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You’re on vacation! You’re in an airplane or in a moving car and your little bundle of love needs a diaper change. Time to pull out diapers made of cloth, which you’ll have to wash later.

Oooh! Everything about that just sounds like fodder for a bad vacation movie.

My good friend who I consider an “eco-mommy” is always trying to find new ways to introduce green products into her kids’ lives. When she and her small family travel, she confessed to me that diapers are the one thing that never seem to go green in her family, especially when the family heads off on vacation.

But whether you decide on reusable or disposable diapers, almost anything is better for the earth than a traditional diaper.

Dirty (Traditional) Diaper Facts

It can take up to 500 years for one diaper to decompose, according to the EPA. Now imagine how many thousands of diapers most parents go through in one year? Disposable diapers make up a solid 5% of landfill waste and can cost several thousands of dollars from baby’s first diaper to potty training.

Cloth Facts for Traveling Parents

Simply put, cloth diapers can be reused. For this reason, cloth diapers may not be the most convenient option for parents on vacation. Most diaper services use non-green products to clean the diapers, and that may not be something green parents are comfortable with. As a result, you may have to figure out how much time you have to wash diapers. However, pro-cloth parents say that there are many green positives to cloth diapers. You’ll save a great deal of your own green by switching to cloth. Plus, most babies who are in cloth diapers seldom if ever get diaper rash, and cloth-diaper parents might have to use less cloth diapers in the first place, because babies can feel when they’ve wet themselves a little more acutely than if they were wearing traditional diapers. Due to the reality of cleaning cloth diapers, this option may not be the best for the family who’s traveling, although when you get back home feel free to check out all the great items at TinyTush.com, including these disposable diaper liners.

The Alternative

For families who want the convenience of a disposable diaper, check out earth-friendly brands, such as Seventh Generation , which has no petroleum-based lotions, fragrances, or latex. All that’s good and green for baby, but the fact is that most disposable diapers are not totally biodegradable. For more info, check out this fantastic disposable “green” diaper chart.
Disposable diapers may be flat-out easier to pack when you’re off to grandma’s or on a cross-country jaunt, but when you return home (and if you’re up for the time it will take), cloth diapers may be worth a try.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By majorbonnet

You don’t have to be Irish to experience the luck that going green can bring. (There’s our one “green” joke. We’re done now, we promise.) There are many ways to be eco-friendly on Saint Patty’s Day.

The History of Green Rivers: Are Dyes Safe?

Ever since 1962, it’s been a tradition in some cities to dye the river waters green in celebration. This tradition started in Chicago and at first, city officials dyed the waters of the Charles River green with oil-based dye – not very environmentally friendly. The good news is that most cities that want to create green rivers do so with environmentally friendly or plant-based dyes. While there still exists some concern about the dyed water, most cities claim the dye is safe.

Make Your Own Shamrocks

Americans spend over an estimated 4 billion dollars on Saint Patrick’s Day. That’s a lot of plastic shamrocks. If you want to make your own decorations, settle in with a stack of green construction paper, scissors, and glue. Let the kids help out as well – they’ll love it.

Clothes

According to the American Retail Federation, about 86% of us will wear green to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. But beware! All green items are not created equal, nor are they lucky for the environment. Check out these cute and eco-friendly items like this organic tee shirt  or simply wear something green that’s already in your closet. Everyone has a random green hat, scarf, or funky pair of socks tucked away somewhere. If you’ve got the money, buy organic clothing; if not, have fun with something old-made-new or hit a thrift store to hunt up some cute upcycled green duds.

Food

For some of us, nothing represents Saint Patrick’s Day more than a heaping platter of corned beef and cabbage. Others, however, may not be all about the meat. There are some fantastic, Irish-themed vegan or vegetarian friendly recipes out there. One of my all time favorites is a veggie-heavy, meat-free version of a sheppard’s pie, which can be made with either beans or tofu in place of lamb.

Beer

Drink organic or local brews to really make your Saint Patrick’s Day truly green. Of course, remember to recycle the beer or wine bottles. Want to dye your booze green? Make sure to use an organic food dye.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By tibbygirl

A few weeks ago, we ran a post about kickstarting a new, green 2012. These basic, eco-friendly decisions were meant to brush the dust off our green attitudes and start the new year off on the right foot.

The three green 2012 kickoffs were walking anywhere, buying a reusable water bottle, and shopping with non-plastic bags. After only a few weeks, my green scorecard is more than lopsided.

