If you’re a parent, you likely have several giant bins filled to the brim with toys for your little ones. And with Christmas (ho ho ho!) over you’re likely to have gotten toys in all shapes and sizes.  And while I’m no bah humbug, the relative size of our children’s toy boxes has become incredibly large given their small stature, and the environmental problems are equally ill-proportioned:

• Mountains of trash: Of the 40 million toys thrown away annually, 13 million are put into the rubbish according to green living website www.ecolife.com.
• Difficult recycling: Because toys are made from many different materials – plastics, metal, glass, computer components, and more – they are incredibly difficult to recycle and in many cases are not accepted by recycling facilities.

Once Christmas is over, we try to keep the toys under control (as well as our carbon footprint) by having a post-Christmas clean-up and getting rid of toys that haven’t been used or the children have simply grown out of.

Donating used toys to a good cause can be one of the most effective ways to recycle toys. Not only does this prevent garbage from being sent to landfills, it provides a second life for your used toys, which means the materials will go on functioning for many months or years to come. The sky’s the limit when it comes to donating used toys – use your imagination to find a person or charity who could use your second hand toys:

• Children’s charities
• Children’s hospitals
• Churches
• Day cares
• Family members
• Friends
• Neighbours
• Playgroups
• Thrift shops like those through St Vincent de Paul or the Salvation Army

Not all toys can be donated to charities for various health and ethical reasons. To ensure that your toys have the best chance of being given away rather than trashed, consider these toy donation guidelines:

• Toys should be nontoxic
• Ensure that the toys are clean and are not missing parts
• Broken toys are unlikely to be accepted, especially if they pose a choking hazard
• Avoid toys with a religious theme unless you’re donating to a faith-based charity
• Toys that require batteries are not as suitable for donation as they will require the parents of the child to purchase batteries (which may be out of their budget)
• Toys made from things like fabric, cardboard, paper, and other absorbable materials are often rejected as they are difficult to clean and disinfect

In addition to donating used toys, there are many ways you can recycle toys so that they don’t end up in the landfill:

• Contribute to a toy library: Some communities have toy libraries that are like book libraries – you can check toys in and out so that your child is never bored with their personal stash. Each toy library is unique to the local community, so the best way to find one in your area is to do a search online for your city/town name + “toy library.”
• Sell or trade: Sometimes a toy is too valuable to simply give away, in which case you could try to sell it.
• Recycling centers: Some communities have set up recycling programs for large plastic toys and metals toys as well, though you will need to call ahead to determine your recycling centre’s toy recycling policy.
• Deconstruction: If your recycling centre will not take your toys as is, sometimes you can dismantle them yourself to recycle the various components, such as the paper, cardboard, metal, and plastic which can then be put with other recyclables of the same kind. Cardboard and paper components can also be composted.

If you have any good ideas for what can be done with second hand toys we’d love to hear from you.

Source:  www.ecolife.com

Read more on how to be green at www.yonderr.com.au

Last week we talked about being green on the cheap, and this week we thought we would focus on the work place.  Here are 5 ways to give your office a green tinge – and some might even save the boss some money.  Here goes:

1. Bring your lunch
Pack your lunch in reusable containers. As well as contributing less to the already overwhelmed landfills, you will save money and your health. Don’t forget to pack a bottle (reusable of course!) of water, real utensils, and a cloth napkin. If you prefer to eat take out, try bringing reusable containers with you for your over-the-counter soup, salad or whatever.

2. Get involved
If your boss isn’t interested in making overall changes, you can still bring in a green cleaner for your desk, or put a bottle of eco dish detergent in the kitchen. Bring your own plate/cup/mug/bowl/utensils and store them in a desk drawer. People will notice and it might start a (good) trend. Find an electronic waste recycling place and help facilitate the office to take old stuff there. Put signs on office and bathroom doors reminding people to recycle and to shit down their computer at the end of the day.

