Green Guide

National Geographic has launched a Green Guide, which provides various tips on how to be environmentally conscious. Whether you are building a new home or renovating a current one, there are buying guides to help you make more eco-friendly decisions about certain materials. Or if you have children going back to school, there is a feature on how to keep the classroom pollution free. Maybe you already know ways to be green, so test your knowledge by completing a quiz on saving gas or seasonal foods. If you are not sure how to deal with plastic and household cleaners, ask a question or see if it has already been answered in the Just Ask section of the guide. Go to thegreenguide.com.

Vegetarian Recipes

Eating a vegetarian or vegan diet at least a couple times during the week can lessen your impact on the environment. VegWeb.com has easy to follow recipes for all of your favorite dishes like General Tso’s Tofu, Cheesy Lasagna and Vegan Fried Chicken. According to Vegan Outreach, livestock in factory farms cause 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Also large amounts of water are used to feed and wash the livestock, and the animals’ waste causes nitrate polluted runoff. Eating a vegetarian or vegan diet doesn’t mean that you have to abstain from chocolate cake or chicken dumplings, because there are non-dairy and meatless recipes for those too. See VegWeb.com.

Recycle Gift Cards

Do you have a pocketbook full of half used or empty gift cards? While they make excellent gifts for birthdays, holidays and various other occasions, they either become forgotten or they clutter your wallet. It’s common to throw these plastic cards in the trash, but Earthworks has created a way for people to recycle them. Because this plastic has been tossed in the garbage, Earthworks says more than 75 million pounds of PVC material from plastic gift cards gets into our waste stream annually. If you have old student ID cards, driver’s licenses, credit cards and gift cards, contact the company to get recycling information. After you have done your part to recycle, the next time you purchase a gift card, ask the manufacturer if they offer the Earthworks earth-friendly alternative, which is a reused PVC plastic card. See earthworkssystem.com.

Green Holidays

When it comes to holidays, there is always planning and preparing that needs to be done. However, if you host greener holiday celebrations, you can make your job easier and less expensive. Green Halloween is a non-profit organization that has a site in development, but it’s a terrific source for parents, children and schools.

You can learn how to host an eco-friendly Halloween party that includes treats, games and prizes. There are also money saving do-it-yourself green ideas like creating your own costume and printing out party games from your computer. Even schools can become greener by taking advice from Eco-Schools and the Teensygreen blog, which are a couple of the links provided in the school section. See greenhalloween.org.