how to's

Instructions for Growing a Magnificent and Radiant Dwarf Sunflower

Submitted by healingdesertwillow on November 13, 2008 - 5:02pm.
Description: 

This is the perfect plant to grow indoors during cooler months. It can be easily transferred into the ground in late Spring if so desired. If you are living in a climate that offers cold harsh snowy winter months, this is a great way to brighten your house with lovely yellow flowers! Gardening indoors can be quite rewarding. All you need is a small space that gets adequate sunlight for about 2 to 3 hours a day. A small grow light is also an option.


Instructions for Growing a Magnificent and Radiant Dwarf Sunflower

Step1~Purchase a large flower pot with a drainage area at the bottom to allow for proper water absorption. Sunflowers need a large amount of space to grow, and a pot large enough for root expansion is preferable.
4” – 8”

Step2~Add a mix of organic potting soil, peat moss, and fertilizer to the flower pot. Sunflowers prefer rich soil, so if you are planning to begin the growing process indoors, adequate nutrients will be required.


Step3 ~ Deposit a single sunflower seed into the flower pot mix. Bury it approximately two inches deep, and cover it completely with the soil. Placing the seed in the center of the pot, and pushing it down firmly into the dirt with your finger should be sufficient.


Step4 ~ Water the sunflower seed liberally, and as needed. Testing the soil periodically by inserting your finger into the soil and feeling for dampness will help you to determine how often it will need to be watered. Spring water is full of the minerals and vitamins that a sunflower needs without the impurities that they do not need.


Step5 ~ Place the plant near a well lit window. Sunflowers thrive off of the sun, hence the name. They also enjoy warm temperatures.

Keeping them safe from any cold drafts will ensure a healthy and happy plant!

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How to Make your Office "Green" - The 12 Step Program.

Submitted by jamyealexandra on November 9, 2008 - 7:31pm.
Description: 

Greening your office will make a huge imapct on the environment, create a more conscious work environment, and could even SAVE money. 

Whether you are an employee or a business owner. Here are some ideas for greening your office.

The 12 Step Program

1. Recylcle -  at the very least paper, bottles, and cans. Have separate bins in the office for recycling. If your office building does not recycle, there is still hope. The City of San Jose has a great resource on how to set up a recyling program at your work! (Props to SJ!)Smile

2. Monitor Lighting Usage –

  •      Make sure you’re using compact fluorescent or LED lights throughout the office.                                        

CFs use ¼ the energy and last up to 10 times as long as standard lights. LEDs are even more energy-efficient. Over its life span, a fluorescent tube will save 640 kWh of electricity compared with the equivalent 100-watt standard bulb. This reduces the production of carbon dioxide, a green house gas, by half a ton and sulphur dioxide, which causes acid rain, by 3 kg. Talk to your building manager and make sure that they understand the money they can save from buying CF or LED lights– they may not care about the environment, but they do care about saving money.

  •      Get lighting motion sensors for offices, conference rooms and bathrooms.

3. Shut down your printers, faxes and computers -  According to the Department of Energy, office equipment accounts for 16 percent of an office’s energy use. The use of computers, printers, copiers and fax machines adds up.

  • Turning your computer’s sleep mode on when you’re not using it can save energy (screen savers do not save).
  • Turn machine off when you leave the office for the night. Some people think that leaving them on saves energy but this is simply not true.
  • Activate sleep mode for printers, copiers and fax machines so they’ll sense inactive periods
  • Consider consolidating these machines by purchasing a machine that performs multiple office functions.
  • Buy Energy Star qualified products to cut down energy use and pollution.
  • If possible, use laptop computers rather than desktop computers. Energy Star models use up to 90% less energy.  

4. Kick the bottled water habit.- Americans throw out over 35 BILLION plastic water bottles every year. To learn more about the impact of this Fast Company Has a great article. Offices are major offenders in this area. 

  • Sign up for a water delivery service, or get a filter, and have everyone use a ceramic or glass cup.This is an easy thing to do and has a big impact!
  • Work with companies like Plant-it Water to provide Eco-Friendly water solutions.

