With the world reaching a point of ecological devastation, its time to start seeking alternative methods of living. Two major areas where we could easily improve are in transportation and exercise. How many of us drive the 15 minutes to work instead of taking it as a half hour walk? Do you drive to the gym, circle the block 10 times looking for that perfect parking space, just so you can go inside a brightly lit building with music blaring and electric machines humming everywhere, just waiting to work you out? Sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it? Well, things are changing and it’s time that we changed the we think about consumption. Here’s to the upcoming surge of cycling sports, and bicycle commuting for health of body and planet. We are proud to launch www.helmetsandarmor.com, a one stop shop where you can pick up all the gear you need to take on a new lifestyle commitment, or continue to upkeep an existing one.

So greener choices are our responsibility to the world and its future inhabitants, but so is making sure you are well protected from anything the world can throw up in your way while you are trying to make it a better place to live. Helmetsandarmor.com has an incredibly well thought out inventory of helmets,  body armour,  apparel options to suit every need. Do you simply commute to work, ride to pick up groceries and enjoy a leisurely ride through the park or trails on the weekends? If so you are probably looking for a lightweight and well ventilated helmet…you most likely don’t require full face protection, but maybe you want to look into some gloves and knee/elbow pads, just to be safe… If you are more into road riding or perhaps a little bit of mountain biking, you are going to want to check out our stylish European style riding shorts and jerseys which are fully equipped with durable fabrics and extra padding, while you’re at it, top off the look with a slick skater style helmet… Into extreme downhill? Well, this is where the full face helmets and roost guards come into play…

Carrying a wide selection of gear by Bern Unlimited,  SixSixOne Protection,  Giro,  Bell Sports,  Giro,  EVS Sports and POC Sports, you’re sure to find everything you’re looking for to help you leave a lighter footprint behind. Boasting incredibly durable, rough and tumble products made from heavy duty fabrics, injection molded inserts and high density foams, replacement items are seldom needed, so you invest in a quality piece once and avoid consuming more than you need to.

At helmetsandarmor.com, we’re in tune with our audience and pride ourselves on offering quality products at competitive prices. If you have any suggestions on items you might like to see in our store, or some feedback on items you’ve already been in contact with, we encourage your comments.

Stay Green and Healthy, get outside and play.

The bin is very basically a box with a lid on it where the lower section of the front of the box is hinged so you can dig compost out from the bottom. If you know anyone with grass eating animals, and chickens, a good way to add to your compost pile in levels is chicken waste and waste from grass eating animals. When you rake your yard of leaves, put the leaves in the bin too. Don’t put big branches in there because they won’t decompose fast enough. Add all of your food waste as you make it. Make sure the pieces are small so they can break down faster and don’t put grease in your compost pile.

You will do your compost pile a world of good if you purchase some work castings to put into the pile once it has begun to grow. In order for the items in the bin to decompose it will need to stay wet, don’t let your compost pile dry out. When you’re ready for compost remove it from the bottom and spread it around your plants. This is a wonderfully green way to fertilize your garden and also keep garbage from heading into the land fills.

This area is located in the North Pacific Gyre which is a clockwise swirl of currents that houses little more than phytoplankton and our garbage. In fact there is so much trash that it is estimated that there is six times more trash than there is plankton.  It is estimated that over twenty billion pounds of plastic trash finds its way from our hands to the ocean each and every year. Plastics are horrible for the ocean because they are toxic, they don’t biodegrade.

They break into smaller pieces that may disperse over a wide area, clogging gills of fish and other filter type feeders. Aquatic birds tend to ingest them and turtles who love the taste of jellyfish end up ingesting plastic bags as well. The ocean only looks big, even the vastness of the ocean can’t swallow up our garbage without a trace. Recycling these items saves the animals of the ocean and keeps it healthy for generations to come.

Some places like Goodwill may take the glasses but they in all likelihood have more glasses than they know what to do with already and are not all that terribly interested in taking yours. So now what do you do? One thing that most people never consider is the different charity clubs such as Lions and Rotary.

Lions Club International has a program specifically for recycling old prescription glasses for children and adults alike. They work in partnership with readingglasses.com in order to distribute the glasses throughout the world. If you have a lot of old glasses, and the lenses are in good shape, these are the people you want to talk to. Even if the frames are not in good shape, they can take the good lenses and put them into useable frames and then redistribute them. This way your perfectly good glasses don’t end up sitting in a land fill for long after you and I both have left this world.

Need to tell people where the edge of the street is at night and don’t want to go spend a lot of money on stake reflectors? Take some of your CDs and attach them to a garden stake, when the vehicle headlights contact the surface of the CD, they will get a shining reminder as to just where the road edge is, and you won’t have to spend a lot of money in order to tell them.

We all need coasters in order to protect our tables. Attach some felt to the back of your unwanted CDs and you instantly have coasters for your drinks. For the big CD cases that come with a whole lot of CDs In each case, fill it up with some rich soil, plant some seeds and put the top back on, now you have a miniature greenhouse.

There are a multitude of uses for these unwanted items, Your only limitation is your imagination.

*Have a bunch of rusty old warped brake rotors you can’t use anymore? Turn them into clocks and sell them on ebay!

*Have an old hubcap from a car long since gone from your life? You can make that into a very stylish clock too.

*How about a worn engine bearing? Well heck, you can make that into a masculine bracelet.

There are innumerable ways you can recycle old car parts, you just need to use your imagination and craftiness and you could be the proud owner of a new glass top coffee table made from the back axel of your old beat up, worn out pickup truck! A good washing and possibly even a good paint job will ensure that your wife will be more likely to allow you to bring your creative genius inside the house. 

Have a past its prime motorcycle instead of a car? No worries, you can do the same kind of thing with motorcycle parts. If it has parts, you can make something else out of it, it all depends on how vivid your imagination is.

