3 of the Best Ways for Retailers to Go Green

As sent in by Sachin

Retailers that do adopt practice with a commitment to sustainability not
only please and attract customers they also tend to benefit from monetary
savings and increased efficiency. There are many great ways that retailers can
become green and here we look at three of these.

As much as anyone else, retailers should realise the importance of ‘going green’ and taking steps to minimise the environmental impact of their business. There are many reasons for this but, first and foremost, a significant number of customers expect and even demand that the businesses with which they engage maintain a commitment to sustainability and environmental protection.

A green attitude is a fundamental aspect of the lifestyle of many people. Shoppers value businesses that have a parallel approach and make purposeful choices about who they will and will not do business with, based on the ways that they manage their environmental responsibilities.
Retailers that do adopt practice with a commitment to sustainability not only please and attract customers, they also tend to benefit from monetary savings and increased efficiency. There are many great ways that retailers can become green and here we look at three of these.

#1: Shopping bags
The promotional bags that are provided by retailers are one of the most obvious and significant ways they can demonstrate their dedicated commitment to the environment. Reusable shopping bags are of course popular and promotional bags offer an effective way for a business to market itself and increase its market share.
The retail bags that are provided can also be stylish and attractive to customers. Many retailers provide bags featuring contemporary designs and the opportunity to prominently feature business details. Green bags are a great alternative when it comes to shopping bags and are selected by many retailers because of their potential for recycling, strength and appearance.
Even when a business opts to use plastic bags, it is possible to use biodegradable plastic bags that have a reduced environmental impact without sacrificing quality and the extent to which the bag is fit for purpose.

#2: Recycle, reduce and reuse
There are many resources and ways that retailers can recycle, reduce and reuse items. These include:

• Reuse of the packaging that comes into the business, such as cardboard boxes
• Commit to the use of double-sided printing whenever possible
• Ensure that items such as: ink cartridges, paper, plastic and aluminium are recycled
• Use digital technology to complete many business processes, such as: invoicing, ordering, banking and paying bills
• Use Energy Star rated equipment, such as: computers and printers. Energy Star rated pieces of equipment are considerably more Eco-friendly and energy efficient.
• Use cleaning products that are environmentally friendly.

#3: Market yourself as ‘green’
With a genuine commitment to environmental protection and sustainability, retailers should ensure that their approach is successfully communicated to actual and potential customers. Retailers need to be upfront and show that they are in fact proud of the environmentally and socially responsible choices that they make.
A ‘green’ commitment is tremendously important for retailers and business owners of all descriptions. Primarily through the packaging and shopping bags that are provided, retailers have a great opportunity to demonstrate their environmental commitment and sustainable practice.
Retailers that do ‘go green’ frequently attract new customers and retain existing ones because customers expect and even demand that retailers will adopt environmentally responsible practices and operate with sustainability as a definite priority.

SOURCE:
Pinoy Academy
http://pinoygreenacademy.typepad.com/

Organic Foods: More Than Just Health Benefits

 If you are a little health conscious, then you might be aware of the health benefits of organic food. With the declining quality of food and people becoming more conscious about their health, organic food is gaining more attention and popularity. However, when some kind of organic foods are mainly beneficial for your health, there are numerous others that render many other benefits other than health benefits. If you still have any doubts about organic food, then just keep reading to know what you are missing without organic food.

Keeps away from chemicals

Apart from the fact, that organic food consists of more nutrients and that it provides you with more energy and keeps you away from diseases, there are some other benefits that you might not see on the surface, as these are hidden. If you dig down into the benefits that organic food provides, then you will come across many such facts that are beneficial in their own unique way. If you consume organic food, then you will not only keep yourself away from pesticides, and harsh chemicals, but will also help in keeping the environment healthy as well. In organic farming no chemicals are used for farming and farmers use natural fertilizers only.