3. Wash more, dry clean less
What are you wearing? Perc (perchloroethylene) the main chemical in dry cleaning solvent is a classified hazardous chemical and has been linked to cancer in lab animals. You know the smell. The chemical gets trapped in the plastic bags. Then we put those trapped items in our closets, close the door, and sleep next to the closet with the windows shut all night long. Bad idea. If you have perc-cleaned clothes you need to remove the plastic and air your clothes for several hours to let the chemicals evaporate. Better alternatives to conventional dry cleaning include sponge cleaning or hand washing. This works, even for wool. Speaking of wool, avoid mothballs. The vapours are carcinogenic and if a child swallows one, it could kill them. Use things like lavender, cedar, and temperature (stick sweaters in your freezer) for moths.

4. Transportation
How do you get to work in the morning? Public transportation is preferable to driving. Carpooling is a good option where public transport is unavailable. Walking or biking are obviously the best options, as is telecommuting (you’ll save money on petrol, too).

5. Open Windows
Studies show indoor air to be worse than outdoor air. Ventilation is key, especially if you’re sitting near a photocopier. And put a plant on your desk – some are known to act as air filters (aloe vera/ficus for formaldehyde; spider plant for carbon monoxide, and several others).

To read the full story, click here

Story source: www.yonderr.com.au

It can sometimes feel like making earth-friendly choices means spending more money.  Well, the good news is that being green doesn’t have to break the bank. With a little creative thinking, it’s easy to ditch the high prices of trendy eco products and go green at no cost.

Here are the first five of our top 10 ways to go green on the cheap.

1. Head outside
With the warmer months here (in the southern hemisphere anyway), now is the time to get outside and visit your local park or beach to throw a ball, have a picnic, run, jump, swim or simply commune with nature – and it doesn’t cost a cent. Enjoy!

2.  Read online
Rather than buying newspapers and magazines and then having to worry about recycling, try reading online.  It’s easy and simple and most newspapers and magazines have excellent free content.  You might even find that you expand your reading material by checking out the local press in the US, Europe or China. It’s not called the world wide web for nothing!

3. Reuse your packaging
Food packaging can contain plastics and other materials that are very difficult to recycle.  Ditch the cost of freezer bags (and your use of raw materials) by using old food packaging instead. Bags used to package frozen vegetables, fish and meats are equipped with lining that effectively blocks freezer-burn – and they’ll keep frozen foods just as fresh the second time around. The plastic bags inside cereal boxes are also great for freezing foods, as they also have a moisture-blocker to preserve freshness.

Some of these bags already have a re-sealable closure for easy reuse. But bags that aren’t re-sealable can be just as useful for storing your leftovers. Make sure to wash all your packaging well before reusing it.

4. Choose a vege-based meal
We’re not saying that eating meat is bad. But the livestock industry does carry a pretty heavy environmental footprint, causing many earth-lovers to opt for a vegan or vegetarian diet. If you’re not ready for a full commitment, try serving a vegetarian or vegan meal to your family once a week.

5. Participate in a cleanup
If you want to help keep your neighborhood beautiful but don’t have tons of cash, try donating some of your free time instead by participating in a local cleanup. Spending an afternoon at a cleanup gives you a sense of fulfillment, keeps your town clean and helps you meet other eco-minded people in your area.

Visit your local park’s or council’s web site to find an upcoming park, river or beach cleanup near you. If you’re having trouble, a web search with the word “cleanup” and your town’s name should point you in the right direction.

Stay tuned for our next five green tips that won’t break the bank.

For more information on this, please click here

Story source: www.yonderr.com.au

Next time you are making a cup of coffee in the morning, spare a thought that you are dealing with a potential fuel of the future.

It’s not just aroma – in Britain, engineers have built a car that runs entirely on coffee beans and broke the world speed record for a car powered by organic waste.

In September, a modified Rover SD1 averaged 66.5mph at the Elvington Race Track near York, smashing the previous record of 47mph achieved by a US team that built a car fuelled by wood pellets.

Engineer Martin Bacon, with the Teesdale Conservation Volunteers of Durham, stripped out the old car and refitted it with a ‘gasifier’ and filters which turn waste coffee granules into energy to drive the engine.

