In honor of Earth Day this year, we want to retouch on why zBoard is such an amazing alternative material. Every year, thousands of units of furniture, literally tons, build up in our nation’s landfills. Way Basics helps reduce this buildup with our recyclable furniture that’s also 99% post-consumer paper, so we completely reuse material that has already been through the consumption process. We would like to remind everyone to help reduce our nation’s already-crowded landfills and find other creative ways of using and reusing your furniture!
Of course, reusing and recycling your furniture is not the only way to help sustain our Earth. Please comment below on your favorite ways of being eco-friendly at home (the wackier/more creative the better!) and be entered to win a cube for you and a friend (color of your choice).
Ps. Next week’s contest has to do with pictures of you/your family celebrating Earth Day so if you do anything to celebrate, be sure to snap a pic!
Tags: earth day, Giveaway, Way Basics, zBoard
One of my favorite ways of being eco-friendly at home is to not flush when not absolutely necessary in order to minimize water usage. I just remember this “If it’s yellow, let it mellow…if it’s brown, flush it down”!
An on-going spousal battle of Eco-friendliness at my household is turning off my wife’s computer. She refuses to turn it off so I have to go behind her each night to shut it down. I am doing good, 300 Watts at a time..
We just got chickens. They eat our compost and we eat their eggs.
We try many things to be eco-friendly at home: My favorite household cleaner is vinegar & water; recycle everything we can; use reuseable bags when shopping; our son takes his lunch in reuseable containers…
my earth friendly tip is to switch off the computer when not in use and also before going out
Another tip is to use solar flashflight to avoid throwing batteries
Happy Earth Day!
We use cloth diapers and try to reduce, recycle or reuse everything.
We bike instead of driving!
We feed worms our leftover organic veggie and fruit peels and they make us great compost for our garden!
I can’t think of anything wacky or creative that we do, but we use eco-friendly cleaning products, compost, have a veggie garden, recycle, use less electricity than average, and use cloth diapers.
Of course, we recycle every single thing possible but when it comes to furniture, I use our local free cycle web group to offer furniture we don’t need anymore. That way it goes to good use. If no one wants it, there’s always a local church or goodwill that will find a New home for it. It’s a shame that furniture ends up in landfills and really not necessary.
I hate wasting water in any fashion, so when I turn on the kitchen sink to let the water get hot to do dishes, I place a bowl in the sink and collect the water. I pour the bowl into a bucket and haul it outside to water my trees. The neighbors may look at me funny, but I easily fill a 10 gallon bucket every other day. (I do the same thing with the shower tap)
After you shower with bar soap multiple times, there are always little pieces left over. These pieces are too small to use to shower with.
So I take left over pieces of bar soap, put them is a pot with water and melt them down. I put the soapy mixture in a beautiful dispener bottle and use this to wash my hands, etc… This way I never have to throw away the pieces.
In addition to the usual reducing, reusing and recycling, my favorite way to help the planet is to ride my scooter. Two years ago I sold my car and bought a Buddy 125cc scooter. I happily scoot around town using 80 mpg come rain or shine.
My grandmother grew up in the Depression & took care of me when my mother worked. Many of my recycle/reuse tips came from her. Vinegar cures/cleans/fixes just about everything: bee stings, cleaning windows, etc. and it’s far more eco-friendly than chemical cleaners. Use newspaper to dry windows and she always lined the bottom of garbage cans with them to absorb leaks and stains. Hankies are better than Kleenex and cost less to use. Learn how to sew: pants too short-turn them into capris; hole in a sleeve, make it short sleeves; darn a sock as much as you can and then use it for a dust rag when its life is almost over. She’s 89 years old now and still washes out Ziploc baggies and uses old milk cartons as freezer containers (wash it out and dry, just add food, fold down the top and masking tape it, write what is/date with a sharpie, then freeze) and milk cartons fit in the fridge so much better than a bunch of freezer bags.
