Back to School with Our Daily Green & ECOlunchbox

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Back to school means time to pack lunches again. We just love these ECOlunchbox kits! No waste in the landfill, the oceans, or roadside. Our Daily Green is a proud affiliate of this fine company. Follow the links above to get your savings.

How to get more milk in your life (guest post)

(today's post is brought to you by a sponsor)

Dairy, it’s one of the main groups in the food pyramid. It provides us with calcium (for strong bones), protein (for muscle development) and good fats to keep us active during the day.

But not everyone includes dairy products as a staple ingredient in their diets. It’s no longer fashionable to drink milk as much as it used to be. Isn’t it strange that when people didn’t have machines for milk cooling, they drank more of it?

Milk can do wonders for your health. If you’re looking for ways to bring more dairy into your life, these tips will help you.

·     Make milk a habit

Bring milk into your everyday life by enjoying a glass with every meal. This way you’ll learn to include dairy in your routine.

If you enjoy coffee or tea, consider adding milk to it. This can be a sneaky way of getting a good dose of calcium without having to really think about it.

·     Use intolerance to your advantage

If you’re lactose-intolerant it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t get the nutrients that other milk drinkers can. You just have to think about it more carefully. 

Switching dairy milk to soy can be a great way of getting your body a good amount of calcium daily. Don’t think that just because you can’t have dairy milk that all milk is a no-go.

·     Yogurt

Yogurt is a healthy alternative to a dessert option. Because it’s made from milk it contains a ton of calcium and all the other good things that you find in dairy products.

It’s better for you than ice cream because it usually doesn’t contain any added sugar or flavors. Adding yogurt to your diet can not only benefit that tastes of your food, but provide you with additional nutrients daily!

If you avoid milk because of the calories, there are many alternatives out there for you. Lighter milk options provide the same great taste that full-fat milk does without the heaviness. Searching for ways to find healthy dairy products has never been easier.

Add more milk to your life and you’ll instantly feel better. Studies have shown that milk provides the best source of nutrients to support healthy muscle, bone and tooth growth. Think about it: the ingredients in milk are enough to support the life and development of a baby calf!

Grab Green Review and Discount Code

Last month the planet celebrated Earth Day, but at Our Daily Green, we think that everyday is worth celebrating our earth. Earth friendly living is a lifestyle, not an occasional choice.

One of the most challenging parts of making earth friendly choices is in the category of cleaning products.

There are countless DIY articles how to make your own soaps and to clean everything using nothing but a piece of earth friendly fabric and vinegar (I jest a little, but not completely). There are a few problems inherent to many green cleaning solutions:

• Time/convenience: for example who in the world has time to make their own laundry soap? I commend the homesteading, off-the-grid lifestyle choices. They certainly are inspiring. To borrow from a popular meme: "Ain't nobody got time for that."
• Effectiveness: I had used a popular earth friendly detergent for years. And my whites eventually became grey. The only way I could keep them white was to add bleach every few loads. Which seemed to offset my intention of going green.
• Scent: Let's face it. Vinegar and rubbing alcohol do a lovely job of cleaning, but then your house smells like pickles or a hospital. Yeah, it's clean. And smells weird.

As our college-aged children are returning home for break, the laundry and dishes multiplied exponentially. This made us especially grateful for the gift pack we received from our friends at #GrabGreen. They sent out a sample pack of their fantastic products for us to test just in time to introduce Mount Laundry From Two Dorms to Time For Home Cooking.  Our washing machine and dishwasher have been in marathon use!

Told you there was a ton of stuff to clean!

Imagine cleaning your house with fresh scents like red pear with magnolia, grapefruit with cranberry, or thyme with fig leaf. Imagine those beautifully scented products also worked wonders. Imagine that suddenly the drudgery of cleaning was somehow offset by knowing that the product you were using was non-toxic, naturally derived, with minimal packaging. The great thing is you don't have to imagine it. Our friends at Grab Green want you to try their product and have fantastic discount code for Our Daily Green readers.

