Category Archives: Going Green

Does Buying Eco Friendly Clothing Really Help the Environment?

Choosing eco friendly clothes is a common piece of advice for families who are trying to go green. Clothing is something we all need, and with kids in the house, new clothes are needed pretty often. Wondering if your shopping habits are really making a difference isn’t a bad thing; it just shows that you’re really thinking about the impact you’re having/

What Is Eco Friendly Clothing?

The first thing you need to figure out is just what is meant by eco friendly when it comes to clothing. Clothes made from organic cotton come easily to mind for most of us. Bamboo is a popular material now. But to really get into eco friendly clothes, you need to go beyond the simple categories.

Handmedown clothes are eco friendly. You’re reusing clothes that someone else was done with.

Clothes bought at thrift stores are eco friendly. Same deal as with handmedowns.

The clothes you have in your closet aren’t going to get any more un-eco friendly, so long as you care for them in environmentally friendly ways.

That’s important to remember. Going green is not all about shopping.

Worrying about whether the materials used to make the clothes matters most when you’re buying new. That’s when you get into organic cotton and other such materials. They matter most when the materials used are new to your purchase.

Does Buying Organic Cotton Clothes Make a Difference?

You can feel as though the difference in how your clothes are produced is a small issue, environmentally speaking. We’re so far removed from where the cotton is grown and processed that it’s easy to miss the harms.

Tremendous amounts of fertilizers and pesticides are used on conventionally grown cotton. This is bad for the land it’s grown on and for the lakes, rivers and oceans the excess water may runoff to. There’s a good post over on The Good Human called What’s So Bad About Non-Organic Cotton? that explains the situation well.

Buying organic cotton also means you’re supporting farmers who aren’t using so many potentially dangerous chemicals.

Clothes made from bamboo, even organic bamboo, are a bit more complex. Most bamboo cloth is chemically processed. Some of these chemicals are hard on the environment and on the workers using them. This processing turns it into a viscose or rayon fiber. It’s not as natural as many want you to think.

Overall, if you want to help the environment through the clothes you wear, really think about where they’re coming from, and don’t go for the huge wardrobe. Reduce how much you buy new, buy used when you can, and pay attention to how the new clothes are made. That’s the best way to limit the impact your clothes shopping has on the environment.

How Careful Should Green Bloggers Be?

It’s interesting blogging about living an eco friendly lifestyle. There’s a lot to talk about, even if some days inspiration is hard to come by. There are often news stories to think about commenting on, products to be reviewed or recommended, and lots of tips to give.

One of the challenges, as with any kind of blogging, is keeping things accurate.

One of the challenges is keeping things accurate.

This isn’t always an easy thing to do. Anyone can make a mistake, and sometimes you aren’t given all of the information you need to be as accurate as you would like to be.

Are You Checking Your Resources?

When you blog, you should be paying attention to where you’re getting your information from, whether it’s information on a sample a company sent you to review that they say is green, or something interesting in the news. You aren’t doing your job if you aren’t trying to be accurate.

Companies greenwash products regularly

This isn’t always easy. Companies greenwash products regularly (PDF), using vaguely environmentally friendly terms that aren’t regulated to describe them. You can’t always get enough information about how a product is made to be absolutely certain it is what it says it is.

When you report on a news story in a green blog, choosing the right resources matters. You aren’t often going to be a firsthand witness, and even if you are, odds are good that you will need some help explaining exactly what happened and what it means for the environment.

There’s nothing wrong with reporting more than one side of the story and adding in your own perspective when you’re a blogger. Blogging usually is about one’s own view of things. But start with a source that gives you whatever facts are available.

Don’t Review Just Anything

Many companies will offer green bloggers completely inappropriate products for review. Sometimes you can really tell that they just want the product name out there, they don’t care how it happens.

I suggest a couple of basic rules for products.

First, if it’s clearly not eco friendly, think if you want to bother. Sure, you can criticize it, but is the product you need something sent out to you to do that? That could just be a waste.

Don’t be afraid to give a negative review.

Second, don’t be afraid to give a negative review, even for eco friendly products. No one likes everything. The more honest you are in your product reviews, the more readers will trust you when you do like a product.

Third, do consider if you really want to review products just for the price of being given the product for free. There are a few perspectives on this, from the point that magazines get free products to review regularly to the point that you’re running a business and your review can be seen as a service to the business, something you should be compensated for. Whatever you do, be upfront about any compensation, including free product you receive, when you do your reviews.

Admit Your Mistakes

We’re all human. Mistakes happen. Admitting a mistake isn’t unprofessional… to the contrary.

Use any mistakes you make as a lesson to your readers. Discuss how the mistake was made and how you can avoid it in the future. It will be good for you and your readers.

Are You Tired of Being Green?

