Lessening the Poop Quotient: Keep dog poop out of your food
I’ve talked about canine poop containment in the past, urging you to try out a doggie doo compost option (either homemade or premade), but scooping can be such a nuisance. Close to 4 million tons of dog waste is purportedly left where it lies every year by dog owners. That’s because on average, 40 percent of all Americans fail to scoop their pooch’s poop.
Is there a way to lessen the amount of poop produced? More than likely your dog will poop less when he’s eating a well-balanced diet filled with top-notch ingredients. Many lower-grade canine foods contain all kinds of animal byproducts. In fact, although the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) is tasked with monitoring feed standards for both livestock and pets, each state in the US is allowed to enforce those guidelines as they see fit, and that can mean some pretty unsavory menus for Fido.
A good portion of many doggie diets on the market are filled with waste foods that are not fit for human consumption. Up to 50 percent of every food animal (lungs, intestines, hooves, hair, etc) is not used to produce human food, and these byproducts often find their way into dietary products for animals. By choosing healthy food for your dog, you can ensure their food is short on byproducts and high on nutrition, which essentially will cut the poop problem at the source.
Higher-quality food that contains good sources of protein are easier for your dog to digest, which means a greater percentage of the calories in the food are digestible and nutrient-rich. In the end, your dog will poop smaller, firmer stools, which means less mess for you!
Here are some characteristics to look for in a healthy dog food:
- Look for protein (meat) to be the first thing on the ingredient list: lamb, chicken, and beef for instance. Avoid foods that contain things like “chicken meal” “beef byproduct” and other non-specific ingredients.
- High-quality ingredients like eggs should also be listed in the top three to five ingredients. What you don’t want one type of meat followed by a list of grains.
- Lucy
Defy the Myth: Stop Idling for Your Car’s Sake
I was recently at the school waiting for the kids and was shocked to see so many vehicles running. And when I stepped out of my vehicle to talk to another Mom, I was almost suffocated by the fumes. Some of the vehicles were even left idling with no one in them!
It’s no mystery that idling can actually have a negative effect on our children’s health. Idling can contribute to health problems such as asthma, heart and lunch disease, and allergies, so keeping the car running while waiting for Suzy or Paul may just be harmful to their health!
And it’s not necessary, either. Contrary to what your husband or father may have led you to believe, your engine does not need to be warmed up before you drive during cold weather to avoid damage. According to California Energy Commissions’ Consumer Energy Center:
“Idling is not an effective way to warm up your vehicle, even in cold weather. The best way to do this is to drive the vehicle. With today’s modern engines, you need no more than 30 seconds of idling on winter days before driving away.”
In fact, they tell us that idling can actually damage your car’s engine parts since fuel is only partially combusted when idling, which means your engine is operating at less-than-peak performance. As a result, fuel residues may build up on your cylinder walls that can then damage the components and reduce fuel efficiency.
For these health and engine reasons, idling is therefore a bad idea. But it’s also bad for the pocketbook, since idling for just 10 seconds burns the same amount of fuel as restarting your vehicle. Likewise, two minutes spent idling uses the same amount of fuel as driving for about one mile. What a waste!
This is totally preventable pollution and expense. I may even consider shutting down the engine the next time I’m stopped waiting for a train or at a long red light!
- Lucy
Sniffing our Way to Road Rage
I don’t drive all that often. We try to minimize the use of vehicles as much as possible and opt for walking, public transportation, carpooling, and other eco-friendly transportation options as much as possible. It helps to reduce our feelings of stress (no one likes to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic) and saves us money, too, to choose these alternative methods of getting around, especially with higher gas prices.
The skyrocketing prices at the pump over the last few years sure have been maddening, but now, there’s apparently another cause of our driving anger. According to a new study by Cairo University’s Amal Kinawy, road rage may be cause by more than other irritating drivers—it could be caused in party by the “emotionally incendiary” fumes of our gasoline!
