30 Tips To Make Your Bathroom More Eco Friendly

Today, please welcome our guest blogger, Marina Chernyak. Enjoy her tips and hopefully, you will utilize them!

We use more chemicals and waste more water in our bathrooms than in any other place in our homes! It’s time to wake up and do something to make your bathrooms more eco friendly, in the interests of our planet. Here are 30 tips that you can implement at your home to ensure your bathroom is more eco friendly.

Dispose Medications And Cosmetics

1.Throwing old medicines into your garbage is not a good idea as animals and young kids may eat them by mistake. Don’t flush medicines either, as these will find their way into ecosystems and eventually into drinking water. Always hand over used medications at pharmacy recyclers and ask them to dispose of it properly. (more…)

I was working at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas when the first shuttle lifted off.

NASA

Now, 30 years later, the shuttle has come to its end of life in the NASA Space Program. It does not seem like its been 3 decades , 135 flights and of course, many deliveries to the International Space Station.

The spaceship and the two other surviving shuttles will become museum pieces, like the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules and the Wright brothers’ flying machine before them. NASA astronauts, a dwindling breed, will have to hitch rides to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz capsules for at least three to five years.

National Geographic

Shuttles launched the Hubble Space Telescope and fixed its blurry vision; built the space station, the world’s largest orbiting structure; and opened the final frontier to women, minorities, schoolteachers, even a prince. The first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, became the oldest person ever in space, thanks to the shuttle. He was 77 at the time; he turned 90 this week.

Atlantis will go on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex in 2013. Space shuttle Discovery is headed for a Smithsonian Institution hangar in Virginia. And Endeavour is bound for the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

NASA has new marching orders for space exploration and I look forward to seeing their progress. In the meantime, BRAVO for the work accomplished thus far!

…. as the green future unfolds.

NASA / Kathryn Hansen.

During the spring and summer melt, the sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean (shown here in this photo from July 12, 2011) begins to melt; the liquid water collects in depressions on the surface, pressing down on them and making them deeper until they become melt ponds. These freshwater ponds stay separated from the salty sea below and around it until cracks in the ice let the two mix.

Scientists who are part of NASA’s ICESCAPE mission (Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment) are studying these melt ponds and the surrounding water and ice to see how changes in the Arctic impact the ocean’s chemical and biological makeup.

That is a really cool landscape, don”t you agree?

… as the green future unfolds.

An international team of scientists has come up with a method to make wool carpets from all-natural materials that can be re-processed after a life cycle.

Erutan

Most carpets are biodegradable but they are glued together using latex. When carpets are thrown away, they end up in an oven to burn for extra energy in other industries or they go to the local dump.

There is a new project that is being funded by the Dutch Government called Erutan or “nature” spelled backwards. Their slogan is “It’s a natural solution – sheep eat grass, from the sheep, we get wool, and from the wool we make a carpet with natural ingredients.” The researchers decided to replace all synthetic substances and chemicals with organic materials, enzymes and polymers. The adhesive is based on natural compounds such as lignin or tannic acid.

It is a joint venture of three Dutch companies – James, Best Wool Carpets, and Bond Textile Research, working in cooperation with three technology developers – Research Institute TNO in the Netherlands, Technical University of Graz in Austria (TUG) and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Spain (UPC).

They have managed to create an all natural carpet that looks and feels like any carpet that is on the current market. There is no latex involved so when the carpet reaches it end of life, it can be re-cycled to a type of fertilizer for agricultural uses.
The team are hoping their carpets will revolutionize the industry.

But the scientists did not want to stop at changing basic ingredients – they decided to make all other processes associated with manufacturing eco-friendly as well.

For instance, the researchers from Technical University of Graz in Austria came up with a way to wash dirty, greasy raw wool from New Zealand sheep without any detergents, salt or any other chemicals.

They clean it with enzymes. With enzymes in washing powders everything has gotten faster, you use less water, it’s much better for the environment and those enzymes come from nature.

As for color, they are using natural ingredients versus the synthetic dyes that are currently used.

As for availability, it is not clear. Will keep you posted.

…. as the green future unfolds.

Trade plus Aid Biogas Digester Project

This is another program that is helping South Africa. There has been a grant for 22 towns to get this biogas digester. As you will see, the towns that have gotten their new biogas digesters installed are very happy campers!

… as the green future unfolds.

Decentralized Energy is the Best Way to Generate Clean and Green Energy!

Quasar-Wooster-Ohio

In Kenya, Lake Victoria is choking with water hyacinth. The people have been critical of the government for not clearing the weed out of the Lake. The local people currently use it to make furniture and baskets.

In walks a green technology…. a portable unit that can generate biogas and liquid fertilizer from the water hyacinth. It is called an anaerobic digester. .An anaerobic digester is a system that takes an organic waste stream and through the process of anaerobic digestion (meaning without oxygen), microorganisms break-down the waste stream which generates biogas in the process. However, they tested this unit at the Nairobi Dam, Naivasha and Victoria Lakes and were successful in breaking down the water hyacinth.

How is it done? They innoculate the digesters contents with a bacteria obtained from animal intestines. In a continuous digester, organic material is constantly or regularly fed into the digester. The material moves through the digester either mechanically or by the force of the new feed pushing out digested material. Unlike batch-type digesters, continuous digesters produce biogas without the interruption of loading material and unloading effluent. There are three types of continuous digesters: vertical tank systems, horizontal tank or plug-flow systems, and multiple tank systems. The contents are emptied and can produce enough fertilizer for up to 4 towns. What a neat way to get and keep agriculture going in these towns.

It has been asked that if the digester can take care of the hyacinth, won’t they run out? The answer is no as the weed is very abundant throughout East Africa. It is a weed and we all know how weeds grow when close to water.

… as the green future unfolds.

May your holiday be safe, fun and full of good food!

… as the green future unfolds.