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Holiday are here……and some green ideas

Looking for that perfect gift every year is a daunting task.  I seem to go through the same routine year after year.  Sometime around mid-November I realize that there is a month to go before Christmas and I should probably start getting gift ideas from family and friends.  And this is the point where I take solace in the fact that I started early this year.  Then after completely forgetting about everything for 3 weeks I am left with about a week to become a scavenger and get great gifts for the people I love.  To make matters more difficult, this year is my first year that I would be conscious of the environment with my gift giving.  So what’s the plan this year….well I’m not completely sure but here are a couple of cool ideas:

• Bamboo: they make a variety of products from clothing (http://www.mymadmonkey.com/), kitchenware (http://www.goingbamboo.com/), children’s toys, IPod cases, furniture, scarves and even flat screen panels.
• Solar chargers for your electronic devices (http://store.greengadgets.ca/products/SOLDIUS-W.html) or power monitors to see who much energy is being used by appliances or other devices.
• Organic linens or sleepwear are always cozy idea.
• Edible gifts are great! Homemade jams and baking with fun labels.
• Memberships to outdoor activities or lessons for a musical instrument or wine tasting.
• Books and e-books

For other great ideas check out http://www.canadianliving.com/life/green_living/19_eco_friendly_gift_ideas.php and http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/green_gift_guid_1.php

This is usually the time of year we love to indulge ourselves and others but this doesn’t mean we should all take some steps at being a little considerate to our environment.

Mymadmonkey hopes you all have a safe, happy and green holidays!

- Jo e k

Learning Green and keeping warm

I was sitting around the house today catching up on my favourite news, blogs and of course celebrity gossip when I started thinking about the home projects I need to get cracking on.  Besides trying to green up the place, there are other things that the wife wants me to do.  Looking over my list I decided that before taking on any project I would take 10 minutes to plan it out first and look to see if there was any way to make the project green, either with the finished project, the way I will complete it or with the tools and services that I use to complete the task.

As part of my planning I did a few searches and stumbled upon a fantastic site that I already knew about but have been neglecting…One Million Acts of Green. This site has countless ways to improve your carbon footprint.  It also lets you add to the acts of green, challenge yourself and other groups to be more green, read what other people are doing and contribute ideas and photos of what you are doing.

My first task today was to seal up any drafts my house has.  With the help of this site I picked up some caulking for the windows, weather stripping for the doors and a plastic window insulation kit.  This should seal up my house and will have an excellent impact on my energy bills over the winter and next summer.

What green projects do you have around the house?  Next for me is putting up the L.E.D. Christmas lights. 

- Jo e k

Incandescents are also hard on the eyes

Well…. it shouldn’t take accidently smashing an incandescent light bulb in your eyes to make you wonder what we’re doing with this whole light bulb “situation”.  But that’s what happened.  I guess it’s not really a situation but that’s the best I could do.  So, I picked shards of glass from my eyes and hair went inside and asked my wife what we were doing with all these light bulbs in our house.  Turns out our plan isn’t that difficult.

• 1) Go to hardware store and buy Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFL’s).
• 2) When old bulb burns out, replace with CFL’s
• 3) Hopefully you will do what I am trying to do and recycle old bulbs.

Cool stats about CFL’s

- CFL’s have a much longer lifecycle than the incandescent.

-  If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.

- Save about $30 or more in electricity costs over each bulb’s lifetime.

- Produce about 75 percent less heat, so they’re safer to operate and can cut energy costs associated with home cooling.

This info was taken from http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls  so check it out.

Bad news is that incandescent bulbs end up in landfills.  What am I going to try and do to recycle them?  I can always use more salt and pepper shakers, little flower vases, maybe some artwork.  I’ll be posting the pics of my creations when the bulbs start burning.

If you were wondering, i flushed out my eyes and I’m fine.

- Jo e k

What did you do?…additup!