The ScienceDaily reported the results: when exposed to either leaded-gas fumes, unleaded-gas fumes, and fresh air, male rates exhibited differing behaviors. Those exposed to either kinds of fuel exhibited more aggressive behavior than those in the clean air group. Leaded gasoline produced with greatest negative results, with altered neurotransmitter levels in the brain’s cortex region and damage due to higher levels of free radicals.
Where are we exposed to these emotionally-poisonous fumes? When we fill up our gas tanks, as we drive around (especially with the windows rolled down), and just by hanging out in cities.
I guess I should be surprised by this finding—the stuff does smell noxious. And now, it’s yet another reason to avoid driving if at all possible. Obviously, I’ll still be exposed to fumes when on city roads, whether I’m a pedestrian, a public transit rider, or a carpooler. But at least I’ll be minimizing my contribution to the problem. Maybe I should move back to the country?
- Lucy
Changing Direction: Free Energy Savings with Your Fan
Do you ever get lost in the spin of your ceiling fan. That gentle, whirring motion and the quiet movement of air. Not quite as intoxicating as a fire, but it can be quite mesmerizing!
And little did I know, but I can actually save energy by changing the direction on my fan now that it’s winter! Direction? I’ve never really thought about what direction my fan turns—I just set it going and enjoy the benefits. And I’ve certainly never considered using it during the winter. You learn something new every day, don’t you?
According to the Look Up campaign, using your ceiling fan strategically can save the average homeowner a reasonable amount of money in heating and cooling bills. And with the average heating bill this season at about $1,182, there’s plenty of room for savings.
Here’s how it works. By turning your ceiling fan(s) on in a clockwise direction during heating/winter seasons, you help to mix the warm air trapped at the ceiling with cooler air at the floor level of the room. Doing this warms up the entire space, and in turn will let you turn down your heating system slightly so that you use less energy. Of course, when summer comes around again, you should change your fan rotation to counter clockwise to get similar benefits only in reverse. I think I’ll set a calendar reminder for myself so that I don’t forget.
And if you’ve got an old fan and want to maximize its performance even more, you may want to consider upgrading to an ENERGY STAR model. These spinners use much less energy (about 50% less) and move air 20% more efficiently, so they’re a good bet when it comes to efficiency.
Now… on to spinning my way to energy savings…
- Lucy
Lucy goes green: Outsmarting the Fruit Flies
I’ve got a vermicompost bin in my home and I love it! It’s a great way for me to get rid of my organic kitchen leftovers (including my tea bags, floss, and even dryer lint!), which helps put my mind at ease about methane emissions from anaerobic digestion in landfills. And, it makes for a much less messy garbage carry-out—a trash can full of sloppy, rotting organics is a nasty thing to take to the curb.
But, fruit flies are sometimes inevitable with an indoor compost bin like mine. The populations of these annoying critters ebbs and flows from month to month, depending on temperatures and how well I’ve been caring for my worms. And while I’m a pretty tolerant person when it comes to doing something in the name of the environment, I can hardly stand another fruit fly in my water. Enough is enough!
So, I’ve started to strategically place fruit fly traps around my kitchen, and, much to my surprise, they seem to be working! Here’s how I constructed them:
- Cut a 500 mL soda bottle (plastic) in half, keeping the bottom end.
- Roll up a piece of paper (any paper will do, really) into a cone shape and tape it so that it can rest inside the open mouth of the bottle bottom. Snip a very small hole in the end of the cone.
- Pour some apple cider vinegar into the bottom of the bottle with a drop of dishwashing soap.
- Place the cone inside the bottle so that the snipped hole sits just above the liquid (without touching). Tape the paper cone to the bottle, being sure to leave no escape routes.
That’s it! The idea is that while fruit flies can find their way into the contraption, they can’t find their way out again through the tiny hole. The way I figure it, they’ll die happy with their bellies full of delicious vinegar…
- Lucy
Keepin’ the Feline Footsies Fresh
I’ve got two cats, and they’re pretty picky about how I (their servant) set up their litter box and how it’s maintained. Much like the three bears, if the litter is too soft, too dry, too dusty, too stinky, or too clumpy, they’re outta there, and I’m left holding, ahem, the crap bag. Thanks so much, kitties!
