Connecticut Green Living

The Town of Ashford, Conn., about 30 miles northeast of Hartford, will receive $20,000 from the US Environmental Protection Agency to help fund new school buses that emit less pollution than its previous bus fleet, the EPA said today in a press release. The new bus will help reduce pollution linked to health problems such as asthma and lung damage, says the EPA. The Ashford fleet was among three in New England, and 88 fleets in 27 states, that will receive more than $7.7 million in rebates through EPA’s 2016 Clean School Bus Rebate Program. The money will help pay to replace 401 older diesel school buses with new buses that are supposed to be more than 90 percent cleaner. “Children should not be exposed to pollutants from diesel emissions when they ride the bus to school in the morning,” said Curt Spalding, regional administrator of EPA’s New England office. “These funds will help protect our children, at the same time they will help keep communities healthier in the future.” “As ...

(The following article first appeared on Examiner.com, Mar 1, 2016) Spring is still a few weeks away, and here in Connecticut we are, no doubt, still in for several more crisp nights. Your kids have been stuffy, sneezy, and nauseated at various times during this winter – albeit a tepid one by New England standards – and you’re almost through the finish line. Not only cooler temperatures but low humidity makes this an uncomfortable time of year. While in summer we often complain about too much humidity, in the winter every body part seems to get chapped and so dry it can be painful. Besides Vitamin C, lots of sleep and hand washing, an effective buffer to winter’s punch is a good humidifier. For kids, nothing beats Vicks SweetDreams Cool Mist Humidifier, which projects an array of wildlife and marine life images such as dolphins and giraffes on the ceiling. No filter is required, and you can use or discard the accompanying Vicks Vapopads with menthol scent (I tried it without, and i...

Upcycled pet food packages are being turned into dog collars - really. And not just because your little Fido gnawed the bag into something resembling a mangled plastic Frisbee (or perhaps that was an actual Frisbee?) Thanks to Wellness Natural Pet Food – the first pet food brand to partner with recycler TerraCycle – pet owners can upcycle their pet’s food packaging into something new and useable, from collars to totes to, heck, even chairs. Through the program, pet mommies and daddies can send their used Complete Health, TruFood, or CORE cat and dog food packaging to TerraCycle to have it shredded and melted into hard plastic. It's then remolded to make new products like the collar you see below. There are even dandy DIY projects to do at home, like collapsible pet bowls and doggy capes. With plastic ending up in gyres, then choking fish and littering our oceans, end-of-use for plastics has never been a more pressing issue. Further, healthful pet food should always be first o...

In a lengthy conference call from Washington, DC with Natural Resources Defense Council today, headed by their president, Rhea Suh, representatives of the New York-based agency stressed the need to hold President Elect Trump and Congress accountable for choices they will make on the environment. The consensus was that the outlook is not good, but that doesn't necessarily come as a surprise - nor as an excuse to throw in the towel. One individual who won't give up on greening America is Interim Director of Ocean Conservancy's Gulf Restoration Program in Daphne, AL, Kara Lankford. She spoke with this reporter later this afternoon about her interests, which are not only focused on the Gulf, but more broadly on environmental issues such as acidification, that mirror the NRDC's. Lankford said, firstly, that it didn't come as a surprise to her that people of this region would have kept their states red in the last election. Changing overnight to a clean energy econom...