Going Green. Over the past few years you’ve seen this expression pop up more and more. People, products, and businesses are continuously declaring that they’re “going green”.  Even our government is offering tax breaks and incentives for eco-friendly products and businesses. As small business owner, you want to contribute to the eco-movement. But you have hesitations. Maybe you think it’s too time consuming to go green. Maybe it’s on your list of things to do, but you’re not sure exactly where to start or what you can do. And more importantly, you want to turn a profit quickly and you don’t want to risk financial loss. Well in this article you will see that not only is it easier than you think to go green, but it’s also beneficial on your bottom line as well.

Here are ten easy tips to make your business more eco friendly:

1. Recycle bins

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Granite counter tops are desirable upgrades for many remodeling their kitchen.  We investigated green, eco friendly alternatives like Icestone, Cambria, Vetrazzo, Richlite, Paperstone but did not find any finishes to our liking.  Also the price for the granite we liked was less that all these. We could buy granite and donate the extra money to charity or carbon offsets.  We tried to buy granite that was from more responsible countries, so we excluded China, India, Iran. We tried to buy ‘local’ American but only a salt and pepper color was available.

Cambria is one of a select few countertops manufactured in the United States. Most others are made overseas, which significantly reduces the greenness of the material due to transportation costs and petroleum use.

Stainless Steel Countertops

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photo credit: d_vdm

Consumerreports.org reports that some Protein Drinks like Muscle milk are contaminated with heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury. They recently investigated 15 drinks and found that most people already had enough protein. Some of the drinks even posed a health risk, due to the presence of possibly harmful heavy metals.

Federal regulations do not generally require that these protein drinks and other dietary supplements be tested to ensure that they are safe and free of contaminants.

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We now live in a world where we’re bombarded with a range of energy saving tips that both help the environment and reduce our living costs. While we do our best to adopt these new practices and build them into our everyday lives, it’s difficult to adopt all of them. Reuse this, recycle that, switch this on then, only use that later… it can be quite difficult to build your life around these new habits, and then we get frustrated with ourselves when we can’t keep on top of everything we’ve learned.

So, for those of us who don’t always have the time to perform all these energy saving duties, wouldn’t it be nice to know which one thing would make the biggest difference?

The Climate Change Act and the EPC

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Having an Eco Friendly Green Independence Day or Fourth of July is more and more desirable these days. How can you green your Independence Day or Fourth of July.

• Buy your meats to be barbecued, vegetables, and other food from a local farmers market or from local sources
• Stick to organic, natural, free range products
• Buy beverages in larger containers and use recyclable or washable cups
• Carpool or take public transportation to fireworks, barbecues, picnics or events
• Don’t light off fireworks, view public performances of fireworks instead
• Rent or buy your decorations and picnic items from used stores like Goodwill. Reusing items that you already have is even better.
• Compost any waste, etc.
• Give out green oriented treats like organic fruit, re-purposed trinkets

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Let’s face it, almost everyone has problems with the battery life for notebooks and cell phones.  Our iPhone barely makes it through a day without charging. More and more devices come with rechargeable batteries and we felt it was time we looked into ways to extend battery life and extend cell phone or iPhone battery life. Eventually all batteries will die, but this article focus on extending the life of lithium-ion batteries that are present in most modern devices so the battery lasts as long as your device will.

Lithium Rechargeable Batteries

If you have devices that need regular sized batteries (AA, C, D, etc), make sure you switch to lithium rechargeable batteries instead of single use batteries.  You will save money over the long haul.  Newer rechargeable batteries store their charge a lot longer.

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Most people do not realize that it takes a lot of water to dye fabrics used for T-shirts, jeans, and other clothing. A recent estimate stated that you could fill 3.7 billion Olympic sized swimming pools with all this water. Even worse, the left over water is often toxic and is dumped into water ways.

New technology is starting to appear which uses 90% less water and chemicals. Some new companies utilize carbon dioxide instead of water. Hopefully more clothing manufacturers will see the light and get more eco-friendly. Consider buying white colored clothes, instead of dyed clothing.

Patagonia Clothes

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Coffee drinkers are joining the green crowd by selecting eco friendly coffee options. We will examine some of the attributes you should look for when shopping for coffee.

Coffee plantations sometimes cause land to be cleared and pesticides and chemicals to be used. Newer shade plantations use natural tree canopies allowing animals to survive in trees while coffee can be grown in a more eco friendly method.

Cleaning up Coffee Processing

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We spend many hours on a mattress, making it one of the biggest investments in your health. We will spend 1/3 of our life on these things, so it pays to think carefully about this purchase. A good quality premium mattress should hold up for 10 years then start to sag. This may contribute to poor sleep and sore backs. Make sure you rotate your mattress every two months, flipping it over if possible to help even out the wear.

When do you need a new mattress?

• If it sags, is lumpy, or is uncomfortable
• If you sleep better in a different bed
• If you wake up tired
• If the coils start to penetrate outer shell
• If you had a problem with bed bugs

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Clorox has made a big splash with the Green Works like of green cleaning products. They are the green categories’ sales leader.

How green is the their Natural All-Purpose Cleaner? They claim 99% all natural ingredients. MSDS sheet shows only hazardous ingredients as Alkyl polyglucoside (lowers water surface tension, enabling chemicals to spread and penetrate easily) and Ethyl alcohol. Clorox has said their alkyl polyglucoside comes from coconut oil.

According to Treehugger – “Preservative (Kathon) and colorant (Milliken Liquitint Blue HP dye and Bright Yellow dye X); — make up the circa 1% of the non-“natural” petroleum-derived portion of the cleaners (though Clorox says Kathon will biodegrade within 28 days.”

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