I hate cleaning. Hate it. I also hate the nasty chemical smell that can come with it. In fact, cleaning products are some of the most toxic materials in your home. Not only do they pose a health hazard, but many of them contain petrochemicals that are harmful to the environment. So what to do to keep your house clean AND earth-friendly? As much as I hate cleaning, I like it a lot more when I find awesome green cleaning products.

Like Rebecca’s Tip O’ The Day noted earlier, baking soda is a wonderful, earth-friendly cleaning product you can get almost anywhere on the cheap. Borax, white vinegar, and cream of tartar are just a few items you can use to make safe, non-toxic cleaning products. This site has plenty of recipes if you want to eschew commercial products completely. However, if you are not into the DIY scene, there are a plethora of cleaning products out there that are non-toxic and biodegradable. I’ve used several, and these are some of the lines that have produced favorable results.

Probably the most widely available, and certainly popular, are Method products. Method produces non-toxic, biodegradable cleaners that are minimally (and tastefully) packaged, and they don’t test on animals. They also just introduced floor cleaner kits (which I am SO resisting buying, since I already have a perfectly good mop and bucket), called the oMop that include those popular disposable microfiber mop pads–however, theirs are compostable. Method’s appeal is their cost-friendliness and availablity–you can get it at your big-box discount store, and it does stand out in a sea of traditional toxic cleaners in those stores.

Seventh Generation makes paper products and cleaning products–in fact, their Free and Clear line has no fragrances or dyes for those with allergies. Their company has rigorous standards for their products, namely that they are all vegetable-based and biodegradable, are not environmentally hazardous or acutely or chronically toxic, contain no phosphates, chlorine, or animal products. They also have awesome coupons on their website.

If you are looking for straight-up awesomely-scented cleaning products that make your kitchen smell like flowers, not chemicals, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day products fit the bill. Their biodegradable cleaners come in three scents, geranium, lemon verbena, and lavender, with a limited run of honeysuckle products out right now for spring cleaning. I love their laundry soap–there’s nothing like lavender-scented t-shirts right out of the dryer.

However, my new favorite eco-cleaning line is Bi-O-Kleen, which I pick up at our local green general store. Bi-O-Kleen products are biodegradable, non-toxic, highly concentrated to reduce packaging, and they have an entire soy-based product line. The best part about Bi-O-Kleen products is that their containers are refillable at many retailers–I just take back my empty bottle, and my store refills it (for a discount, too!) I must insert a personal rave on their automatic dish soap: I’ve never found a biodegradable dishwasher soap that actually worked with our dishwasher, but this soap leaves my dishes completely streak-free. A note on their website–they haven’t updated in quite a while, because their products have completely different (and I think better) label design, but it is the same product line.

When we moved into our first home, our bedroom closet had some hideous doors that we knew were going bye-bye. We put them in our unused garage with the hopes that we'd be able to use them someday. One year later, when I was prepping to start a garden, I needed a way to prevent our black lab, Asher, from getting into the veggie plants. I decided to build a raised garden bed, and my mind immediately went to the doors in the garage.

You can easily build a low-tech box like this for your garden for very little money and with very little construction experience. These raised planter boxes can be as large or as small as you can find doors for. It keeps our dog out and I don't have to kneel to tend to the plants in the box, plus we kept the doors out of the landfill. You could also use this for a compost bin, although you would have to use doors with vented slats, like our long doors, to maintain air flow.

Materials Needed:

• 4 salvaged wooden interior doors or cabinet doors, roughly the same width (solid wood or vented slats)
• 16-24 nails or screws
• electric drill or hammer

We visited our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore, where you can buy salvaged building materials for next to nothing (and give your money to a worthy cause) and found two cabinet doors that were roughly the same width as our old closet doors for a few bucks. We left the doorknobs on because that made the box easy to carry to our chosen location after we finished building.
Construction is so simple that my husband and I were able to build this in about fifteen minutes.

1. Lay all doors out on flat surface in roughly the same arrangement that they will be in your box.

2. Stand one end door up (the shorter cabinet door here). Stand one side door up so these two doors form an L. Make sure both doors are evenly on the ground

3. Use nails to join these two pieces together. Nail the face of the short door to the edge of the long door. Three or four nails down each side should do it.
End View
4. Repeat, attaching the other long door to the shorter side, keeping all pieces evenly on the ground.

5. Attach the final short door to the longer two on the opposite end from which you started.

6. You can reinforce by drilling screws on each cabinet face through the long doors, but ours was sturdy with just the nails.

After you are done, you can paint it, then move the box to where you want it in your yard. We then filled ours with layers of mulch, compost, and topsoil. This will settle over time, so go ahead and fill all the way to the top. We also surrounded the box will mulch to keep weeds from popping up. This particular box held 2 tomato plants, three basil plants, and multiple carrot plants.

