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 Green Tip: Cut twine and fishing line into small pieces to protect wildlife. 

Wildlife friendly trash disposal tips

Twine trash poses a major hazard to animals.

We rely on twine and fishing line to tie everything from packages to hay bales to fishing bait. Turns out these all-purpose strings can also entangle wildlife.

Birds sometimes use twine as nesting material, making them especially prone to these perils. Along with moss and grass, ospreys like to adorn their nests with baling twine. They often snarl themselves in the twine, getting injured or even killed. In 2010, University of Montana researchers reported that baling twine entangles and kills about 10 percent of osprey chicks annually statewide.

Fishing line is typically made of monofilament, a thin and often clear material that can easily ensnare wildlife, resulting in injury, drowning, or starvation. Animals can also ingest fishing line. One rescued sea turtle had consumed nearly 600 feet of fishing twine.

Use twine made from natural materials, such as hemp or jute, rather than plastic, and cut it, especially baling twine, into small pieces before discarding.

Most monofilament does not biodegrade. You can take used monofilament fishing line to recycling bins at your local tackle shop, which will often ship it to the Berkley Recycling Center in Iowa. You can also ship your old line to the Berkley Recycling Center directly. These eco-innovators will use your line to create Fish-Habs, four-foot cube structures that attract fish and promote plant growth, enhancing aquatic habitats, such as the spaces between pier pilings.

–The Sierra Club

Green Tip: Common dish liquids as well as most “natural” dish liquids include toxic ingredients, while diluted castile soap makes an effective and inexpensive alternative.

Natural dish soaps generally aren’t as effective as the ones that are a startling orange color and full of chemicals that makes your dishes sparkle. The trouble with being tough on grease is that this usually also means tough on the health of whoever uses the stuff–and on the aquatic life of the rivers and streams where it ends up.

Common dish soap ingredients include:

Fragrance. Anything scented probably contains hormone-disrupting phthalates, unless the manufacturers specify that they only use essential oils. Even phthalate-free synthetic fragrances usually are petroleum-derived.

Dyes. Food-grade coloring is implicated in behavioral issues in children.

Antibacterial ingredients. You may see “triclosan” listed on the label, or it may just say “antibacterial agent” or something along those lines. This stuff is totally toxic (carcinogenic and hormone-disrupting) and may be causing the super bugs we are hearing about.

Surfactants.  Sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) and sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) are common foaming agents. Both SLS and SLES produce lovely bubbles in your dish soap, and are found in lots of “natural” brands. SLS is okay in my opinion (although not ideal), but SLES is not.

How to Make Homemade Dishwashing Liquid

Here is one insanely easy homemade dish soap recipe:

Combine 2 parts castile soap (Dr. Bronner’s is a good option) with 1 part warm water, plus (optional) a few drops of lemon oil. Shake before using.

Other options

Tandi’s Naturals Solid Dish Soap is a bar soap, and I was reluctant to try it at first. But given the dearth of truly safe options, I eventually agreed to test it out, and <Click Here to continue with the article>

Don’t throw out that leftover or spoiled milk—dilute it with water and  spray in your garden, for potent fertilizing and fungus fighting.

Old-time garden wisdom and recent scientific plant research say that milk contains fungicidal properties. Spraying milk on plants will control the growth of bad fungi.

Fungi are microscopic non-green plants; they germinate and grow like other plants. A handful of soil contains thousands and thousands and thousands of fungi. There are good fungi and bad fungi. Good fungi help build the soil by breaking down organic matter into nutrients plants can use. Bad fungi are parasites that feed on plants. Bad fungi include mildews (downy mildew, powdery mildew), rusts, rots (root rot, damping off, fruit rot), canker, scab, spot (black spot and anthracnose), wilts (fusarium and verticillium) and smuts (black sooty molds caused by black sooty fungi spores).

Fungi are spread by spores. They germinate and root just like other plants. When a fungi takes root as a parasite on the tissue of other plants, it feeds and begins to grow. A fungus can be prevented from rooting and can be removed (prune off the infected plant tissue and throw it away in a paper bag so that the fungi spores do not spread). Fungi allowed to grow will spread via spores floating on the wind or swept along in a drop of water.

 Fungicides are preventive, not a cure. They cover plant tissue and do not allow fungi to root.

Plant researchers in Brazil and Australia using milk as a fungicide on vegetable crops, grapes, and flower crops found that spraying a dilute mix of 1 part milk and 9 parts water prevented fungi from growing.

The researchers also believe that the potassium phosphate in milk helps boost the plant’s immune system and may also work as an antibiotic.

A note: skim-fat milk works best; the fat in whole milk may clog up your sprayer. Even reconstituted powdered milk will work.

Tomato disease fighter formula: combine 1 part skim milk and 9 parts water. Spray the plant every two to three weeks until mid-summer (most fungal diseases have run their course by mid-summer, except where the weather stays warm and humid).

Green Tip: Plant a tree in honor of the birth of your child or grandchild, and compare their growth over time

The idea of planting a tree in honor of a special occasion is not a new one. People have been planting trees in honor of births, deaths, weddings, housewarmings, and other occasions for many years. Still, the concept never seems to have caught on as perhaps it should have. Planting a tree in celebration of a birth is perhaps the most poignant of occasions because this is a gift that will grow alongside the child, year by year maturing and flourishing. Another great idea is to donate to The National Arbor Day Foundation. They will plant a tree in a national forest devastated by fires and other disasters. No matter how you approach it, choosing to plant a tree to welcome a child to the world is a wonderful, unique idea. This is a gift that will benefit not only the baby, but the world as a whole.

A microwave is a lot more efficient for reheating food than a stovetop

A microwave is a lot more efficient for reheating than a stovetop, since it takes 80% less energy to warm up relatively small amounts, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Although the microwave needs a lot of electricity, it’s a relatively short burst of power.

While stovetops are less efficient, you can make regular gas or electric cooking more efficient by matching the size of the burner to the size of the pot—a 6-inch pot on an 8-inch burner can waste a significant portion of a burner’s heat—and by keeping a lid on unless the recipe forbids.

Though cooking accounts for only 3% of total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions from residences, every bit we can cut is significant because we use so much more than we really need. Per capita, we now consume six times as much electricity and twice as much natural gas as we did in 1950. Whether our overall standard of living has improved correspondingly is open to debate.

Saving energy isn’t just green but also massively cheaper than wasting power the way most households do. At your present utility rates, to heat that soup on the stove would cost you about three times as much as warming it in the microwave.