We appreciate companies that are committed to providing effective products that care about the planet. From their website:

We've invested years into scientific development to discover the right balance of plant and mineral-based ingredients to ensure safe and effective cleaning power! Our concentrated, non-toxic products are packed with power and are formulated to go beyond existing eco-friendly products and compete with conventional products.

Grab Green offers delivery options as well as a subscription service. Their products are also available in selected retail outlets. We are proud to give them our highest recommendation. The products we received were complimentary, and all opinions are our own.

Get 25% OFF with code: Earth25

Ink Waste: The Environmental Impact of Printer Cartridges

(sponsored post)

Electronic waste is a worldwide crisis rapidly gaining momentum as businesses and individuals consume more disposable electronic devices than in any other time in history.

This form of pollution contributes to the majority of overall toxic waste produced in industrial and urban areas. This has created a need to come up with new and improved solutions to decrease the amount of electronic waste produced yearly.

These solutions may take different shapes, as they can be to change consumer consumption patterns, creating new technologies or coming up with new ways to recycle.

High numbers of printer cartridges are disposed of yearly, and they have become a major contributor to the electronic waste crisis. These cartridges contain carbon, plastic and toxic coloring agents that take decades or centuries to biodegrade.

Printer Cartridge Facts

To understand how the cartridge manufacturing process and improper disposal of these affects the environment, it's important to be aware of some facts:

• The International Journal of Innovation indicated in 2012 that up to 375 million toner and printer cartridges were disposed of yearly.  Over the course of a year, this means around 660 cartridges per minute.
• Large numbers of these printer cartridges end up in landfills, but a large amount of them are incinerated, releasing toxins into the atmosphere. Some of these toxins, such as dioxins, are carcinogenic. Even if they aren’t inhaled, they still pollute crops and water supplies.

• There are several ways that printer cartridges can be recycled, but studies estimate that only half of used cartridges end up being recycled or remanufactured.

Impacts on Natural Resources

When printer cartridges are not recycled, the manufacturer needs to purchase new materials instead of reusing old materials from recycled cartridges. Each cartridge is made up of metals and plastic that contains limited-supply natural resources. Plastic comes from oil, and metals such as aluminum or copper are mined. Having to purchase these new materials, it means that more limited resources are being used.

Pollution            

Throwing away a printer cartridge along with regular trash means that it will most likely end up in a landfill or incinerator. As mentioned previously, some components in printer cartridges take centuries to break down. As it starts to break down, the remaining ink leaks out, polluting its immediate surroundings. The smoke from incinerating the cartridges can be carcinogenic, as well as a pollutant and smog contributor. The metal parts leave a residue needing to be stored in landfills.

Greenhouse Gases

Printer cartridges not being recycled can contribute to global warming. By using a recycled cartridge, the manufacturer does not need to produce new materials, leading to a shorter manufacturing process producing fewer greenhouse gases. HP is a leader in recycling ink cartridges. They have been manufacturing their cartridges with recycled plastic, therefore reducing gas emissions. They believe that some of the plastic has been through their cycle ten times. This process has replaced plastic that would have needed to be refined from petroleum.

Energy

The more energy that is being used in manufacture and production, the more the earth is affected. More oil needs to be produced and burnt, additional power plants need to be built, and more solar panels and wind turbines need to be installed. When printer cartridges are not being recycled, manufacturing a new one uses a significant amount than using a recycled printer cartridge. This supplemental use of energy is harmful to the environment as all energy production sources use natural resources. Even wind turbines or solar panels, which do not need fossil fuel power to run, need to be transported to the site, and use mined metals.

Solutions for Printer Cartridge Waste

By recycling or safely disposing of electronic waste, it’s conceivable that the environmental impacts caused by printer cartridges can be significantly reduced. One efficient way to recycle is to send back printer cartridges to be remanufactured. These cartridges take a lot less energy to be produced and have the same performance as new toners when industry standard methods are used in their production.

