“People are so worried about what they consume between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they consume between the New Year and Christmas.”

—Unknown

I like New Year’s resolutions. They provide a great opportunity to reflect upon the successes and shortcomings of the past year, and set goals and intentions for the new one. I don’t believe in making the kind of resolutions in January that ensure I will be self-flagellating in February, but I do think it is important to set progress benchmarks for doing things I care about over time.

Really, a resolution is nothing more than a firm decision to do or not do something. This year, I’ve made four firm decisions for the Small Footprint Family. We will…

#1 Do something physical in the sun with my family as often as possible.
The older I get, the more it seems that the aches, pains and dis-ease of modern life are really the result of deficiencies in sunlight, regular physical activity and nutrient dense, whole foods. These are three essential things we were evolutionarily designed to require in large, daily quantities. And they are also three things American consumer culture has almost completely designed out of our lives over the past 50 years.

I have always been happiest and healthiest when I have been doing regular outdoor work, whether that be tree care, greenroofing, farming, or at least puttering outside daily in our food garden. Since leaving my greenroofing business to have Babyzilla, I have gotten away from fulfilling this biological need, and I am really feeling the effects physically and mentally. (Not to mention the fact that my Vitamin D levels could use improvement.) So, this year, I resolve to complement our already very healthy diet with daily sunshine and enough outdoor physical activity to get our heart rate up. Babyzilla is very excited about this—as you can imagine any toddler would be!

What are you doing in 2010 to make sure you get enough sun and activity?

#2 Increase our local food consumption by 10%.
We currently get about 75% of our produce, meat and eggs from local organic farms and ranches as members of two CSAs and weekly visitors to the farmers’ market. But here in California, finding local produce year round is very easy: We grow a majority of the nation’s organic fruits and veggies after all. Nevertheless, I’d like to increase the amount of local food we eat by 10% in 2010—including finding a local source for pasture-raised pork bellies, so I can learn to make my own bacon this year!

If you’re wondering why choosing local food is so important, and how to get started with eating more locally-produced foods in the new year, please read Why We Should All Eat Locally.

How can you eat 10% more local foods in 2010?

#3 Reduce our trash output by 20%.
We eat few packaged foods, and compost most of our food waste, but somehow we still produce at least two tall kitchen bags of trash every week. The biggest single sources of trash in our house are disposable coffee cups from the corner coffee shop, spoiled leftovers that contain meat and so can’t be composted, and plastic food bags that can no longer be washed and reused. This year, we will strive to get the thermoses washed more regularly, among other waste-reducing measures.

If you’d like to learn more about composting or reducing your waste output, please read Waste Not, Want Not and Compost Happens.

What can you do to reduce your trash output by 20% in 2010?

#4 Quit extraneous spending and buy second-hand. This resolution is dear to my heart. Some would argue that consumer spending will get the economy going again, so we should all go out and do our part for the country by buying stuff. Never mind that many of us no longer have the money or the credit to keep buying things we don’t really need that were designed to be provide only short-lived satisfaction anyway.

Rather, I believe it is all the stuff we buy—as part of a consumption-driven economy dependent on limitless growth—that has brought us to the brink of the greatest economic and environmental crises humanity has ever seen. The wanton, subsidized exploitation of natural resources and fossil fuels that brings us $5 radios and ripe tomatoes in January simply cannot be sustained. We cannot maintain an economic system or a culture requiring infinite growth on a finite planet. We cannot endlessly consume from limited and vulnerable resources—and we are destroying or running out of a lot of things we’re gonna need in the future. You know, like fresh water.

It’s not enough to recycle your bottles and cans, install CFL light bulbs and bring your own bags. It’s time for a new economic paradigm: one where return on investment is not measured just in dollars, but also in how a product or service benefits regular people, communities, and the fragile land, water and air we depend on—a “triple bottom line” of economic, social and environmental sustainability.

In such an economy, many industries, products and services we take for granted today would no longer be considered profitable or ethical, and they would be replaced by new closed-loop industries, social entrepreneurship and relocalized community economies.

And yet the endless quest for Stuff is not only damaging to the Earth and threatening to our very survival, it is also spiritually debilitating too. Since when did spending money become an American pastime? For all our wealth relative to the rest of the world, Americans are not a happy people. In fact, we are becoming quite depressed, impatient, despondent, and diseased, despite—or perhaps because of—how much stuff we consume.