Healthier plants and animals

Organic plants or food thrives because these are stronger due to the use of organic fertilizers. Not only the plants gain from organic practices but animals also gain a lot from such practices. When it comes to farm animals, they are fed with only organic feed, so you can be sure about the quality of the milk or meat that you get from animals reared as per the organic standards. There will not be any problem such as dying sea, sick birds, or even infertile wildlife due to harmful chemical exposure.

Get healthier environment and improved economy

Organic food renders many other benefits for the environment that include elimination of topsoil erosion, nutrient depletion, pollution, scarred landmark, etc. This is not all, as organic farming that brings organic food to you also helps in supporting your local economy. If you purchase more organic food, then this will help the farmers and also helps in growth of organic farming. Consuming organic food also keeps your family healthy. This is because traditional food practices have been associated with many birth defects such as childhood leukemia, learning disorder, nervous system disorder and autism, and even ADHD. Therefore, by switching towards organic food you can keep your family healthy and happy.

Organic food surpass non-organic food

One of the other benefits of organic food is that, it excludes genetically modified organisms, which are food that comes with a genetically modified structure. If you delve deep into the facts, then you will find out about the glaring deficits of such kind of food. If you weigh the benefits health and other benefits of organic food, then you will surely find out the benefits from organic food outweighs the doubtful goodness of food that are non-organic.

If you are concerned about the cost of organic food, then you should compare the cost of organic food to the cost that you will save on health, because if you stay healthy you can save health care costs, making organic food even more beneficial.

Source:

Organic Foods:  More Than Just Health Benefits 

http://organichealthadviser.com

HOW TO MAKE HAIR ORGANIC PRODUCTS

If you've ever wondered how to make organic hair products, this article is for you. Buying organic hair care products can prove quite a challenge. Understanding the labels and deciphering the difference between organic and natural makes the process of buying organic hair products a complicated activity! An alternative to buying organic hair care products is to make your own. It is possible to make conditioners, cleansing rinses and even hair sprays using only natural, certified organic ingredients.

 Benefits of Making Your Own Hair Products

The benefits of making your own hair products are many. It means that people looking to lead an organic lifestyle can use products they know are truly organic and meet their own requirements. It is possible to keep developing hair care recipes to meet your needs. As the ingredients are all readily available and the products easy to prepare, every member of the household can have their own special organic hair care program.

As no chemicals have been used to make the products, homemade hair care will be kind to your hair and skin, and to the environment. There are no fears of introducing chemically derived products such as  Sodium Lauryl Sulphate to the hair and skin. Such chemicals are reported to cause skin irritation and many people try to avoid them.

Ingredients Use in Homemade Organic Hair Product

No special ingredients are required to make your own organic hair products. Many of the items can be found in your store cupboard right now! Eggs, honey, cider vinegar and olive oil not only make a wonderful salad dressing, but also are great for use on hair to give you smooth, silky locks.
The most important thing to remember is that the better quality the ingredients, the better the end result will be. Therefore use the freshest of ingredients wherever possible. The benefit of using certified organic ingredients is that you have the reassurance that the ingredients you are using have been grown without the use of harmful chemicals or chemically derived substances.
Some of the most common ingredients used in homemade hair products are:

• Eggs
• Yogurt
• Fruit 
• Avocado
• Honey Coconut Oil
• Cider Vinegar
• Chamomile
• Oils

These organic products are readily available from regular grocery stores and organic markets. 


How to  Make Hair Organic Products


If you are wondering how to make organic hair products, there are many excellent books and websites dedicated to natural hair products. These provide a good source of recipes and information about using natural products to help care for your hair.


In general, the ingredients are mixed together and then applied to the hair and scalp. As there are no chemicals that have been added to speed the process along, better results are reported after leaving the ingredients on the hair for a couple of hours before rinsing well. This depends, of course, on the type of recipe or treatment.
As homemade hair care is completely natural, it also contains no preservatives. Therefore new mixes should be made each time, and any leftovers refrigerated in an airtight container.