5. Stock your office’s kitchen with reusable plates and mugs rather than paper toss-aways.

6. Eleminate Vending maching waste. - A typical refrigerated vending machine consumes 400 Watts—at a rate of 6.39 cents per kWh, that’s an annual operating cost of $225.

  • If your office vending machine dispenses its own cups, make sure they are recyclable or see if the machine allows you to use your own reusable mug instead of dispensing a plastic cup each time it makes a beverage.
  • Ask the machine provider to de-lamp the machine, or  add an occupancy sensor on the machine that reduces the vending machine’s power requirements during periods of inactivity. De-lamping vending machines can save $100 every year.

8. Puchase Responsibly - Start with recylcled office papers and other office products. You can get paper, envelopes, folders, pads, post-it notes– everything comes in a recycled version now. 

9. Cut Down on Office Transportation - Carpools and public transportation benefit both the environment and your employees/ co-workers. Driving just 10% less, can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 0.2 to 0.8 tonnes per year. Carbon dioxide is the number one contributor to the greenhouse effect, and cars produce about 30 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions.

  • Offer carpool-matching services that allow employees to find co-workers that live near them.
  • Encourage biking and walking to work by providing bike racks outside of the office.
  • Create a reward program for using public transit.
  • Provide parking incentives such as closer/shaded parking spots for carpoolers.
  • Consider telecommuting to allow employees to work from home one day a week work.
  • Use a workweek with four 10-hour days instead of five eight-hour days.

10. Thermostat tricks of the trade-  Heating, cooling and powering office space are responsible for almost 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., eat more than 70 percent of total electricity usage and 39 percent of the energy use in a typical office.

  • You can save about 10 percent on your electricity bill by just adjusting that thermostat by one or two degrees
  • Get a programable thermostat - This device will help you keep your building warm/cool when the people there and save power and money when the people are away.

11. Investigate green power options. Many local utilities offer the opportunity for you to pay just a few dollars extra per month to buy “green power” that comes from wind farms and other sustainable sources. Talk to your building manager about this as an option.


12. Put Someone in Charge or form “Green” Task Team
Perhaps hire an energy manager or transportation coordinator. If you can’t do that put together a task team to help “green” the building.

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How to be a Conscious Consumer

Submitted by jamyealexandra on November 9, 2008 - 6:00pm.
Description: 

Green. Sustainable. Fair trade. Local. Organic. Socially Responsible.

What does this mean to in today’s marketplace? 

Conscious Consumers are growing and representing an increasing presence in the market. These consumers are creating change. By being a socially conscious consumer you are making “Green” become mainstream, and businesses are beginning to step up. Conscious consumers are require that companies inform the public about their practices and are accountable for their impact on people and the planet. 

Here are some suggestions of what to keep in mind as a socially conscious consumer.

  1. Health and Environment: Conscious consumers look for “natural, organic and unmodified products” We say “no” to harmful pesticides or chemicals. A conscious consumer also cares whether a company is doing their part for the environment, and minimizing their imprint.
  2. Honesty: Conscious consumers insist on reliable and accurate product descriptions. Businesses using the term “green” without backing the action behind do not cut it. Do online research.
  3. Relationships: Conscious consumers want to support local businesses if they can, and want to know where products come from; We want more personal interactions when doing business. The old paradigm of “it’s not personal, it’s business” does not work for us.
  4. Doing good: Conscious consumers are concerned about the world, and the impact that their spending has on the way the world does business. We are doing our part to make the world a better place… and we want the businesses we support to do the same. Look for; how a business is giving back to the community that supports them, their use of fair trade products, and sustainable business practices.
  5. Employee Practices: Conscious consumers care about how a business treats their employees. Check out greatplacetowork.com to find out companies that are known for caring about their employees.

It is amazing how much voice your dollar has. Reward businesses that are making the effort to operate in a more conscious way, their success is in your hands. Browse through the Businesses premiering on Dianovo to make sure your money is supporting a new and more conscious way of doing business.

