Archive for December, 2007

College Students can be Green Too!

Friday, December 28th, 2007

The college years are an exciting transitional time for young people. For many, college is the first time they have been on their own, and they’re faced with being responsibe for their own actions and their own well-being. For some students, college is the first time they are faced with making their own choices. It can be overwhelming, and the pressure of making green choices might just be too much to handle. There are five simple choices students can make in their transition into adulthood that can easily lessen their footprint while in college.

Walk. Nearly all college campuses are designed to be walker-friendly. College may be the only time when driving a car is not absolutely necessary. However, if being completely car-free isn’t an option, park it and leave it. Campus parking is notoriously frustrating, and keeping your car parked in a lot is a lot easier than futilely circling the parking lot to find another space. Use your feet, a bike, or campus transportation to get from your dorm to class to the library.

Eat greener. Choose a diet based in whole-grains, fruits and vegetables, and lean proteins from plants sources, such as beans and nuts, will not only reduce your carbon footprint, but will help fight off the dreaded freshman 15 (pounds that is). Many dining halls are getting with the program and offering a wider-variety of meat-free entrees, and partnering with local farms to offer organic and local produce. If yours doesn’t, take advantage of those student dining surveys to express a preference for local, organic, and fair-trade food choices.

Drink greener. Stop drinking bottled water. It is expensive and damages the environment. Choose to use a filtered water bottle that will eliminate your plastic bottle waste. These Portable Water Filters are perfect for you and environment.

Recycle. May be more convenient on college campuses than in the general community. Dorms often have trash rooms where students dispose of their garbag. They almost always have recycling bins for cardboard, plastic, glass, cans, and paper. In your dorm room use two separate waste cans, one for trash and one for recyclables. This makes disposal a breeze.
Reuse. Consider used items when looking for college gear. Find used furniture, clothes, etc..
Students make big changes when they take the step from high school to college. That makes this transition the perfect time to take small steps for a greener life.

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Ways To Be More Green With Your Water Usage….

Wednesday, December 19th, 2007

1. Drip Drip Drip
Dripping faucets can waste gallons and gallons of water every day. A leaky toilet can use 90,000 gallons of water in a month. You solve this by changing the washers on your sinks and showers, or get new washer-less faucets. Of course, the easiest and cheapest way to start saving water is to properly maintain your sinks, showers, etc.
2. Good water habits
Try to stay aware of this precious resource disappearing while brushing your teeth or shaving and always wash laundry and dishes with full loads. When washing dishes by hand, fill up the sink and turn off the water. Take shorter showers or, if you have good friends, shower with a friend. To put things in perspective, take a quick look at your next water bill when it arrives. It probably won’t be costing you too much, but the average household consumes multiple thousands of gallons each month. See if you can make this number go down.
3. Stay off the bottle 
Bottled water sucks. In most first-world countries, the tap water is provided by a government utility and is tested regularly. Water tests have shown in many municipalities, tap water is actually better than bottled water. Bottled water is not as well regulated and studies have shown that it is not even particularly pure.  Most bottled water doesn’t come from an “Artesian spring” and is just tap water anyhow. Coca Cola is known for adding salt to Dasani bottled water so now you get salt from water not just the local fast food restaurant.  Reasons to avoid Bottled water are because it is even more expensive per gallon than gasoline, bottled water incurs a huge carbon footprint from its transportation, and the discarded bottles do not decompose. If you want to carry your water with you, get a filtered water bottle and fill it up as you go. Having a filter built into your water bottle will allow you to re-use the bottle and get great taste for free! If your water at home tastes funny, don’t worry cause your filtered water bottle will remove the bad taste, bad odor, and chlorine chemicals.
4. Harvest your rainwater
Put a rain barrel on your downspouts and use this water for irrigation. Rain cisterns come in all shapes and sizes ranging from large underground systems to smaller, freestanding ones.
5. At the car wash
Car washes are often more efficient than home washing and treat their water rather than letting it straight into the sewer system. But check to make sure that they clean and recycle the water.
6. Keep your eyes open
Report broken pipes, open hydrants, and excessive waste. Don’t be shy about pointing out leaks to your friends and family members, either. They might have tuned out the dripping sound a long time ago.
7. Don’t spike the punch
Water sources have to be protected. In many closed loop systems like those in cities around the Great Lakes, waste water is returned to the Lake that fresh water comes out of. Don’t pour chemicals down drains, or flush drugs down toilets; it could come back in diluted form in your water.

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Why we need to be more responsible with water?

Monday, December 17th, 2007

For starters, no natural resource is more valuable than water. Even though we have water everywhere, and it seems to cost nothing, it is the most important, but at the same time, the most polluted and abused of all our natural resources. As our water supplies become more and more distressed the safety of our drinking water, the health and well-being of our natural ecosystems and the durability of our food supply are at risk.

