North Country Home: Local News

  • Everyday Green: Enjoy a Green Thanksgiving

    Thanksgiving – a time for celebration, a time of abundance and gratitude, and a time for connecting with family and friends. Do we need to make this a green occasion? After all it only comes once a year. Maybe that’s the clue. For many of us in industrialized countries Thanksgiving isn’t the only day of plenty. We tend to live in abundance all year round, so much so that it is difficult to remember to be grateful on this or any other day. So let’s begin there, with gratitude. ... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: Water, water, everywhere?

    Surely we have abundant water? According to U.S Government estimates, the Great Lakes are shrinking, especially Lake Superior, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Although Lakes Erie and Ontario received good rainfalls in recent years, reservoirs in the Catskills, providing water to NYC, have fallen to record lows. The government projects that 36 states will face water shortages within the next five years.... Read more..

  • EVeryday Green: The not-so-big house

    Having spent most of my life in houses of less than a 1000 square feet, I’ve often fantasized about living in a larger space. There are those folks who have gone the opposite direction, living in very small houses, some as tiny as 140 square feet. I realize those of you who live in apartments or trailers are thinking even 1000 square feet could seem like a castle. What can we learn from these small home dwellers? ... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: Eating Less Meat

    As I was planning some dinner menus the other day it suddenly occurred to me: I plan all my dinners by starting with what kind of meat I have on hand. Meat is the centerpiece around which everything else is arranged. In an effort to cut down on our meat consumption I wondered if there was another approach I could take. Want a different answer? Ask a different question! ... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: SPECIAL NOTICE

    October 24, 2009 is International Day of Climate Action. ... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: No Impact Project

    “For one year, Colin Beavan and his family unplugged from the electrical grid, produced no trash, traveled exclusively by foot or bike, bought nothing but food (and all of it locally grown). By the end, they discovered something surprising: living simply wasn’t just good for the environment; it made them healthier, happier and richer in ways they’d never expected.” By the way, they did this in New York City.... Read more..

  • Have a Green Halloween

    So what’s so green about Halloween? Well for openers, according to a survey by BIGresearch, it is anticipated that in the U.S. we will spend about 3.12 billion (BILLION) dollars this year on candy, costumes, and decorations resulting in tons of plastic packaging, candy wrappers and paper party decorations winding up in our landfills. Also, consider that children are getting diabetes at an earlier and earlier age and it seems clear that bagsful of commercial candy are not the healthiest “treat” we could be giving them. ... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: Fashionably Green

    “Out with the old, in with the new” used to be my fall mantra. This year I’m questioning how much new I really need, and, if I do buy new clothes, how that will work with my desire to live a more sustainable life. As I thought about it I was transported back to some basic tenets of environmentalism: reduce, reuse and recycle. ... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: Choosing Green Energy

    With nighttime temperatures dipping into the 30s, who isn’t thinking about how to stay warm? Looking at last year’s heating bills got me to wondering how I might save money and make more sustainable energy choices. It also made me curious about where our energy comes from.... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: Looking Good While Going Green

    What IS in an average bottle of commercial shampoo? Go check your label. If you can read the miniscule print I’ll bet you’ll find, as I did, items such as: sodium laureth sulfate, sodium laurel sulfate, cocamidopropyl betaine, sodium chloride, hexylene glycol, methylparaben, propylparaben phenoxyethanol, etc. etc. plus fragrance and water. Yikes, sounds like a mad scientist’s chemistry experiment. ... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: New Appliances for Old?

    On the surface it seems an easy question to answer. Energy Star labels tell us how much energy an appliance consumes. Labor Day appliance sales are up and running. Why not buy a new fridge?... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: Fish: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

    When I was a kid growing up in Seattle, my favorite restaurant treat was a heaping plate of deep fried popcorn shrimp; in fact it was the only fish I’d eat. In college I sustained myself cheaply on tuna fish sandwiches. Since then I’ve developed a taste for a wide variety of seafood and freshwater fish. Unfortunately, eating fish these days is not quite the carefree event it was in my childhood and college years.... Read more..

  • Scorecard: The first three months

    So how is my green “experiment” going? I thought it was only fair to share with you from time to time my progress in creating a more sustainable life. I hope you will share your successes as well. Through expressing our thoughts and actions on this blog, we can become an environment to inspire others.... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: Green Remodeling

    If we are ever going to replace our single-pane glass windows, or insulate our 70 year old house, 2009 seems to be the year. The government is offering a substantial tax credit for energy saving repairs/remodels, such as windows and insulation. Products that qualify make you eligible for a tax credit of 30% of the purchase price up to $1500. So we made the decision to go ahead with it. After all, what could be easier, or more green, than saving energy by installing better windows and insulating the house? It turned out to be a bit more complicated.... Read more..

  • Greenwashing

    How can we identify which companies or products are really green, in the sense that they’ve attempted to make the entire chain of operations more sustainable? How can we discover which companies are guilty of greenwashing? It takes some research, but there are websites to help you find the truth.... Read more..

  • Paper, Paper Everywhere

    As I look around our world, and my own personal environment, I sometimes feel as if we are afloat in a sea of paper. In spite of the advance of the computer, paper continues to proliferate. Is there a way to stop, or at least slow down the flow?... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: Use What’s On Hand

    How often do we get into the middle of a recipe or a project and discover we’re missing an essential ingredient, component, or tool? How often do we respond by thinking we have to go buy the missing object? What if, instead, we use our creativity and use what’s on hand?... Read more..

  • The 10% Solution

    My question is, do we wait for the government to mandate what we already know needs to be done, or do we take personal responsibility for creating the kind of world that we want to live in? Governments, even those with the best intentions, move incredibly slowly. As individuals, however, we can start right now.... Read more..

  • EveryDay Green: Green and Clean

    How could something so familiar be so dangerous? There’s the rub. We use chemicals every day rarely thinking about their potential toxicity. How often do we read labels on our cleaning supplies, and even if we tried, how many of those labels are clear or easy to understand? Do we know what “caution” or “danger ” means on a product label?... Read more..

  • Everyday Green: Right Brain Math

    Reuse is one of the three tenets of environmentalists. It is not such a novel idea. We reuse many items in our daily life, such as clothing, housewares, and electronics. But with other items, like packaging or paper, it is easy to get into the habit of using something only once then discarding it. Just by reusing something one more time you could halve your expenses and the use of resources.... Read more..