If you are not totally green yet, that is OK. Some of these tips are so good, it might change your mind and cause you to pick up the pace in being more green in the way you live.  As REALTORS we have the good fortune to get a great monthly REALTOR magazine and the newest issue had an article by Wendy Cole , " 10 ways to make your life greener".

While I can't re-publish her article she did offer links to some sites on the Internet that are very useful and perhaps you will like some of the ideas.

One of the links was to Saazs' One. It is a different type of energy efficient lighting that can last upwards of 20 or more years. No one knows for sure since we will have wait 20 years and see if it is still around. The creators behind this new type of illumination are an example of thinking out of the box when it comes to technology. The new light source design is called Planilium. When I went to their site I can see that while this is new today, I expect we will see be seeing applications of this new "green" type of lighting commercially as well as residentially. We used to think the future is way off in the distance and from what I can tell of this lighting, the future is here right now.

Another of the great links she took me to was the Montauk Sofa Company. Taken from their vision statement "Montauk's goal is to provide the most stylish, comfortable, fashionable sofas with no impact on the environment and to embrace ecologically advanced incentives." Their focus is reduce greenhouse gases and to provide clean biodegradability and closed loop recycling. What that means to us as consumers is that they use materials that are recycled to build their furniture and when you are are done with it, you can send it back and they strip it down and recycle it again. Having been in the design industry before real estate, this is a significant contribution to going more green and this raises our consciousness about it.  

Another link Wendy provided was cfpwood.com and it is a company that fabricates Kitchen cabinets with wood and wood products that are free of formaldehyde. The cfp stands for Columbia Forest Products. The significance of formaldehyde in that it is the key compound of the resin used as adhesives in the fabrication of plywoods and wood laminates. The problem here is that in its free state, formaldehyde is a volatile gas and a common volatile organic compound ( VOC) . Formaldehyde has been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as a "known human carcinogen". Ever been in a new mobile home on a warm day? They often have a strong odor. Little wonder if most of the walls are wood paneling. Now guess what the resin bond used to make that paneling has in it? Formaldehyde when reacted with urea produces a hard thermoset resin commonly used in the adhesives for fabricating hardwood plywood, particle board and medium density fiberboard (MDF.) There are solutions and when we learn about these harmful things that have been in our lives for decades and decades, the best course we can take is to start refusing these harmful substances in our lives. Columbia Forest Products, for instance, uses a soy based resin that is not volatile nor harmful. Again, thinking out of the box which provides safe wood products for in home use.

If you have been watching HGTV and all the home remodeling shows, you have seen the beautiful glass tiles made from recycled glass. It is a really cool technique of grinding up on the glass that comes from empty bottles of all colors into granules and using very high temperatures to fuse the granules into glass tiles. The tile products are really attractive and it represents material that is recycled glass trash.

SmokeFree Self Contained Fireplaces are a big hit is the design world. They may be put in any room of the home or even used outside because they are portable and require no chimney or utility connection ( gas). They are fueled by denatured alcohol which is clean burning and a renewable resource.

So in celebration of Earth Day it is not enough to just know about these things. It is time for each of us to make the commitment to do something to help make the difference. Like I have said in many of my posts on the subject, the changes, big or small all lend to taking care of what we have.

Please understand that to be "Green" doesn't require that you make wholesale changes in your life or the way you live. If we were just less wasteful, more of the resources can remain for more generations to have access to them. If we are just more careful about what we use and how we dispose of it. So, be it fixing a dripping faucet, cutting the waste of excessive water use, adding in some trees and plants to our landscapes to shield the heat away from our homes, changing out a few light bulbs to use less energy and create less heat, using some of the ideas of remodeling with recycled materials, not dumping harmful trash in the land fills, recycling glass, metal, paper and plastic, eliminating or refusing the use of known harmful products anywhere, turning off energy sources when you aren't using them, every little bit we do to help can make a difference. And if we all helped out a little, the difference would be huge.

Happy Earth Day!