Have a great (and green) Halloween!

Earn rewards for your everyday green actions!

In addition to sprucing up the place, these household plants actively target certain toxins and keep the air you and your family breath clean, Highland said. These plants are labeled O2, which means they improve your home air quality.

Check ‘em out here.

How can you find out where your homes is most energy inefficient?

Do you tremble when you open your monthly utility bills? If so, it’s probably time for an assessment of your home’s energy efficiency to help you to identify problem areas, like leaky ducts or ill-fitting windows, where heated or cooled air escapes.

Chris had Bertie Heating & Air evaluate her home.  They are partnered with GRU to provide this comprehensive service for FREE.  The team took about 2 hours, and examined every aspect of Chris’s home for energy efficiency.  They found leaking ducts, inefficient windows, poor and absent insulation, an oversized air conditioning system and poor A/C returns.   Once these thinsg were corrected, Chris’s electric bill fell from an all-time high of about $580.00 to $250.00 last month.  The difference was astonishing and immediate.  To have the same energy evaluation done on your home, call Bertie Heating & Air: 352.331.2005!  Thanks to Jim Bertie for joining us in the studio this morning for our 1 Thing segment!

Listen to our conversation with Jim this morning: 8.29.11.4.1 Thing – Home Energy Evaluation with Jim Bertie

Don’t Wash Dishes By Hand. Don’t Even Rinse Them.

Dishwashers, especially energy-efficient water-saving models, do the job better.

Relying on a dishwasher — instead of hand washing — saves a lot of water.

If you don’t pre-rinse your dishes, running a full load through the dishwasher will save as much as 35% of the water used to do a load of dishes by hand.

Read it all here.

Try a Natural Bug Spray

Herbal bug sprays employ essential oils with natural repellent properties to ward off mosquitoes, flies and ticks.

Instead of reaching for regular old smelly bug spray, try out a natural, herbal insect repellent; new brands now available and come free of all worries about harsh ingredients.

The active ingredient in most conventional bug sprays, N, N-diethyl-meta-toluamide, or DEET, has worried parents, despite getting the ok from government regulatory agencies and scientists, as well as the industry.

Read it all here.

Encourage Children to Play (and Learn) Outside

The introduction of the No Child Left Inside Act of 2011 this week reminds us that kids need environmental education, citizen science projects and time to simply playing outdoors.

Playing and learning outside can strengthen kids’ minds and bodies, encourages creativity and scientific exploration, and may pay dividends for attention spans and educational achievement, not to mention longterm environmental quality: If kids don’t learn to love nature when they’re young, they’re unlikely to support environmental protection as adults.

Yet today children spend half as much time outdoors as they did 20 years ago, according to one study, as televisions, video games and other electronics have come to dominate their free time. And across the country, tight budgets have lead to sharply curtailed opportunities for environmental education, particularly hands-on experiential education outdoors.

You can fill in some of the gaps with help from groups like the National Wildlife Federation’s Green Hour initiative, which encourages parents to set aside one hour a day for unstructured outdoor play. (For some ideas, we partnered with the group on these 30 ways to get your kid to play outside.) You can find a local hike or other outdoor activity, using our tips, or you can join in a citizen science project that will stimulate scientific exploration while helping professional scientists gather needed information about environmental trends, like the health of U.S. songbird populations.

Read it all here.

Clean Windows with Vinegar

It will save you money, and the need to stock extra chemicals. Get a jump on Green Spring Cleaning.

Instead of harsh chemical sprays, get those windows and mirrors crystal clear with a simple solution of white vinegar, newspaper and a little elbow grease. You’ll also save money and the hassle of needing to stock more cleaning supplies.

Read it all here.

Recycle e-Waste with e-Stewards (or R2)

Electronics can be recycled into new products, but the industry has been heavily criticized for dumping waste abroad instead of recycling it. That’s why it’s smart to seek out certified recyclers.

With the switch from cell phone to smart phone, VCR to DVR and answering machine to voice mail, it’s no surprise that e-waste is a fast-growing category of waste filling our landfills and being burned up in our trash incinerators. But electronics are made up primarily of components that can be recycled, and improper disposing can lead to pollution of air and water.

Unfortunately, as of the EPA’s latest analysis, more than 80% of electronics are trashed rather than recycled. Compounding the problem is this: Some supposed recyclers have been shown to be fraudulent. Instead of stripping down computers and phones to their constituent parts for reuse, they were dumping much of the waste in third-world nations, where the poor were left to pick through for valuable bits, exposing themselves to toxic pollution in the process.

Read it all here.

Pull Weeds. Don’t Pollute

Opt for homemade weed killers, like your own fingers, before resorting to chemical pesticides.

As spring gives way to summer, so the excitement of planting a new garden and tidying the yard gives way to the drudgery of maintenance. Put more simply: Weed season is upon us.

Many homeowners resort to the use of lawn and garden pesticides to attack weeds, but there are better ways. Insect and weed killers can kill beneficial plants and insects, harm overall soil health and run off into nearby streams, or seep into groundwater supplies. Once used, pesticides can linger for years. Pesticides are typically made from petroleum-based chemicals.

Read it all here.