Natural Rug Cleaning

A lot of books, articles and web pages have already been published to display information on environmentally responsible way of life. Though being a realtor from Toronto gives me plenty of occasions to talk about the many ways of green living with my clients, my topic today will be a bit more specific. In this article, I will try not to repeat all the tips on eco-life, you have probably read them many times before anyway. Our today’s topic will be the three common items that we generally don’t even consider to be a problem: food, water and electricity.

Groceries

Suppose that the majority of people are used to recycling part of their trash - at least paper, glass and metal, then we can say that most of the remaining household litter is comprised of groceries. The majority of the groceries that we throw out is in most cases in perfect condition and in some cases even in the original wrapper or box. The sad truth is that on average most families in Canada throw away 20 to 30% of groceries purchased in stores. Together with the groceries thrown out in stores and restaurants, it makes between 7 and 14 billion tonnes of food dumped annually. In Canadian dollars, that’s $3 to 5 billion per year.

Shocking, what we have just calculated, isn’t it? With so many organizations trying to help people suffering from lack of food, while at the same time so much of it is being wasted right under our noses. Now you might think “OK, so I will take our leftovers, pack it and send it somewhere else where people are hungry.” But hold your horses, that is not the best thing to do, we have some more practical tips for you. 1. Try to utilize the remaining food when preparing your next meal. If you cooked too much rice for supper yesterday, you might want to use it in stuffed peppers filling today. 2. In your food cabinet, always stock food that’s closest to the expiry date in front of food that last longer. 3. It may happen that you know beforehand that there is some food you are not going to be able to consume before its expiration date. Instead of throwing it out, try to find a local charity or soup kitchen and bring your food there when it’s still serviceable. As hungry people don’t live only in Africa, your food will serve a good purpose even in your city. 4. Do not dump leftovers - mulch it. Always try to think in the way that groceries just shouldn’t be dumped. If you don’t have a garden yourself, try to find someone who does and can do the mulching.

Water

You probably already know many tips on how to prevent using more water than necessary in your household. But now let’s focus on lavatories, as they are an important part of our household and also may be critical in how much water is used in the household. Well, today we can hardly imagine our life without a proper lavatory, and we don’t even need to care about them at all, if they still work. But try to determine the amount of water your household uses every month just for flushing the lavatory. You might be astonished by the big number you get out of this. Now suppose you could lower that by simply decreasing the amount of water your lavatory uses every time you flush. Basically, we can mention two useful tips: 1. There are new kinds of toilets available, that need just the minimum volume of water necessary. Just stop by at your local shop - you might be surprised what choices regarding lavatories there are today! 2. Another way of reducing the amount of water for flushing is to put a few plastic bottles filled with water into the tank of your toilet. You might have to experiment a bit before you discover the right volume of water needed for the toilet to keep functioning fine.

Electric current

Just like with water, many recommendations on electricity waste prevention are available only and elsewhere. What I personally consider being the biggest electricity waster is the often used tumble dryer. We got used to having everything we like or need instantly, that we no longer care how much unnecessary resources are wasted just because we don’t want to wait. Of course we no more want or have the time to wash our clothing manually, and it is true that by using dishwashers we can waste less water. However, think about tumble dryers. Ask yourself - do you really need your clothing to be dry instantly, instead of waiting one or two days for it to dry by itself? If you really want to “live green”, use your tumble dryer only in crisis situations or get rid of it (sell it) completely. This will have two pluses - you will become even “greener” and you will be able to spend less money on your electricity bills too.