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Nutrition tip

Submitted by thedancer on April 26, 2007 - 4:05pm.
Description: 

Fiber makes us full sooner and stays in our stomach longer than other substances we eat, slowing down our rate of digestion and keeping us feeling ful longer. High fiber foods are prunes, kidney beans, bran flakkes, broccoli, oat bran and pears.

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Switch to Household Cloth

Submitted by Moon Bees on February 27, 2007 - 9:24am.
Description: 

Reducing the amount of trash you throw away every day is important on so many levels.

We have evolved into such a "disposable" society. As a parent, I became very aware of this in my own life and set out to change. This "How To" is an outline of what I did for my home personally, and I hope it can help others.

Think of all the paper towels and toilet paper you use in your home in one day. Think of all the money you spend on those things to just throw them away and buy more. There IS a better way.

Start with your kitchen. Stop buying paper towels and paper napkins.  Stock up on handtowels, washcloths, or make your own. If making your own, the sizes I prefer are 4"x6", 8"x8" and 11"x11". The smaller ones are good for quick clean ups on the counters and for wiping little faces at the dinner table. The medium size serves well for cleaning counters and are big enough to use as napkins. The largest size works well for drying dishes, covering bowls in the microwave, and other large tasks.

The bathroom is also a great paper waster. I live in a house with 4 females and one male. All-male households probably find that they use a LOT less toilet paper than homes with women, but well...we can't just give two shakes and walk away. My personal size preference for bathroom wipes is 4"x6". For my bathroom, they are 2-layer Hemp/Cotton rectangular cloths, and for my children I spiced it up a bit making them oval and using cute flannel prints with 3 layers. Storing *used* wipes is simple: Keep a small trashcan with a lid beside your toilet. Give it a cloth liner. When it gets full, simply remove the cloth liner like a bag, turn it upside down in your washing machine and then drop in the empty bag. No need to handle dirty wipes!

The most frugal way to go about this is to make your own. There are many fabrics out there to choose from, but I have found that the most absorbent fabric is Hemp Fleece. Hemp is grown naturally withOUT pesticides and can be grown using a lot less land than cotton.Hemp can be hard to find outside of the internet, though, and cotton flannels also work very well. To make an even bigger impact on saving resources, use recycled materials! Old tee shirts, flatfold cloth diapers, old terry robes and towels. If you have an old terrycloth robe, you can easy make enough wipes to supply an entire bathroom.  After choosing your fabrics and cutting to the sizes you prefer, you need to simply serge the edges together. No serger? That's okay too; just use a zig zag stitch around the edges to keep fraying to a minimum.

To further reduce your disposable household items, you can also consider cloth menstrual products and cloth diapering. Cloth diapers are gotten so complex and varied, though...that would need another "how to" ;)

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Emission (Carbon) Offsetting

Submitted by jediwright on February 12, 2007 - 8:31pm.
Description: 

If you're not already familiar with offsetting your ecological footprint than this How To will serve as a nice introduction in doing so, step by step. Carbon offsets (or carbon offsetting) differs slightly from renewable energy credits (REC's) in that they serve to balance out whatever negative contribution you've made in travel (whereas REC's provide an alternative for clean energy supply, usually in home and business energy use). The example below uses air travel but they can also apply to ground transportation (car, bus, train, etc.), etc. and utilize positive contributions such as tree planting or renewable energy and energy conservation projects, sometimes certified as Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits.

This isn't to say that you should go excessively drive, fly, boat, etc. as much as you want but it is a nice introduction to going green and start reducing your personal or professional contribution to global warming.

To start, you should locate a respected provider who to date, are generally those endorsed with either the Resource-Solutions/Green-e or Gold Standard programs which are some of the leading endorsement providers a energy/carbon credit retailer can get. Some of our recommended retailers include CarbonNeutral.com, Native Energy, and Green-e. In this example will be using Native Energy.

We'll assume you have the time to follow these steps now if not, that's fine. You can always come back to review the steps anytime. Once you're ready to begin however, you'll need to gather a few copies of your utility bills.