The Event: Walking anywhere.

The Score: B-
The Explanation: While some members of my family have happily started walking more, we’ve mostly been walking to keep the pounds off and to bring more relaxation into our lives, rather than walking to anywhere specific. We’ve walked to close neighbors’ houses rather than taking the car. Since I work in walkable distance, I’ve started to walk to work at least once a week. Provided I’m able to leave the office during daylight hours, this works fine.

The Event: Cloth Shopping Bags

The Score: D
The Explanation: Remember the reusable bags. This should be easy, right?  However, it always seems that I’ve forgotten them at home – and so,  I easily contribute to the billion wasted plastic shopping bags a year. The best that can be said is that we’re able to get a lot of use out of them as garbage liners or puppy scoopers. Still, there’s a lot of room for improvement on this one, because I don’t want to become one of the shoppers responsible for the huge number of shopping bags in landfills. Once I travel again, I look forward to having a few empty bags with me for random purchases.

The Event: Buying a reusable water bottle.

The Score: A
The Explanation: I was able to find a BPA-free water bottle at a fairly inexpensive price (green on two counts!) and, even though it’s huge, I’m happy to take it with me everywhere. It holds 32 ounces of water, so one fill-up stops me from adding four, eight-ounce plastic water bottles to a landfill. But will I be able to keep it up? Absolutely. I just make sure that it’s always by the front door and ready to go before I leave the house. (I’ve taken this water bottle with me on a few trips recently and it’s held up quite nicely.)

How about you? Did you walk more places? Did the reusable bags make it with you into the store or did you (like me) forget them at home? Did you always remember the water bottle? How has your Green 2012 Kickoff held up?

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By Paul A Hernandez

As I looked around my house, I wondered how we could go green for New Years. Would noisemakers be a thing of the past? And what about decorations? Here’s how we’re going to ring in the New Year and still make our celebration as green as possible.

Tablecloths

If you’re having an at-home blow out, avoid the store-bought plastic tablecloths in exchange for an old, freshly laundered white sheet. Also, check out the old stuff. You’d be surprised what goodies may hide in old drawers and cabinets. While wracking my brain for stuff to use for New Year’s, I was lucky enough to find my grandmother’s tablecloth, somehow in excellent condition. Reusing an old white sheet for a tablecloth is another thrifty idea.

Plates, Plastics and Glass

If possible, avoid paper plates and instead use washable plates. If you’re having a large get-together and the idea of all that cleanup kills your party buzz, go for recyclable plates. Be sure that you have clearly marked bins for trash and recyclables. Once you’ve got all your favorite drinks together, make sure that you’re recycling glass bottles as you go.

Decorations

Soy candles are all-natural and often have many exotic scents. This New Year’s, I’ll be hunting for some of my favorite mint or basil soy candles. They smell fresh and clean, perfect for the New Year. If you’d rather avoid candles altogether, LED fake candles are the way to go. Get creative with clippings or flowers from the yard. Even if you live in an area where there’s snow on the ground, fallen twigs can be rolled in glitter, painted, and tied with homemade bows. A string of LED holiday lights are great for artistic decoration.

Drinks and Food

Organic champagne and beer can be found pretty much everywhere, but your best bet would be to hunt up a local alternative grocery store or shop online. Vegan patties and crumbles can be substituted for meat in appetizer recipes.

Noisemakers

Since I may be hanging out with some kids for New Year’s, I wanted to make sure they had something to make noise with without wasting plastic. After all, little ones don’t really care what they’re making noise with as long as they can make noise in the first place. If the kids are staying up to ring in the New Year, make homemade shakers out of thick construction paper. Roll a piece of paper into a tube, staple one end, fill the middle part with pumpkin seeds or dry beans, and let them shake away. (The same rules apply with an old canister.) It’s green and the whole thing can be recycled at the end of the night.

Photo by besighyawn

By Marissa Cohen

Whether you’re looking for stocking stuffers or gifts to charm the Grinch in your life, this list has eco-friendly holiday gift ideas for everyone. From eco-aware spa services to non-toxic crayons, be merry and bright with these earth-positive treats.

