Tips for How to Live and Die Green on a Budget

There are many ways to "green up" your lifestyle and sometimes the most simple things can have a huge impact. If you can't afford solar panels, windmills, and electric cars there are many other simple ways that you can contribute to a green lifestyle, while you are here, and after you are gone. Keeping our minds focused on our carbon footprint as we go about our day and move around the earth can help us to reduce our impact by making small everyday changes.

Some things you can do daily to start living more green are: Not making as much paper waste, try to reduce the amount of paper items you use and recycle what you can of the paper waste you do produce. Try to use washable dishes where possible.

Take a couple of natural fabric bags to the store to carry your purchases in, avoid walking out of any store with a single plastic bag if possible. You can usually find these cloth grocery bags for sale at most major grocery stores and supermarkets for a dollar or two each.

Create rain barrels to reduce your water consumption. Recycled plastic barrels are available pretty cheap at some home stores and make a great way to water the yard or even flush your toilets using water freely available and otherwise largely wasted. Just place the rain barrels at your rain gutter down spouts and cut the spouts to just above the barrel, then put a screen over the opening in the barrel small enough to keep mosquitoes out, and direct the rain spout at the opening. Insert a spout at the bottom to hook a garden hose to, and you will be saving a fortune on your water bill while keeping a lovely yard or garden. This also helps to prevent toxic runoff during heavy rains.

Use non toxic cleaners in your home and office. There are a variety of commercial cleaners available that are safe for the environment and non toxic to us, but a great cleaner for a lot of different applications is plain old vinegar and water. A solution of white vinegar and water in a spray bottle works wonders for cleaning up messes. It actually kills harmful bacteria as it cleans and deodorizes. The strength of the mixture is up to you but I wouldn't advise making it too strong or you will have a hard time using it.

One way to save water in your house if you don't have low flow toilets, is to place a brick in the toilet tanks where the water is stored for flushing. This will take up a little room in the tank displacing some of the water and letting you flush with less water than normal. This shouldn't affect the function of the toilets unless they already have small tank capacities.

Change all shower heads to low flow heads and all light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs, this can have a big impact on your monthly bills as well as the environment. CFL light bulbs can save you hundreds per year on your electric bill alone and last up to 10+ times longer than conventional incandescent bulbs.

Living green is something we should all try our best to do but have you ever thought about dying green? What happens to us after death can have a huge impact on the environment. Here are a few things most people don't know about dying and what we can do to "green it up".

Traditional embalming and burial of a body is horrible for the earth. We shoot our dead full of formaldehyde and alcohol, put them inside a heavy wood or steel box, then stick it in the ground inside a concrete vault. The ground is full of chemical treated wood, metal, concrete, and formaldehyde that will never nurture it. Every year we are sticking more and more of these materials in the ground. You may not know it but when a body is embalmed, all of the excess embalming fluid drains from the table, into the sewer, and into our water resources, ouch.

Cremation is a better option than a traditional burial but what is the impact of cremation on the earth? Well, we aren't sticking anything in the earth so that's good, but when we cremate a body, we release a ton of Co2 into the atmosphere and use enough energy to power a car for over 4000 miles.

So if the traditional way is hurting the earth what can we do to make our deaths easy on the earth? There are now a few funeral homes around the country that specialize in green burials. They do not use any embalming fluid, instead they keep the body refrigerated. They have a viewing just like any other service but the difference is that they put you in an earth friendly pine box, or wicker casket that will completely biodegrade without any harmful chemicals leaching into the soil.

When it comes time for burial, they take the body out to a hand dug grave site, no machinery used, and simply put it in the ground and cover it up after the burial service. The families often join in on the shoveling of dirt. There are no grave stones littering up the landscape, you visit your loved ones via a GPS unit programmed with your loved one's coordinates. They can even program the computer to greet you in your loved ones voice if you like.

Can you think of any thing better we can do for our planet than responsibly disposing of our remains, when we die, in a way that feeds the earth? Another big advantage to a green burial is that it is much cheaper than traditional services because you don't have to pay for all the chemicals, metals, concrete, stone, and machinery used in the process.

If we all make a few green choices every day and gradually work it into our lifestyles, and beyond, we will be having a huge positive impact on the planet and the world.