Tips for Reducing Food Waste # 2

Don't ever shop from memory. This results in buying too much of one thing and not enough of another - and waste sometimes occurs. So, make a shopping list before you go to shop.
Let's shop and keep green ^^

Earth Facts # 1

In September of 1998, reported the hole in the ozone over Antarctica had reached record proportions: 10 million square miles, roughly three times the size of Australia.

Pheww, wondering how large is it now -_-

Tips for Reducing Food Waste

Fridges tend to hide a lot of food. It gets pushed to the back and forgotten until such time that the fridge is cleaned or an awful smell starts emanating from it. Check your fridge weekly and bring foods that will expire soon to the front (can be called “stock rotation”) to encourage family members to eat it, or use as ingridients in the next meal you cook.

Ant Deterrent

Pouring lemon juice around areas that ants frequent is said to repel them.

Let's GO GREEN, Everyone !! ^^

Uses of Lemons

Lemons - a fruit with a wonderful fragrance, great in food and beverages, but also very handy for multiple purposes around the home. Lemons are high in vitamin C, have an anti-bacterial effect and are thought to posess antioxidant and anti-carcinogenic properties. The juice consists of about 5% acid, which also makes them useful for a variety of household purposes.

Selecting and Storing Lemons
The best lemons are those that have smooth, oily skins and are heavy for their size. They should be bright yellow with no green tinges. Lemons will keep for up to a week at room temperature, two to three weeks refrigerated. Lemon zest (peel) can be frozen for months.

Juicing Lemons
To get the most juice from a lemon, it should be allowed to reach room temperature, or microwaved for a few seconds prior to juicing. Using your palm to roll the lemon on a hard surface can also help improve juice yields. If you only need a little juice, some people pierce the end with a fork, squeeze the amount needed, cover the holes with tape and then store in the fridge.

Here's a selection of handy tips.
1. Air freshener - an equal amount of lemon juice and water added to an atomizer will create a wonderful synthetic chemical-free green air freshener for your home.
2. All purpose cleaner
Again, an equal amount of lemon juice and water added to a spray bottle is an effective kitchen and bathroom cleaner.
3. Microwave
Heat a bowl of water and lemon slices in your microwave for 30 seconds to a minute; then wipe out the oven. Stains will be easier to remove and old food odors neutralized.
4. Fridge
Half a lemon stored in your fridge will help control and eliminate unpleasant smells.
5. Toilet
Mix 1/2 cup borax and a cup of lemon juice for a powerful toilet cleaner that will leave it smelling extra clean!
6. Laundry
A teaspoon of lemon juice thrown into your wash can also help your clothes to smell fresher.
7. Dishes
A teaspoon of lemon juice added to your dishwashing detergent can help boost grease cutting power
8. Glass and mirrors
4 tablespoons of lemon juice mixed with half a gallon of water makes an effective window cleaner
9. Furniture
2 parts olive oil or cooking oil mixed with 1 part lemon juice makes for an excellent furniture polish!
10. Cuts, stings and itches
A small amount of lemon juice pour onto minor wounds can help stop bleeding and disinfect the injury (it will sting a bit).
11. Hands
The smell of fish can linger on your hands, even after scrubbing with soap - rubbing your hands with lemon juice will neutralize the smell and leave your hands smelling wonderful.


Isn't it incredible how we have so many environmentally harsh cleaning chemicals in our homes when nature already offers most of what we need. Let us start to live greener from our home for a better environment.

Let’s GO GREEN everyone !!!

Greener Disinfectants

Making your own environmentally friendly disinfectant is very cheap and extremely quick to do using just eucalyptus oil and water.

Simply mix 1.6 oz of eucalyptus oil with a litre of water. Shake well before use and use as you would a store bought disinfectant.
Eucalyptus oil is a very good disinfectants material. It is usually used for sterilizing medical equipments. Do be careful when handling eucalyptus oil as it's quite potent and can cause skin irritation in it's undiluted form.

Here's another disinfectant recipe if you're not particularly fond of the smell of eucalyptus:
1 gallon warm water
20 drops grapefruit seed extract
Mix and pour in a spray bottle

LET’S TRY IT NOW !!! ^^

Why Recycle ?

Recycling is very good way of saving energy and conserving the environment. But unfortunately, we often don’t care enough about it. I found a lot of interesting facts about recycling:
• 1 recycled tin can (often used for softdrink container) would save enough energy to power a television for 3 hours.
• 1 recycled glass bottle would save enough energy to power a computer for 25 minutes.
• 70% less energy is required to recycle paper compared with making it from raw materials.
• 1 recycled plastic bottle would save enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for 3 hours.

