At rubbingnickels.com, we often have the feeling that the “green” movement has stalled a little in the era of the economic downturn. Some of the actions we take to be more green cost money, for example, purchasing a hybrid car or installing solar panels. But what many forget is that “eco” and “thrifty” often go hand in hand. Think along the lines of things your Grandma might have done that you thought were strange: i.e. re-using margarine tubs as tupperware or sewing crazy quilts out of leftover scraps of fabric. Here are a few tips that will help you save the planet and save some cash at the same time (just like Grandma used to do).

1. Tighten up your gas cap. Yep! According to the Car Care Council, we lose 147 million gallons of gas each year, evaporated into the atmosphere, due to loose gas caps.

2. Use bar soap instead of pump soap. If you buy bars in brown, biodegradable or re-usable wrapping (like the soap in our picture), you decrease your waste from 20 pounds of plastic each year to zero.

3. Cool your water in the fridge. Running the water into a pitcher until it is cold can waste many gallons of water. Run the water into the pitcher at room temp (not letting the faucet run first) and then cool it in the refrigerator.

4. Re-use your scrap paper. It never fails that when you try to print a document, you end up with tons of extra pages with tiny bits of print in the corners or bottom. Don’t recycle this in the bin! Instead, us it for kid’s homework, grocery lists and gift wrap.

5. Use a toaster oven for baking whenever possible. According to Country Living magazine (April 2009), toaster ovens use half the amount of electricity as electric ovens and they don’t raise the temperature of the kitchen nearly as much.

Get Eco-thrifty!

Darcy Ratner and Julie Arnheim
Founders, Rubbingnickels.com

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.

I’m back with more thrifty gardening tips.

H2O

Water is scarce – and costly – in the southwest, so I do what I can to recycle it. I keep plastic bowls in the kitchen and bathroom sinks – also in the shower – to trap the precious liquid, which I then transfer to watering cans. I used to hose down my garden twice a week. Since I’ve started the catch-it-in-a-bowl system, I’ve been able to eliminate one of the weekly hosings.

Also, I keep a pitcher of left-over coffee, which I feed to acid-loving plants. This is cheaper and more ecological than buying chemicals at the nursery. Your azaleas will thank you for that cup of Joe. Word of caution: don’t use coffee grounds – they bring nasty bugs.

Most of my soil is in the shade, so I buy huge pots on the cheap at yard sales, fill them with tomatoes, basil, and wild strawberries, and place them in a sunny spot near the garage.

LAWN-O-PHOBE

I don’t get the American obsession with green, grassy lawns. I suspect it’s based on an unconscious nostalgia for British country mansions. Maybe a big grassy plot makes sense if you live in a wet climate and have to throw tea parties for a few hundred dukes and duchesses, but most of us common folk only use our lawns when we’re mowing, watering, or fertilizing them.

Depending on where you live, between thirty and sixty percent of our water usage goes to lawn care. I wonder how many gazillion gallons of our precious H²O that adds up to. Also, lawns use more pesticide and herbicide per acre than just about any crop grown in America. We pay good money for these poisons, which are then introduced into our water supply. Plus, those gas-powered noise-polluting mowers and trimmers help deplete the ozone layer. Then there’s the esthetically: the grass lawn that used to be a symbol of aristocracy is now the image of ticky-tacky suburban conformity.

So let’s see now: grass lawns are costly, toxic, and boring. Not this baby’s idea of a bargain. If you can’t eat it, smell it, put it in a vase, or smoke it – why bother?

Read the rest of this entry »

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.

Our best tips come from you, our readers. Each week during October, we will be giving away a RubbingNickels.com Reusuable Tote Bag in a random drawing. To qualify, simply share your best eco-thrifty tip with us at RubbingNickels.com.

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.

You might be surprised to find out that there is actually a brewing debate over whether and how soon we will run out of space in our landfills. The debate is quite similar to the global warming debate, with the conservatives taking one side and the liberals taking the other. In the great landfill debate, environmentalist claim that the more we increase our landfill size, the more likely we will all get to have landfills in our back yards. The conservatives claim that landfill technology will save us, even as the landfills grow out of control.