Admit it. Sometimes being eco friendly is just a wee bit frustrating. It’s challenging even when you’re used to it. There are only so many parts of being green that can really feel routine when you know there are easier but less eco friendly choices out there.

I think we all feel the temptation at times to skip the green solution and do things the easy way. To drive where we could walk or ride a bike. To skip the search for organic or local produce. To shop without worrying about where the products came from, what they’re made from or how they were made. To give in and let the kids have whatever random plastic toy they’re begging for that you know will be forgotten in a week if you buy it.

Most of us will give in at one point or another on these things. We don’t have perfect willpower. But sometimes it’s all just so overwhelming that we want to just quit for a time.

How do you get past that?

Take a Hike

You heard me. Take a hike. Get outta here!

Seriously, go reconnect with nature. Head out to a favorite hiking trail, favorite beach, whatever really helps you to enjoy nature at its finest.

If you can do this regularly so much the better, but that isn’t possible for all of us. Get out into nature as often as you can to help yourself remember just why you want to be eco friendly in the first place.

Figure Out What isn’t Working for You

Often frustration with being green isn’t so much the whole being green thing. It’s one particular thing that just isn’t working for you. Maybe you’re one of the unlucky ones who just doesn’t do so well with CFLs. Maybe buying organic produce and free range meat is adding a stress you just can’t quite cope with on your budget.

Whatever is causing the problem, think if you really need to continue it. For foods, look at which ones are really a priority to get organic for you. It matters more on some foods than on others.

If you just don’t like the light quality from CFLs, think about other ways you can save energy. There are lot of choices out there. Maybe something else would work better for you, such as drying your clothes on a clothesline or remembering to completely shut down your computer at night.

You can always come back to the frustrating parts later. You could make more progress overall by skipping things that aren’t going too smoothly at the moment.

Slow Down

How many changes have you tried to make recently?

Much like figuring out what isn’t working for you, you should be noticing if the changes are coming too fast for you. Most people don’t do so well with a ton of changes being made all at once. Take it a little bit easier for a while or even stop adding new eco friendly habits.

It’s okay to feel frustrated with eco friendly living. It’s a difficult process for most of us. But try not to let frustration stop you. Take a deep breath, then another, and figure out what’s going wrong. Once you know where the problem is, you can start working on the solution.

Is Being Eco Friendly Just Too Much Effort?

How do you think of being eco friendly. Is it something that’s just a part of your day or is it something that takes a lot of work? How you view it is probably a big part of whether or not you’re succeeding at being green.

It’s Too Much Work!

Work. Effort. Time consuming. Expensive. Inconvenient.

Those are some of the ways many people see being eco friendly. It’s no wonder people don’t want to concern themselves about the environment when that’s how they see the steps required.

And it’s true of some eco friendly things you can do. Having your own organic garden takes work and is time consuming. Organic and local produce can be expensive and inconvenient. Putting in solar panels is expensive at the start. Reusing things instead of throwing them away is time consuming and may be inconvenient.

Thank goodness not everything that’s eco friendly is really hard to do.

Some things take just a small step and they become easy. Switch your incandescent bulbs for CFLs and you’re saving energy with no extra effort. If you find the bulbs discounted by your local power company they aren’t even particularly expensive.

If your recyclables all go into one bin, having a recycle bin next to your trash cans is easy. It’s a small inconvenience having to empty two cans instead of one, but it’s overall not that hard to manage.

Turning out the lights as you leave a room is easy once you build the habit.

Organizing your errands so that you drive less actually saves you time. It also saves gas, which means you spend less money.

Adjusting the thermostat is easy and saves money. An extra sweater in winter or dressing a little cooler in summer while letting your body adjust to warmer temperatures is surprisingly easy.

Some efforts can become a pleasure. If you like being outdoors or just want to be a bit more active, that garden can provide that while producing wonderful vegetables for you that are far superior to what you can buy at the store. It’s not heavy exercise once you’re done with the digging, but it’s getting you off the couch and into the fresh air.

Isn’t that what parents are always trying to get kids to do? It’s still good advice.

Take Small Steps

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, just pick one simple green step to start yourself off. Small changes are easier to make than big ones. When you’re comfortable, add another, then another.

There’s not much in life that comes with no effort at all. That’s true even of your bad habits. Put in a little more effort and build better ones.

Wanna Go Camping Sooner?

Well, you don’t have to go camping necessarily. I suppose you could just make a day trip of it. From April 17-25, 2010, all National Parks are offering free admission. Sounds like a lot of fun to me, and visit the link to get all the details.

The various parks may have different activities. Saturday April 24 is for kids to learn to be Junior Rangers at certain locations. There are a variety of projects for volunteers and other events. you’ll have to check to see what’s happening in parks in your range.

Even if you don’t decide to go camping, this is a great chance to head out to one National Park or another. For some parks this is a pretty significant savings; others are normally pretty inexpensive to visit, but free is free!