A note on Organic Shampoo 


Shampoo is a difficult subject for the organic shopper. The whole process of making any form of soap is a chemical one and shampoo is no exception. Many handmade shampoo recipes call for the use of a soap base. Natural ingredients are added to this base to make a shampoo. For instance nettle and lemon might be added to make a deep-cleansing shampoo.
It is up to us all, as individuals, to determine our own personal standards and requirements when it comes to the use of shampoo and other soap products within an organic lifestyle.

Tips for Making Your Own Hair Cares

 

• Keep a note of what works well and what doesn't, amending and developing your favorite recipes over time.
• Buy the best organic ingredients available.
• Remember good hair care is influenced by what goes in the body as well as what goes on the hair, so a good diet will help promote healthy hair. 

Source:
How to make hair organic products?
http://organic.lovetoknow.com

How to Make Organic House Cleaning Products

Many people want to know how to make organic house cleaning products. Using organic and natural products to clean your home means you aren't spreading chemicals around--making it safer for you, your family and the planet.

The Basics of How to Make Organic House Cleaning Products 

If you are looking for ways to bring more natural products into your cleaning routine, there are a few basics you will want to have on hand at all times. All of the following items should be available at your local organic grocery store:

• Baking Soda.This baking basic is a powerhouse of cleaning and deodorizing. It can be used in homemade cleaning solutions, as a paste or sprinkled directly on a surface.
• Borax: A naturally occurring compound made of boron, sodium, oxygen and water, borax is a great cleaner, especially for laundry.
• Cornstarch: Great for cleaning carpets and rugs, cornstarch can also be used in place of baby powder.
• Lemon juice: A natural whitener, lemon juice can also remove grease and other stains, especially on aluminum and porcelain.
• Salt: Abrasive but gentle, salt is great for scouring.
• Washing soda: This is different from baking soda and is a good choice for general cleaning, cutting grease and disinfecting. You can find it on the laundry aisle, but it may not be an organic product.
• White vinegar: Another great general-purpose cleaner, white vinegar is good for removing mildew, grease and other stains. It is also a great choice for washing windows and making metal surfaces shiny. 

Organic House Cleaning Recipes

You can also use three tablespoons of washing soda in a quart of water as a general purpose cleaner. Washing soda may also be used in place of regular laundry detergent.

To boost your laundry with borax, add half a cup of borax along with your organic laundry detergent to each load of laundry.

Organic furniture polish is made by combining three parts olive oil with one part vinegar or lemon juice. Just wipe on with a soft cloth.

A combination of two tablespoons cornstarch, a cup of white vinegar and a gallon of water is a good choice for washing windows. To get even more natural bang for your buck, use your newspaper to wash down the windows. This helps eliminate streaking and saves you from having to buy paper towels.

A cup of white vinegar in a gallon of water is also a good way to clean linoleum floors. Add a quarter cup of baking soda for an even more powerful cleaner. A cup of vinegar microwaved for a minute or two will also loosen up any cooked-on food and make the microwave easy to clean.

Salt is a great way to deal with stains and spills in the oven or the sink, and a combination of baking soda and borax is a great sink cleaner that won't scratch porcelain.You can also make a cleanser out of two ounces of borax and two cups of water to wash walls and other dirty surfaces.

Cleaning With Organic Products

Now that you know how to make organic house cleaning products, it is important to note that while all of these are great alternatives to the chemical-laden products you can buy at the store, none of them work as quickly as those chemicals.

Patience is necessary for seeing the best results with these cleaning products. You might need to put in a little more elbow grease or let things soak a longer period of time than you might be used to, but it is well worth the effort to get conventional cleaning products out of your house.

 

GOING GREEN: THE BENEFITS OF USING ORGANIC SKIN PRODUCTS

Nowadays, most people are making the transition from being predominantly synthetic to going completely green. From the kind of cars we drive, to the clothes we wear, to the foods that we eat, everything is moving towards a natural state of being. It’s no different in the area of skin products. We can see this in the immense popularity of organic skin products that compete alongside the more well-known department store bought skin care products. But are these products just about going green for the environment or are there other benefits as well?

