Don't limit bulk purchases to food items only!

Buying shampoo, laundry soap, dish soap, toilet paper, etc. is also beneficial to the environment and your wallet. Even if an item is not available in bulk at your local co-op or health food store, buying the largest size possible will give you similar savings financially and environmentally.

Four years ago, before America was awash in greenwashing, Mothering Magazine featured a great article title "No More Junk Toys: Rethinking Children's Gifts" by Judith Rubin. Rubin writes,

Like junk food, junk toys can be fun but are devoid of nutrition. Buying them requires little forethought. They are excessively commercial, and are often linked to cross-marketing schemes. They excite children at first, but that initial flicker doesn't endure. Also like junk food, junk toys have hidden environmental and social costs for which the consumers pay.

Catalog Choice is a free service sponsored by the Ecology Center. Their mission "is to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices." The site is simple to use. After creating an account, simply search for catalogue names, enter your customer identification number from the back of the catalogue (if available), then click decline. If the catalogue you wish to decline is not in the database, you can request Catalog Choice to add it, and they will notify you when it is available. I have already declined ten catalogues in a few days; however, it can take up to ten weeks before you stop receiving the declined catalogues. Catalog Choice also offers a "My Choices" page, which allows you to change your mind and start receiving the catalogues again, as well as follow up on catalogues that you are still receiving despite your requests.

• Daily Tip: Halloween with Less Waste,
• Green Style How-To: Supermarket and No-Sew Halloween Costumes,
• Five Super-Simple Steps to Green Trick-or-Treating,
• Daily Tip: Wholesome Sweets

By now you may be groaning, "Oh no, not another green Halloween post about making your own costume and giving out pencils," yet this green idea flips the holiday over on the concept of Fair Trade.

Think about Fair Trade in the simplest terms, as a young child may define it. If I give you something, in exchange you will give me something of equal value, whether monetary or not. For example, children trading marbles will exclaim, "That is not fair," if they do not view the marble exchange as equitable. In a child's mind, Halloween is not an equitable trade... they make out like bandits while trick-or-treating! All they have to do is sport a costume and knock on their neighbors' doors to receive lots and lots of candy! It is definitely not a Fair Trade! Global Exchange proposes a change to this custom by promoting "reverse" trick-or-treating.

Our attire should reflect the outside temperature in our region, and thus our homes would not have to kept as warm if we dressed appropriately. According to Live Earth, just lowering your thermostat two degrees will save 4% on your energy bill and prevent 500 pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere! Two degrees is hardly noticeable when proper layers are worn. Even for families like mine that heat with wood, conservation is still important, and less word burned is better for our environment too.

As a new parent, I was very concerned about swaddling my newborn in synthetic, petroleum-based polyester blankets. Conventionally grown cotton baby blankets are not much better, as they are grown and produced with pesticides and chemicals. The solution: organically grown baby blankets. Unfortunately, six years ago the only organic fiber blanket I could find was a dull green color and unattractive. Today, babies can be swaddled in stylish, luxurious organic baby blankets by Robbie Adrian Luxury Organics, the perfect gift for baby.

Use One Heavy Power Load at a Time

15 years ago, my power system consisted of one solar panel, one golf cart battery, one DC light, and one DC car stereo. Today, I live in a modern off-the-grid home complete with many large energy-using electrical appliances, such as a washing machine, air conditioner, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, and baseboard heaters. Using these appliances off the grid is only possible by limiting their usage to one at a time, with the exception of the refrigerator (which remains on 24 hours a day). Unlike grid-connected homes, where it is common to see multiple large loads running simultaneously, most people living off the grid cannot run their washing machine while vacuuming, their heaters while washing dishes, etc. Alternative home energy systems are limited to the amount of power stored in the battery bank and what is being currently produced via wind, water, and/or sun for available power.

According to EcoMall, "Breastfeeding is probably the most overlooked means of contributing to the health of our planet" and parentingweb states, "Breastmilk is actually the most ecological food available to humans." Wow, those are pretty strong statements. Mother's milk is completely natural (minus the toxins present from environmental contaminants), is produced without using resources (except for the resources used to produce the food the mother eats), and it creates no pollution. Breast milk comes from the mother's body and bottles are not required, unless a mother is pumping because of work schedules, etc. There is never any waste with breast milk, as healthy mothers produce the right amount of milk a child needs based on the principle of supply and demand.

In contrast, the production and packaging of infant formulas uses natural resources and takes up landfill space, all of which contribute to climate change. According to Dia Michels, author of Mother Nature Loves Breastmilk, "If every child in America were bottle-fed, almost 86,000 tons of tin would be needed to produce 550 million cans for one year's worth of formula." Furthermore, these tin cans can leach BPA into the formula. The Environmental Working Group tested infant formula and found, "For 1 in 10 cans of all food tested, and 1 in 3 cans of infant formula, a single serving contained enough BPA to expose a woman or infant to BPA levels more than 200 times the government's traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals."

My near-encounter with the Prius occurred because the car was running on its electric motor, thus making the car virtually silent. As the Prius backed out of its parking space, I was caught by surprise and realized how much I rely on my ears to warn me of traffic. We tell children to "look both ways and listen" for cars when crossing streets, but as our fleet moves toward hybrid vehicles (and hopefully electric ones, too), we will need to adjust which senses we rely on to keep us safe in parking lots and crossing roads.

Xeko doesn't just talk the eco-talk, though: it walks the eco-walk. All of the playing cards are made of recycled stock and printed with soy inks. In addition, players are encouraged to return their card wrappers to the company and earn Green Star points, which can be traded for free downloads. Furthermore, four percent of profits are donated to Conservation International for work to save the hotspots. What are hotspots? Hotspots provide the setting for Xeko missions, and are "the most threatened and species-rich places on Earth."

Currently numbered at 34, the hotspots contain 75 percent of the planet's most threatened mammals, birds and amphibians while covering just 2.3 percent of the Earth's surface. An estimated 50 percent of all vascular plants and 42 percent of land vertebrates exist only in these hotspots.