We got new next-door neighbors, who haven't moved in yet, but have been working on updating the house for the past few weeks. On Saturday, my husband called me over to the window.

"She's washing out her paintbrushes with paint thinner ON THE GROUND!" I looked. Sure enough, our soon-to-be neighbor was pouring paint thinner all over her paintbrush, right into her yard, along with the paint from the brush. "What should we do?" he asked. What should we do? We didn't want our first encounter with our new neighbors to be us acting as the neighborhood eco-police, but we also didn't want paint thinner going into the ground that we plant food in.

"Maybe she doesn't know that that's not okay," I optimistically offered. It wouldn't surprise me. Take a look in a neighborhood dumpster. Chances are, people in your neighborhood are probably disposing of things that they shouldn't.

When my kids visited the landfill, their pre-trip lessons included one about BOATY. BOATY is an acronym to help consumers remember what shouldn't be disposed of with your regular household trash:

Batteries, in general, shouldn't go into the house. Newer alkaline batteries have 97% less mercury than they used to, so many landfills have lifted bans on alkaline batteries, but you should check with your local hazardous waste agency on how to dispose of these. Rechargeable batteries, particularly nickel-cadmium (NiCd), are a better choice than alkaline because they can be reused many times, but are identified as hazardous waste and should be recycled after they can no longer be charged. Automotive batteries should be recycled, and button cell batteries, such as those in hearing aids, should be disposed of as hazardous waste.

Oil and other hazardous household fluids (like paint thinner) have the potential to pollute groundwater and harm wildlife (think Exxon spill). The EPA estimates that 40% of spilled oil comes from consumers in their homes changing their own oil. The good news is that you can recycle used motor oil–fossil fuels are finite, right? AutoZone and Jiffy Lube both accept used motor oil for recycling. Other household fluids, like cleaning solutions, antifreeze, fertilizers, solvents, paint, and degreasers should be disposed of during hazardous waste pickup days. Most solid waste management departments have these once or twice a year, where your hazardous waste is picked up by your municipality and properly disposed of.

Appliances and e-waste take up a ton of space in our landfills. Roughly 10 million refrigerators are disposed of each year. Ahem, did you get that? TEN MILLION! Forty percent of those are salvaged and resold/reused, but the rest go to landfills. Those old fridges release refrigerants and insulating foams that aren't exactly eco-friendly (read: ozone depleting). How do we fix this problem? First of all, repair your appliances. Use them until they completely cash out and cannot be fixed. If you are dead set on buying something new (like an incredibly efficient refrigerator) make sure you aren't throwing away a perfectly good appliance by donating or selling your old appliance via Gigoit or Freecycle. Goodwill and the Salvation Army will accept many used appliances. E-waste, a growing problem in America due to constantly emerging technology and built-to-die products, Only 13% of the 20 million computers that became obsolete in 1998 were recycled, but discarded electronics contain cadmium, lead, and mercury, all extremely hazardous to humans. Thankfully, e-cycling programs are springing up all over the country–you can even get rebates and discounts from many retailers for trading in your used cell phone, computer, or printer cartridges. Try E-Cycling Central to find programs in your area.

Tires, until the 1960's, were almost all recycled. When oil (the material used to create synthetic rubber) became cheap and abundant and steel-belted tires came into prominence, that recycling almost completely shut down. Thankfully, our country has started recycling tires again, because their durability allows them to be recycled into a plethora of items. Tires are bad for landfills because they are large and bulky and the steel-belt can puncture the , the geotextile liners of landfills, leading to ground contamination. Tires can be recycled at almost any car dealer or tire service center, but it's worth checking around–some places charge a small fee to drop off tires. Those tires are turned into roads, playground surfaces, and athletic facilities, among other things.

Yard waste, such as leaves, grass clippings, branches and sticks, are high-volume and take up a lot of space in landfills. More importantly, yard waste is easily reused by consumers and communities. Hello, composting? Grass clippings are great natural fertilizer for your lawn, but can be composted, along with leaves and your home food waste, to create a rich fertilizer for your plants. Most communities collect extra yard waste, either in special bags for pick up, or in special dumpsters. That yard waste is turned into mulch and compost used throughout cities and towns, and often available to citizens. In my hometown of St. Louis, residents can pick up mulch and compost for free, which is awesome when getting your garden started in the spring (we're taking a trip next week!)

The best resource available to figure out how to reduce, reuse, or recycle your trash, or properly dispose of it, is Earth911. They have a wealth of information and can direct you to resources in your area to help you reduce and clean up your household solid and hazardous waste. The EPA's solid waste site is also good.

(What did we do with the neighbors? We walked up to the grocery store, bought them a six-pack of locally-brewed beer and stopped by to introduce ourselves. This weekend, we're going to offer to help them move in and properly dispose of the household hazardous waste associated with moving, cleaning, and refinishing their floors. Wish us luck!)

