Featured Article: Roofs with Roots: Stylish Sod Roofs

While we will always love the country in rural Iowa, the simple fact is that people are flocking to cities faster than ever. When living in a city it is difficult to grow anything, especially your own produce or garden. There just isn't the space. However, today's featured article is about a trend that is seeking to end that: Sod Roofs. These roofs allow residents to have their green space, regardless of wether or not they have lawn space.

The Apartment Therapy article shows 5 of their favorite sod roofs. We like them all, but wish we could see just how urban areas could benefit even more from these sod roofs. These are cool examples though, and a great starting place to adapt for your urban home.

Check out the article here.

Featured Article: Fall Pest Patrol

We've already had a couple winter prep blogs for you garden, but today's featured article gets a little more in-depth with the cleanup part of your fall gardening duties. The blog post we're featuring, from A Way to Garden, is a great quick overview of how to deal with a host of pests that prey on your garden.

A lot of the pest cleanup work you do in the fall can greatly benefit your garden in the spring. The blog goes over some of the greatest problem pests, cabbage worms, viburnum leaf beetle, squash bugs, deer,  mice, and voles. All of these creatures can ruin a perfect garden, so taking out their paths and hiding places in the fall will make it hard for them to move back in come spring.


Read the full article here.

Featured Article: 5 Ways to Start Preserving Food At Home

Once you start to look into the statistics on food waste the can be fairly alarming. In the United States over 40 percent of food produced is wasted, and the average American produces 10 time their body weight in trash a year.

When faced with statistics like that it's easy to start taking food preservation measures that will also save you some cash! That's where today's featured article comes in. This article goes over a few easy ways to start saving your food, from canning to making jam, they have some great ideas to help you get the most out of your grocery bill.

We hope this article can help you to save some much needed grocery money and some waste- but don't forget that if you do have food waste composting is a great sustainable way to take care of it.

Check out the article here.

Do you have any other smart ways to preserve your food? Share them in the comments!

Featured Article: 10 Things to Recycle for Charity

Today's featured article is an interesting read. According to the article, 72 percent of the people they polled would be more likely to recycle if it benefited a charity! That's great, but if you don't know a way to do that it doesn't help much. Fear not though- this list has a list of 10 things to recycle for charity!

This article is great because it shows you directly who your recycling will benefit, and it isn't an abstract concept like the environment, it's smiling little kids, low income families, teachers, and many others. By showings us people who benefit from the action it gives people someone to relate to, and anything that leads to less waste, especially some of the waste categories on this list, is a good thing.

What do you think? Would recycling come more easily to you if it was for charity?

Read the full article here.

Featured Article: A Green Business Rating System, Created By Middle School Students | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation

Today's featured article, from Fast CoExist, seems even more important as we approach the beginning of the school year. Today's article features students near Detroit who developed a Green Business rating system for businesses in their town.

These middle school students collected information from 100 business owners in their area to find out just what they were doing to be sustainable. They included waste diversion, CFL bulbs, natural lighting, hybrid or alternative fuel vehicles for business purposes, and many other factors to develop a rating system of all of the businesses they worked with.

This article is inspiring. If these students can work so hard to encourage area businesses to be more sustainable, what could we do at our own places of work. Waste diversion is easy, and we can help your business to become more sustainable through waste diversion. Other methods of creating a greener business are also easy to implement, as long as you take the time to do so.

What is your business doing to be sustainable? Let us know in the comments.

Read the original article here

Featured Article: Recharge in the Great Outdoors

Summer is reaching a close, but there is still time to get in some final camping trips before it's done, and the  Iowa State Fair starts today. These outdoor activities are great for family bonding and a general good time, however sometimes they can leave you with dead electronics. This article features information about how to recharge outdoors, as well as some helpful information for campers about getting dual usage out of your electronics.

Being able to recharge electronics on the go, without outlets, is a pretty spectacular thing. This type of charging utilizes greener energy and may help to show people just how easy it can be to utilize green energy.

Read the original article here.