16 Ways to Go Green for Less

Forget Fancy Gardening Products

Jerry Baker is known for the many plant sprays and fertilizers that he concocts from ingredients you might find around the house. For example, to keep cats from using the soil around a prized plant, he suggests mixing flour, powdered mustard, cayenne powder, chili powder and water together to sprinkle around the plant. To green up fading plants, hit them with a mixture of beer, ammonia, dishwashing liquid, liquid lawn food and molasses. To drive away caterpillars, puree a cup of orange peels in boiling water and use it as a spray.
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16 Ways to Go Green for Less

Get Group Rates for Solar Installation
Sticker shock is usually the main obstacle stopping people from getting solar power installed in their homes, with $20,000 being the typical cost to enter the market. But one California company is taking groups of homeowners and working with a solar power company to get them a group discount, saving them 17% through the program.

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16 Ways to Go Green for Less

Try Holistic Medicine
Fashion designer Donna Karan wants to save you some money on your health care bills and make you feel better with a nationwide initiative to spread the word about holistic medicine. She has been working with doctors, physical therapists and nurses to come up with yoga exercises that people can do in bed, wheelchairs and when they have very little energy after being depleted by chemotherapy. Other protocols use breathing, meditation, aromatherapy and acupuncture to deal with pain, nausea and other discomforts without medications.
· More on Holistic Medicine and watch our video with Donna Karan below the feature on the main page!

16 Ways to Go Green for Less

Start a Compost Pile
One of the best and easiest things you can do for the environment is to keep a compost bin, either in your backyard or kitchen. And, despite common belief, it doesn't smell. All you need is a bin. Then throw in equal parts "browns" (twigs, dead leaves, branches) and "greens" (grass clippings, fruits and vegetables). Let that settle for about five weeks, then start throwing in your organic waste: eggshells, wool rags, hair, fur, fire place ashes, etc. Not all organic waste can be composted, such as meat, dairy products or charcoal.

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16 Ways to Go Green for Less

Try New Solar Lighting Options
If you've ever wished you could bring out the sun at night, IKEA's new solar-cell powered desk lamps might be the answer. The cells transform sunlight into electricity, and that electricity is turned back into ... light! The Sunnan, an LED desk lamp, can go glow for four hours and takes 9-12 hours of daylight to re-charge. The desk lamps come in blue, green, red, orange and yellow and cost around $20 -- all without the bother of an electrical cord.

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16 Ways to Go Green for Less

Make Your Office Eco-Friendly
If you're trying to green over your lifestyle, you've got to make sure your ideas spill over into your office space. Once you're able to show your colleagues the numbers they're saving by going green, you're going to be the coolest person in the office. Make green the only option, by taking away paper cups and buying recycled paper supplies, and give the staff incentives. Make a list of goals, and after a goal is reached, reward the staff. It's going to take a little bit of inspiration and a whole lot of nagging, but once you make the switch, you'll be rewarded in more ways than one.

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16 Ways to Go Green for Less

Save Big With Rechargeable Batteries
Every year, Americans buy 3 billion batteries to power their electronics. One way to cut down on the amount of batteries that end up in our landfills is to use rechargeable batteries. By using rechargeable batteries instead of regular batteries, you can save on average over $80 a year! In our experience, the best battery out there is Sanyo's Eneloop series. The new battery is a hybrid, meaning that it's fully charged out of the box, like alkalines. It's slow draining, suitable for long term electronics such as remote controls and clocks.
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16 Ways to Go Green for Less

Green Your Wine
Science extols the benefits of a glass of wine a night. But how to make that beneficial pleasure fit into an eco lifestyle? Buy organic wine. Additionally, for a mere $9.95 you can pick up a handy tool that will save you countless bottles of wine over the future: the Vacu Vin. Developed by the Dutch in 1983, the Vacu Vin was created to vacuum your wine. It suctions out all air from the bottle, slowing down oxidation, so that when you open it the next day it will be as fresh as a newly-corked bottle.
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16 Ways to Go Green for Less

Monitor Your Energy
Why is it important to read your home energy levels? When you know how much you're using, you're much more likely to conserve. A variety of gadgets out in the market now make it incredibly simple to read your energy use. TED's Energy Detective is an easy solution for measuring everything in your house, to find out what is eating away at your energy bill. You can order a simple package for $145. For a bare bones device, the Kill A Watt is handy for measuring an item at a time. It's great if you have the time to measure your own data, and can multiply to average your energy use. Only $24.40.

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16 Ways to Go Green for Less

Beer-Bottle Water Heater
Last year, Ma Yanjun, a carpenter in Qiqiao village, in China's Shaanxi province, came up with a simple, ingenious idea that provides a basic need. Upset that his mother couldn't get a warm shower, he constructed a solar water heater out of old beer bottles and pieces of hose. Water heats as it slowly flows through the bottles and hoses; by the time it gets to the shower, it's comfortably hot. The idea has caught on, and he helped construct similar heaters for twenty other families in his village.

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16 Ways to Go Green for Less