I believe our unhealthy and unsustainable cultural relationship to earning/spending money in order to acquire material things is supplanting what really matters at the end of the day: strong, authentic relationships with our family members, friends and neighbors; nutritious, whole food meals enjoyed with others; daily sunshine and physical activity; and ample time for recreation, contemplation, reflection and rest.

For this reason, in 2010, I want to spend my money in support of the new paradigm. We will severely curtail buying things we want but do not need, and anytime we do need to acquire something, we will try first to get it from a local, second-hand source before buying it new. Fortunately, San Diego has many, many outstanding thrift stores, and other resources like flea markets, FreeCycle, CraigsList and eBay are available too.

This spendfast means a year-long experiment in not buying any more clothes, shoes, books, DVDs, magazines, excess toiletries, stuff for the kitchen, stuff for the house, stuff for… the sake of Stuff. Should be an interesting challenge. I’ll keep you posted…

To learn more about “spend-fasting,” please read The Story of Stuff – Reducing our Consumer Footprint.

What are you doing in 2010 to trade quantity for quality in your life?

Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, Americans throw away a million extra tons of garbage each week, including holiday wrapping and packaging, according to Robert Lilienfeld. Lilienfield is co-author of the book Use Less Stuff: Environmental Solutions for Who We Really Are. Here are eight ways to reduce your environmental footprint this holiday season. 

1. Make Your Own Wrapping Paper
Most mass-produced wrapping paper you find in stores is not recyclable and ends up in landfills. Instead, here’s a great chance to get creative! Wrap presents with old maps, the comics section of a newspaper, or children’s artwork. Or use a scarf, attractive dish towel, bandana, or some other useful cloth item. Lilienfield, who has published a newsletter on reducing waste since 1996, notes that if every family reused just 2 feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet.

And not all gifts need wrapping. “Think back to your three favorite holiday memories,” Lilienfeld said. “I’m willing to bet that they all involve time you spent with your family and friends.”

By giving gifts that can be experienced, like tickets to a baseball game, a trip somewhere interesting, or a homemade dinner, you can minimize wrapping and shopping, and still win points with the receiver. “People like these gifts just as much, if not more” he said. (Indeed, I do!)

2. Buy Energy-Saving Holiday Lights
Thanks to technology, you can now decorate your house with LED lights that use 90 percent less energy than conventional holiday lights, and can save your family up to $50 on your energy bills during the holiday season! As an added bonus, LEDs release little heat, and they last about 200,000 hours. In the unlikely event that one does burn out, the rest of the lights keep on glowing. Whew!

According to one U.S. Department of Energy study, if everyone replaced their conventional holiday light strings with LEDs, at least two billion kilowatt-hours of electricity could be saved in a month. The savings would be enough to power 200,000 homes for a year! LED lights are available at many major retailers.

3. Add Organic and Local Foods to Your Holiday Feast
Support local family farmers who grow sustainable meat and produce. Not only does local, organic food taste better, but you’ll also be doing your part for your community and the planet too. Find an organic turkey or humane ham and local vegetables for holiday dinner.

4. Get a Pesticide-Free Tree
Demand is on the rise for Christmas trees that are not covered in chemicals; some growers use 40 different pesticides, as well as chemical colorants. The good news is that there are now a number of tree-farms that sell pesticide-free trees, so ask your local Christmas tree seller, or search for an organic tree farm near you.

5. Recycle Your Christmas Tree
Ninety-eight percent of Christmas trees were grown on farms, not in forests, so at least you’re not cutting down an ancient tree. Each year, 10 million Christmas trees end up in the landfill. While your tree won’t fit in the recycling bin with your newspapers and bottles, you can recycle your tree: many cities offer programs to turn your tree to mulch or wood chips. Some cities even use your old trees to do important environmental projects like streambank stabilization. Call (800) CLEANUP or visit www.earth911.org to find the tree-recycling program near you.

6. Recycle Your Old Cellphone
Getting a new cell phone for Christmas? Not sure what to do with the old one? Now, you can drop off that old phone at any Staples store, as part of the Sierra Club cell phone recycling program. Each year, 130 million cell phones are thrown out, weighing approximately 65,000 tons. Recycling your old phone prevents hazardous elements like mercury, cadmium and lead from ending up in our landfills. Find out more.