Some other interesting facts that we need to know:
• Approximately 60% of the rubbish that ends up in the dustbin could be recycled.
• On average, 16% of the money you spend on a product pays for the packaging, which ultimately ends up as rubbish.
• As much as 50% of waste in the average dustbin could be composted.
• The largest lake in the Britain could be filled with rubbish from the UK in 8 months. How long do you think it will take to fill up the lake with rubbish from all over the world ? Hmmm.. In my opinion, 2-3 days would be enough.
• 9 out of 10 people would recycle more if it were made easier.


Above facts are really interesting to be read. It quite shocked me to know that packaging cost is about 16% of the total price of a product. I think it is too much for something that will end up in a dustbin. We should find a way to reduce the packaging cost.

Glass
• Each family uses an average of 500 glass bottles and jars annually.
• Glass is 100% recyclable and can be used again and again.
• Glass that is thrown away and ends up in landfills will never decompose.
Paper
• Recycled paper produces 73% less air pollution than if it was made from raw materials.
• 12.5 million tonnes of paper and cardboard are used annually in the UK. Have you ever imagine the amount of paper usage in the whole world ? How many trees needed to meet the demand of paper ?
• It takes 24 trees to make 1 ton of newspaper. In UK alone approximately 300 million trees are needed each year. Imagine the amount needed for the whole world.

Plastic
• 275,000 tonnes of plastic are used each year in the UK, that’s about 15 million bottles per day or 5.4 billions bottles per year.
• Most families throw away about 40kg of plastic per year, which could otherwise be recycled.
• The use of plastic in Western Europe is growing about 4% each year.
• Plastic can take up to 500 years to decompose.

May with the above facts we can realize how important recycling is. We should do whatever we can to reduce rubbish. It will make a big impact for the environment.
For example, if we could reduce paper usage for just 1 kg/person per year, it would save approximately 5.28 million tress in Indonesia alone. Another example is by reducing the usage of plastic shopping bag. We can start to bring our own shopping bag when we go to shop our daily needs. Many supermarket has already sell reusable shopping bag. Separating organic and non organic rubbish will also help the recycling process.

Many things we can do in our daily life to conserve our environment. We can always start from ourselves, even simple things can really make a big difference for the environment. Remember the “3R” of green living, which are reduce, reuse, and recycle. Let us start to care about our environment. Let us save the world we live.

Waste Decomposition Rate

Waste Decomposition Rate is described as time needed by a spesific waste to be decomposed by the environment. I found some information regarding this topic on the internet. It is a very interesting topic to be shared to everyone. It shocked me to found that glass bottles that often used in soft drink products actually need a very very very long time to be decomposed by our environment. -_-‘

Decomposition process is actually depend on environmental condition where the waste being decomposed. For example, look at the difference between how fast steel rusts (a form of decomposition) in a humid salt air environment such as the coast vs. a dry environment like a desert. For wastes buried in the landfill, the decomposition process usually takes a lot longer time than if they were exposed to the air. There is a fact that newspaper which were buried in the landfill still not fully decomposed after several years. Can you imagine ?!!??

Here's a list of common items and how long they take to be decomposed in the environment:
• Glass bottle 1 million years
• Plastic Shopping Bag 500-1000 years
• Monofilament fishing line 600 years
• Plastic beverage bottles 450 years
• Disposable diapers 450 years
• Aluminum can 80-200 years
• Boot sole 50-80 years
• Styrofoam cup 50 years
• Leather 50 years
• Tin can 50 years
• Nylon fabric 30-40 years
• Plastic film canister 20-30 years
• Cigarette filter 1-5 years
• Wool sock 1-5 years
• Plywood 1-3 years
• Waxed milk carton 3 months
• Newspaper 6 weeks
• Orange or banana peel 2-5 weeks


After some reading to the information above, let us take some time to think and make some efforts to reduce the usage of some goods that can produce wastes which are difficult to be decomposed by the environment. If we like to shop, let us think of some ideas to reduce the usage of shopping bags, for example by bringing our own shopping bag which can be used repetitively.

Researchers found that Indonesian produce waste in amount of 2.6 litre/day per person. The population amount in Indonesia is approximately 220 millions people. So everyday, the total amount of wastes produced is 572 millions litre. Where those wastes go ?? To the landfill. But how long will it takes until the landfill can no longer store more waste ?

In Indonesia itself, cigarette manufacturers sell billions of cigarette per year, which produce cigarette filter waste (which will be fully decomposed after 1-5 years). We can imagine the amount of cigarette filter waste produce in all countries every year. –_-‘

So, let us together start a new life style, that is green living life style. Modern life style doesn’t have to sacrifice the existence of our environment. We can start by doing a small and simple thing in our everyday life. At home, at the office, at school, wherever we are. We can make a big difference for our environment, for the world we live. Just remember, “everything big start small”.

LET’S GO GREEN EVERYONE !!!!!! ^o^