Green Spring Cleaning

This spring when you’re pulling out the couch to attack the annual aggregation of dust bunnies, emptying out the garage and wiping down the shelves of your refrigerator, consider the environment.

Every year, we break out the Pine-Sol and the vacuum cleaner attachments and go to town for spring cleaning for a fresh start to the new life of the new year. Why not make that fresh start even better by transforming your home into an eco-conscious living space?

The trick to establishing a greener home that is both easy to maintain through the year and functional is to create an infrastructure that supports recycling and a lighter eco-footprint.

Organize a recycling center in your home

Recycling is a breeze with a designated home recycling center that contains bins to separate and store waste until you take them to the city’s recycling center.

Clear out a space in your home, such as a corner in the garage, a broom closet or even the trunk of your car to store recyclables.

Owensboro, Ky., only offers recycling for seven items at the recycling center: clear plastic, opaque non-colored plastic, cardboard, newspapers, magazines, steel cans and aluminum cans.

Some local retailers, including Wal-Mart, offer recycling for plastic grocery bags.
Make your trip to the recycling center an activity as regular as going to the groceries.

Avoid harmful cleaning products

Most household cleaning products contain harmful chemicals including carcinogens, endocrine disruptors (which can cause ADHD, infertility, challenged immune systems, miscarriages, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers) and neurotoxins (which affect brain activity, causing headaches and loss of intellect).

While many cleaning products tout “natural” and “organic” in their names, those terms are not clearly defined to mean safe for you or the environment. And manufacturers are not required to list every ingredient in the product.

Researching safe cleaning products can be overwhelming, time consuming and frustrating. So look for cleaning products that don’t contain the warning signal words “caution,” “warning,” “danger” or “poison.” These terms indicate that the product is harmful or fatal.

Instead of reading ingredient lists, look for cleaning products that say on the front “contains no . . .” volatile organic compounds (VOCs), Alkylphenolethoxylates (APEs), Formaldehyde, Organochlorines (OCs), Styrene or Phthalates.

Also, though this may be disappointing to many people who love the smell of fabric softener, look for fragrance-free products.

In 1986 the U. S. National Academy of Science identified the ingredients in many manufactured fragrances as carcinogens and neurotoxins that are the primary cause of disease in humans along with insecticides, heavy metals, solvents and food additives.

Start a compost pile

When you chop lettuce and peel onions while fixing dinner, don’t throw the waste in the trash.

Start a compost pile in your backyard — or side yard if you don’t have a back yard. Or consider starting a community compost bin if you live in an apartment.

The compost pile can be kept neat and is easy to manage if started properly. Discard waste into a small area on the ground contained by some two-by-fours or some chicken wire about two to three feet high.

Keep the pile damp but not soggy, and cover it with a thin layer of dirt.

The best compost contains 75 percent brown material (leaves, saw dust, dye-free paper towels and napkins) and 25 percent green material (vegetable and fruit scraps, grass clippings in small amounts, egg shells, tea bags, and coffee filters) with a thin layer of dirt on top. Toss a couple of earth worms in there to speed up the process.

Rotate the pile with a pitchfork or shovel every two weeks. The bottom layer of the pile is ready to use every few months.

Minimize utility consumption

While you power through the house with your vacuum cleaner and dust rag, look for any electronic appliances that sit unused for significant intervals and unplug them.

Virtually every electronic appliance draws phantom power even when turned off. DVD players, TVs, computers, radios and cell phone chargers when not in use still draw electricity.

Desktop computers are one of the biggest energy leaches in your home.

If your entertainment center plug-ins are stashed behind a shelf unit, consider plugging them into an easily accessible surge protector so you can turn it on and off when you go to sleep or leave for school or work.

If you haven’t already, go ahead and switch you incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescents (CFLs). They have decreased in price significantly since they first hit the market and you will earn your money back quickly as they last longer and use less electricity.

And when you hit the bathroom and kitchen, screw an aerator onto your faucets. They decrease water consumption and are easy to attach. Showerhead aerators are available as well but may require a little more to install them.