But I have to say, I’ve finally found the perfect cat litter. Not only do the cats like it, it’s also better for the planet.
Why, you ask, do we need to green-up the way our kitties poop? Here’s the scoop. First, clay litters are all bad. Made of a mineral, usually bentonite or attapulgite/montmorillonite, clay-based litters are eco-unfriendly from the get-go. They rely on unsustainable mining practices and are heavy to transport to boot, so their carbon footprint is sizeably larger than your feline’s paw prints.
Not only that, but clay litters tend to be unhealthy for kitties, adding silica dust to their lungs which can contribute to respiratory problems. Add to these problems that fact that there’s nothing to be done with used clay litter (especially the clumping variety) but to send it to the landfill where it can contaminate ground water and where it’ll sit without biodegrading for centuries, and you’ve got one solid, stinky mess. Apparently, we Americans throw away 2 million tons of kitty litter every year!
My new solution is this: Feline Fresh Natural Pine Cat Litter. It’s made from leftover wood material which means its biodegradable, so that’s an improvement. Additionally, when you’re done with it, you can put it in your compost pile (preferably one that’s not going to be used on your veggie garden) or employ it as mulch on flower beds and around trees. It’s low on odor, dust, and won’t track like clay litters, and it has no chemical additives, so it’s healthier for my kitties, too. I absolutely love this stuff!
- Lucy
Scan for Savings: GoodGuide’s iPhone App
GoodGuide, a great little company that’s making it easier for us regular consumers to make greener, more ethical purchases, has recently released an iPhone app for their already handy database.
What’s GoodGuide, you ask? Currently, it’s an elaborate database, containing over 70,000 items (at the time of this writing—they’re adding more every single day) such as toys, personal care products, food, household items, and more. Using expert advice and recommendations from other consumers, the guide pulls together information about each of these products, creating a rating for them so that you can make an informed decision before plunking down your hard-earning cash.
Their philosophy: the more information that’s in the hands of consumers, the more we can signal companies about our consumer preferences, which in turn will push them to make better products that are safer, more eco-friendly, and traded fairly. Their aim is to fill a huge information gap in the marketplace.
They provide ratings on a variety of indexes, including:
- Health performance (cancer risk, endocrine disruption, skin and eye irritation, etc)
- Environmental performance (emissions in water, air, land, and climate as well as use of natural resources and environmental management programs)
- Social performance (how well employees are compensated, whether labor and human rights are observed, diversity policies, etc)
These ratings are then weighed carefully and plugged into their system, which then spits out a number that gives a reference for comparing that product to others in similar categories.
What’s really cool is that their new iPhone app allows you to scan a product at the store (using the UPC barcode) to instantly get a rating for a particular product (provided it’s in their database already). And if a product hasn’t yet been rated, the more it is scanned by iPhone users, the higher it will rise along the priority chain for future ratings.
Good work, GoodGuide!
- Lucy
The Green Challenge – Day 29
Join me on this Green Challenge – Thirty Days of Serious (and Silly) Green Commitments! Each day, I’ll challenge myself to introduce a new green thing in my life, and I invite you to get on the bandwagon to make a difference. If all goes well, we’ll be living a greener life that will continue well beyond this Earth Month!
I love the dishwasher (probably because I hate washing dishes by hand), so it’s a good thing that it uses less water and energy than the average dishwashing session at the sink. But I wonder about how much dishwashing soap I use—I never know if it’s enough or too much. Of course, we use eco-friendly, phosphate-free, biodegradable automatic dishwasher detergent, but I hate to waste if I don’t have to.
I did a little reading (off the bottle of detergent) and found that the amount really does depend on the hardness of our water. To find out how hard our water is, I called our local water utility and they gave me a generalized number which I then used to determine how much detergent I needed (according to the bottles directions). Now I know that I only need to fill the main cup three-quarters full, which is less than I was using. This will be an easy habit to form, and one that will benefit our cleaning product bill, too.
- Lucy
