Green NoNo’s

We have been giving advice on how to make a home and your lifestyle more green and eco-friendly, such as make sure to recycle, turn off lights and switch to CFLs and LED lights. How about what you shouldn’t be doing if you want to live a green life? There are a bunch of no no’s to keep in mind from day-to-day activities to remodeling approaches.




We will work on this to grow over time – but here’ a start:

1. Don’t buy bottles water or other plastic bottles drinks – we want to limit the amount of plastic that is produced in general. If we all cut down on these purchase, think of what a powerful message we’ll be sending to the producers of these items – that they need to think of alternative methods of packaging and delivery, and that bottled water is not needed if we can keep our local water sources clean and available through conservation and preventative practices for runoff and other contaminants.

2. Don’t be fooled by green-washing – There are a lot of products coming into the market place that can easily fool you into thinking that you are selecting an eco-friendly choice. We recently came upon a product from Ziploc – called “Evolve”. This product at first glance makes you think that you are purchasing some kind of recycled product – but look closer – this is not really the case. Evolve does use 25% less plastic than the “normal” Ziploc baggies – but they are very much still virgin plastic. The box is made from some recycled cardboard, and this is a good step too but its not the whole picture. They do claim that wind power is used in the production of the product and we do want to support that idea, but how much of the power is wind power – 1%, 10%, 90%?

What happens if we all start purchasing this product because we believe it is superior to their previous offerings? Than the producer, Ziploc, gets the idea that the public is gullible, which we are, and that to sell more baggies, with 25% less plastic (while charging us more for the privilege of letting them use less) is completely acceptable and a winning concept for them. When what is really happening is that yes, they are thinking about the product materials, and using less of an oil-based material, and they have recognized the marketing benefits of selling a “green” product, but they are at the same time duping us and winning at that game, and so they have no incentive to do better – to actually produce a green product, such as corn-based plastic films, use packaging that is 100% recycled, and recyclable, and that their manufacturing plants be completely dedicated to using only renewable energy sources.

If the public does not demand these measures by voting with our pocketbooks, then the companies producing these items will never need to do a complete job.


Stay tuned for more!