It is easy to become overwhelmed and to not know where to begin to correct these massive water problems, but there are many opportunities each day for everyone to make a difference. If your like most people at some point in your lifetime you have heard about water-saving etiquette, so hopefully we can make a good case for conserving the stuff with practical, everyday water-saving strategies as well as some more high-tech approaches.

One of the first steps we can each do is stop using bottled water because the plastic bottles have huge impacts on our ecosystems. The environmentally friendly alternative is a filtered water bottle. These portable water filters are simple to use, and can drastically cut down on the hundreds of millions of water bottles and plastic that is thrown away each day. You no longer need to worry about where your plastic bottle is going.

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Tap Water Purely Bad

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

Tap water has been tested again and again.  All the same results have came out.  Tap water is just something you don’t want to drink.  Don’t know what’s in your water? Read your city’s Water Quality Report. Click here to see examples of reports from the city of Dallas. These reports are mandated by the government, however the quality of the water does not have to be up to par. It has been noted the over 2,100 contaminates has been found in tap water all over the country.  Some of them are various types of bacteria to parasites.  Also heavy metals and chemicals.  All of these contaminates, when consumed, can cause damage to the body, make people ill with diarrhea and stomach viruses, and in some causes certain cancers from the chlorine intake.  Water is good for the body, but drinking tap water can do more harm then good. The best solution is to just drinking filtered tap water you can drink from filtered water bottles.  Put the tap water in and filter while drinking nice crisp water.  Now all you are doing is giving your body all good with none of the bad while drinking water.

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Going Green Today!!

Friday, December 7th, 2007

Green is the new black! Everywhere people are talking about “green.” From every walk of life, it seems there is a green slant. Even TV shows, movies, and even food have taken the “green plunge.” What does that mean for you? Most of us have never worried about if we left a light bulb on, much less about how much water we used when we took a shower. So what has turned everyone onto being and doing green? Many people are concerned about their education, their children, and their overall “carbon footprint.” Energy, food, and water are on the top of the green priority list, and they should be on yours, too. Energy consumption is very easy, and can even save you money! The average household in the US consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. This can easily be reduced with a few simple and inexpensive steps.

First, turn up or down your thermostat, depending on the weather. It’s obviously not necessary to be running you’re a/c or heater when you are not there. A programmable thermostat is even better. It will turn itself off and on to not only save you money, but save on energy and thus “go green.” You also should change your most used light bulbs to low-energy or fluorescent. Energy surveys can also be done for free by your local utility company and can give you a personal plan of attack for lowering your energy consumption.
How do you go green with food? Buy local as much as possible! Visit the farmer’s market in your area. There are also local places where you can find organic meat, vegetables, eggs and goods at fair prices. Buying local saves the atmosphere from absorbing millions of tons of carbon emissions. If you have a green thumb, you might want to start a garden! This is such a great activity to do with your family. Organic milk and eggs are easy to begin buying first, and you can branch out from there.

Although this last area has been in the spot light recently, many people still over-look their water usage and waste. You don’t have to buy an expensive filtration system for the home, nor do you have to fill up a bunch of bottles every day from home to avoid buying bottled water. The easy solution to cut down on your water costs and the plastic waste created by plastic bottles is to purchase water filter bottles. It’s such a simple idea, and can drastically reduce your energy consumption. Portable bottle filters have the added benefit of being healthy for you. They are the perfect alternative to bottled water. They play a tremendous role in reducing waste and they are cool! Most people haven’t heard of filtered water bottles or other types of portable water filters, so you should do your part to get the word out. If you see somebody walking down the street with a bottle of store-bought bottled water, tell them how much energy they are wasting, and how to use a filter bottle.

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Pure Water 2GO featured in Milwaukee Journal

Thursday, December 6th, 2007

As you may have noticed, portable water filters have gained in popularity recently. The idea of a filter built into a water bottle is not a new one, but it is to a lot of people. Portable filtration units allow you go virtually anywhere and filter your own water. No more buying bottled water, standing in lines, throwing bottles away, or wondering exactly what you are drinking.

Filter bottles come in many sizes, shapes, and colors and filters are available to filter basic chemicals like chlorine and lead all the way to complex membrane filtration systems that can actually remove Bacteria and Giradia. The best thing about these types of filters in the portability. A Biological filter bottle can be taken anywhere in the world, and has the ability to literally save your life if you are in an area where you cannot find safe drinking water.

Pure Water 2GO was recently featured in the Milwaukee Journal as having the best filtration systems on the market today, and all in a portable unit.

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