Beauty and Relaxation

Holy happy holidays -it is an entire network devoted to spas with sustainable business practices! Bring a little relaxation to the people in your life with a trip to an eco-friendly spa. Green America sponsors this database of hundreds of national green spas. Looking for beauty products? If you’re looking for something that reminds you of snow and the holiday season, try this mint body wash, one of my sulfate-and-petroleum free favorites from Alba Botanica. In fact, everything from Alba Botanica is free of sulfates, petroleum-based ingredients, and other unhealthy toxins, so there’s much to love.

Green Travelers

For the holidays, Terrapass is offering $5.00 Climate Change Chocolate that comes with a verified carbon offset of 133 pounds, the average daily amount of one person’s carbon impact. For your friends who have no idea what carbon credits are, what better way to sway them to the green side than with chocolate? Plus, check out the e-card options. As always, a sturdy stainless steel water bottle is a good gift for a traveler. A small solar phone charger wouldn’t go astray either.

Green Kids

These non-toxic crayons look like colorful little pebbles. They seem like so much fun, I’m half tempted to order some myself. Homemade vegan cookies (made with an assortment of vegan or gluten-free flours) are also great extras for holiday gifts.

Crafty, Thrifty Fun: A few years ago, a green pal of mine and I made homemade magnets from some small, store-bought glass disks, some equally small, disk-shaped magnets, and a stack of magazines. We clipped all kinds of random magazine pictures, glued the clipping to the magnet, and then glued the glass disk on top of the picture. We even made little “sets” – some magnets were different shades of greens cut from a photo of trees, while some were pictures of movie stars. Magnets are cute, easily personalized gifts, if you’re willing to take out an hour or two to get creative.

Photo by Woodswalker

By Marissa Cohen

Whether you’re waiting for Hanukah Harry or Santa Claus during the month of December, it’s important to make your winter holidays as eco-friendly as possible. Americans generate over 5 million tons of trash each year between Thanksgiving and the year’s end. That’s a lot of extra wrapping paper, old lights, and other kinds of waste. Avoid a lump of coal from the green fairy and follow these holiday tips.

Wrapping

If you don’t want to waste paper, there are many eco-friendly and green ways to wrap holiday presents without generating more stuff to recycle. After all, traditional wrapping paper doesn’t only waste paper but is often unsustainable. A crafty friend of mine uses scraps of old fabric as her wrapping paper of choice, and loosely seals the fabric with glue. Not only is this kind of creativity worlds above store-bought gift-wrap, but it can be easily personalized with fun and nostalgic photos or drawings. Thrift stores or garage sales can be a green place to find alternative ways to package presents. A small glass bottle that I found at a garage sale for a dollar got a new life as part of a gift when I packaged fun, small items in it. Suddenly, that small, varied bunch of cute little gifts wasn’t in a boring (and wasteful) paper box or swathed in a heavily dyed bit of wrapping paper. Instead, the glass bottle wound up making the present! Plus, it had the added bonus of being free storage for the person who received the gift.

Holiday Cards

Put your holiday card list on email! There are several free e-card services online that let you send e-cards to several emails at once. By this simple act, you can save paper and reduce the carbon footprint of your stack of holiday cards. If you want to stick with paper, consider enlisting the kids’ help to make a few homemade cards for special people.

Gifts

Purchase gifts from natural fibers such as organic cotton, hemp, or glass. Avoid larger stores for vendors that work with free trade or eco-friendly organizations. Make sure that all the holiday waste such as boxes, packaging materials, or paper get recycled or reused.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo by LornaWatt

Is your green hotel really green? Or is your hotel merely trying to dip into the pond of eco-travel? Here are some tips to separate the truly eco-friendly from the environmental pretenders.

Local Staff

A good sign of an eco-friendly lodging is to find out if the people employed by the hotel are locals. Are the tour guides and trail leaders ‘locally grown’? This is a key way for green hotels to give back. A good eco-friendly hotel should make the most of community involvement. Does the staff seem knowledgeable about the eco-friendly policies of their establishment?

Water

Several hotels give you the option to reuse towels and thus, conserve laundry (and valuable energy and water). When searching for a green hotel, be sure to find out more about their water conservation policies. Are there water saving devices such as water sensors or lo-flow shower heads installed in the bathrooms? Does the hotel kitchen use similar devices? Of course, make sure that you’re also staying aware of how much water you’re using, but make sure that the eco-friendly hotel supports your water-lovin’ efforts.

Recycling

Most hotels and business establishments recycle these days. Still, dig a little deeper and get curious. What kind of recycling does your green hotel do? Do they recycle paper or aluminum? Does the hotel or lodging participate in a carbon offset program?

