Green Options

We cranked up the woodstove for the first time this season last night at Inn Serendipity. The cool, fall nighttime breezes have arrived here in Wisconsin, and that means just one thing: time for hot cocoa. But not just any hot cocoa. When my husband, John Ivanko, and I moved from Chicago apartments to our Wisconsin farm, we traded convenience for countryside. No more quick runs to the mini mart store at the end of the urban block for a missing ingredient. . With civilization now a fifteen-minute drive away, I’ve learned the art of self-sufficiency by creatively making store bought mixes with pantry ingredients.

Hot cocoa serves up a good example of how making your own mixes from pantry staples deliver benefits on multiple fronts:

Clip coupons.  Shop sales.  Stock up.  While everyone seeks ways to save on food costs in today’s economy, most of the “tips” offered are sounding like a stale rerun, repeating the same conventional basics over and over.

Maybe what we really need is a time of crisis is to rewrite some of the old rulebook.  Maybe we need a dose of frugality innovation.
With that in mind, here are some fresh perspectives on saving a dime while saving the planet.  For those in the Madison, Wisconsin area, come join me for my workshop on this topic of cutting costs while eating well at the upcoming Isthmus Green Day on April 25 at the Monona Terrace.

1.  Use it Up
Every year around early spring, my family and I go on our annual “food buying detox diet” where we literally go cold turkey as best we can on buying food.  This isn’t as depriving as it sounds as we focus on eating through the pantry, using up all those items we already invested in that are often lingering near expiration dates.

An article in the March 28 New York Times contained some pretty unflattering remarks about compact fluorescent light bulbs.  Since the bulbs were never given a chance to speak in their own defense, I guess it’s up to us fluorescent bulb-huggers to speak for them.  So, here goes.

Want more out of your garden this season?  By “more,” think beyond increasing tomato yield of zucchini size.  Drawing inspiration from the Victory Garden era of WW II, plant your seeds with a deeper mission this season. 
Strengthen your growing your efforts on a personal level by giving your garden a purpose, a symbolic calling and goal that connects your plot with changing the planet.

The Victory Garden concept is going through a well-deserved revival, currently fueled by First Lady Obama’s White House garden plantings inspired by the Eat The View campaign. 

As I write about in this month’s Hobby Farm Home, Victory Gardens today redefine what “patriotism” can be, bringing self-sufficiency and healthy, local eating back into the realm of national pride that just might take us back to where we were over sixty years ago, when 30 million Americans grew about 40 percent of the vegetables consumed nationally.

Victory Gardens today hold opportunity for deeper creativity and self-expression.  Sure, we garden for everything from fresh flavor and health benefits to cost savings to the family budget.  But this season, give your garden an extra eco nudge by defining a “mission” for your growing efforts.  What bigger planetary issue do you hope to address by working the soil?

Such a garden mission can be private, something just you know and keep in your heart as a motivator when the mercury rises and you need an extra reminder of why you garden.  Or you can take your mission public, using it as an education tool to help others make the connection between a radish seed and transforming the world.

Here are some sample missions to get you started:

“The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.”  ~Hanna Rion

There is no doubt that human beings have become far removed from the natural world. It could be that this separation from nature is a root cause of many of society’s problems. When we deny ourselves access to the natural world, we lose a part of ourselves, our culture, and our sanity. Want to get it back? One of the simplest ways to reconnect with nature is to dig right in and grow something.

We all know that too much fat, sugar and salt are not good for us.  Staying up late and being sedentary are also counterproductive to our wellbeing.  As long as you are getting a good night’s sleep, sticking to a healthy diet and exercise program and using nontoxic skincare and cosmetic products you are doing what is right.  Right?

Believe it or not you can get too much of a good thing and we may be overdoing it without even realizing it.  Most of us use too many beauty products. Not only that, but we tend to use too much of each product at one time.

Only a handful of safe and effective items are really needed in our beauty arsenal to keep our skin happy and healthy.  A nontoxic cleanser, a toner for those with oily or acne prone skin, one good moisturizer for the season, an eye cream you can use in the morning and at night, a treatment and a product for exfoliating your skin.  Pair these items up with mineral makeup and blush, nontoxic mascara and your favorite lip color and you are good to go most days.

One of the great things about many green products is that they’ll actually save you money, sometimes over the long term (solar panels), but sometimes almost immediately (CFLs). In this economy, finding green products that are healthy, environmentally friendly AND economical is more important than ever. So, here are some new products we’ve come across over the past few months that offer just that - high green benefits AND more money in your bank account!

