The biggest benefit of buying in bulk is that it leads to less waste in terms of packaging. Products that are individually packed often use up more plastic, carton, and ink than products that are crammed into one large container. This is true whether you buy detergent, milk, or toys.

Another benefit of buying in bulk has nothing to do with the environment, but is something any penny-pinching housewife will appreciate – savings. Companies usually price super-sized products a bit lower than small packets to encourage consumers to buy more. While the difference in price is not that big, those pennies will eventually add up to a significant amount.

Here are some tips for buying in bulk to ensure that nothing is wasted:

• Buy products in bulk only when you also consume them in bulk. Examples of ideal products to buy in bulk include toilet paper, shampoo, milk, biscuits, detergent, and anything that you use on a daily basis. Here’s a good list of some items you might want to buy in bulk.
• Check the expiration date. If you won’t be able to consume the product before the expiration date, then don’t buy in bulk. The last thing we want is to encourage a throw away culture.
• Do away with plastic bags and paper bags. Some products bought in bulk come with handles in their packaging (i.e. disposable diapers and toilet paper). Reduce waste further by not having them bagged.
• Do not buy non-consumables in bulk because they will just end up stocked in the house for a long time.
• Stay within your budget. As much as we want to help the environment, we also know that most families have budgets they need to work with. Exercise financial restraint when bulk buying, stocking up on the most needed items and putting off unnecessary purchases.

To start off, hopefully you would have used the pumpkin “pulp” to make a pumpkin pie, curry, fry, soup or whatever you fancy. And now that Jack has done his job adding a festive spooky atmosphere in our homes, he can still do more good in our garden.

According to our friends at Earth 911, there are more than enough reasons:

” Every year, one billion pounds of pumpkins are produced in the United States alone, including at least 100 million pounds in every state. Unlike many other aspects of your Halloween experience, pumpkins don’t come in difficult to recycle packaging, which should make proper disposal a no-brainer.

….Pumpkin seeds themselves are a strong source of nutrients, including zinc, iron and phosphorus. These are all great additions to a compost pile, assuming you don’t want to absorb these nutrients yourself in a pumpkin soup or pumpkin pie. So now that you know why to compost, let’s discuss how you do it.

Compost piles rely on a mix of nitrogen-rich greens (which will include pumpkin components) and browns (leaves, paper and other carbon-rich materials). So, Halloween is the perfect time to compost because you’ll have a bunch of leaves falling before winter that need to be raked anyway.

What you’ll be left with after the bacteria take over is a nutrient-rich fertilizer substitute for your garden. You’ll also get two stages of pumpkin compost, first when you gut it to create a jack-o-lantern and again when you smash up the shell in November.

The last benefit to composting pumpkins is that the product you’re creating is ideal for growing your own pumpkins. Lots of communities have pumpkin growing contests in October, so you might as well have an advantage based on what you’re growing with.”

If you’re somewhat intimidated by composting and have never tried it before, the 911 people have you covered, with the best resources on composting on the net. Click here and start composting today!

A Waterless Composting Toilet

Delicious organic produce for lunch, soft sustainable cotton in our bed sheets, color coordinated recycling bins in the garage – going green seems to be all lovely jubbly, until we get to the place that decidedly is not – the toilet.

I recently read an article in the UK Guardian on this, under Ethical Dilemmas. The facts are ugly indeed and are a real dilemma we should be aware of:

” …4,000 litres of water to wash away the 13 gallons of faeces and 130 gallons of urine we each produce annually (plus, huge amounts of energy are required to run sewage works)…

Each year more than 200m tonnes of human waste and vast quantities of waste water and solid waste go untreated around the world….”

It also rightly points out that ours is a “flush and forget” society, which is bad enough as it is, but whats worse is that 41% percent of the worlds population have no access to sanitation at all. And all this waste, which when not disposed of properly has some pretty devastating effects, affecting the health of millions in the developing world, mostly children.

So what can be done? Well, at the very least, you should have one of those toilets that uses the least amount of water possible, with a dual-flush system. Teaching members of your household to flush only when absolutely necessary is also good and easy to execute (for instance, with children and #1, to just please shut the lid, # 2 may be flushed).

More drastic measures are as follows:

Buy an Eco Toilet: The interesting-looking toilet in the photo above, is a composting toilet from Envirolet which basically turns your waste into useful compost!

Building an Eco-Toilet For Outdoors: If the above product inside your home is just a bit too advanced (and costly) for a beginner greenie like yourself, you could attempt to purchase a kit to build one in your garden or yard. Ecovit has an aptly-named “Privy Kit” which converts any outdoor toilet into a modern urine-separating toilet for only about $100.

Hire A Green Plumbing Company – These people help with finding green solutions for home and commercial waste requirements. Companies who provide this service can also help with the right fixtures, pipes and heaters which save water, energy and promote better sanitation. Try Green Plumbing USA or Green Plumbers in Australia.

Welcome to Yurto, the blog about eco-friendly living in the home. Inspired by the yurt, an ancient circular dwelling place built in tune with nature, we hope to explore the ways we can all make a change for the better in the world that we live in – beginning from our homes.

Why is it so important to go green? Al Gore, who woke up the world with his now-famous documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, puts it succinctly:

“…Some of the leading scientists are now saying we may have as little as 10 years before we cross a kind of point of no return, beyond which it’s much more difficult to save the habitability of the planet in the future…”

10 years??? Now that’s a scary thought.  If you have children like me, that’s enough reason to stop procrastinating and do something about NOW.

So from plastic to canvas, wasting to conserving,  lets find ways to care for the earth while we can and live healthier, happier lives.