Organic skin products are extremely friendly for the environment. And unlike their synthetic made counterparts, organic skin products disintegrate well after they are discarded. They can be used freely without the fear of them reaching dangerous toxicity levels.

Organic skin products are totally natural. They contain plant herbs, and sometimes animal products. But these are completely non-synthetic, which means more people can use them for their skin treatments without fear of breaking into allergies or rashes. Also, these are all-weather, all-region skin care products which means you can use them anywhere – from a tropical Asian beach to a freezing Arctic tundra!

Organic skin products are relatively cheap. Most of them, with a few expensive exceptions, are quite cheap and can be even made at home provided you have a good guidebook on making organic skin products. In any case, organic skin product lines offer you more value for money.

Organic skin products are easily available too. Your neighborhood store may keep stock of them, or you could just simply order them online. There are numerous organic skin product companies that advertise and maintain online presence through individual websites. And its better too, because you can get the full range of products of a particular company if having tried one that you really like. And most organic skin care product companies will deliver their products to your doorstep. It’s the commercially made cosmetic product brands that don’t normally offer this kind of service.

Using organic skin products is like going back to the basics. Getting these kinds of products to take care of your skin is one of the best decisions you’ll ever make. It’s good for you and good for the environment. In this age of environmental depletion, buying organic skin products and going green for Mother Earth is one of the best ways we can pay her back.

Source: 

Going Green: The Benefits of Using Organic Skin Products

http://skinbeautyreview.com

WHY SHOULD YOU MAINTAIN AN ORGANIC LIFESTYLE?

maintaining a healthy lifestyle is a change many people have brought upon their lives, this movement towards living an organic and a healthier life has been progressively increasing due to the positive life changing rewards it offers. These rewards are along the lines of improving your health, feeling more energized, and above all you will feel and look young again.

By eating organically the food you will be in taking will have a much better nutritional value than normal food. This means that the food it self will have more vitamins that your body needs and less of what your body doesn’t need. Therefore your body receives the best possible nutritional value out of the food being consumed, which in return it makes you feel more energized, healthier, and younger. Other than the fact that organic food is healthier than normal food, it’s also been medically proven that it decreases the risk of getting sick.

 Eating organically is a key component for an organic lifestyle but there is a lot more to it, such as replacing bad habits for better one’s. One of the bad habits many people practice is smoking, no matter what positive short term affects it may have the long term affects easily out weight the short term one’s and causes severe damage. For example cancer, heart disease, lung infection, damage to reproductive organs, negative impact on blood circulation and respiratory diseases that can all cause death. All these diseases are in no way equated with a few minutes of relaxation. Even though quitting smoking is said to be harder to do than heroin and more addictive than heroin, it’s not impossible to do, it may be hard such as many things in life but it’s not impossible. Therefore I highly suggest for anyone that does smoke quite often to try and stop or if you feel that it’s not in your hands to stop then get help as soon as possible for your own sake, so you can live better, healthier and maintain an organic lifestyle.

 After reading this if you are interested to take initiative and to change your future for a more organic lifestyle then come aboard and join this movement.  A key start point once you make this decision is run a quick scan through your refrigerator and gets rid of all the “junk” food. By this I mean get rid of all the food that has no nutritional value or does more negative than positive. Then go shopping for alternatives to the food you normally eat but make sure it has an organic certification. Once you did so you have taken the first step to better your self and you future. I would like to congratulate you on your decision and tell you that you will not regret this change.

Why Should You Maintain an Organic Lifestyle?

Organically living and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is a change many people have brought upon their lives, this movement towards living an organic and a healthier life has been progressively increasing due to the positive life changing rewards it offers. These rewards are along the lines of improving your health, feeling more energized, and above all you will feel and look young again.

By eating organically the food you will be in taking will have a much better nutritional value than normal food. This means that the food it self will have more vitamins that your body needs and less of what your body doesn’t need. Therefore your body receives the best possible nutritional value out of the food being consumed, which in return it makes you feel more energized, healthier, and younger. Other than the fact that organic food is healthier than normal food, it’s also been medically proven that it decreases the risk of getting sick.

