20 THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WWW.KANSAN.COM News WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2008
Fitness: Green your workouts
It's easy to make small changes to your lifestyle to be more green. Recycling, carpooling and buying products from local markets are only a few of the simple things you can do to be more eco-friendly. However, how green are you exercising? Follow these tips to green your workout routines.
1. BUY A REUSABLE WATER BOTTLE
If you work out four days a week, that's almost 200 plastic bottles you'll throw away every year. Cut down on the trash by buying your own bottle.
2. GREEN YOUR OUTFIT
Buy exercise clothes made of organic cotton. The material is especially nice for exercising because it is breathable and absorbent.
3. TAKE IT OUTSIDE
walking there instead of driving as a warm-up.
Instead of using a treadmill, find a trail or a park where you can run. If you must exercise in a gym, try.
Information complied from www.living.health.com
Deepa Sampat
Weekend Project: Make your home eco-fabulous
That old crooner Kermit the Frog might have to change his lyrics. It's now easy being green. Creating an eco-friendly home can be done without home-growing your own food or renovating and putting in solar panels. There are easy ways you can be earth-friendly around your house. Follow these five easy steps that MSN gives and make your home eco-fabulous.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Simple steps such as recycling beer and wine bottles and soda cans is a way to be more eco-friendly around your house. CONTRIBUTED PHO
1. Use power strips.
Using power strips helps the environment and saves you money. When you turn a light off, it is completely shut off but when you have electronic gadgets, "phantom power" comes into play. Even when turned off, the TV, VCR and computer all still use electricity. This is why the little light on your computer is still on even when your computer is shut off. Plug your electronic into power strips and turn the strip off when you're not using what's plugged into them. It makes it easier and more efficient.
2. Buy fluorescent bulbs.
These lights that look a little bit like a twisted ice cream cone turn on
instantly and shed warm light, lasting 10 times as long as regular incandescent bulbs. Fluorescent bulbs are more expensive, but use 66 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs. By replacing a 100-watt incandescent bulb with a 32-watt fluorescent bulb you can save $30 in energy costs over the life of the bulb.
3. Watch the temperature.
It may seem simple, but heating and cooling account for almost half a house's energy consumption. Keep the thermostat high in warm weather and turn it down in cold weather. Each degree below 68 degrees during colder weather saves 3 to 5 percent more heating energy. Keeping your thermostat at 78 degrees in warm weather will also save energy and money. To keep cool, shade east and west windows and delay activities such as dishwashing that generate heat until the evening. Use ceiling fans as much as possible instead of air conditioners.
4. Dam your toilet.
Americans use about 100 gallons of water per day. About one-third of that water gets flushed down the
toilet. A toilet dam stops some of the water from leaving the tank when you flush. This can cut the water used by as much as 20 percent. Although the actual toilet dam is a specialty product, a "tank bank" works in the same way. This is merely a plastic bottle with a valve that keeps some of the water in your tank from getting flushed. The idea is to save water by not allowing the tank to completely empty each time you flush. No purchase is necessary; simply use an old plastic bottle from your recycling. 5. Recycle.
This may seem like a "no duh" approach to greening your house, but some households still haven't caught on to the reduce-reuse-recycle slogan. Lawrence provides an easy way to recycle right outside of Wal-Mart. The Wal-Mart community recycling center provides places to recycle plastic, tin, aluminum, glass, newspaper, paper and cardboard. Sending plastic to a landfill increases greenhouse gasses.
— Rebekah Scaperlanda