10 Everyday Ways to Contribute to a Healthier Planet

Ten tips on everyday way you can go green taken from the book True Green: 100 Everyday Ways you Can Contribute to a Healthier Planet.

1. Power Shower - Try and limit your time in the shower to 5 minutes.
2. Run the dishwasher only when it is full or reduce water even more by washing them by hand (without the water running).
3. Use a solar clothes dryer, or a clothesline instead of the clothes dryer.
4. Stick to the old-fashioned way of clearing the driveway or leaves, using brooms and rakes.
5. Grow your own vegetables in a kitchen garden.
6. Get a mug instead of using disposable cups at work.
7. Print documents on both sides of the paper to cut down on paper use.
8. Turn off the lights when they are not in use.
9. Log out of the computer and shut it down when not in use.
10. Before you make any purchase, ask yourself if you really need it. Remember that less is really more.

More Information: True Green: 100 Everyday Ways you Can Contribute to a Healthier Planet.

Al Gore Challenges the Nation

In his speech on Thursday July 18, 2008 Former Vice President Al Gore called for a “man on the moon” approach to the solving the problem of global warming. He challenged the nation to take bold steps towards solving the climate crisis.

You can view excerpts from his speech from We Can Solve It on YouTube:



You can also find out more information on two Squidoo Lenses that I have created one for the We Can Solve It Campaign and the other to honor Al Gore and the work he is doing.

Green Visiting - The Monterey Bay Aquarium

In June we took the girls to one of their favorite places to visit, the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Not only is the Aquarium a fun place to visit, it is a great way to teach children first hand about nature, the sea, sea life and the environment.

A visit to the aquarium is also a great way to teach them be more nature aware and develop a concern for the environment and for animals.

My daughters never seem to tire of visiting all of the different exhibits. This year they were finally old enough to sit through several of their educational programs, All about Otters, The Deep and another about the Jellies.

The Aquarium offers a variety of different programs that are fun, entertaining and educational teaching about the many different inhabitants of the aquarium and the deep ocean.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium also hosts a variety of different hands on programs are available for children and adults to experience the aquarium creatures up close and personal like getting to touch a sea anemone or a crab.

Conservation Message
The mission of the Monterey Bay Aquarium is to "Inspire Conservation of the Oceans.

In addition to inspiring conservation of the oceans, the Aquarium is deeply committed to minimizing their environmental impact and to conducting business operations in ways that reflect and advance their conservation mission.

Staff members are encouraged to carpool, bike or ride the bus to work. The Aquarium only uses recycled paper for printing and photocopying.

Visitors are encouraged to minimize the use of water and paper products when using the restrooms, to dine on sustainable seafood resources and eat from recyclable containers. This simple conservation messages is displayed on every paper towel dispenser in the restrooms:

Paper Towels = Trees

Which makes you think twice about grabbing that second paper towel.

Learning Resources
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is a living learning institution. In addition to offering resources for those who can make it to the Aquarium they also offer online information and educational newsletters for teachers who may not be able to easily travel with their classes to Monterey.

You can learn more about the Monterey Bay Aquarium as a Teaching Resource or just get a glimpse at many of the different exhibits, more information and at least a virtual trip at the Monterey Bay Aquarium lens if it is too far to travel.

Image Source: Josh Berglund. Tropical Menagerie. Creative Commons License. Some Rights Reserved.

Fighting Climate Change

The 350 Challenge is a small way to show support to fight climate change. The more bloggers that get the badge, the better.

Thousands of readers will know that the climate movement is spreading far beyond the typical “environmental” realm and into the norm.

Bloggers are encouraged to post the badge on their site. In exchange, a Brighter Planet will be offsetting 350 pounds of carbon in your name. 350 pounds is equivalent to 100 lightbulbs for a day, not driving a car for two full weeks, or turning off all of the power in Washington DC for five minutes.

