“Excuse me.  You’re kind of interrupting.”

Ever felt like you were interrupting a conversation?  Feel like you’re butting in?  Maybe you were standing a bit too close to people talking in hushed tones?

Sound familiar?  Yeah, it happens.  And chances are, if you felt that way, you were indeed interrupting!

But that’s not the way it is here! This is a blog!  Jump (or Butt) right in!

You may feel that talking about issues pertaining to sustainability on green blogs is not worth your while, after all, you recycle, use a reusable water bottle, and do a lot of the, “little things,” to be greener. You generally, “care about the environment.” What more

Recycled paper toilet paper no longer looks like the rough-as-a-cob stuff pictured here. You can find TP made from recycled paper that is actually soft!

Green Life Project is a weekly series of posts highlighting one change for readers to make in their life in order to gradually green their lives.  If you’re just joining us, feel free to jump right in here on week five — you can catch up later!

||Week Five||

This week’s Green Life Project action item is to begin purchasing 100% recycled content toilet paper.

A popular recent New York Times article states that, “In the United States, which is the largest market worldwide for toilet paper, tissue from 100 percent recycled fibers makes up less than 2 percent of sales for at-home use among conventional and premium brands.”

What should you do?  Wipe your butt — with a green toilet paper!

Purchase a 100% recycled content toilet paper.  Try to find one with at least 50% post-consumer product and one which was not manufactured using chlorine-based bleach.

But it’s toilet paper.  Why does it matter what I flush down the toilet?

As we work toward personal sustainability, we have to look beyond our own backsides.

Check it out these four must-read bullet points regarding the, “toilet tissue issue,” (mostly from the same New York Times article) and see how your use of a such a seemingly mundane product could be so very damaging to our environment!

Scandal?  You bet!  And you may be the perpetrator!  Yeah, you!

By now, you’ve likely heard all about Earth Hour, whether in the news, your employer, or your friends, most of us have an idea of what it is about.  (If you don’t know, it’s one hour of turning off your lights on March 28 starting at 8:30 p.m. your local time).

What’s the scandal?

But there is a dark (or should I say, “light”?) secret some of us are hiding.  Despite hearing about this worldwide movement in an effort

Whether you're drinking red or white wine, time to make your wine consumption a bit greener!

Did you know that you can recycle wine  and champagne corks through a company we have discussed on Earthascope before, TerraCycle?  You might also try to sell them on Ebay or make them into something useful!  Check out the step-by-step process for collecting and recycling (along with photos) below!

How do you recycle wine corks?  Wine cork recycling can be easy!

I used TerraCycle for sending off my wine corks.  You can check out handmade sites like Etsy to see if there are any projects you might want to take on yourself to use, give as a gift, or sell.  Or make it up yourself!  I’ve seen trivets, wreaths, baskets, and bulletin boards made from spent wine corks.  What ideas do you have for reusing wine corks?   Comment below!

You have to register with TerraCycle in order to send them corks.  So, if you are an avid wine lover

You don't have to sacrifice your suds when you switch to a greener dish soap!

Green Life Project is a weekly series of posts highlighting one change for readers to make in their life in order to gradually green their lives.

||Week Four||

This week’s Green Life Project action item is to purchase a green dish soap. This is yet another simple step toward a more sustainable you!

Where to start? Here are some broad, basic guidelines to use for a greener dish soap:

1. First, try to get a dye-free, frangrance-free soap.
2. Second, attempt to find a dish soap with plant-based surfactants, such as coconut-based ones.
3. A third, related item to look for

We ran a story earlier this weekend that featured a video of various diapers decomposing over the course of one year.  While the regular plastic-based diapers looked virtually identical after one year compared to when they started, one diaper had completely disappeared!

That magical, disappearing diaper was the gDiaper!  Demand for more information on this super-diaper quickly led to us posting a follow-up article that solely focused on the gDiaper so here it is!

First, I found out about gDiapers through my wife who is a neo-natal intensive care nurse at one of the premiere children’s hospitals in the United States.  While we don’t have any children yet, she works with babies on a daily basis — changing diapers, feeding, cleaning, and other care — many on premature babies.

She comes home and says “Hey have you heard about gDiapers?  They’re an earth-friendly, disposable diaper that fits into these really cute, cloth exteriors.”

Did you know? Every day, Americans send 50 million dirty diapers to landfills.  That’s right, 50 million every day.  That’s approximately 20 Billion each year!  Guess how many years it takes for each one of those 20 Billion turd receptacles to decompose? <answer at bottom of post>

Check out the following video which comes to us from gDiapers, which makes eco-friendly plastic-free baby diapers (no adult versions that I could find LOLZ).  Basically, it shows 3 different types of diapers decomposing over the course of one year.  The results: truly eye-opening!

Environ|Mental is a series of posts regarding changing your mentality about the environment.

Adjust your environmentality!

What?  Don’t recycle plastic?  A website promoting greener living telling you not to recycle?

Kind of…  but not really.  Read on!

Actually, I’m telling you to think about not even needing to recycle plastic — that is, when possible, avoid using plastic altogether.

Don’t let plastic into your life!

Plastic is difficult and costly to recycle, it degrades each time that it is recycled, and it takes many lifetimes to break down. So, when you can, stop using it! Just cut it out of your life!  Use metal, use wood, don’t use it at all!  Don’t buy that gadget.  Don’t pull that plastic bag off the roll.  Give

Product Reviewed: Soap Nuts

Place of Purchase: BuySoapNuts.com

Purchase Price: $40/ 1 kg OR $22 for 500 g OR test them out for a penny plus shipping!

Product replaced: Long ago, I had used Purex…  I switched to using a series of different more ecological options such as Seventh Generation Powder. 

Ingredients: Nuts from the sapindus mukorossi tree.

Use: I was sent both whole nuts, which you place into a small cloth bag and powdered nuts, which you seep in hot water to extract detergent.  I used both of these in place of typical laundry detergent.  If you check out buysoapnuts.com, and read about it on wikipedia, you can find that there are many more uses!

Results: I first tried the soap nuts in

Green Life Project is a weekly series of posts highlighting one change for readers to make in their life in order to gradually green their lives.

||Week Three||

This week’s Green Life Project action item is to purchase and begin using reusable grocery bags.

We’re in week three of a year-long quest toward a greener lifestyle.  If you’re just joining us, it’ll be easy to catch up — and you can do so at your own pace!

This week, we have another simple step you can take toward more sustainable living!  The next time you’re at the grocery store, be it your Jewel, Trader Joe’s, Wal-Mart, Whole Foods — no matter what your typical place for groceries, buy one or two reusable grocery bags and begin using them!  We’ve discussed this before, and now it’s part of your year-long journey toward a more sustainable you!