A new technique for recycling clothes has begun to hit the market. Now you can take these unwanted items and turn them into quilts or even floor runners. You don’t need to cut them into patches and stitch them up, you use them just as they are and work them together to create some really fun designs, then just run stitch-lines across the whole piece, about an inch apart. Obviously you will want to use clothing and materials that are similar in weight so that you don’t end up with a lumpy piece that you can’t use. Coordinate your colors and create something fun. When you’re through, you can use the item to warm your bed or protect your floor.

Maybe you can use it to create a bed for your pet. Make a big bag out of the recycled material and fill it full of all of those unwanted packing peanuts. If you put the peanuts in a bag and put a zipper along one side of the material bag, you can make the pet bed completely washable. It’s light weight, won’t harbor little biting beasties and won’t have cost you anything but your time.

When you use the eggs, don’t throw away the eggshells, dry them out and crush them and feed them back to the chickens. This helps them to keep producing enough calcium to create more eggshell. Have some food left over from dinner? Within reason, you can feed your leftovers to your chickens. They enjoy fruits and grains and even some meat though in lower quantity.

If you let your chickens free range your property, you will also be able to help keep the bugs at bay. Wouldn’t it be nice to have fewer bugs on your property without spraying pesticides all over everything? If you grow a garden, you can also use the chicken’s droppings to fertilize your garden, it is high in nitrogen and your plants will love you for it. Basically you can start your own recycling system and be all the healthier for it.

Home raised chickens tend to produce eggs that are much higher in Omega 3 fatty acids than store bought chicken eggs which are much higher in Omega 6. Most people’s diets are too high in omega six and too low in omega three. This will be your chance to turn those figures around.

1. First, go around and unplug all of your appliances

2.Then, go around and unplug all of your electronics.

Now you’d think that this would probably stop your meter dead in it’s tracks but that is often not the case.

3. Do you have your cell phone chargers plugged in? They drain power even when there is nothing plugged into them. 

4.Did you check your garage? There are many things that can be drawing power without being in use in your garage.

Okay, now you think you’ve got everything so you check your meter. Your meter is still running! What could possibly be drawing the power now? Take a good look around.

5. Do you have any glade air fresheners plugged in? Those are also a constant draw on your power.

You will be amazed at how really difficult it can be to get your meter to come to a complete stop. Now plug your appliances in one at a time, this will show you how much power is being drawn by each item. From here you can decide what you really need plugged in and what you don’t. This will help you cut down your power usage.

What if your city doesn’t have such a program? You’ll need other ways to recycle your boxes (dropping them over the wall into the neighbor’s yard doesn’t count). If you have things that you don’t want anymore, try listing them on Ebay, when someone buys the item, use one of your boxes to pack and send it in. It’s almost like re-gifting a present you don’t want. You get rid of the unwanted item and the box too!

If you don’t have things to sell, advertise your boxes for free on a local online classified ad service. For as many people as there are trying to get rid of boxes, often there are just as many looking for them. Do you give a lot of gifts at Christmas time? Break your extra boxes down and store them flat until you can use them for Christmas presents. Boxes make great forts and kitties love to play in them. Why go out and by a hundred dollar cat tree when with a little craftiness you can turn your unwanted boxes into a cat tree your cats will love?

All of these can be used in an abundance of ways rather than throwing them away.

*There are many recycling centers that are now accepting them.

*You can also drop them off at pretty much any mail center as they reuse them.

*If you have a green thumb, you can use packing peanuts instead of rocks at the bottom of your pots for drainage.

*Using an ice chest and need to keep it cool as long as possible? Put some bags with packing peanuts inside into the ice chest. Make sure the bags are well sealed otherwise you will be picking packing peanuts out of your ice and food.

*Making your own Halloween costume? Need padding? Packing peanuts make great padding for costumes because they are light weight. Just make sure they are completely contained or you will be playing Johnny Appleseed with packing peanuts.

If you just plain detest packing peanuts, when you order things, request that the sender use some other material that is more environmentally friendly, this will solve all your problems before they even occur.

Water purification is the key, because there’s plenty of water overall – it’s just not clean. Finding inexpensive, adequate, and responsible ways to make dirty water clean is what states have to focus on. There’s only going to be so much water available, and if an area can take that water and make it safe to drink again, water can be recycled just like plastic, cardboard, and glass. Setting up everything that’s needed to purify water will cost a lot of money, though, so it’s important that states start planning now, so that they can build things over time and have them ready when they need them. 

Soybeans and other common feedstocks for biodiesel are popular, but algae offers up to 100 times more oil for each acre that’s harvested. That could be very significant when people are trying to use this on a large scale, since it can take a lot of feedstock to produce biofuels that work well. There are many different kinds of algae, too, and finding the ones that work the best can mean some trial and error for a lot of scientists. If one kind of algae works better than other kinds, it’s possible that there will be ‘farmers’ who will grow certain types of algae simply to be used for fuel production.

If you’re interested in keeping your home greener like the Obamas, there are things you can do, as well. They might not get you a LEED certification, but the planet will thank you. Making your air conditioning and cooling systems more efficient is one thing that you can do. You can also use cleaners that don’t have a lot of chemicals in them, use organic food because it doesn’t have pesticides in it, and buy energy efficient light bulbs like CFLs.

People who have children or pets often try harder to avoid using chemicals and are moving more toward a greener lifestyle. You can do that, as well. Reading the labels on cleaning products helps, but that’s not the only thing that you need to do. If a chemical is less than one percent of the cleaner, it might not even be listed. That doesn’t mean it’s not in there. You can make a lot of cleaners at home, too, and they won’t have those dangerous chemicals in them. That’s something to consider if you want a greener lifestyle and a healthier environment for your family and pets.