7. Offset Your Travel
If you or your loved ones are traveling more than 100 miles this holiday season, try to reduce air travel whenever possible, and consider offsetting the fossil fuel pollution generated by your trip, no matter how you travel. These companies can help you get trees planted to reduce your impact.

• Terrapass – Provides carbon offsets for flying, driving, etc.
• CarbonFund – Provides a variety of carbon offset projects to choose from.
• Carbonify.com – Tree planting for offsetting carbon emissions

8. Donate Your Time or Money to an Environmental Group
Get into the holiday spirit by volunteering! There are countless ways to help improve your community—and the planet—from cleaning up a local river to helping inner city kids experience the outdoors for the first time.

How are you being green this holiday season?

We Wish You a Peaceful Holiday and an Abundant New Year!

—The Small Footprint Family

Installing solar panels to generate your home electricity has many benefits:  

• Protects you from escalating energy costs – Electricity gets more expensive every year. Over the last 35 years, the average annual rate increase has been 6.5% (high energy users have seen substantially greater increases).
• Supports clean energy – The average solar PV residential system (based on 5kW), would save nearly 175 tons of carbon dioxide over its 30-year lifespan, equivalent to removing 32 cars from the road. It takes approximately 4,487 new trees to absorb that much CO₂ produced by fossil fuels.
• Adds value to your home – The value of a solar system is added to the appraised value of your property and does not increase your property taxes. Solar is one of the few home improvements that can be justified in terms of return on invested dollar.
• Provides unlimited power - Solar is a true renewable and sustainable source of energy. Reduce the dependency on fossil fuels and produce your own electricity while reducing your carbon footprint. One of the side benefits is that with photovoltaic panels, homeowners have the ability to generate excess electricity during the day and sell it to the utility company through “net metering”, i.e., you run the meter backwards.
• Reduce the need for additional power plants – Your utility company’s peak demand is during the day. Meeting peak demand is how utility companies justify more power plants. On the hottest days, the oldest, dirtiest power plants are cranked up. Through net metering, you’ll sell the output of the photovoltaic panels to the utility. With enough of us net metering, we will reduce the need for additional power plants that are only used to meet peak demand. That will protect the environment for everyone and help keep rates from rising too fast.
• Rebates and tax credits are available – Various financial incentives are available from the State and Federal governments to encourage investment in solar energy.

Solar photovoltaic panels for your home can be expensive, requiring up-front investments of thousands of dollars. Even after federal and local tax rebates, it can take years for that investment to pay itself back to the homeowner in locally generated electricity. Fortunately, more and more states are authorizing solar leasing companies, making solar energy as affordable as your monthly electric bill!

Lease Solar Panels for Your Home
With a solar lease, you lease photovoltaic panels for your home, hassle-free. Someone else will install them (and not charge you for it). Someone else will make sure the components all match. Someone else will maintain them. Someone else will take them down and put them back when you need a new roof. Someone else will even move them to your new house when you move. Since your electricity is virtually free, the monthly payments for solar leases are often lower than your current electricity bill.

Each state has its own rules regarding solar leasing programs, and there are several states now with incentive programs available, so check with your local Department of Energy to see what they offer. There are also many different solar companies out there providing services with many different lease terms and fee schedules. Be sure to read the fine print on any lease and do your homework on any company you choose to do your installation. Here are a few national companies to get you started: (Though don’t forget to look up local companies in your state!)

• Citizenré
• Solar City
• Sun Run
• SPG Solar

Installing solar panels on your home can make a real difference in reducing your bills and the ecological damage our dependence on fossil fuels creates—which is not only important for the planet, but is absolutely vital for the health of our families and communities too. With solar leases, clean energy and greater self-sufficiency is within reach of more people than ever.

There are consequences to our national habit of sending food to landfills. American food waste has significant environmental, economic, and cultural ramifications.

On average, Americans waste 40 percent of our food supply, which is more than 1400 calories of food per person per day, reports a new study by a team of National Institute of Health researchers. That food waste costs us $136 billion nationally, or about $600 per household each year. In other words, the food we waste is more than enough to feed the nearly 10% of Americans experiencing hunger right now. 
According to WastedFood.com, wasting food squanders the time, energy, and resources—both money and oil—used to produce that food. Increasingly, great amounts of fossil fuel are used to fertilize, apply pesticides to, harvest, and process food. Still more gas is spent transporting food from farm to processor, wholesaler to restaurant, store to households, and finally to the landfill. Food waste now accounts for more than one quarter of the total freshwater consumption and about 300 million barrels of oil per year!

