creative blossoms

1. Is it reusable or biodegradable?

For any product you buy the questions you need to ask yourself is: Reusable, Biodegradable or Recyclable or none of the above. Is the item reusable? Reusable beats everything. Most of the time.The only exception being if you already have too many of something – like those bags given/sold everywhere to use instead of plastic or water bottles and coffee mugs.

2. Is the item biodegradable or recyclable? These really have to be asked at the same time. Biodegradable and recyclable is probably better than just recyclable in most instances. Even though paper bags and plastic both take a similar amount of resources to make them, considering people's ability to litter, I'd rather see a paper bag improperly disposed of than a plastic one. At least that paper one will decompose. That plastic bag is around for your life, your children's lives, their children's and beyond.

3. Is the item non-recyclable, non-biodegradable, non-reusable? Stay away.

This is the very essence of green thinking. When you're done with that product it's just going to sit in the ground, or river, or lake, or ocean forever? If this is the only option you've got in front of you, do without.

4. Can you pronounce the ingredients?

Perhaps the simplest test in determining the quality of something you're going to put in or on your body, is simply asking yourself if you can pronounce the ingredients. And I'm not talking about not knowing the correct way to say some new-to-you. I'm talking about multi-syllable words that bear no resemblance to anything you yourself could actually grow in your backyard. If whatever you're looking at be it food, a health and beauty product has anything like that, put it right down and move on.

If you can't visualize all the ingredients, still less pronounce them then you can be assured that the product, 99 times out of 100, is not green. The distance all those ingredients traveled adds up too. The simpler you keep things the better.

5. How did the product get here?

Even if you're getting the majority of your food locally, and try to buy locally made consumer goods, there's still probably a good deal that's imported.

Here is the best of energy efficiency: Ship, train, truck, plane. You very well may have known that order, but not the impact.