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

We've indexed ten great ways to be greener without spending much of your hard-earned green!

You may be watching as the economy threatens to turn its, “recession,” moniker into, “depression,” all while reports about the dire circumstances our environment is in continue to mount.

Need a couple of examples?  Try here and here.  Below, you can find ten great ways to green your life on the cheap and save money while you do it!

While the economy plummets, you may be asking yourself, “can I really afford to be, ‘green,’ during these economic times?”

I’m here to tell you, “Absolutely you can!”

Here I have compiled a list of ten articles from Earthascope that outline different ways to improve your envirohuman impact while saving money.  You don’t have to stop your efforts to pollute less just because of bad economic times!

Think of it as turning the recession into your own, “green session”!

As ordinary citizens of the United States and also citizens of other connected economies await to see what will transpire in the coming days and the fallout from the credit/subprime/overall economic decline, one might wonder what effect this might have on the environment.

While most are likely much more worried at this point whether or not their savings and investments will be worth much after this mess and still others wonder whether or not they will have food on the table or a roof over their head.  Still, even others already find themselves hungry and/or without a home.

While you may feel somewhat hopeless about the financial system at-large, there may be some small things you can do to both save money and improve your envirohuman impact simultaneously.  

Turn any plastic bottle into a eco-watering can!

We’ve already mentioned the benefits of using a watering can around the house but today, we’ve got a tip for greening this already pretty green activity!

Behold the EcoSpout! The EcoSpout is a small spout kit that can turn almost any small plastic bottle or milk jug into a watering can.  The system will fit most quart and gallon plastic containers.  A new adapter will connect to snap-on and non-standard threaded jugs.  Included are a small spray spout and thin stream pouring spout.

How does the EcoSpout green your plant watering can?

Be sure to keep baking soda on the shelf at all times!  Why?  Beside the fact that it is an ingredient in many recipes, it is an environmentally-safe, healthy alternative with many functions.

Here are a four basic tasks for which you can use baking soda:

We often write, “EHI Quick Tips,” which outline simple, easy steps you can take to green your daily life.  The writers of EnviroHumanImpact believe that this is a great approach to those just begining to look at a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle.  Once you have introduced a few greener buying options or changes to daily life, it can become difficult to stop yourself from adopting even more practices that will improve your envirohuman impact!

Here, we have compiled a short list of some of the easy, yet effective changes you can begin using in your daily life, right away!

1. EHI Quick Tip: Unclog that Shower Drain
2. EHI Quick Tip: Get a Watering Can
3. EHI Quick Tip: Ditch those Paper Statements
4. EHI Quick Tip: Buy a Tea Kettle
5. EHI Quick Tip: Ride the Elevators Less at Work

You might notice a common pattern here: most of our quick tips are easy and focus on reducing our energy, water, or other resource usage.  What ideas do you have for improving one’s envirohuman impact?

This week, I see two stories you should be apprised of if you are following the environment.  These are important for the longterm implications they may have on our environment.

The first story I would like to outline for you in this week’s news section is an effort to change rules in the Endangered Species Act that would effectively strip it of most of its effectiveness by allowing more projects to go forth that do not completely annihalate a species.  Currently, projects deemed to put into danger habitat or any species on the endangered species list is not allowed to move forth.  That’s the move in a nutshell, but for a spectacular article with description of the change and plenty of insight, check out George Lakoff’s article on this matter.

That’s a major language change!  And it’s the same kind of sneaky changes we’ve seen over the last eight years, with signing statements at the time of signing laws, essentially explaining the intention to go ahead and not enforce a law.  

The other change is by the Environmental Protection Agency regarding its rules governing the engines of lawnmowing and trimming machines and engines for personal boats.  In order to have these engines fall within range of the new regulations, set to be enforced begining in 2011 and 2010 respectively, manufacturers will likely begin adding catalytic converters, which would reduce the amount of particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide are released (they’re standard on car engines).  Read the whole article here.