And if that weren’t enough, food rotting in landfills contributes to global warming. Landfills are America’s primary source of methane emissions, and the second-largest component of landfills are organic materials. When food decomposes in a landfill, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Furthermore, wet food waste is the main threat to groundwater or stream pollution in the event of a liner leak or large storm.

Given the prevalence of food waste, what can we do to keep it out of landfills? The Environmental Protection Agency provides a useful resource with its Food Waste Recovery Hierarchy. At the top of the list is “source reduction,” or, in laymen’s terms, buying less. That means planning dinners, making specific shopping lists, and sticking to them. At restaurants, this means ordering sensibly and taking home leftovers.

Reducing waste also means buying locally produced food as much as possible. If farmers have strong local demand for their products, and can deliver foods often fresh-picked the day before, there is naturally less spoilage and waste. And with strong local farm markets and CSA programs, you are less likely to buy more than you need for the week.

After source reduction, feeding hungry people through food recovery or gleaning is the next best way to curb food waste. Food-recovery groups rescue edible but unsellable food from supermarkets (see photo above), restaurants, and institutional kitchens. Gleaning, meanwhile, is the practice of picking crops that a farmer plans to leave in the field. Whole fields are often left unharvested because the crop’s market price won’t justify the expense.

Feeding animals comes next in the hierarchy, so don’t feel too bad about slipping your scraps to Spot. On a larger level, hogs, cows, chickens and other livestock could make great use of commercial food waste. Many independent farmers are thrilled to reduce their feed costs while diverting food from landfills.

Fats and greases can be diverted to rendering plants that make soap. If you’re brave enough, you can try this at home. Increasingly, used cooking oil is being used as a fuel source for biodiesel vehicles, or “grease cars,” an engine conversion to which, if you’re brave enough, you can also try at home.

Another waste-to-energy scheme is anaerobic digestion. While it’s not yet on the EPA’s hierarchy, the process harnesses bacteria to convert food and yard waste into bio-gas that can power vehicles or create electricity. Americans have long used the process to create energy from animal manure, but businesses on both coasts will soon use the process to transform supermarket and municipal food waste into power.

At the very least, food should be composted. Many individuals, schools, universities, hospitals, and municipalities have been doing so for years. Composting costs roughly the same as regular waste diversion and, depending on landfills’ tipping fees, can be even cheaper.

What comes at a high price, however, is wasting a resource like food by sending it to landfills. When that happens, we squander the time, money, resources, and effort that went into producing that item while ignoring the environmental impact.

In the spirit of not wasting food, here are two easy and delicious recipes for Thanksgiving leftovers…

Black Friday Pie

• 1 cup mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes or yams
• 1/2 cup cubed or shredded cooked turkey
• 1/2 cup cooked cut green beans
• 1/2 cup turkey gravy
• 1 cup prepared stuffing
• 2 Tbsp. butter or coconut oil, melted

1. Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Thoroughly grease a 9-inch glass pie plate.
2. Spread mashed potatoes or yams onto the bottom and up the sides of the greased pie plate. Fill potato crust with the turkey, green beans, and gravy. Smooth stuffing on top of the turkey and gravy to create a top crust.
3. Brush top of pie with melted butter. Bake pie until stuffing is golden and crispy, about 40 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Turkey Soup with Root Vegetables

• 1 roast turkey carcass, cut into pieces
• 12 cups cold, pure water
• 3 stalks celery, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 Spanish onion, chopped
• 1/4 bunch Italian parsley
• 2 bay leaves
• 12 whole black peppercorns

• 2 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1 large parsnip, peeled and diced
• 1/2 pound rutabagas, peeled and diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 Tbsp. minced Italian parsley
• 2 cups pulled turkey meat (optional)
• salt and black pepper to taste

1. Bring the turkey carcass and water to a boil in a large pot over high heat. Skim off and discard any scum that forms.
2. Add the chopped celery, chopped carrots, chopped Spanish onion, 1/4 bunch parsley, bay leaves, and peppercorns and return to a simmer.
3. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered for 3 hours. Strain the turkey broth through a mesh sieve and skim off any fat that floats to the surface.
4. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the red onion; cook until the onion has softened and turned translucent, about 5 minutes.
5. Add the diced celery, diced carrots, parsnip, and rutabaga; cook 5 minutes more. Stir in the garlic and chopped parsley, and cook for 1 minute more.
6. Pour in the turkey broth, add pulled turkey meat (if using), season to taste with salt and pepper, and bring to a simmer over high heat.
7. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until the vegetables are nearly tender, 15 to 20 minutes.
8. Cover and remove the pot from the heat.
9. Serve and enjoy!

