“To go green” means to gathering knowledge and involving in practices leads to more environmentally friendly and ecologically advantaged lifestyles, which can help protect the environment and sustain its natural resources for current and future generations. Products or substances are considered green if they reduce waste, that is, they can be recycled or reused, they conserve energy and improve air quality.
1. Make Use Of White Vinegar: The Multipurpose, Chemical-Free Household Cleaner
Vinegar isn’t only useful for cooking, though. It also makes a great cleaner and disinfectant because it’s made from acetic acid. Acetic acid is a colorless organic compound that gives vinegar its sour taste and pungent smell. It’s also an ingredient in some store-bought household cleaners.
Vinegar is awesome. It is green, safe, and used inside and outside of the home. Counters in the bathroom and kitchen can be wiped down with vinegar so they shine and are stink-free. Grease stains are easily wiped away by combining vinegar and baking soda and applying this to the area. Sinks can be free of soap buildup and grime by scrubbing them with a rag dipped in vinegar. A vinegar and baking soda mixture works great on shower heads, toilets, and bathtubs. This green product can even be used on your precious car; wipe down leather, wash away water stains on the outside, and polish the plastic with vinegar.
2. Make use of Essential Oils
Essential oils are a natural, safe, non-toxic way to clean your home. They’re inexpensive and versatile, and they also work well for personal care and aromatherapy. Essential oils are the natural solution to all of life’s conditions.
Essential oils have grown popular over the past few years, and it is no surprise why; these yummy oils are safe and still serve many purposes. Lavender can be added to any green cleaning product for a fresh and relaxing scent. Lemon oil, Tea tree oil, Lavender oil, Eucalyptus oil, Wild orange oil, Peppermint oil and Cinnamon oil are examples of essential oils that can be used for cleaning. Essential oils make it fun to create your own cleaning products, so you can know exactly what is being sprayed in your home.
3. Take Advantage of Baking Soda
Baking soda not only removes those strange smells coming from your fridge, it’s also a great odor-eliminator for your carpet. Just sprinkle on a little baking soda to soak up some of those odors and then vacuum it up.
4. Refresh Your Indoor Air Naturally
Skip the store-bought air fresheners and instead try boiling cinnamon, cloves, or any other herbs you have a fondness for. Fresh chocolate chip cookies also have been known to create a friendly aroma. Also, plants may not make your house smell different but are good for filtering interior air–pretty much any broad green leaf plant will do. Peace Lilies are a favorite choice.
5. Discard Toxic Cleaners Safely
When replacing your cleaning products, don’t just throw the old ones in the trash. If they’re too toxic for your home, they won’t be good for the drain or the landfill either. Many communities hold toxics & electronics recycling days and will take all of these off your hands. Throwing chemicals in the trash or down the drain means they might end up back in your water supply and come back to haunt you (see How to Go Green: Water for more).
6. Employ a Green House-Cleaning Service
For people don’t have the time to clean their own homes, fortunately Rainbow Cleaning NY offer green cleaning services, we help get things spic and span. If you can’t find one in your area (or their rates are outlandish), call around until you find a service willing to use the products and methods you specify.
Extensive use of new or unnecessary products is the main reason for the rapidly increasing waste in our environment, this can also bring about unchecked waste formation. The rapid population growth makes it imperative to use secondhand products or judiciously use the existing ones because if not, toxic waste will pose serious risk and health implications as a result of numerous toxic waste generation.
A conscious decision should be made at the personal and professional level to judiciously curb the menacing growth of wastes. Putting a bit more taught into the way we manage waste and waste disposal in our homes and commercial centers can help us get more organized, with careful planning, we will be able to save more money and have less of an impact in our environment. Here are some of the ways we can effectively manage waste and dispose waste:
1. The use cloth bags instead of plastic.
This small measure will greatly reduce the amount of waste you bring into your house. No matter where you’re shopping, you can bring your own reusable cloth bags instead of accepting plastic bags from the store. Plan ahead by purchasing several reusable bags and storing them where you won’t forget to bring them along next time you go shopping, like in your kitchen or in the trunk of your car. see samples of multipurpose cloth bags here.
2. Recycling
The most obvious way is recycling. However, you need to get the right containers for every type of waste that you will be recycling: plastic, paper, glass, metal, batteries and light bulbs, electronics, compost, etc.
Around 75% of all the waste is recyclable, however, the uptake is very low. This is because people usually have no idea about which materials can be recycled and how to properly recycle those materials.
In general, the following household waste can be recycled:
Plastic containers.
Paper products like computer paper, egg cartons, newspaper, and cardboard.
Glass containers.
Aluminum cans, aluminum foil etc.
3. Composting
Composting turns your food waste into fuel for your garden and it can suit gardens of any kind. Even if you are not good at gardening you should know that composting is always good for plants and gardens. And if you don’t have a garden or a plant somewhere nearby, you can donate that compost to a public garden. This will help the garden and limit your carbon footprint.
Composting is not expensive. You would want to fill one small container with materials that are high in nitrogen and materials that are high in carbon. Food scraps and yard cuttings don’t need to be thrown out. Instead, you can compost them and turn them into rich, nutritious soil that can be used to nourish your garden.
Keep adding those materials until you fill your container. It will heat up and you should give it a week or two to cool down. After that, you should mix it using a pitchfork and shred as much as you can. The smaller the pieces are, the smaller the scraps the shorter decomposition time you get.
To start a basic compost pile, save these items:
Green items, which break down quickly, like raw vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, tea bags, grass cuttings, leaves
Brown items, which break down slowly, like sticks and branches, paper, cardboard, eggshells, sawdust.
You can avoid getting new bags for shopping, buy one cloth bag and use it for life if you want. Similarly, you can reuse fizzy drink bottles for water on some hot days rather than throwing them away. You can do the same thing with wood, metal and glass. If you have old clothing, electronics, or other items you don’t want or use again but are still in good, you can donate them instead of disposing them out in the trash. You can donate old clothes and other fabrics, old electronic devices, furniture and even vehicles.
Durable containers present in our homes can be reused a couple of times before they need to go out with the garbage or recycling. Bottles, boxes and bags can all serve a second purpose if you know how to use them
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