Food

One of the best things about vacation is the food. However, make sure that the hotel you’re considering uses either organic or locally grown produce whenever possible.

By Marissa Cohen

I never thought my bathroom would start to have a green transformation, but it has. There’s a drying rack (also known as a clothes horse) sitting next to my tub. It’s right there, in front of the bathtub and the sink. As household items go, it looks cozy, quant, and helpful. I  feel like I’ve somehow traveled back to the days of Little House on the Prairie. I don’t mind it.

Upon learning that I could save hundreds of pounds of carbon dioxide emissions every year by drying my clothes on a drying rack or clothesline, I’ve set myself a challenge, namely to rack-dry as much as possible over the next month and then see if there’s a drop in my bill.

When I went shopping for my drying rack, I chose one that was tall (about 3 ½ feet) rather than some of the wider, shorter choices available, for the greatest space economy. Also, out of the several available at my local household goods store, pick the one that’s the most sturdy if you want to try larger items of clothing on it.

I haven’t stopped using a dryer for the larger things but so far, I’ve been hand washing small items like socks, underwear, or tee shirts – things that I can safely experiment with to see if they become wrinkly. Even if they do, it’s easy enough to get some steam going and watch the clothes slowly let go of the wrinkles. I’ve found it’s also a good idea to move the dryer rack outside into direct sunlight if I want to keep white fabrics looking bright. I’ve noticed, though, that, even in the brief time that I’ve been experimenting with drying racks, that colored clothing can lose their brightness if dried outside, so turning them inside out is a good idea. That’s another thing I’ve noticed about rack-drying your clothes. It forces you to slow down.

So far, we’re right on track. We may not know if we’re saving money yet, but we’re definitely helping the environment – and taking time to smell the roses as well.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo by storebukkebruse

Did you ever take the time to read the warning labels on the backs of most household cleansers? Most basic cleaning products (with the exception of environmentally friendly lines) are chock full of dangerous toxins. However, using natural and non-toxic methods can get your house clean while protecting your health and respecting the environment.

Lemon

Due to the acid in the citrus, lemon is a natural stain remover. It’s also a fantastic natural cleanser and  green bleach.

Another great thing about lemons? They can be used to remove stains from everything from pots to clothing, just sprinkle some juice directly on the stain. (Rust, mildew stains or tarnish can all be removed from clothing or kitchenware by mixing lemon juice with some salt.) Make sure to wash fabric right after the lemon treatment, though.

Vinegar

Vinegar is harmless, non-toxic, and a fantastic, multi-purpose cleanser. It’s non-pollutant and non-toxic – as green as can be! I can speak from personal experience – this one has become a favorite in my kitchen. Vinegar and water mixed together (the more vinegar, the stronger the “cleanser” will be) becomes a great kitchen spray. It’s perfect for cleaning kitchen or bathroom countertops.To clean the green way, get to know the many uses for vinegar. Use vinegar to clean windows by mixing ½ cup of it to every gallon of water and pouring inside a spray bottle. To get vinegary-fresh tile floors, mop with the same vinegar-and-water mixture.  Brian Clark Howard mentions that vinegar is a great way to remove bacteria and other residues from fresh fruit and veggies, too. Much better than those expensive produce cleansers from the supermarket!

by Marissa Cohen

Photo by Golf Bravo1

The Desoto Hotel uses an array of fabrics in our top quality rooms. Bamboo sheets are just one of the types of sheets that we’re committed to using. Bamboo fabric is versatile, organic and antibacterial. Plus, they’re super soft and comfortable.

Bamboo Kills Germs

Bamboo bedsheets are antibacterial. Several studies show that bamboo fabric actually kills about 99% of germs.

Soft and Adaptable to Weather

The sheets also naturally adapt to the weather or room temperature, keeping you warm in the cold weather, and nice and cool in hotter weather. Why? Well, not only are the sheets softness wonderful for people with more sensitive skin, but the natural bamboo fibers helps to redistribute moisture, pulling any moisture deep into the bamboo fibers and away from the actual surface of the bedsheet.

No Pesticides, No Pests

Bamboo itself contains a natural antibacterial agent called bamboo kun. Thanks to the bamboo kun, bamboo plants don’t need pesticide or fertilizers to keep the pests away. The fact that bamboo kun changes form – from plant to bedsheet – doesn’t matter. Pests will still stay away from it.

Photo by Foilman

 by Marissa Cohen