Banning Pediatric Cold and Cough Medicines
05-12-2010
Ouch! Sore muscles?
05-09-2010
EXPLAINING HOMEOPATHY
05-06-2010
Medicine for the 21st Century
05-01-2010
Safe Drugs? By Avghi Constantinides D.Hom HMC MA
06-02-2010
Your Childs Health Care By Avghi Constantinides D.Hom HMC MA
05-02-2010
SAM-e By Joel Morris MD
02-01-2010
Colds & Flu Season
10-03-2009
COMING FROM THE HEART By Kellie Jean Lewis June 2009
06-01-2009
Balancing Nutrition with the Seasons By Katie Lee, LMFT, L.Ac. May 2009
05-01-2009
Major depression - April 2009
04-01-2009
February 2009 By Keiko Cronin, L.Ac.
02-01-2009
January 2009 CFL Newsletter - Green!
01-01-2009
Diabetes By Dr. Margo DeLeaver MD
06-01-2008
YEAR OF THE EARTH RAT - A NEW CYCLE BEGINS By Keiko Cronin, L.Ac.
02-01-2008
Going Green in 2008
01-09-2008
Avghi Constantinides DHom HMC MA
11-01-2006
| Going Green in 2008
01-09-2008
REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE!
Happy New Year! Here are the Centre for Life we try our best to be green. We have a water filter at our office; each practitioner has their own tea mug; we have timers on our air conditioners; we recycle tin cans & paper by taking them home to recycle; we have replaced a lot of our plants to succulents; we also use as much sunlight as we can and in some offices we dont need to turn on the overhead lights.
We also try our best to be green in our homes and wanted to share some tips with you. This is how we can contribute to making our environment a better place.
Here is a little list of the things we can do to help.
How to save on water:
Replace plants that require a lot of water with succulents or plants indigenous to Southern California
Sweep the yard and sidewalks instead of using water.
Install a home water filter. Bottled water has become a national craze. Tons of plastic is produced each year for the bottled water industry. Container ships and trucks use fuel to ship water all around the globe (from as far away as Fiji or the Alps). Save tons of plastic and fuel by installing a high quality water filter in your home to provide purified drinking water. Purchase a stainless steel reusable water bottle and carry your own filtered water with you in the car, to the gym, to the office.
Install low flow showerheads and turn off the water when brushing your teeth. It will save water and lower your bills. Your water company may have free or discounted low flow showerheads.
Low flow toilets, your water company may give you a free low-flow toilet or a rebate if you buy one.
Fix any water leaks you have.
Shorter Showers: use an egg timer as an incentive to take shorter showers. Try to get it down to 7 minutes and you will see a big reduction in your water bill.
Use the rule: If it's yellow let it mellow; if it's brown flush it down. This may sound funny but if you pee at night, no one sees the toilet. The flush wont wake anyone either.
Do laundry less by re-wearing a clothing item more than once when possible. Use dryer balls to help dry clothes more quickly and efficiently. Also, take out heavy items that take long to dry and let them air dry almost completely before putting them in the dryer. Designate laundry days and don't let the dryer cool down between loads as this will save energy. Wash after 7pm if possible.
How to save energy:
In cold weather, wear a sweater and socks around the house instead of turning up the heat. House heaters release sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide emission that cause acid rain.
Lights Turn them off when you leave the room.
Light Bulbs Replace all your incandescent bulbs with energy saving lamps. They cost more but earn back the money in energy savings. You may be able to get free bulbs from your power company! If every one the USA changed just one light bulb, it would be the same as taking 800,000 cars off of the road!
Open your curtains/blinds on the sunny side of the house during the day in wintertime to take advantage of solar heating. Close them at night to keep in the heat.
Refrigerator is the worst energy hog in a home. If you replace it with a new one be sure to check the energy usage figures posted inside. Again your utility company may have a rebate for an energy saving model and give you a fee to recycle your old one.
Easy green tips:
Carry a travel mug. If you purchase tea or coffee while out driving around invest $20 in a stainless steel lined travel mug and save on paper cups and plastic lids. Most coffee stores carry them, and some even give you a discount if you bring your own mug. It is also healthier to drink a hot beverage from a steel cup. Bleached paper and foam cups both leach carcinogenic chemicals such as dioxin and chlorofluorocarbons into your drinks, especially into hot beverages.
Take your compost to the Learning Garden at Venice High School (corner of Venice Blvd. and Walgrove). If you do not have a way to compost at your home, collect your fruit and vegetable scraps, fallen leaves, egg shells, etc. in a plastic bucket and drop them off every week at the Learning Garden. For current garden hours call 310.722.3656 and speak to David King, the Garden Master.
Farmers Markets Purchase locally grown produce to reduce the eco-footprint caused when food has to be transported by truck or plane from long distances. For a schedule, go to: http://www.farmernet.com/events/cfms
Carry your own shopping bags. Buy several heavy-duty cotton canvas bags and keep them in your car. They last for many years and can easily be washed. [Statistics from Heal the Bay: Los Angeles County residents use 6 billion plastic bags each year and recycle only 5% of that total. Instead, they become part of the plastic-dominated litter stream, putting added pressure on scarce landfill, fouling our public spaces, degrading already weakened watersheds and threatening marine life. In 2007, the world disposed of approximately 500 billion plastic bags.]
Use eco-friendly cleansers.
Junk mail Go to www.dmaconsumers.org Here you can take your name off mailing lists to no longer be inundated with junk mail.
Green Travel Tips:
Tickets--Use E tickets instead of paper tickets. You can save as much as $30. per ticket, and the airline industry could save as much as $3 billion annually by eliminating paper tickets altogether.
Luggage Tickets- Use the tag that came with your luggage set. You'll save time at the airport as well as paper. 60 million sheets of paper could be saved per year.
Check In -Try self service, use print at-home-tickets. Cardboard boarding passes handed out at the gate are almost always more difficult to recycle because of ink used and, in some cases, the magnetic strips placed on the back.
Toiletries- Pack your own toiletries instead of relying on those given by the hotels. A single three hundred-room hotel in Las Vegas uses more than 150,000 plastic bottles of shampoo per year.
Car Rental-Rent a Hybrid car or a more fuel-efficient vehicle. A hybrid rental can go 3 times as a far as a standard sedan on a single tank of gas. There are 1.7 million rental cars in the US. If every one of them were a hybrid, more than 9 million gallons of gasoline would be saved-per fill-up.
Transportation- Share rides to the airport and split your fare with a fellow passenger. You'll help reduce pollution and traffic congestion.
Native American table grace:
Earth, who gives to us this food,
Sun, who makes it ripe & good,
Dear Earth, dear Sun, by you we live;
To you our living thanks we give.
Thanks to Avghi Constantinides, Marla Mervis, Laura Vinokour, Linda Gill, Melanie Erceg & Keiko Cronin for all their great green tips!
To unsubscribe, please respond to this email with unsubscribe in the subject line.
|