The breakthrough car is not the first to be powered by coffee.

Mr Bacon and his team based the design of the Rover on a coffee-powered Volkswagen Sirocco built for the BBC science show Bang Goes The Theory.

That car was driven from London to Manchester in March last year and straight into the Guinness Book of Records, as no car powered by waste material had ever travelled that distance before.

Bang Goes The Theory presenter Jem Stansfield explained that the cars are a genuine alternative to powering engines using fossil fuels.

They work, he says, by burning waste coffee granules, which would otherwise end up in landfill..

“It’s like an old charcoal burner,” he said.

The coffee is heated up like charcoal. Then the combustion gases, generally carbon dioxide and water vapour, are reduced by hot carbon to carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

This is then filtered by a cyclone filter and a rock wool filter and cooled down by a radiator.

“By the end the gas is a lot cooler and cleaner and is piped through to the engine” Mr Stansfield said. “The coffee gas, the carbon monoxide and hydrogen, goes in the cylinders and the explosion drives the engine.”

Coffee powered cars … what a great way to reduce our carbon footprint and
cut the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

To read the full story, click here or visit www.yonderr.com.au

According to the manufacturers cold water laundry detergents wash most clothes perfectly well. Most if us, however, still cling on to our mum’s advice about using warm water to wash our clothes.  However in the process we use up valuable energy and contribute to carbon emissions.  And remember, you don’t need a carbon tax to become more aware of CO2 emissions.

According to TreeHugger, a full 90 percent of the energy used in washing clothes goes toward heating the water, so it stands to reason that using less energy by washing in cold, unheated water would create significant environmental savings. But just how much difference are we really talking about?

The TreeHugger number crunchers came up with some pretty interesting results. It turns out that pressing the cold/cold button (instead of the hot/warm button) on your washing machine has the same impact as driving about 9 miles in a car or the production, transportation and storage of a six pack of beer.

It may not be too surprising that one load of laundry doesn’t make a huge amount of difference compared to, say, not eating meat or dairy. But, multiply those impacts by 392 — the number of laundry loads an average U.S. home washes in a year — and, all of the sudden, there are some real impacts.

Washing laundry in hot water is really wasteful
Washing every load on the hot/warm cycle (in a top loading machine and an electric water heater) for a year is equivalent to burning about 182 gallons of gasoline in a car; in an average (19.8 miles per gallon) car, that’ll get you around 3595 miles. So, wash in hot/warm, or drive almost 3600 miles — same difference.

Similarly, if you wash with the hot/cold cycle (in a top loading machine and an electric water heater), you’ll end up with 2407 pounds of CO₂ per year — just over a metric ton — which is equal to about one US round-trip cross-country flight (6171 miles of long-haul flying).

Using a gas water heater is far more efficient
If you’ve got a gas water heater, the news is a little greener. You’re looking at 3.22 pounds of CO₂ per load, which translates to just over 3 miles in a car; add that up over an average year’s worth of washing, and you’re looking at just over 1288 miles in a car or about 1262 pounds of CO₂, or most of the way from New York City to London by airplane.

Using cold water can really net you some savings
When you use cold water to wash, you just use energy to run the machine — about .24 kWh — without using any energy to heat the water. That .24 kWh translates to about .41 pounds of CO₂ per load, or about 162 pounds of CO₂ per year. That’s about 8 gallons of gas, or 164 miles of driving. Compare that to the 3595 miles of driving that the top end of the emissions scale (washing in hot/warm, using a top-loading machine and water heated with an electric water heater), and pressing that cold/cold button starts to make a sizable difference.

Using an efficient Energy Star machine makes a big difference, too
Energy Star estimates that water savings range from 40 percent to 75 percent with front-loading washing machines, so their relative impact would be comparably less.

What does this all mean? Aside from being a great example of how little decisions add up to make a big difference, it shows how wasteful heating large quantities of water can be. Just selecting the “cold/cold” cycle has the potential to save as much CO2 emissions each year as thousands of miles driven in a car, or even an airplane flight or two.

For the full story click here

Story Source: www.yonderr.com.au