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday hosted by Cheeseslave!

You may not know that your appliances—cell phone chargers, desktop computers, computer monitors, printers, televisions, DVD players, microwaves, coffee makers, and more—drain energy anytime they’re plugged into a socket, regardless of whether they’re turned on or off. And many electronics, like your plasma TV, don’t actually go all the way off—they continue using “standby power.” The average American home has 40 electronics drawing power in off or standby mode, totaling almost 10% of residential electricity use. 

The amount of standby power wasted varies among electronic equipment, but overall, the cost to consumers and businesses for all the electricity lost to these energy vampires in the U.S. is estimated to be $4 billion annually. According to the Natural Resource Defense Council, reducing standby power consumption in TVs by 25% would save over 10 billion kWh of energy per year. Annually, this would cut energy bills by nearly $1 billion, and prevent about 7 million tons of CO2 emissions.

Slay the Energy Vampires in Your Home

• Get in the habit of unplugging all sleeping or not-in-use appliances. (Lamps are exempt.)
• Use a switchable power strip for clusters of computer or electronic products. That way you can switch everything to zero with one action. (The Smart Strip and Bye-Bye Standby kits are made for this.) Many energy-saving power strips double as surge protectors, so they’ll protect electronics against lightning strikes and power surges.
• When shopping, search for low standby products. (Asking a salesperson will probably be a waste of time.) Look for the ENERGY STAR label; these products have lower standby.
• Buy a low-cost watt-meter, measure the devices in your home, and take targeted action. You will certainly be surprised at what you discover and this exercise might even pay back the cost of the meter in savings. (The Kill-a-Watt is a great tool for this.)

On a house by house level, a computer screensaver alone costs about $60 a year of electricity to maintain, and a plasma TV sucks up $160 worth of energy annually when in standby mode. That’s a lot of money to pay for an appliance you’re not even using, so unplug those vampires today!

Nothing would protect the environment and reduce our dependence on oil more than reducing our transportation footprint. Transportation accounts for more than 30 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. In big cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, and Washington, D.C., car pollution causes the grey smog that leads to hotter summers and those horrible red, orange and even purple air-quality days that cause asthma in children and other health problems in adults. 

According to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), public transportation in the United States saves approximately 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline and about 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Yet only 14 million Americans use public transportation daily, while 88 percent of all trips in the United States are made by car—and many of those cars carry only one person.

Here’s how commuting wisely could make a difference for your family:

• Energy Independence. If just one in 10 Americans used public transportation daily, U.S. reliance on foreign oil would decrease 40 percent.
• Safety. Riding a bus is 79 times safer than riding in an automobile, and riding a train or subway is even safer.
• Health. Studies have shown that people who use public transportation regularly tend to be healthier than people who don’t, because of the exercise they get walking to and from bus stops, subway stations and their homes and offices.
• Cost savings. According to an APTA study, families that use public transportation can reduce their household expenses by $6,200 annually, more than the average U.S. household spends on food every year. If you can bike or walk, you’ll save even more.

While living close enough to walk or bike to work is the healthiest, cheapest and most eco-friendly option, public transportation and carpooling are very good choices too. But perhaps the best reason to leave the car at home is that you can sit back, read the paper and avoid the stress and headache of dealing with rush-hour traffic!

Did you know that America faces a water-supply crisis? Less than 2% of the Earth’s water supply is fresh water, and yet we’re using and polluting our water faster than we can replenish our clean supply. Today, the average American uses approximately 140-160 gallons of water per day, so it’s more crucial than ever that we reduce our water usage as much as possible so we have enough for tomorrow.

In this episode of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Robert Glennon, author of Unquenchable, tells us he believes Americans need a moral compass and the political will to prevent the water crisis from becoming a catastrophe. Profligate consumption of water for agriculture, power generation, industry, and homes has led to reduction of groundwater, threats to rivers, and mortal danger to many of the nation’s lakes. Much of the blame for this state of affairs lies with uncontrolled growth in the nation’s South and Southwest. Desert cities such as Las Vegas use fountains as decorations. Phoenix households draw down the finite resources of ever-shrinking Lake Mead.

