The Green Life

Things To Do This Weekend

Thursday: Enjoy your organic turkey, tofurkey, or other ecofriendly holiday meal while watching the carbon-neutral Lions-Packers game.

Friday: Avoid the hordes--stay home and buy nothing.

Saturday: Tune in to Sierra Club Radio for interviews with columnist Paul Krugman, global-warming leader Fran Pavley, and Cindy Kang of Green Corps, plus a political update from Carl Pope and some tips for heating water efficiently.

Sunday: Veg out. It's good for the environment!

Monday: Check back here for a gander at Sierra's green-gift guide. Yep, it's that time of year again.

Fuel for the Fire

As Halloween approaches, people in nippier parts of the country might be thinking about curling up in front of the fireplace. On this week's Sierra Club Radio show, we discuss greener ways to light your fire, including:

• looking for artificial fireplace logs made of wood only and avoiding those that contain paraffin, a petroleum-based byproduct with dubious emissions quality (an easier task now that Duraflame has switched to non-petroleum waxes); and
• checking out cool ecofriendly alternatives like logs made of recycled cardboard boxes, recycled-paper briquettes, or logs made from used coffee grounds.

Although they're cleaner than they were 20 years ago, wood stoves can cause dangerous microparticulate pollution too. Before burning wood, check to see if the particulate level is high in your area by visiting airnow.gov.

Insulating Made Easy

We've got a nice sunny weekend predicted for San Francisco, but in many parts of the country, people are starting to think about getting ready for winter. If you listened to Sierra Club Radio today, you know that adding insulation and improving the air sealing in your home are two key ways to improve energy efficiency year-round and minimize heating costs in the winter.

Not sure where to start? Cruise over to the Department of Energy's website for some good DIY ways to detect air leaks in your home and tips for hiring a pro to do a more thorough energy audit. (The agency's guides to caulking and weather-stripping are heck of useful too.)

Once you know what some of the problem areas are, check out Sierra's July/August 2007 article "Remodeling Right" for simple, sophisticated, and "whole hog" ways to get your home in tip-top shape.

On the Air

Tune into Sierra Club Radio on Saturday for the scoop on plug-in hybrid cars and this weekend's big marches to stop global warming, plus some tips from me on remodeling green. For more on that last subject, check out "Remodeling Right" in the July/August issue of Sierra.

A Tip a Day...

...keeps global warming at bay. (And other environmental problems too!)

Want to start living a lower-impact, higher-quality lifestyle? Not sure where to begin? Sign up for our new Green Life newsletter and receive an easy tip every day about a small change that can make a big difference. Simple steps like replacing conventional lightbulbs with more efficient ones, keeping your car tires properly inflated, or adjusting your thermostat a degree or two can save you money, reduce waste, and help save the planet. Don't delay, sign up today!

Welcome!

"The Green Life" was launched in the November/December 2005 issue of Sierra magazine as a place to showcase trendsetting people, cool products, and empowering ideas. Quickly we saw that there was too much happening, too fast, to limit our coverage to a few bimonthly pages, and thus this blog was born.

When we devoted our January/February 2005 issue to the burgeoning green-lifestyle movement, we saw there was a huge interest in earth-friendly options for living well. What we wear, where we live, how we get around, and how we spend our money affects not only our own quality of life, but the quality of our environment. Fortunately, style and sustainability increasingly go hand in hand, reaffirming our belief that the best things in life truly are green.

What's your favorite green product? What ideas have made your life a little easier and the Earth a little happier? Share your rants, raves, tips, and questions with other readers and us.

--Jennifer Hattam, editor