Energy Cinch Window Blankets. Windows are often an energy efficiency problem spot. Many homes lack the latest energy efficient windows, leading to energy loss and uncomfortable rooms throughout the year. Because window replacements are so expensive, though, it almost never pays to replace a window just for the energy savings benefits. Payback periods can often be ten years or more. There are other solutions - films and solar screens reflect sunlight during hot weather, and insulating drapes are helpful year-round. But Energy Cinch Window Blankets offer another solution. They combine the high insulating qualities of the thickest drapes with the installation ease of an extendable shower rod. You can easily remove them during times of the year when they’re not needed. An Energy Cinch can cut a problem window’s heat loss by up to 80%.

Enersaver Programmable Thermostat. We’ve praised the virtues of programmable thermostats many times before, but it can be a bit difficult to get them set right. We’ve come across this new thermostat from Globe Electric, called the enersaver Spin-N-Click. It uses a scroll wheel and single button to make programming much easier and more intuitive. And, at $49.95, it’s a relative bargain for a full-featured programmable thermostat. At this price, the thermostat will pay for itself in less than a year’s time in most homes.

While there are some who say we will (or should) travel less in the coming years — and perhaps some of us will — let’s not forget that the travel industry is the second largest industry on this planet after the industrial-military complex. It’s vitally important to many communities, businesses and organizations, ours included. We operate Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast, completely powered by the wind and sun.

My first post on ecotourism presented an approach to travel that sustains, enhances or restores diverse ecological systems, preserves the economic and social well-being of the local and global community, and fosters a greater understanding on the part of the traveler of nature, culture or the community visited. It’s the “triple bottom line of profits, planet and people” I write about in ECOpreneuring, applied to the travel industry.

This type of travel usually provides the ecotravelers with authentic experiences (read: not merely heads on beds) and the travelers themselves participate in the renewal, restoration or revitalization process underway by the community, business or organization. Ecotourism is a departure from the consumption and luxury focus of the mainstream tourism industry that touts all-inclusive resorts and 4-star amenities with little or no thought given to paying livable wages to employees or producing some of their own energy on site.

Since piloting a green travel program in 2007, the State of Wisconsin’s Department of Tourism, through their Travel Green Wisconsin program, has provided a framework by which already green tourism related businesses can be more easily found while those enterprises that recognize that there’s more green in going green can follow detailed certification requirements to embark on their journey to evolve, as all organizations will need to do sooner, or later, as a restorative enterprise that follows not just the laws of supply and demand, but also the laws of nature.

So I came home from work today and saw a woman riding a bike loaded to the gills with cardboard boxes on a heavy duty bike trailer. At first I thought it was just another one of the local crazies that rides their bikes from one side of the town to the other all day long, but I’d never seen her before, and if you’ve lived in my town for as many years as I have, you get to know who our crazies are.

I watched her ride her bike around my neighborhood (it’s a small neighborhood) with a bit of a detached interest as I unloaded things from my car. She stopped every now and then, picked a package out of her clown-car-stuffed trailer and dropped it off at various neighbors’ doors.

According to James Poterba, Head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, we are officially in a recession, so it’s more critical than ever to start cutting expenses wherever possible. 

One of the biggest areas in which you can reduce spending — especially in households with children – is right in your own kitchen. Here are some helpful tips for meal planning, food preparation, and grocery shopping that will reduce the strain on your wallet while offering some significant health benefits to boot.

Put on your Planning Cap

Planning your meals at least a week ahead will drastically reduce waste, and keep you from the trap of randomly tossing items into your grocery cart.  Figure out what your menu will be and buy only those key items.  And be sure to stock up on non-perishable goods that have longer a shelf life so that you’re armed with the right ingredients for each meal — dry and canned foods (rice, pasta, tomatoes) and powdered milk.

With the holidays approaching and the economy on the downturn, I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels the pinch in my wallet. There’s not much you can do to lower rent or mortgage, utility bills, or car payments, so your food budget will likely be what gets cut back. If the thought of eating nothing but rice and beans for your holiday meals scares you, don’t worry! You can trim your food budget while still eating well and keeping it green. In fact, there are many ways to lower your grocery bill while helping the planet out at the same time.

Following are some of the ways I’ve tampered my food spending, but please comment with your money (and earth) saving ideas!