Get your own 350 Badge for your blog, be sure to sign up and help show your support for fighting climate change.

The 350 Challenge is sponsored by a Brighter Planet.

More About a Brighter Planet
Brighter Planet is a Vermont start-up committed to fighting climate change and building a clean-energy future. Borne out of a Middlebury College classroom, we are dedicated to demonstrating how small actions can lead to meaningful change.

Learn New Words, Donate Free Rice

A Chance to Let Others Eat Green

At FreeRice.com you can learn new words, improve your vocabulary at the same time you are donating free rice for the United Nation's World Food Program.

It is a fun way to learn some new words by playing the FreeRice Game and being able to donate free rice.

For each word you get right, FreeRice donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Programme.

I manage to get to a level where I donated 1000 grains of rice.

You can learn more at the lens that I created for the FreeRice project or by visiting their website.

More Ways to Go Green - Tips from Mom Bloggers

There were so many great tips and comments for the week of the Blog Party that I've still got more to share.

Mnmom offered these tips for More Ways to Go Green:

1. Have been switching all lamps to compact fluorescent.
2. Use my own bags at the grocery
3. Keep the thermo at 68, even in frigid MN winters.
4. Use the back of paper in the printer. Rarely does anything need to have it's own clean sheet.
5. Use reusable gift bags for ALL holiday gifts. No more wrapping paper in our house!
6. Brooms only - no leaf blowers
7. We designed our yard to be mowed without needing an edger
8. Keep our tire pressure up and the oil changed regularly in our old clunker.

Even More Ways of Going Green came from Michelle.

Here are highlights Michelle's recent blog on no brainer ideas for moms to start going green around the home.

1. Go Unplugged.
Try unplugging appliances and electronics like the toaster, coffeemaker, or DVD player when you are not using them.

2. No to the Flow
Turn off the water while you brush your teeth.

3. Be a Bag Lady
There is no reason to use plastic or even paper bags to shop anymore. Besides the enormous environmental impact they have, green bags are easier to carry, especially with kids in tow, they are virtually unbreakable, and they just look nicer too.

4. Keep it cool baby.
Adjust your thermostat. For every degree you lower the thermostat in the winter months, or raise it in the summer months, you can cut your energy bill and usage by about 4%!

5. Fill 'er Up
Try buying hand soap, shampoo, dish soap in bulk and refilling the bottles you have instead of throwing them away and buying new ones each time. It saves money too.

6. Shut it off
Don't leave your car running. First of all, it's just not safe and from an environmental standpoint, you are cutting down on your emissions by turning it off.

7. Lights Out
Turn the lights off when you leave a room. Take advantage of the extended daylight hours in the summertime and leave the lights off for as long as possible and let the natural light in.

8. Buy Smart, Save Big
The next time you are shopping for a new appliance for your house, invest in one of the Energy Star, high efficiency appliances. Purchasing Energy Star appliances is worth the cost.

9. Cold Turkey & Air Drying
Try washing all of your laundry, or as much as possible anyway, in cold water. Up to an astonishing 90% of the energy used to do a wash of laundry comes from heating up the water.

Don't forget the dryer. Install a clothesline and hang your clothes outside to dry.

10. Pick It Up
Don't litter and please teach your kids not to litter as well. So please, dispose of your trash properly, and please recycle whatever and wherever you can!

Featured on Best Green Blogs

My Green Doc Blog has been included in the Best Green Blogs Directory under Green Blogs, Green Guides, Green Moms, Green Parenting, Green Tips & Tricks, Green Women, M, Personal Blog, and Sustainable Living.

Best Green Blogs is a directory of weblogs that focus on green and sustainable people, places, products, ideas & possibilities.

The directory was developed to give a voice to the green blogosphere, create community and support the thousands of independent green bloggers. Everyday green bloggers are posting news, information and ideas that are useful to transforming the world into a more sustainable and liveable place.

