Going Green with Organic Vegetable Gardening

January 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

organic vegetables makati

    I have just found out that organic vegetables are sold in a bazaar near our office in Makati. The bazaar in Salcedo village is organized by residents of the subdivision. I’ll try and see what kinds of organic vegetables are sold there and if there’s a difference between organic vegetables and the mass produced vegetables I usually buy in supermarkets.
    Even here in the metro, I hear a lot of mothers who turn their backyards into a vegetable garden. There are even some exclusive subdivisions that offer large tracts of land. The idea is to provide a farm for the homeowners without leaving the city.
    Organic vegetable gardening is one good way of going green. If you have a backyard that is lying there, why not turn it into a garden? It is a lot of work but many people say that it is very rewarding to take care of a garden.
    My grandmother used to have a vegetable garden in her backyard. It has tomatoes, squash, eggplants, cucumber, calamansi, pechay, and many other vegetables. She didn’t have to go to the market for her vegetables. She saves a lot and she also receives extra income because her neighbors buy vegetables from her.
    When I grow old, I want to go into organic vegetable gardening too like my grandmother. I like to grow my own vegetables. I can be sure that there are no pesticides and not synthetic pest controls in my garden. I will be 100% sure that the vegetables that my family is eating are safe.
    Right now, the only thing that I can handle is few pots of herbs in my apartment: basil, rosemary and I always have a pot of aloe vera. I think it’s a good start.
Filed Under: Everyday Green, Organic Gardening Tagged With:

More Tips for Green Kitchens

January 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

biodegradable waste

    There are a lot of little things that we can do to make our kitchens green. Almost everything that we do in the kitchen can be more eco-friendly not to mention budget-friendly and safer for our health.
    First, take a look at your cleansers—your soap dish and the liquid that you use for cleaning your sink. You can use natural cleansers such as baking soda or you can choose cleansers that do not have harmful chemicals such as lye and phosphates. Lye was studied to be carcinogenic while phosphates (the chemical that makes our dish soap sudsy kills water and all water living organisms including fish).
    How about our table napkins and paper towels in the kitchen? We can buy recycled ones. Every time we buy napkins and paper towels that are not recycled, we are contributing to the denudation of our forests. Large logging companies supply a bulk of their logs to the makers of table napkins.
    If all of us will do this, imagine how many trees we will save. If there are 1 million households who stop using new table napkins that are from trees and not from recycled papers, there will be millions more trees in our forests.
    The non-stick pan use chemicals to coat our pan. When we scrub them, the chemicals get washed off and they go to our water bodies. We can use stainless pots instead. They are healthier (no chemicals leach while we’re cooking) and they are easier to clean than non-stick pans.
    How much trash do we make in our kitchen? Probably a lot everyday. We can reduce our trash by segregating the biodegradable wastes like the pared vegetable skins or excess food and make a compost pit in your backyards. There are some villages and residential communities who organize environmental drive that turn biodegradable wastes to natural fertilizers.
    Turning our kitchens from ordinary to green kitchens doesn’t necessarily need to be expensive. Little changes in the things that we are using can mean a lot of difference. If each one of us will reduce our kitchen wastes by 1 kilo every day, we will have at most 60 million kilos of reduced wastes when we add them all together. Now, I don’t know how many tons are those but I’m pretty sure it’s a LOT!
Filed Under: Everyday Green Tagged With:

Flash Floods in Cagayan de Oro

January 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

    Many low-lying villages in Cagayan de Oro are submerged in water because of intermittent raining last weekend. Many people are surprised with how fast the water rose. There were many families who stayed on their roofs. They didn’t eat for days because they couldn’t leave the house.
    Locals of Cagayan de Oro said that this is the first time in many years that they have experienced flash flood. Illegal logging has been a problem for years now and now time has come when nature shows her fury.
    What is sad is that the people who are affected are ordinary people who can barely keep up with day to day living. The high officials who issued permits to logging companies and the owners of these logging companies are in the comfort of their homes this weekend or having golf at an exclusive club while the people in the villages are starving.
    The flash floods in Cagayan de Oro tells us forcefully that we cannot have a flash flood free country if we continue on denuding our forests. It may be very hard to tell this to those people who are benefiting financially by the denuding of our forests.
    How can we be sure that we will not be the next victims of flash floods? How can we stop people from denuding our forests? These are big questions I wish I have answers to but unfortunately I don’t. Maybe you can help.
Filed Under: Nature's Fury Tagged With: ,

Greening Your Bath with Natural Bath Sponge

January 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

loofah bath sponge

    Aside from using natural bath soaps and bath wash that don’t use a lot of chemicals, another way to green your bath is to use natural bath sponge. If you are still using a sponge that is made from net (polyurethane) or cellulose, throw them in the trash can and replace them with loofah.
    Unlike the bath sponge that is made from polyurethane and cellulose, loofah is 100% natural and is made from a vegetable. The vegetable is called Chinese okra which looks like a cucumber. When this vegetable is dried, it becomes loofah.
    When you are in the store, make sure that what you are buying is 100% loofah which is made from this vegetable gourd. There are many synthetic bath sponges that are labeled as loofah in the market so beware.
    Aside from being a good bath sponge to working up a lather and exfoliating, loofah also helps in the proper circulation of our body.
    There is another natural bath sponge that can be used which is the sea sponge. Environmentalists do not recommend people to use this. Sea sponges are getting extinct. We have never seen many sea sponges in their habitat. Except maybe for Sponge Bob but that’s another matter.
    Sea sponges are actually animals so it takes a while for them to breed. On the other hand, loofah is vegetable so we can plant as many as we want. We can even grow them in our own backyard so we can have a ready supply for natural bath sponge.
Filed Under: Everyday Green Tagged With: , ,

Green Bath and Body Works Soap

January 5, 2009 By Leave a Comment

organic soap

    When we lather our body with our favorite soap, do we know how many chemical ingredients in the soap that gets in contact with our skin and may enter our body through our skin’s pores? These are some of the ingredients used in making commercially bought soaps:
    -Coco Diethanol Amide
    -Sodium lauryl ether sulfate
    -Sodium silicate
    -Sodium tripolyphosphate
    -Caustic potash
    -Ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid
    -Sodium phosphate
    -Benzalkonium chloride
    -Glycerine
    -Carboxyl methy cellulose
    -Triethanol amine
    These are only some of the chemicals that are used in making soaps. They are needed to give the soap the quality of a soap: hard, produces bubbles and can clean oil and dirt in our body. If we use a soap that has added qualities such as a moisturizing soap or a soap that has a scent, then more chemicals are added in those soaps.
    Most of the chemicals found in our bath soaps are not harmful but they are still chemicals. They enter our body through our skin. When they enter our body, they become toxins that need to get out either through perspiration or peeing. When they don’t get out and they accumulate, they will cause illness including cancer.
    Good news is that today there are a lot of stores that are selling organic eco-friendly bath soaps. These soaps may be expensive but they are not made from chemicals. The ingredients are all natural meaning they are sourced from nature.  Using organic bath soaps helps in greening our planet because thsee soaps are not manufactured with chemicals in the factories that use up a lot of energy.
    When we use handmade soaps and organic soaps, we can help in reducing the air pollution that the factories of popular bath soaps emit in their factories. Besides, organic soaps are really good to out skin. They don’t cause skin irritation and dryness. THey can smell really good too when they are added with natural oils such as lavender and rosemary.
Filed Under: Conservation, Energy Saving, Everyday Green, Green Homes, Green Tips, Pollution, Toxic Wastes, Water Conservation, Water Resources Tagged With: ,
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