Eating organically is a key component for an organic lifestyle but there is a lot more to it, such as replacing bad habits for better one’s. One of the bad habits many people practice is smoking, no matter what positive short term affects it may have the long term affects easily out weight the short term one’s and causes severe damage. For example cancer, heart disease, lung infection, damage to reproductive organs, negative impact on blood circulation and respiratory diseases that can all cause death. All these diseases are in no way equated with a few minutes of relaxation. Even though quitting smoking is said to be harder to do than heroin and more addictive than heroin, it’s not impossible to do, it may be hard such as many things in life but it’s not impossible. Therefore I highly suggest for anyone that does smoke quite often to try and stop or if you feel that it’s not in your hands to stop then get help as soon as possible for your own sake, so you can live better, healthier and maintain an organic lifestyle.

Source:

Why Should Maintain Organic Lifestyle

http://www.yesorganicfood.com

WHY GO ORGANIC?

FIVE WAYS TO GO ORGANIC

Switching to organic is tough for many families who don’t want to pay higher prices or give up their favorite foods. But by choosing organic versions of just a few foods that you eat often, you can increase the percentage of organic food in your diet without big changes to your shopping cart or your spending.

The key is to be strategic in your organic purchases. Opting for organic produce, for instance, doesn’t necessarily have a big impact, depending on what you eat. According to the Environmental Working Group, commercially-farmed fruits and vegetables vary in their levels of pesticide residue. Some vegetables, like broccoli, asparagus and onions, as well as foods with peels, such as avocados, bananas and oranges, have relatively low levels compared to other fruits and vegetables.

So how do you make your organic choices count? Pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene, whose new book “Raising Baby Green” explains how to raise a child in an environmentally-friendly way, has identified a few “strategic” organic foods that he says can make the biggest impact on the family diet. 

1. Milk: “When you choose a glass of conventional milk, you are buying into a whole chemical system of agriculture,” says Dr. Greene. People who switch to organic milk typically do so because they are concerned about the antibiotics, artificial hormones and pesticides used in the commercial dairy industry. One recent United States Department of Agriculture survey found certain pesticides in about 30 percent of conventional milk samples and low levels in only one organic sample. The level is relatively low compared to some other foods, but many kids consume milk in large quantities.

2. Potatoes: Potatoes are a staple of the American diet — one survey found they account for 30 percent of our overall vegetable consumption. A simple switch to organic potatoes has the potential to have a big impact because commercially-farmed potatoes are some of the most pesticide-contaminated vegetables. A 2006 U.S.D.A. test found 81 percent of potatoes tested still contained pesticides after being washed and peeled, and the potato has one of the the highest pesticide contents of 43 fruits and vegetables tested, according to the Environmental Working Group.

3. Peanut butter: More acres are devoted to growing peanuts than any other fruits, vegetable or nut, according to the U.S.D.A. More than 99 percent of peanut farms use conventional farming practices, including the use of fungicide to treat mold, a common problem in peanut crops. Given that some kids eat peanut butter almost every day, this seems like a simple and practical switch. Commercial food firms now offer organic brands in the regular grocery store, but my daughter loves to go to the health food store and grind her own peanut butter.

4. Ketchup: For some families, ketchup accounts for a large part of the household vegetable intake. About 75 percent of tomato consumption is in the form of processed tomatoes, including juice, tomato paste and ketchup. Notably, recent research has shown organic ketchup has about double the antioxidants of conventional ketchup.

 

5. Apples: Apples are the second most commonly eaten fresh fruit, after bananas, and they are also used in the second most popular juice, after oranges, according to Dr. Greene. But apples are also one of the most pesticide-contaminated fruits and vegetables. The good news is that organic apples are easy to find in regular grocery stores.

SOURCE:

Five Ways to Go Organic

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com