DAILY BITE: from Ideal Bite

Moon Shine – Garden Week

The Bite:
Wanna get loaded on cheap electricity? Go with nonpolluting solar patio lights, and pretty soon you’ll be drunk with (free) power: an hour of sunlight hitting the earth provides more energy than everyone in the world uses in a whole year. Drink up.

The Benefits:
* No hangover for the earth. Solar energy is clean and infinitely renewable.
* Home-brewed electricity. Solar energy’s free, so most of these lights will pay for themselves within a year.
* You could install these things wasted. With solar pathway lights, for example, all you gotta do is stick ‘em in the ground.

READ: Full Bite

« DetailsArt
Gifts With Humanity »

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 6:43 am and is filed under GREEN LIVING. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

DAILY BITE: from Ideal Bite

Hostile Takeover – Garden Week

The Bite:
Weeds showing your plants no mercy? Fight back with eco-friendlier herbicides that keep weeds away while letting your garden re-coup.

The Benefits:

* Peace on Earth.The majority of the herbicide you apply doesn’t actually reach the target weed, and all of it eventually impacts the environment.
* Less violence toward your plants and the earthworms that sweeten your soil – and our options are still effective.
* Keeping kids and pets outta harm’s way. There are about 110,000 human poisonings from herbicides, insecticides, and pesticides in the United States each year.

Personally Speaking:
Jen even killed knapweed (MT’s notoriously insidious nonnative invader) using Deadeye (though she had to do it several times ‘cuz that stuff just keeps coming back).

Full Bite

« The Hand Crochet Hat by Lori Leigh
Gifts With Humanity Earth Day »

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 7:40 am and is filed under GREEN LIVING. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

DAILY BITE: from Ideal Bite

Green Grass or Bust – Garden Week

The Bite:
Does your green thumbing require lots of water? Give your wallet a lift: Save cash and H2O by watering your garden in the early morning. Not quite a free ride, but still pretty sweet.

The Benefits:
* More H2O to keep hydrated on road trips. Up to 30% of water used for midday watering will evaporate, while nighttime watering causes your garden to stay damp longer, sometimes leading to mold.
* Not (hitch)hiking up your water bill. About 50%-70% of the water a typical American household uses goes to the lawn and garden.

Personally Speaking:
Heather learned the dangers of nighttime watering years ago: R.I.P. Heather’s first petunias.

Wanna Try:
* Just water and set your sprinkler timer for early in the a.m.
Also:
* Water your garden only when the ground is dry.
* Make sure your sprinklers are directed to water your garden – not your concrete.
* Raise the level of your lawn mower to 2 or 3 inches. Longer grass keeps moisture better because it shades the roots.

« Dash Hemp
AllPosters.com »

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 7:54 am and is filed under GREEN LIVING. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

DAILY BITE: from Ideal Bite

Are you a slave to Claritin?

The Bite
Break free with natural remedies. They can be just as effective as allergy drugs, but usually have fewer side effects, so you can unchain yourself from the tissue box without resorting to synthetics.

The Benefits
Abolishing side effects. While remedies such as peppers can still have their own side effects, OTC and prescription allergy drugs call out anxiety, headaches, insomnia, and a weaker immune system as common.
Getting back to your servitude. Allergies result in almost 4 million missed workdays in the United States every year.
Not making nature your bitch. Fewer synthetic chems in pills = fewer synthetic chems that can end up in our ecosystems.

Personally Speaking
Our SF office is one big room, and a couple of us get pretty bad allergies this time of year, so we researched this tip mainly so that everyone else could get relief from all the freakin’ sneezing and sniffling.

« Frontier Natural Products Co-op
IsaBooties »

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under GREEN LIVING. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

DAILY BITE: from Ideal Bite

Driving solo and late to a bikini bash?

The Bite
Dive into the car-pool lane alone for once – you deserve it for being eco. Cops won’t mind as long as you’re cute-ish (if you’re fugly, there’s always the “my water just broke” excuse). It’ll get you through rush hour without going off the deep end.

The Benefits
*Lifeguarding the planet. Clinical studies show that using the diamond lane prevents up to 790 pounds of greenhouse gases per person each year. Yep – 790 greenhouses.
*Getting to the party on time. Forget fashionably late; punctuality counts for a lot.
*More attendees. It’s Peer Pressure 101: The more people there are in the car-pool lane (especially if they’re driving nice cars), the bigger car pooling’s cachet becomes.
*And hey, if you do get a ticket, you can always contest it in court.

Personally Speaking
Those of us who occasionally drive alone in the HOV lane sometimes keep mannequins in our front passenger seats to avoid getting ticketed; no tickets so far (fingers crossed)…

« Green People UK
Frontier Natural Products Co-op »

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 10:29 am and is filed under GREEN LIVING. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.