In Unquenchable, Glennon documents in great detail the present and future water crises in Georgia, California, and even seemingly water-rich Michigan, noting that states generally end up competing with one another over water allocation and that international conflict follows in short order. Desalination offers little immediate hope because of economic and ecological barriers. Glennon submits a list of possible reforms to decrease water consumption. Some, such as waterless toilets, are technological innovations. Others, such as restructuring sewer systems, require governmental intervention.

Saving water is even more important if you live in a dry climate where there are water restrictions or drought conditions, like San Diego, Phoenix, or Denver. But even if you live where rainfall is plentiful, a few easy changes can save you at least $200 per year on your water and sewer bills, and help protect our water supplies from depleting too quickly: 

Dishwashers. If your dishwasher was built before 1994, buy a new energy- and water-efficient Energy Star-qualified model, and you’ll save more than $30 per year in utility costs. Many states and municipalities offer rebates or tax incentives for upgrading your dishwasher: Find out if you qualify.

Faucets. If your bathroom and kitchen faucet pours out more than 2 gallons per minute, attach low-flow faucet aerators. You’ll save up to $80 per year on utility bills. If you turn the sink off while you brush your teeth or scrub your hands, you’ll save even more!

Showers. If your showerhead blasts more than 3 gallons per minute, switch it out for a low-flow one. Most low-flow showerheads feel as nice as the high-flow ones. Since you’ll also save energy (due to less hot water use), you’ll shave about $80 per year off your utility bills. You can save even more if your shower takes less than 6 minutes!

Toilets. Compared to a pre-1993 3.5 gallon-per-flush toilet, an EPA WaterSense-labeled toilet will use 1.3 gallons or less, saving $90 per year. Many cities offer local rebates if you change out your toilet to a low-flow or dual-flush model. If you don’t need a new toilet, you can cheaply convert your existing toilet by putting a plastic bottle full of sand or a brick placed in an airtight bag into the tank to displace the water. You can also retrofit your tank with a dual-flush system that will use less water when all you need to flush is urine.

Ever wonder why we use potable water to flush the toilet? What a waste! To really maximize your water savings, consider installing a Watersaver system that recycles the water from your bathroom sink by using it to flush your toilet. This system in combination with a low-flow, dual-flush toilet could save you hundreds of dollars and thousands of gallons a year!

Washing Machines. If your washing machine is more than 10 years old, a front-loading, high-efficiency Energy Star-qualified washer can save you $145 per year between power and water bills. Many states and municipalities offer rebates or tax incentives for upgrading your washing machine: Find out if you qualify.

Irrigation. Landscape irrigation is one of the biggest uses of household water during the summer, so anything you can do to save water outside your home will also save you at least $75 a year. A series of rainbarrels—or better yet, a cistern—can capture rain water from your rooftop which you can then use to water your lawn and gardens for free, saving precious fresh water for cooking, drinking and bathing. (Calculate the size of the rainbarrel system or cistern you need to capture all the water from your rooftop here.)

You can also install a micro-irrigation system that targets just your plants and reduces the runoff and evaporation that wasteful sprinkler systems cause. These drip systems are very affordable, easy to install and highly efficient—they can even water your outdoor potted plants while you are away!

Since it takes energy to treat our water, if just one out of every 100 American homes retrofitted with water-efficient fixtures, we’d save enough energy to power 900 homes for a year. So in every way it pays to conserve water. After all, we can’t live without it.

Shop for Water-Wise Products >>

Once your baby is at least 6 months in age, it is time to introduce some solid foods. But, have you ever looked on the back of a jar of baby food or a box of rice cereal? Yikes! The first thing you may notice is added modified starches, sugars, corn syrup, or preservatives—even in the organic ones. Your baby certainly doesn’t need any of these things, and some could even be outright harmful. 

The second thing you may notice is that there is almost no nutrition in jars of baby food or boxes of rice cereal—again, even in the organic ones. With the exception of a little added Vitamin A or C, packaged baby foods have nothing to offer your little one except mush to fill the tummy. Lastly, what you cannot see (and what is not on the label), are the pesticide, herbicide and other toxic chemical residues that were part of growing and processing the food in the jar. These hidden ingredients have no place anywhere near your baby!