1. Once you've decided on a retailer, locate their carbon calculator.



2. With this site, you'll want to select the "Travel Calculator" and than choose your travel method, in the example here, we'll use "Flights". Than enter in your departure and arrival cities and states. The calculator will auto-calculate (auto-calc) your mileage. Continue as many times as necessary by selecting "Add This Segment" for multiple stops, "More To Calculate" to add another flight or "Done" to checkout .



3. The resulting screen will show your total mileage traveled, total CO2 produced and the total $ amount to offset your travel 'print. This site gives you 3 different options to choose from: wind, 100% farm methane (farm methane is not the best choice in our opinion) and 50/50 blend of both.



4. Once you've made your choice click "Buy Now" and you'll enter their Yahoo! shopping cart (this isn't an error, just a cheaper solution to checkout software). You may raise the number of credits or not, it's up to you but they do auto-fill your cart with the appropiate number, so you needn't bother changing this if you don't want to. Click "Checkout". A series of 4 steps will appear, fill out the information as requested and follow their prompts.



5. Once you've navigated your way through the final checkout steps, confirm that you've received their auto-generated invoice by checking in your email inbox (it's also a good idea to check your junk mail filter as companies emails are often confused for spam). Attached to your invoice is a note from the CEO of the company, thanking you for your contributions...



6. Repeat as necessary anytime for the most common travel methods.

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Greening your Holidays!

Submitted by bluecobalt on December 10, 2006 - 3:42pm.
Description: 

Regardless of whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, or Winter Solstice, this holiday season, stop for a moment and think about the impact you are about to have on the environment. There are ways that you can still have a wonderful and fun-filled holiday season, without further contributing to the harm of the planet.

Give a gift to the earth and future generations of life on this planet.

Here's a few suggestions:

1. Don't travel a great distance this season, especially not by plane.

"...one transatlantic round-trip flight contributes to global warming at twice the rate of driving a medium-sized car 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) a year. And the U.S. green group Natural Resources Defense Council notes carbon isn't even the whole problem -- nitrogen dioxide and water-vapour emissions from jetliners also worsen the greenhouse effect." - http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/43095/?comments=view&cID=258334&pID=257653

2. Don't buy so much stuff!

Don't give in to the gift buying frenzy this year. We all have plenty of stuff. If you really want to give someone you love something meaningful this year, give a gift that will help spread your commitment to helping the planet and living in a more conscious manner.

  • Make them a gift. - You know how much you love it when you receive something hand-made. It really stands out in your heart and your mind, and lets you know how much that person really cares about you. Well, why not do that for the people you love. Take the time, be creative, and make them each something nice for the holidays.
  • Do something wonderful for them that you know will make them happy.
  • Give green. - Help your loved ones and the world by giving them a gift that you know was created in an environmentally conscious manner.
  • Give green empowerment. - Empower your loved ones by giving them a book or video that helps them to learn to live in a more green and conscious manner. I'm giving the DVD of An Inconvenient Truth to several people that I love.
  • Purchase carbon offsets in their name.
  • Donate to an environmental organization in their name.

3. If you order something that must be shipped, order early and choose ground shipping rather than overnight or 2 day.

While not a perfect solution, ground shipping emits less carbon and is less harmful to the environment than having your packages flown.

4. Don't kill a poor tree to hang decorations on!

There are approximately 30-35 million Christmas Trees killed and sold in the U.S. every year. (according to The National Christmas Tree Assoc. - http://www.christmastree.org) (I just love this quote from their FAQ - "you're not "killing" a tree by using a Real Christmas Tree. Unfortunately many people have the misconception that Christmas Trees are cut down from the forest. Real Christmas Trees are actually grown as crops, just like corn or wheat, and raised on a farm." As far as I'm concerned, whether from a forest or from a "crop", cutting down a tree, using it to decorate your home, and then disposing of it is "killing a tree.")

Plus, many tree farmers use pesticides and other toxic chemicals to create perfect trees, and all of that goes right into the environment.