Love the cubes. Two teenage grandsons, two granddaughters, cubes for shoes, cubes for clothes, cubes for lacrosse gear, baseball gear, softball gear. We recycle just about everything and the cubes make us feel as if we’re doing our bit. I bike most places and use re-usable shopping bags (hate if I forget and have to use plastic
……
My boyfriend and I support our city and environment by living downtown. No car, no worries!
I use a washable cloth on my mop and make my own cleaner. We have a garden and enjoy fresh herbs. Our family enjoys walking to the grocery store which is right down the street.
I wouldn’t say any of the below is wacky, but they’ve saved us lots of money over the years in addition to being green:
The home entertainment center is on a power strip and everyone in the house knows to turn it off when not in use. We use CFLs and pay a little extra to guarantee our power supply is renewable via the “Energy for Tomorrow” program. We have a special recycling area set up for stuff that can be recycled but not through the city pickups. I’m planning to get a rain barrel and use that for an herb garden, and I’m hoping to learn to vermicompost this year. I keep a cheap set of silverware and plates made of post-consumer #5 plastic at work for lunches. Depending on the weather I’ll bike or take the bus to work.
I try to never buy/use anything disposable–I don’t buy paper plates or napkins. I only keep a box of tissues for visitors (sharing my “hankies” would be a bit too quirky for me!). I use rags (old t-shirts) instead of paper towels, etc. I love old furnitures with character and have been known to adopt pieces off the curb. And I love my z-board cubes, doubles & triples!
I agree! The suggestions aren’t necessarily quirky but I love all the different things everyone does to help our planet! Everyone has such wonderful ideas! I am having a great time learning from everyone! Thank you!
One of the ways I like to be eco friendly at home is to use reusable waterbottles. I fill them with filtered tab water. I also seperate trash into plastics, papers, glass and everything that is bio degradeable like egg shells and banana peels. I use them in my back yard to fertilize.
I just recently started composting. I add anything from dryer lint to egg shells. I have such a smaller bag of garbage! fertilize my plants and can’t wait to use it in my garden. Can’t wait for all the fabulous fruits and veggies!
I shop at consignment stores for my children’s toys. Not only do I get great toys at reasonable prices, we don’t get all the excess packaging that comes along with them.
We do several different things to be Earth Friendly! We run a small family farm, and use the chicken poop as fertilizer along with using my beehive for pollination of our garden. Between my sister and I, we recycle clothes. She has a 4 year old, I have a 3 year old and my step daughter has an almost 1 year old, so my sister sends clothes and shoes to me, and I send them to my step daughter. I also use cloth diapers when my son is not in daycare and also use cloth monthly “mama” pads. We recycle the egg cartons that we sell our eggs in, and our customers always bring them back to us when they buy another dozen. We’ve taught Monster to garden already, last year he grew some amazing squash. We also have an underground creek that is on our property, and we use that to water the garden because the water isn’t safety tested to drink. So, we’re a very eco-friendly family!!!
My favorite eco-friendly thing was using cloth diapers with my daughter.
Now, I am using snack containers and other reusable containers when we go out to limit plastic bags….
In our home we celebrate the Earth every day. We try to think about what we use and do in our home, how we shop, how we eat and how reduce our waste in our home. We shop local, most of the time, we use locally grown fruits and veggies (lots of veggies from our own garden) and we work hard not to fill our landfills, by refusing, redusing, reusing and recycling. That’s how we celebrate Earth Day!
I recycle everything possible at home.
We do a variety of things, like composting, recycling, using CFL and LED lightbulbs, not flushing the toilet every time, buying used clothes/toys, using cloth diapers, breastfeeding, opening the windows instead of using the A/C, biking to work, using worn out clothes as rags, etc.
We use cloth diapers, cloth wipes, cloth napkins, and mama cloth for starters.
I clean predominantly with alcohol, vinegar, lemon juice, and salt, rather than complex chemicals.