Kenny Luna is the Pied Piper of light bulbs. CFL bulbs, specifically, and he's working his tail off to see to it that every kid in America gets one in their home. Luna is a middle school science teacher from North Babylon, New York, who was so moved by Hurricane Katrina, its devastating aftermath, and connection to global warming, that he decided he had to do something, anything, to fight climate change. "I was so passionate after watching Katrina, and I was just tired of watching people do nothing. Someone had to do something," Luna said in a phone interview from his home.

That something was CFL light bulbs. He began with his school PTO, with the idea of giving students CFL bulbs, which use 66% less energy than regular incandescents. His students became involved. They wrote to Oprah. They talked to retailers. They held a press conference. The community became involved. Mr. Luna's Bright Idea was born. "We realize that we need to do something about global warming. Unfortunately, a lot of people think, for some reason, that it's not going to affect our kids," Luna said, "I think they think it's going to affect kids five thousand years from now, and unfortunately, that's not the case."

Home Depot eventually donated one CFL to every kid in his district, North Babylon, and Luna and his crew had a community Lighting Ceremony, complete with live band, magician, and refreshments, to hand out the bulbs. "That night alone, we probably gave out over 2,000 light bulbs," Luna said. "That's a lot of light bulbs."

Mr. Luna's Bright Idea is expanding. Districts across the country have contacted Luna about bringing the Bright Idea to their schools. Although details are not finalized, Luna has been in talks with a number of high-volume retailers, working on a a way to make this happen as early as next fall. He's starting a non-profit, Mr. Luna's Bright Idea LTD, that will work with kids and the environment, which already has an impressive group of people expressing interest in its board of directors, namely Treehugger.com founder Graham Hill, Princeton scientist Michael Oppenheimer, teacher and president-elect of the California Science Teachers Association Susan Pritchard, Brown University scientist Steven Hamburg, and Janet Myerson, a school board member with extensive experience with the New York State PTA. The non-profit will give grants to schools and teachers to implement their own light bulb programs and scholarships to students going into environmentally-focused fields. And although Luna knows that giving away 53 millions bulbs may be unrealistic, that's not stopping him from coming as close as he can. All this, from one teacher working one light bulb at a time.

Many of us remember turning 16, getting our driver's license, and feeling that freedom of being able to get to wherever we wanted. I was a lucky one: my parents bought me a car right off the bat. However, that car was not exactly, oh, a Prius. My '84 Cutlass Ciera (with sweet whitewall tires and a Grateful Dead sticker) guzzled gas, but at less than a buck a gallon in '96, even on my restaurant hostessing paycheck, it was a small price to pay for freedom.

Kids today aren't much different, even if the world is. Gas is at least twice that, cars that kids want are, by and large, much bigger (anyone see the six-door Hummer on MTV's My Super Sweet Sixteen? Oh, me neither…), and global warming is looming much larger, but kids still want that freedom, and, if they are lucky, they'll still get to drive. So how do I get my kids to at least drive responsibly?

We start off by watching An Inconvenient Truth. This film kicks off our study of energy. Straightaway, the kids understand that transportation by fossil fuel has consequences for our communities and environment. Then, students list five cars, including their make, model, and year: either their own car, if they have one, or the car of a parent or friend; their dream car; a car they will realistically be driving in five years; an SUV; and a hybrid of their choice. Using FuelEconomy.gov, kids record both the city and highway estimated miles per gallon for their chosen cars. Then, using prices seen at the gas station across the street from our school, students calculate both weekly and yearly fuel costs for each vehicle, based on 300, 200, or 100 miles of driving per week. When students, particularly those who pay for their own gas, see the drastic differences between SUVs and smaller cars, particularly hybrids, they are shocked. The totals can vary by thousands of dollars.

Where do we go from there? First, I encourage kids to simply drive less. Our district is small–most kids can walk, bike, or take the school bus. Our community's recently-rejuvenated downtown area is just down the street from our school. There are city bus stops and a light-rail stop within two blocks, and we look at where public transportation can take us (they also get a kick out of seeing me on my bike in the morning or waiting for the bus.) Beyond that, we look at tips from 365 Ways to Save Gas by Ron Weiers, which outlines driving habits, maintenance tips, and good habits that help save gas (and is a great continuation if you loved Rebecca's auto-themed Tip o' the Days.) Hopefully, this allows students to think before and during driving, which will benefit their wallets and our world.

Many engaged couples spend countless hours planning a ceremony that reflects who they are. Until recently, however, green couples had limited options when it came to lessening their big day's big footprint, but since more couples are considering the environmental impact of their vows, multiple new resources and vendors are catering to a more sustainable clientele.