Remanufacturing printer cartridges means that raw materials can be saved, as up to 97% of the original components can be reused when it is being remanufactured. At peak efficiency, a remanufactured cartridge will need only 1/9th of the raw materials needed when manufacturing a brand new printer cartridge.

Meal Planning to Avoid Waste (infographic)

Source: eReplacementParts.com

Spring Cleaning with The Amazing WhipIt

We will begin today's post with a confession. I don't like cleaning. Not on a boat, not with a goat, not here nor there, not anywhere.

Yet, when Our Daily Green was invited to test a line of cleaning products? We jumped at the chance. Like it or not, you still must clean your home. And what better way to do it than by testing a product "As Seen On TV" ?

I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for infomercials. They make everything seem so easy and doable. Convincing, too! I was sure that Whip It would make me think I had a personal butler.

Well, to go with truth in advertising, no, that didn't happen. I still had to scrub and wipe and scour my home. But that's okay, because it worked! Seriously, what is more frustrating than cleaning? Cleaning and finding out your product didn't work. As someone who regularly writes about "green" products, with natural ingredients, I must also confess that I typically put certain products (like those for glass) in the 20% bin. The part I am not going to get right. Because most glass cleaners that do not contain toxic ingredients like ammonia don't accomplish the goal.

I put Whip It to the test. My glass shower. This glass has to contend with soap scum on one side and hairspray on the other. I ask a lot of my glass shower doors and I did not anticipate that Whip It would prevail. (aside: that didn't stop me from singing a song from the 80s that copyrights prevent me from sharing, but imagine me with a red flower pot on my head as I sing about the product).

I have spent this past week cleaning my home. I have tested laundry, surfaces, and the holy grail of cleaning, glass.

Whip It lives up to the hype. I propose this: Buy some. If you order online, please tell them you didn't see it on TV, but you did see it on Our Daily Green. Show us some love. Show them some love. They sent me a box of stuff to try and I liked everything! I did! My house smells pretty, my shower walls sparkle, and I didn't use toxic things to make that happen.

I don't even have the magic of really good photography, just a real person, with less than perfect photos to share. I took some before I cleaned, and after. And heck yeah, it's nice. And isn't toxic. And makes you sing songs from the 80s if you're a certain age.

In other words, Whip It, Whips it good.

Disclosure: Whip It sent me a box of their cleaning supplies to test. It inspired me to clean. I don't like cleaning, but I like the results. If you don't like to clean but you like seeing results, we strongly endorse this product.

How to save water every day (Infographic)

From Visually.

Five things you should never flush

One of the possibly most misleading labels on personal care products is the word flushable. To borrow from the Jurassic Park quote, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." The only thing that should go down a toilet is human waste, water and toilet paper. In fact, even the extra-soft toilet paper can pose a hazard to your plumbing because it takes longer to break down.

Because of the confusion surrounding such products, septic tank maintenance has become increasingly difficult. Most products labeled as flushable will certainly go down the drain, but once there, they will not properly break down and in older plumbing can eventually create a clog, prompting you to need septic tank pumping. If they make it past your property, you're still potentially causing your municipality an issue.

To save yourself from costly repairs, as well as potential community wide assessments to repair damaged infrastructure, Our Daily Green has a list of things you may have thought you could flush, but shouldn't.

1. Feminine products of any sort, including tampons, liners, and pads
2. Cleaning wipes or personal wipes
3. Cotton balls or pads
4. Cotton swabs
5. Dental floss 

All of these common bathroom items can wreak havoc on your pipes and septic system. Because these sort of items also often have greasy residue on them, they create "superknots" that do not dissolve and clog entire sanitary systems. In London in 2013, a 15-ton fatberg, which was comprised of wipes and fat brought the city's sewers to a standstill.

Do yourself and your pipes a favor, if you're in doubt, don't flush it, but dispose of such items in your regular trash. 

We'd like to thank today's sponsor for encouraging us to take care of our pipes and septic systems. All opinions and advice are our own.