Tree Hugging Family » Water

A nice reusable glass water bottle for our old pal Peggy

Jennifer — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 03:19:21 +0000

During all of this SIGG has BPA in the liner drama going down, maybe one of the most peeved individuals I’ve run into about it has been our own Peggy – aka, ex-Tree Hugging Family co-blogger extraordinaire. At Blisstree Green I posted about the SIGG issue as well and Peggy left an interesting comment about looking for glass water bottles. She posted a link to one type of glass water bottle, but didn’t love the reviews. It got me wondering if there was a better glass reusable water bottle out there, one Peggy might like, and after a little search I found one pretty cool option.

The Love Bottle is a reusable glass water bottle made with partially recycled glass and a ceramic swing top lid that creates a water-tight seal, although you can get a non-toxic silicone lid as well. Basics about the bottle include:

The bottles have a cute shape and fun designs BUT they’re not too flashy, which I like.
You can dress it up with stickers or write and draw on printed areas of the bottle.
The bottle comes in 500 ml and 1000 ml sizes. It’s noted that the smaller size fits most car water holders.
They offer a nice reusable non-toxic silicone funnel, which is a great idea for limiting water waste.
Made in China (not great) but the company claims that they’re made responsibly, although I don’t think they’re a member of a Fair Trade group. They also state that their current goal is to move production to the U.S.
You can design your own.

Obviously there are huge eco-benefits to glass water bottles. They won’t leech anything into your water, they won’t taint the taste, and they’re recyclable. Downsides – glass is heavy, breakable, sweats, and not a good natural insulator like stainless steel water bottles.

To keep your water cold, Love Bottle offers neoprene bottle carriers in pink or black for both sizes with drawstring closure and adjustable strap. BUT keep in mind that neoprene is not an eco-friendly product. I’d skip this water bottle carrier and go with a greener option like…

Overall, this is one nice alternative if you’re looking for a glass water bottle. What do you think? Would you use a glass water bottle instead of plastic or stainless steel?

Visit Love Bottle to learn more.

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The Best Looking Reusable Water Bottles on the Planet

Jennifer — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:00:02 +0000

To be honest, I’m perfectly content with my trusty old Klean Kanteen Water Bottle – it’s not fancy, but it works and I’m not using and tossing lots of lame platic bottles into the trash. That said, every once in a while I really wish I had a pretty little bottle. One that would be a nice conversation starter; one that gets long looks, one that makes me swoon.

Is it possible to swoon over a water bottle? Um YES. Is it necessary? That’s up for debate. Probably not, but if you’re looking, or just want to indulge in a second water bottle, here are some that beat out the plain old silver toned fare. Oh, and just so I don’t have to repeat myself, all the bottles I’ve brought here are recyclable and eco-friendly.

Green Bird Water Bottle

ANY bottle, and I do mean ANY bottle from Earth Lust. We could talk all day about their designs. Many sizes too.

A little Sigg water bottle treat – SPRING HAS SPRUNG

Pottery Barn Butterfly Bottle

Purple Rainbow or Stainless Swirl Filtered from EcoUsable AND yes, I know the second one is a stainless steel bottle, which I said we were avoiding, but come on, it’s all pretty with swirls!

Red Koi Fish, Earth Meets Sky, and Tree of Life; all are Gaiam bottles from Tennis Company.

Which bottles do you like?

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

How to choose eco-friendly seafood

Jennifer — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:06:44 +0000

Earlier today we looked at a simple question; Is Eating Seafood More Eco-friendly Than Eating Meat?. The general answer was no. There’s more too it than just yes or no though. It is possible to make smart eco-choices when it comes to the seafood on your plate.

As noted in the last fish post, don’t buy fish from questionable places like a fish farm.
Avoid seafood that’s caught with trawling efforts.
Like most foods, buying local and in-season seafood is eco-friendly, however since we all don’t live on the coast, here’s some extra purchasing help…

The Environmental Defense Fund has a few handy guides that can help you make smarter seafood choices:

Head to this page; scroll down a little, and you’ll see three cool guides; Eco-Best Fish, Eco-OK Fish, and Eco-Worst Fish. You can also search by fish type and shellfish choices are included.
Sushi Selector (blah sushi – if you like it though, this guide is useful).
Print a Pocket Seafood Selector [PDF] or Pocket Sushi Guide [PDF]. If you have a mobile, you can download info about buying seafood to use on the go.

Organic seafood?

