17 Sep Happy Fridays: 5 Eco-Friendly tips from Oprah!
So this week’s post is all about ways to be environmentally friendly in your own home, and it’s from one of our favorites: Oprah! Oprah did a segment on her show featuring these tips and how easy it is to implement them in your day to day life. Of course everyone wants to be eco-friendly, but sometimes it’s hard to find practical ways to feel like you are making a difference. Not anymore! With these tips you’ll save energy, save money, and make your life a little bit greener.
Oprah’s 5 Eco-Friendly Green Living Tips
Eco-Friendly Tip #1: Eco-friendly Canvas Bags
When you’re deciding between paper and plastic at the grocery store, choose neither. Plastic takes 1,000 years to decompose and paper bags use 14 million trees a year. Instead, an easy eco-friendly tip is to use cloth grocery bags. Any cloth bag will do, but Oprah said that her website is selling organic cotton canvas bags made without pesticides.
Another easy eco-friendly tip is to use an organic mesh bag for organic produce. One eco-friendly expert urged consumers to look at the amount of packaging in the grocery store. Since petroleum-based packaging isn’t good for the environment, buy items that use minimal packaging.
This easy eco-friendly tip may cost you a little more money: organic produce. It’s a green tip because it takes less energy to harvest and doesn’t use pesticides, so it’s healthier for the planet. But, organic produce isn’t necessarily a green money saving tip – though it could make you physically healthier.
Eco-Friendly Tip #2: Eco-Friendly Eating
Elizabeth Rogers wrote The Green Book, which contains dozens of easy eco-friendly tips that Oprah loved. In writing The Green Book she wanted to answer the question, “What are the easiest things we can do that make the biggest difference?”
One of Rogers’ green tips is using one less napkin a day because paper napkins make a huge difference. Give up one paper napkin a day, and you’ll save a billion pounds of paper waste in landfills a year. Using cloth napkins is one easy eco-friendly tip on Oprah that makes a huge difference.
Eco-Friendly Tip #3: Natural Cleaning Products
“Clean doesn’t have a smell,” says one environmentally friendly family. When your bathroom is clean, it shouldn’t smell like pine or lemon. Switch from toxic to non-toxic, natural cleaning products. Seventh Generation sells non-toxic products, which improve your family’s health by being less likely to cause asthma attacks. Or try Green Works!
Eco-Friendly Tip #4: Change Your Lightbulbs
Most of the energy comes from coal-fired plants. A compact fluorescent light bulb is more energy-efficient and will save your money in the long run. CFL lightbulbs are energy smart; they’re more expensive, but they’ll last longer.
Eco-Friendly Tip #5 on Oprah: Daily Green Tips for Every Family
These easy eco-friendly tips are things you can do every day. The green tips come from the Squire family (a green family featured on the eco-friendly Oprah show).
– Use the same cups over and over.
– Don’t run the dishwasher unless it’s absolutely full.
– Don’t throw clothing or shoes away, especially leather shoes.
– Buy clothes at secondhand, consignment, or resale shops.
– Put power strips on your tv to turn everything off when you go to bed or leave for the day.
Vampire or standby power drains energy.
Finally, one last eco-friendly tip on Oprah is to go to a landfill and see where your garbage goes. It doesn’t just disappear! When you see a landfill in person, you’ll think twice about what you throw in the garbage and what you recycle. Recycle as much as you can. Make sure you check what types of plastic are recyclable in your city, through the Public Works or Sanitation Department.
Hope these tips will help everyone be a little greener! Happy Friday everyone!
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