If a tree is part of your holiday traditions, buy a live tree, and decorate it with cool and extremely energy efficient LED Christmas lights. When the holidays are over you can then plant it in your yard so it can produce oxygen, shade, and a place for many animals to live for generations to come.

If you don't have a yard:

  • Plant it somewhere in your neighborhood where it will be safe to grow. (Go gorilla gardeners!)
  • Or you might be able to donate it to your local city or town for planting.

5. Eat food grown locally and organically.

The further food is shipped, the greater the impact on the environment, and if it is not organic, then you know that it was drenched in pesticides created from petroleum. Do you want to be eating that?

Check out your local farmers' market (http://www.localharvest.org/farmers-markets/) or food co-operative (search on http://www.coopamerica.org/pubs/greenpages/) for the best in local grown, organic and pesticide free fruits and veggies. Local grown means less shipping. Organic and pesticide free means less use of petroleum based chemicals, and better health for you and your loved ones.

6. Think sustainable, not disposable this year.

  • Wrap creatively. - Wrap your gifts in re-used wrapping paper, paper made from recycled sources, or be creative and use beautiful organic fabrics that can be re-used and become a part of the gift.
  • Use organic linens. - Purchase organic linen napkins, placemats, and tablecloths.
  • Use compostable dinnerware. - Unable to buy organic linens, and short on dishes and flatware for entertaining? Be sure and use napkins, plates, and flatware made from renewable resources such as sugar cane fiber and corn plastic.
  • Send Holiday E-cards. - Save the paper and the wasted fuel to deliver conventional cards (which are not recycleable due to the colored dyes). Send your loved ones bright, colorful and fun animated e-cards to share the holiday spirit and show them that you care.

7. Scent your holiday home with natural organic essential oils and potpourris.

Sprinkle a few drops of a natural, essential oil like cedarwood, spruce, frankincense or sandlewood on a bowl of pine cones. Or make a simmering pot of cloves, cinnamon, and orange peel in water, and keep it on a low heat to fill your home with it's delicious aroma.

"95 percent of chemicals used in fragrances are synthetic compounds derived from petroleum. ...which are capable of causing cancer, birth defects, central nervous system disorders and allergic reactions." - http://www.naturalingredient.org/syntheticfragrances.htm

8. Illuminate your home with beautiful and naturally scented soy, vegetable, or beeswax candles.

"Paraffin is an inexpensive sludge waste product of the petroleum industry that has been bleached then texturised with acrolyn, a known carcinogenic product." - http://www.epicureantable.com/articles/acandles.htm

9. Use LED decorative lights with the environment in mind, and save money on your energy bills.

LEDs can be used to decorate your home and your tree. They are 90% more energy-efficient than traditional incandescent lights, emit way less heat, and have a longer lifespan. Many homes burn down each year due to regular holiday lights setting a tree or draperies on fire. With LEDs you are also free from that worry.

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Water Conservation

Submitted by jediwright on December 8, 2006 - 4:06pm.
Description: 

Here are just a couple of quick tips, mostly common sense when you think about it, on how to conserve water and reduce your water and power bill:

1. Don't flush the toilet every time you pee: "If it's pee, let it be! If it's brown flush it down". Yes it may sound gross (it's really not that bad :) but if you only share your toilet with a few roommates, a few family members, significant other, or especially just yourself, there's no reason to waste all that water. Plus you'll save a few bucks on your next water and power bill, especially when you combine this practice with the others below.

2. Take shorter showers (or a shower over a bath) and maybe even try braving fewer showers in your daily/weekly routine. One (1) shower a day can even be too much for some, why do you need more than one? After all, a natural scent can do wonders for you and your partner, those pheromones weren't created for nothing!

3. Use less in the kitchen: try designating a favorite glass or cup (if you haven't already) and only exchange it for another or clean it once a day (or longer). If you're drinking mostly water, which is also another big plus in your favor, than there's not much concern over germs.

You can also try washing your dishes by hand, just be conscious of the water pressure you use, you can run it at a half or a third of full pressure and still do an effective job. If need be, you can crank it up when rinsing before and/or after you're done scrubbing.

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