There's a growing group of brides and grooms who are choosing to simplify their ceremonies. For those of us (myself included) who want to eschew a fancy ceremony in favor of something simpler and/or non-traditional, IndieBride is a lifesaver. There are plenty of sustainable brides (and grooms!) who share their ideas, experiences, and advice on working outside of the traditional wedding industry DIY (doing it yourself).

The new Portovert Magazine is "the first and only magazine for eco-savvy brides and grooms", and has resources and tips for all types of weddings, from intimate ceremonies to lavish receptions. For those couples who still want the big traditional ceremony, but not the big impact on the earth, their Responsible Resources offer organic florists and caterers, tree-free invitations, and vintage gowns. Organic Weddings is another great site that provides vendors and resources.

Diamonds are the traditional stone for wedding settings, but industrial production methods can be extremely draining both environmentally and socially. Jewelers like greenKarat and Brilliant Earth combine conflict-free and created stones with recycled metals for settings to produce beautiful and sustainable rings.

Those green couples who choose to create a gift registry can forget about the traditional big-box stores in favor of more eco-friendly home stores. We registered at Gaiam, although GreenFeet has a variety of products, including organic bedding and towels and recycled glassware.

During our school's waste audit, lunch waste was a large percentage of what was thrown out daily. All of those individually wrapped chips, cookies, pre-packaged cracker and cheese combos, and juice boxes add up, as do the plastic and paper sacks they are packed in. In fact, it has been estimated that the average school-aged child packing a lunch generates 67 pounds of waste per school year. Fortunately, parents and children can easily reduce their lunch waste using several techniques that will not only curb excess packaging, but encourage their kids to eat less processed foods as well, and probably save time and money.

First, forget about disposable lunch bags, cutlery, and napkins. Reusable bags are inexpensive–simple cloth bags can be found for a few dollars at grocery stores, or at local discount stores. Most people already have silverware, and if you don't want to chance losing your good silver in Susie's school's trash, you can pick up a cheap second set from a secondhand store.

Second, get rid of other disposable containers. Instead of plastic baggies, try reusable containers. Plastic containers with locking lids have become so cheap that even if a child occasionally throws one away, it's no big deal, and a variety of sizes and shapes allows for almost anything to be safely packed (the sandwich-shaped containers awesomely protect, virtually eliminating soggy, smashed sandwiches. Bonus!) Thermoses, which are often included with children's lunch bags, eliminate waste from juice boxes or pouches and soda cans. For the more stylish student, check out LaptopLunches and their Japanese-inspired bento boxes.

Third, buy lunch food that is minimally packaged. Fresh fruit needs no packaging; just wash and go. Although it's tempting to buy individually packaged chips, yogurt, or applesauce, one large container has less packaging and is much cheaper per serving. This is a perfect opportunity to teach kids how to pack their own lunches. Even small children can help, and taking part in the lunchmaking process gives kids ownership of their lunch, and they'll be more likely to eat it all.

These lunch techniques don't have to be just for kids–many adults take their lunch to school (including us teachers!) You can do the same thing. For ideas on easily packable, minimally packaged and processed foods, and more information on organizing school-wide waste-free lunches, check out Waste Free Lunches.

In the age of overconsumption, even the thriftiest among us find themselves with perfectly good items that we no longer need. Green folks want to keep that stuff out of landfills and give it a new home. Websites like Freecycle and Craigslist provide forums for people to advertise things they'd like to give away, but St Louis-based web developers Peter Schmalfeldt and John Kramlich wanted to provide a more user-friendly medium for those looking to connect their reusables with new owners. They’ve created Gigoit, which stands for "Garbage In, Garbage Out", a free web-based service that’s aiming to simplify reusing. Gigoit has only been live for less than a month, and strong communities have already sprouted in the St Louis and Memphis areas.

“Most people who could be using a service like this are really deciding between using something like Freecycle or just throwing [the item] in the trash,” says Schmalfeldt. “That is a huge decision. It has to be super easy to donate an item, and it needs to be fast…they should be able to get the item out of their hands as quickly and painlessly as possible.”

How does Gigoit differ from Freecycle? Simply put, it's easier. For one, users don’t have to go through a lengthy registration period just to access items up for grabs. Anyone can immediately see what's available near a given zip code. By eliminating the “mailing list” model, all information is centralized, and it’s much easier to find what’s relevant to the user, his or her area, and what her or she is looking for. Once an item has been picked up, it’s taken off the board by the giver, without having to post a message for everyone else on the site to filter through. Users only receive messages related to their own transactions, and RSS feeds allow users to quickly access the latest items in their area. Users also manage their own profiles, which can be as elaborate or as simple as they want, and users aren't limited to certain geographical areas–you can access items from all over the country on the same site.

In short: Schmalfeldt and Kramlich have done their homework. Despite its small start, the relative simplicity of using Gigoit will have it surpassing Freecycle and Craigslist in no time.