The good news is that making your own baby food is very, very easy, and is one of the best ways to ensure the quality of nutrition your child gets for healthy growth and development. It’s also very inexpensive, compared to baby food you buy in the store, and requires no resource-intensive packaging or shipping to the store. In fact, making your own baby food can save you over $600 a year!

On the weekend or during regular dinner cooking, simply lightly steam a bunch of organic veggies (or leave them raw, depending), blend in a food processor or blender, then freeze the puree in ice cube trays. Once the foods are frozen, pop them out of the trays and put them in a freezer-safe container to keep them from getting freezer burn. Each cube makes one serving!

If you just don’t have the time or inclination to make your baby food, many brands of organic, frozen baby food are now available. These frozen brands are made from fresh produce that’s minimally processed through quick freezing, which maintains more of the original flavor, color, and nutrient content than the jarred stuff. These companies also use eco-friendly packaging such as recycled cardboard, vegetable inks, and BPA-free plastic. Some brands include:

• Plum Organics – organic purees in three different textures, including Super Greens (peas, spinach, and green beans);
• Jack’s Harvest - organic purees in heart-shaped “cubes” packed in a single bag; first stage (smoothest) faves include peas with mint, also Papplesauce (peach, apple, and cinnamon);
• Tasty Baby – organic purees available in three consistencies (smooth to chunky); top picks include Corn in the USA and Bangos (banana, mango, and vanilla);
• Mom Made Foods – certified organic purees including broccoli, sweet potato, and apple.

Finally, the easiest, cheapest, and most low-impact way to feed your baby is a technique called “Baby-Led Weaning.” Advocated by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, Baby-Led Weaning is a way of introducing solid foods that allows the baby to feed herself—there’s no spoon-feeding and no purees. The baby sits with the rest of the family at mealtimes, and joins in when she is ready. You offer her food in sizes and shapes that she can handle and she feeds herself with her fingers, choosing what to eat, how much and how quickly.

Finger-sized “sticks” of organic, steamed carrots, skinned zucchini, apple or pear, or even bits of hormone-free, grassfed ground beef or minced chicken are perfect, highly nutritious first foods when doing baby-led weaning. This is the way we introduced solid foods to Babyzilla with great success. Her first foods were homemade garlic hummus, fresh strawberries, and liver!

All healthy babies can eat soft, solid foods, even without teeth; they just need to be given the opportunity to feed themselves. After all, would you want to be strapped into a high chair and force-fed spoon after spoon of bland vegetables? It’s surely much more exciting to be able to exercise a bit of control over your diet and share in a bit of what mom and dad are having. And it’s much easier on parents too!

Learn more about Baby-led Weaning here.

Being an eco-conscious parent often means taking a look at the footprint of all the baby gear we are told we just have to have in order to properly raise our children. Sometimes this means finding greener choices (like cloth diapers instead of disposables), sometimes this means reusing hand-me-down onesies from your older sister, and sometimes this means opting out altogether from purchasing things that will become quickly obsolete.

When reducing your family resource consumption, consider whether or not you really need a stroller. Strollers are expensive, use a lot of fossil fuel resources and generate a lot of toxic waste from manufacture, to packaging and shipment to your local store, all the way to their final resting place in the landfill after they inevitably break.

Not only do strollers have a large ecological footprint from cradle to grave, but they may not be very good for your child’s development either. Recent studies have shown that strollers in which your baby faces away from you could risk long-term development problems in your children.¹

For most of human history, there have been no strollers. Even today, most of the world’s parents use cloth wraps of various types to wear their babies on their bodies. In the last couple of years, many Americans and Europeans have taken up the practice too. Studies have shown that babywearing has many benefits for infants and young children as well as for the carrying parent. Here are five of them:

1. Babies who are carried often cry less. A 1986 randomized, controlled study by Hunziker and Barr showed that carrying an infant 2 additional hours per day reduced crying overall by 43%, or one entire hour.
2. Babywearing is good for babies physically. According to Dr. Eckhard Bonnet in a 1998 article published on Didymos, a baby wrap or sling holds a baby’s body in a comfortable, correct position, much as the womb carries a fetus before birth. Upright carrying also massages your baby’s abdomen which promotes healthy digestion, and prevents physical abnormalities associated with infants who spend large amounts of time lying on their backs or bellies (such as hip dysplasia, frog legs, or flattened skulls on the back or sides).
   Note: The exception to this are the baby carriers that dangle your baby from his crotch. These facing-out types of carriers (Baby Bjorn and others) are harmful to the development of your child’s hips.
   