If you live in the UK, you’re in luck because two organizations, the Soil Association and Organic Food Federation, have actually developed aquaculture standards for organically farmed fish in the UK. You’ll need to look for one of the following labels on your seafood…

If you live in the U.S., you’re not so much in luck because we don’t have set organic standards for seafood. The word on the media street is that yes, soon we may have U.S. organic seafood standards. Back in Nov, news came out that the USDA approved the first rules for organic labeling of fish, but among other organic fish arguments, there’s an ongoing debate about farmed fish and organic labels. As noted, farmed fish are not eco-friendly, yet, the debate rages about being able to call these fish organic, which might confuse consumers. Anyway, as of right now, you can’t get organic fish; not certified, no matter what a fish market might tell you.

Other useful tools:

Here’s a guide to in-season fish if you live in the UK.
Regional seafood guides (U.S. included).
Consumer Guide to Mercury in Fish
Shrimp Eco-Labels: What Do They Mean – here’s a clue, not too much.
Buying fresh, local and at the right time benefits fish and consumer – great article for seafood lovers; covers questions to ask seafood sellers, how to choose seasonal fish, and more. Since you can’t score organic fish, this article provides some great help for getting the best seafood you can under the circumstances.

What’s your take on seafood vs. meat? Do you think one is the better eco-choice?

[image via stock.xchng]

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How You Save Water

Peggy — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:00:39 +0000

Thanks for participating in last month’s water conservation poll. We’ll have a new one in the sidebar soon.

What measures do you take to conserve water?

I’m not listing each answer, but here are some highlights:

• Most popular answer (aside from “At least 5 of the above”) was turn off water while washing dishes and brushing teeth with 15% of the vote.

• Eating little or no meat claimed 7% of the vote. It takes a lot of water to get a package of beef to the store. . .

• Compost instead of using the garbage disposal and wear clothes more than once both came in at 6% of votes, while taking fewer showers/baths received 5% of votes.

• And it seems most of you do a mixture of all the choices with 46% of the vote as “at least 5 of the above.” In retrospect, that choice probably made this poll confusing to interpret. I won’t do that again.

And a different sort of poll –

Here are the most read water posts at Tree Hugging Family in July:

Green Product Review: SIGG Water Bottle

Green Product Review: Klean Kanteen Water Bottle

Dishwashers Use Less Water

Easy Toilet Leak Test

10 Handy Water-saving Tricks

As Jennifer mentioned, we’ll sprinkle in more water posts throughout the year. And if you have some students in your family, please don’t miss all the Back to School posts at Tree Hugging Family throughout August.

Image via stock.xchng

Click here to learn about all the current contests, themes, and green challenges going on at Tree Hugging Family in August 2008

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Wear & Wear Before Wash

Peggy — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:00:51 +0000

Since July is almost over, we’ll be taking down the water poll in a couple of days. Please take it if you haven’t. It’s in the sidebar.

In glancing at the poll results, I’m a little surprised that only four voters have said that they wear clothes more than once before washing. But we did include that pesky “At least 5 of the above” answer, so maybe that accounts for part of it.

You know I’m curious though.

If you don’t wear your clothes more than once before washing, what are your reasons? Of course, many kids get their clothes too dirty to be recycled, so I’m mostly talking adults or older kids here.

Here’s what I do:

Not to say this system is perfect… Once I wear something, I place it in a different part of my closet so that I know it’s already been worn once. I also try to remove cat hair with a brush. If I only wore something for a couple of hours, I always wear it again before washing. (Since I work from home, I often change back into comfortable lazy clothes as soon as I get home.) In general, I wear clothes two to three times before washing.

However, if it’s stinky hot outside, the clothes get washed. If I spent a lot of time in a public place or doctor’s office, I feel compelled to wash my clothes instead of re-wearing them. I’m a germ freak in that way. I’m also a little messy, so about once or twice a week I spill food on my shirt. Not everything gets worn more than once, but I try.

Do you have a system to keep track of when it’s time to wash your clothes, or do you only wear once?

Image via MorgueFile.

Click here to learn about all the current contests, themes, and green challenges going on at Tree Hugging Family in July 2008

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Building & Installing a Rain Barrel

Peggy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:00:41 +0000

If you can get past the guy in the intro with the unnaturally tall mustache, then you’ll learn how to build a rain barrel from a food barrel. The video also goes into installation and maintenance tips, as well as some interesting facts. It’s 4:57 from HGTV.

If you’d prefer written directions, go to HGTV’s Rain Barrels project.

Click here to learn about all the current contests, themes, and green challenges going on at Tree Hugging Family in July 2008

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Help me out here – which is worse – wasteful trash or wasting water?

