green ideas Archives

31 Green and Eco Friendly Tips and Ideas

January 1, 2011 by Momstart 13 Comments

My friend Summer helped me put together 31 posts about living green and eco friendly tips to live by. Thanks to her help, I’ve compiled a list of 31 Green and Eco Friendly Tips and Ideas to help you turn your life more green. Here are those 31 tips!

1) Buy Chemical Free Products

2) How to Go Paperless Banking

3) Repurpose Tennis Shoes Through Reuse a Shoe

4) Donate Used Greeting Cards, Christmas Cards, Valentine’s Day Cards, Easter Cards, all occasion cards to St. Jude’s

5) Ways to Reuse Boxes before you recycle them

6) Eat Local, Fresh and Organic

7) How To Get Off Mass Mailing Lists (Go Electronic)

8 ) Use Eco Friendly, Natural, and green cleaning products

9) Give Live Flowers or Herbs instead of cut flowers as gifts

10) Bring Your Own Coffee Mug or Sleeve to the coffee shop

11) Use Green Compostable Utensils and Plates

12) Give digital versions of gifts, music, books, games. These types of gifts are all available digitally.

13) Dispose of Batteries Properly

14) Know Local Places to donate used toys, electronics, and other items. Donate used items to charity.

15) Find places to Sell Used Electronics

16) Ways to dispose of Christmas Lights

17) Adopt and Animal

18) Give the Gift of Experience

19) Find ways to properly dispose of electronics and make some money doing so

20) Use Green Gift Wrap Techniques

21) How to create an Eco Friendly Advent Calendar

22) How to find an Eco Christmas Tree

23) Turn Home Made Crafts into a Charity Project

24) Recycle Cell Phones through Operation Gratitude

25) Turn off Vampire Appliances

26) Lower Your Paper Trail by using electronic invitations and e-greeting cards.

27) Use a water filter instead of buying water bottles

28) Use Plantable Paper, Botanical Paper, and Tissue as gift wrap

29) Make Home Made Items whenever possible

30) Regift items that you do not need or do not want to donate. Do not throw them in the trash!

31) Earth Friendly Plant and tree Disposal

Green Tip: How to Go Paperless, e-Statements, On-line Banking & Mobile Banking

December 29, 2010 by Momstart 4 Comments

Today’s green tip from Summer:

Start getting e-Statements for all those Christmas bills. Now that the big one has passed, go online before your bills start showing up at your house. Simply go online to your billing company’s site and let them know your desire to start the New Year going green. Check the back of your credit and bank cards for website information. You can also call the credit card company to get your paperless statements showing up.

We are mostly paperless at my house using Bank of America. We do a ton of on-line banking, but we still get a few statements and it’s such a waste because all we have to do is shred them. We hardly ever open up the bank statements. We’ve turned off as many paper bill statements as we can. Bank of America has a tip sheet on how to go banking paperless. You can also watch a video demo of going paperless in the new year.

Did you know that you can set up everything to be automatically paid through your bank with automatic bill pay?

You can pay virtually anyone on-line through automatic bill pay. We’ve even found that it’s very easy to set up a new merchant if you need to pay someone. You can even set up a one time payment. We recently added our Home Owners Association to the automatic bill pay, because I certainly won’t remember to pay it. My husband is very thorough and makes sure that everything is paid every month.

Did you know that you can deposit your checks by taking a photo of them with your cell phone and using mobile banking? Bank of America Mobile Banking is available on different mobile platforms, including but not limited to iPad and iPhone.

With Mobile Banking from Bank of America, you can easily take your banking with you.* Check your balances, pay bills, transfer money, and locate ATMs and banking centers. Our Mobile Banking app is convenient, fast and free.

FEATURES
— Check account balances
— Pay bills and transfer funds**
— Find ATM and banking center locations using GPS, with no address input required (this is only available through our app, not on our mobile website)***
— Feel secure with our industry-leading mobile security and our Online Banking Security Guarantee

Now I’m sure I could write a five page document fully explaining on-line banking, mobile banking ,and how to go fully paperless next year, but I thought I would just set you up with a few easy steps to start off with! Good Luck going green!

This post was not sponsored, I did work with Bank of America last month, but we’ve used them for 3 years and been very happy with them.

Red and Green Advent Calendar Ideas

December 1, 2010 by Momstart 3 Comments

Happy Holidays, it’s December first and yes, I really am inspired to be more green. I have always been afraid that I just can’t be green but one of the things that I learned at the Great Wolf Lodge Ecomoms event was that it all starts with baby steps. I recruited my friend Summer to help us with some of those baby steps and she has put together, MomStart’s Red and Green Event.

So for December 1st, Summer has some ideas on Advent Calendars and what to put in your advent calendar:

Day one of going green for the holidays with Mom Start. Take your advent calendar and in each day place a piece of paper with holiday activities you and your family can do together. This will cut down on all those useless trinkets plus if you invest in a reusable calendar then you also have less waste that way too. Include things like: make bird/squirrel feeders from popcorn, nuts and dried fruit; making a spare plate of goodies for a in family need; get your real tree (check back with Mom Start tomorrow for more on selecting a Christmas tree); make a tie-knot fleece blanket as a family and donate it.

My favorite advent calendar is one that I bought from Starbucks about five years ago give or take a year. Wow, that makes me realize that my daughter is about to turn four. Oh, sad. Anyways, it’s been great using the same one every year, we can refill it and now thanks to Summer, I realize I’ve been green all along and never even realized it.

About Summer:

Summer is the President of our Local MOMS Club chapter, she is the mother of two adorable active boys, and is always thinking of ways to help others. She is a friend, a wife, and always busy as all mommies are.