3. Babywearing encourages healthy mental and emotional development. Since in-arms parenting meets your baby’s needs for warmth, comfort, and access to breastfeeding, babies cry less and spend more time in a quiet, alert state. While in this state they are better able to learn about their environment and develop mentally and socially. As long as you can carry them, toddlers also enjoy being worn, and benefit from interacting with others at eye-level instead of being looked down upon in a stroller.
4. Babywearing makes parenting easier. Carrying baby in a sling, wrap or pack frees your hands to work, or assist in the needs of older children while still being able to give your baby the closeness she needs. Many slings also allow for breastfeeding while on the go. If yours is the type of baby that needs to be held during naps, like mine, doing it with a sling allows you to get some work done, or to do almost any other activity.
5. Babywearing promotes attachment. Babywearing allows you to bond with your baby and learn to meet your child’s needs more quickly. Babywearing also helps mothers who may be suffering from depression to nurture their babies with less effort. Preemies and sick infants also grow and heal faster when worn, especially when the baby and parent are skin-to-skin.

There are many types of slings and carriers available to meet a variety of needs. Some of them are beautiful works of fashion art any new mom would love to wear! (And there are gender-neutral carriers for Dad, too.) We primarily use an Ergo structured carrier, which is most comfortable for all of us, but we keep a ring sling on hand for quick trips and errands. Between the pack and the sling, my arms never get tired carrying my 25-pound 17-month-old—even when vacuuming the house or doing the dishes!

Baby carriers can be purchased at retail stores, but you can find a much better selection online. My favorite online store is Attached to Baby, which has the biggest variety and best pricing on the Net. There are also many online groups, forums and local clubs dedicated to babywearing.

So, unless you have multiple babies, are a runner who plans to go running with your baby, or are unable to carry your child on your body for medical reasons, why not enjoy all the ecological and developmental benefits of wearing your baby? You could save between $200-$700, and avoid the plastic, fossil fuels and packaging waste of a stroller!

^1. http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/11/21/baby.buggies/index.html

Happy Eco-Tip Tuesday! Here is Number 10 of the 10 “Advanced” Ways to Be Green that can save you money, and improve the health of your family and the planet.

Do you have a great eco-friendly living idea to share? Let me know if you think Eco-Tip Tuesday should become a blog carnival! 

Advanced Ways to Be Green #10

Upgrade Your Appliances – Many people believe that keeping old appliances is a form of recycling. But this is only half right. True, you’re not clogging up the landfills, but keeping the old stuff isn’t necessarily the greenest choice either.

Appliances account for about 17% of your household’s energy consumption, with refrigerators, clothes washers, and clothes dryers at the top of the consumption list.

So, if you’ve got appliances that are more than 10 to 15 years old, they are probably using 70 to 90 percent more power than new models, and you can make a significant cut in energy use by replacing them.

And because many retailers will take your old appliances and recycle them (as will some collectors, like 1-800-GotJunk), you don’t have to fear that your old model will be lying in a landfill for thousands of years. Just ask a few questions before you buy.

When you’re shopping for appliances, think of two price tags. The first one covers the purchase price—think of it as a down payment. The second price tag is the cost of operating the appliance during its lifetime. You’ll be paying on that second price tag every month with your utility bill for the next 10 to 20 years, depending on the appliance.

When you do shop for a new appliance, look for the Energy Star label. Energy Star products usually exceed minimum federal standards by a substantial amount. This appliance shopping guide lists some of the major appliances that carry the Energy Star label and provides helpful information on what to look for when shopping for an appliance.

To help you figure out whether an appliance is energy efficient, the federal government requires most appliances to display the bright yellow and black EnergyGuide label. Although these labels will not tell you which appliance is the most efficient, they will tell you the annual energy consumption and operating cost for each appliance so you can compare them yourself.

President Obama has created tax credits of up to $1,500 as well as other big incentives for purchasing Energy Star appliances, and with so many retailers offering great sales on appliances these days to get you to come to their store, now is a great time to save lots of money and energy!