Jennifer — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:48:00 +0000

Remember when I posted about ice pop molds? Well, I got three sets of the Tovolo Molds, and we really like them. It’s the first time we’ve had single style molds, and the first summer we’ve been completely ice pop trash free. We did used to make homemade pops, just not as often because the multiple molds (i.e. molds stuck together were problematic).

In any case, since this is water month, and I’ve been water slacking, I figured I’d bring up our one and only issue with these molds. You still have to use a decent amount of water in order to get them loose enough to pop out.

We considered some solutions:

Fill a bowl with water and loosen all the ice pops at once – the problem here is that you can’t just leave open ice pops in the freezer. They get icky.
Fill a cup with water when you want an ice pop, place ice pop mold in cup, and wait. Um, kids don’t do well with waiting for an ice pop when they’re hot.
Get a blow dryer – see if that works. Well, that’s an energy drain for one. Two, mixing electricity and watery icy pops seems slightly dangerious. Three, like I really want to buy a blow dryer.

SO – right now, what we’re doing is when Cedar wants an ice pop, he grabs one and holds it under running water for a minute. One to two minutes of running water for an ice pop seems so wasteful to me. However, on the upside, we’re not tossing out all that plastic trash from store bought pops, also we use up all our produce on pops, so we waste less food.

Still, I feel a little guilty. Any solutions people? Do you think the pros of homemade ice pops outweigh the cons of this water waste?

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

10 Handy Water-saving Tricks

Peggy — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:00:39 +0000

Not tricks exactly, but they’ll work like magic to keep you from wasting water. Most of us know about low-flow shower heads, but have you thought of all the other little ways to save water?

Didn’t finish that glass of water? Pour it into your window box or the flower bed outside instead of down the sink.

Drop an ice cube? Your dog or cat might like that in the water bowl, or you can place it in the bird bath.

Changing the water in the fish tank? Feed it to the plants. They’ll love the nitrogen!

The kids insist on running through the sprinklers? Have them do this early in the morning or later in the afternoon. The lawn will be able to absorb more water before it evaporates.

Need hot water from the tap? Keep the container you use for watering house plants close by the sink. When you’re letting water run to heat up, stick the watering can under the tap.

Didn’t drink the whole pot of coffee? Save it for frozen coffee drinks or popsicles. Yum.

Runny nose? Remember to throw tissues in the wastebasket, not toilet. Extra flushes waste water.

Don’t have the extra cash for mulch? Use pine needles to help plants retain water. If you don’t have a pine tree, you probably know someone who does.

Do you need to thaw some food before cooking? Don’t run hot water in the sink. Use your microwave’s defrost setting or thaw in the refrigerator overnight if possible.

Having trouble rinsing all the shampoo off your dog’s coat during baths? Fill an empty shampoo or dishwashing liquid bottle halfway with water, then add a couple tablespoons of shampoo. Shake. Squirt this on your dog instead of full-strength shampoo. It will lather very well and rinse quickly! (Don’t do this for medicated shampoos.)

Image via flickr.

Click here to learn about all the current contests, themes, and green challenges going on at Tree Hugging Family in July 2008

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What’s grey water?

Peggy — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:00:31 +0000

Grey water isn’t exactly gray. And some people call it graywater, grey water, or gray water. Confusing, eh?

Unless Jennifer disagrees, I’m going to call it grey water.

Grey water is any water that has been used in the home: shower, sink, laundry. Toilet water shouldn’t be reused. Grey water can be used for different purposes, like watering the lawn. Grey water may also be used in the toilet.

You can install a grey water system to filter, store and re-route used water. But first, make sure it’s legal in your area and that you’ll be able to get a permit. Grey water systems aren’t allowed everywhere. Check locally.

If you’re considering a grey water system, you’ll also need to do some research into the needs of your garden plants and the types of household cleaners you’re using. Plants that love acid don’t do well with grey water, and some household cleaners aren’t compatible with grey water systems.

Businesses/products for grey water systems:

ReWater

Clivus Multrum

Brac Systems

Garden Angel from Perpetual Water

More on grey water:

Oasis Design

Grist: On Channeling Gray Water to the Garden

Treehugger: Big Steps in Building: Install Gray Water Recovery Everywhere

UMASS Extension: Recycling Gray Water for Home Gardens

Grey water systems can be effective for reusing some water, but you don’t necessarily need a grey water system in order to conserve.

There are lots of little ways to save water inside the home. Check back tomorrow for a post on water-saving tricks.