Save Green More Uses for Plastic Bags

To kick off the Mom Blog Party I posted 20 + Ways to Reuse a Plastic Bag and encouraged visitors sure to share their favorite ways of reusing a plastic bag.

While we'd like to see everyone converting over to reusable shopping bags, like My Green Sacs, until plastic bags are banned, we need to figure out ways of reusing the more than 100,000,000,000 (billion) plastic shopping bags used every year in the United States.

Visitors posted a lot of other great tips for saving green by reusing or recycling their plastic bags. Here are some more suggestions from our blog visitors.

Uses for Plastic Bags

Trash Can Liners
From That Crazy Mom We use our plastic bags for trash can liners also. I also use them for my regular kitchen trash. Rather than a big 13 gallon bag, I just put our garbage into the grocery bags then toss them in the kitchen trash.

We also have a local thrift store that takes the bags and reuses them to package up customer's purchases.

From callmekelly I actually just recycle all of the plastic bags I get, though I use cloth bags mostly so I don't have many. I find that may be better than using as liners. Instead, I don't use liners in the small trash cans but rinse them out when they do get dirty with collected rain water.

From ikkinlala We use our plastic grocery bags as garbage bags - if we tried to use full-sized garbage bags, it would stink too much before we got them full. We've been using cloth bags for a long time, but sometimes we need to leave them at home so that we'll have some bags for garbage.

Recycling Bag Programs
From Shannon I wish the grocery stores would actually get rid of plastic and paper bags and make everyone that wants groceries use the recycle bags!

Whenever I go to Wal-Mart though I try to remember to take any plastic bags I have received.

For Messy Jobs
From Angie I re-use plastic grocery bags for when I clean out the cat litter box.

From Monkey's Momma I am a nurse and when I did Home Health, one house I went to should have been declared unfit for inhabitation. Anyway, I would carry a ton of plastic Walmart bags with me in the car. Before I went in this house, I would step one foot in each bag, tie it around my ankle, and off I'd go. When I left the house, I removed the bags from my feet, then my gloves and disposed of them in another plastic bag.

Note to the Go Green Tip Winners:

Everyone who shared a Green Tip is eligible to receive one of the My Green Doc Blog's “Go Green” or “Live Green” sticker in the mail.

You will also receive the Go Green, Live Green or Save Green image via email to use as as a blog badge.

To claim your prize, please send me an email to mygreendoc-at-gmail.com with the information I need to send you your “Go Green” or “Live Green” sticker and blog badge by May 31.

Green Tips from Blog Party Visitors to Go Green and Save Green

Now that blog party has ended, I have pulled together all of the green tips suggested by visitors to the site. We've had a lot of great tips and comments for the week, so I will be running the tips over several blogs this week.

Go Green - Conserve Water

From Joy: GREEN TIP! This will save you money when you flush the toilet. Take a jug of milk (some toilet tanks can fit a gallon, others can only fit a half-gallon).

Fill it with rocks, weights, or whatever you can find that will give it weight. I used those melted marbles you find in craft stores.

After flushing, place the jug (or similar water-proof container) inside the tank, off to the side of the plug. And voila, less water is filling up your water tank!

Go Green Kids

From Katie My tip is let your children get involved. My youngest learned about recycling at school and ever since has become an advocate for it. It's his job to check containers to see if we can recycle it. He was thrilled when we bought reusable bags at the grocery store and we take them everywhere we shop!

Go Green - Neither Paper Nor Plastic

From dolls123 I'm using cloth bags instead of plastic ones.

Go Green at the Store

From Brianna We use our own bags at the grocery store and I'm even getting to the point where I take them to other stores, too. We also use cloth napkins instead of paper ones or paper towels. I'm amazed at what a reduction it is in our use of paper!

I sew, so I make pillowcases as "wrapping paper" for gifts. Just tie with a string and it is a great package!
From Audrey Our biggest contribution has been to only use reusable grocery bags. We love it. We even bought a dozen of them for my mom.