I have to land in the environmentalist’s side on this one and for that reason, I have done a little research on what we can do with our extra “stuff,” so that we can decrease the volume that goes into the landfill. It is amazing how many great sites there are for recycling. Here’s a sampling of what I found in a book called The Virtuous Consumer, by Leslie Garrett. I highly recommend this book as a resource for reducing, reusing and recycling:

• Dressforsuccess.org – Recycles gently worn business clothing, coats and briefcases.

• Wildize.org – Collects hiking boots through their Boots for Rangers program for African rangers who patrol park boundaries and wilderness areas.

• Nikereuseashoe.com – Turns your old running shoes (they can be gross and nasty, even!) into athletic surfaces.

• Worldcomputerexchange.org – Recycle your PC to be used in a school in a third world country.

• Suitcasesforkids.org – This site helps give foster kids a place to keep their stuff as they move from place to place.

• Lions International – Donate your used adult and kid’s eyeglasses for use in third world countries.

Darcy Ratner and Julie Arnheim
Rubbingnickels.com

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.

Do you like to take long showers and run the faucet while you brush your teeth or do dishes? If so, you might need to take a look at your Household Water Consumption. Water consumption isn’t just about YOU, it’s about the Earth’s fresh water supply. In California, for example, we’ve had an extremely wet Winter and Spring, but that doesn’t mean we should let up on our diligence about water use. You never know. Next year could start another 7-year drought so it’s always good to keep our reservoirs as full as we can.

If you’re willing to take a good look at your water use, the CSG Network’s website has a handy water usage calculator. It is designed to give information about where and how much water we use. It will help you track your water use both outdoors and in by asking questions like “how many daily showers are taken”, “how long are the showers”, “how many times a week is the lawn watered” and “for how long”. If this tool does nothing else, hopefully, it will increase your awareness of the patterns of water usage in your home so that you can begin to implement some cutbacks.

Once you get motivated to cut back, Save20gallons.org is a great site to visit for tips on decreasing water use. Don’t forget that decreasing your water usage, especially those long showers, can help save money on your utility bills as well. We hope you learn something and save some money. Let us know what you find out about your household water consumption.

Darcy Ratner and Julie Arnheim
Founders, Rubbingnickels.com

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.

After a recent storm in Los Angeles County, it was estimated that at least 2.3 billion individual pieces of trash floated out into the Pacific. I read about this in an article in Sierra Club magazine that talked about the “flotillas” of plastic and trash that are currently floating in the Pacific Ocean and how they are killing the sea life and polluting our oceans and beaches. As consumers, we can help remedy this situation, family by family. Here are five Eco-thrifty ideas that you can incorporate into your household to help decrease your contribution to the trash “flotillas”.

Plastic Water Bottles – JUST SAY NO to plastic one-time-use water bottles. It does take water to clean the reusable bottles but if you have a filter on your fridge or a Britta filter pitcher, the water you drink will be perfectly safe and taste great. This will also save you a lot of money.

Laundry Soap – Consider going back to a traditional powder laundry detergent. Tide HE Detergent is a highly rated powder and works in the new front-loader machines. You can recycle the cardboard box which is already made from post-consumer cardboard.

Plastic baggies and zip-style food storage – In our house, we try our hardest to use a tupperware or other reusable container to store leftovers and or freeze foods. For packed lunches, we use gladware rather than baggies whenever we can for sandwiches and snacks. Reach for the reusable first and save money!

Plastic Milk Cartons and Bottles – When we lived in Colorado we had a milk delivery service that brought milk in old fashioned glass bottles once a week. What a treat! No plastic coated cartons or plastic gallon bottles were being used to provide our milk. If you can get a service like this in your area, give it a try! The bottles are completely reusable.

Plastic bags in the produce section – Once again, JUST SAY NO to these bags. They are a complete waste! Do you really care if your produce gets mixed up in the bottom of your grocery bag? If you are completely addicted to these bags, you can re-used them many, many times if you pop them into the bottom of your reusable grocery bags after you unpack your groceries.

Keep cutting back on the plastic and the world will be a better place…

Darcy Ratner
Rubbingnickels.com

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.