Save Green - Printers and Printing Paper

Another Tip From Ana When printing, to save on ink, click on preferences, then paper/quality tab, then on Draft. It will print out lighter than on the regular setting, but it's readable and saves on cartridge ink.

To save on paper, simply print on both sides of the page when printing multiple pages.

Source: Eco-friendly tip #8: Saving When Printing

Save Green - Alternative Fuel Sources

From michelle Another suggestion would be to do as I did and switch to bioheat. It's great because it uses heating oil and biodegradable products like soybean oil. If you're really into being green then you should be excited about this because you get to keep your home comfy, cozy, and warm during the cold seasons and help preserve the earth as well. I got lots of great tips from Oil Heat America.

Save Green - Compost

From Ana My tip that I would share is to compost when possible. It isn't as difficult as most would believe and creates reusable waste.

Note to the Go Green Tip Winners:

Everyone who shared a Green Tip is eligible to receive one of the My Green Doc Blog's “Go Green” or “Live Green” sticker in the mail.

You will also receive the Go Green image via email to use as as a blog badge.

To claim your prize, please send me an email to mygreendoc-at-gmail.com with the information I need to send you your “Go Green” or “Live Green” sticker and blog badge by May 31.

...and the Blog Party Winners are...

The Mom Blog Party was a lot of fun, getting a chance to meet many new Mom Bloggers. I am pleased to announce the big winners of the prizes donated from My Green Doc Blog, My Green Sac and the Imagine Peace & Love.

Prize Winners from My Green Sac

My Green Sac - $25.00 Gift Certificate
lovethatsara from ShesTongueTied.org

Prize Winners from the My Green Doc Blog

My Green Gift - Green Spa Package
Monkey's Momma a.k.a. M. Hall from Monkey's Momma

Prize Winners from Imagine Peace & Love
Imagine Peace & Love - $20.00 Gift Certificate
Mnmom from Happy to be from Iowa

Imagine Peace & Love - Buttons
Unycorne a.k.a. Heather Quarnstrom - The "Official" Heather Quarnstrom Blog

Note to the Winners:
To claim your prize, please send me an email to mygreendoc-at-gmail.com with the information I need to send you your gift certificate or gift by May 31.

Winners of the My Green Doc Blog “Go Green” or “Live Green” stickers will be announced in tomorrow's blog along with the collection of the best Green Tips from the Mom Blog Party Moms.

My Green Doc Blog Featured on Eco Street

My Green Doc Blog has been included in the EcoStreet Green Community Directory as another one of their Blogs that care and are working to raise green consciousness.

We are listed as one of the "blogs devoted to saving the planet & promoting a more ethical way of life."

EcoStreet.com started in 2002 as a way to raise green consciousness. It began as a directory of UK websites to spread the word about living green, help people who wanted to live more sustainable lives by making it easier for people to find green products and services.

Today EcoStreet is a thriving global community. It has grown over the past 5 years into a thriving global community and is the Web Directory for Eco Friendly & Sustainable Living.

Understanding CO2 Emissions Using Black Balloons

A compelling video messages that helps make the issue of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions more tangible and more visible.

Watch the Black Balloon advertising and be motivated to Go Green and Save Energy.



What is a Black Balloon?
A black balloon is being used as a simple way to help people visualize just how much greenhouse gas is produced around the home, in the office and in other places. Each black balloon measures 50 grams of greenhouse gas.

Making Carbon Emisssion Visible
This Energy Saving Campaign from Climate Protect gives a very powerful visual cue for remembering to conserve energy where CO2 emissions are represented as black balloons. The first ad from the Alliance for Climate Protection encourages everyone to decrease energy use in the home.

The bottom line: using less energy means less greenhouse gas emissions and helps to reduce the impact of climate change.

Find out More on We Can Solve It on the We Can Solve It on Squidoo.