Enjoying an eco-lifestyle means living greener in all areas of your life. You may be taking environmentally friendly steps at home, but are you also doing it at work?

People spend almost 90% of their lives indoors, and for those people who work inside that equates to about 40 or more hours at your desk, office or cubicle. Whether you’re a student interning at a major corporation, a marketing associate making phone calls all day or an office assistant handling paperwork, you’re going to spend a majority of your time in one place all day.

So don’t you want your work space to be eco-friendly and energy efficient? It can be if you make these simple changes in your life.

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Join Alaska IPL at the Pioneer Park Civic Center on Saturday, January 30th, 2010 from 11 am to 3 pm, for an inspiring community event — One People, One Earth.

This free, family-friendly event will infuse fun, faith, education and charitable opportunities to learn about environmental stewardship and how you, your family, schools and congregations can save energy, resources and money.

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While glass recycling is a thing of the past in Anchorage, construction and demolition recycling is a new addition. In November Central Recycling Services opened a multimillion dollar plant to take scrap metal, rebar, contrete, shingles, scrap lumber, Sheetrock, carpet and other materials and turn them into concrete and landscape aggregate, pallets, shredded rubber, animal bedding, mulch and more.

A 2006 consultant report for the Municipality of Anchorage found that 32,000 tons of construction and demolition materials ended up in the city’s waste stream every year. (Compare that to glass recycling, which accounts for 1,500 tons of landfill waste annually.) With that in mind, city recycling coordinator Donna Mears calls the new service a huge leap forward.

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McDonald’s logo is going green to promote a more eco-friendly image in Europe. It is swapping its traditional red backdrop for a deep green. The company says about 100 German McDonald’s will make the change by the end of the year. Some franchises in Great Britain and France already have started using the new color scheme.

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Let’s face it: With all that rushing, consuming, and bargain-hunting, the holidays can be darn stressful. So this year, following the best of the methodology pioneered by the revolutionary Slow Food Movement, TreeHugger is taking them back. We’re putting the brakes on stress and over consumption and making a return to those idyllic holidays of old with our Slow Gift Guide, consisting of 12 categories and over 100 gifts.

True luxury is taking the time to enjoy, the time to savor the moment. Each of these gifts–selected for thoughtfulness, longevity, and quality over quantity–have this goal in mind. Maybe it is as simple as a fresh, home-cooked meal whipped up with a pressure cooker, or the leisurely hours spent playing with a child with free downloaded paper gnomes. From delicate bracelets and sturdy fishing gear made of recycled material to donations to our favorite non-profits to bamboo keyboards, solar iPhone skins, and eco-friendly dollhouses, let’s take back the holidays together. And hey, till then, take it slow. -Mairi Beautyman

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1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.

Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.

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Along with all the other interesting things that an iPhone can do  – allow you to read free books,  listen to Elvis radio, and never be out of tweeting range, for instance – a few of its more than 50,000 apps can make an environmental impact on your life.

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Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations.

The movement is simple in concept if not always in execution: Produce less waste. Shun polystyrene foam containers or any other packaging that is not biodegradable. Recycle or compost whatever you can.

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Environmental savings can be elusive, and the benefits and costs confusing. To help households wade through the information, consultants armed with stepladders and gadgets are selling advice on energy efficiency, indoor air quality and even methods for creating an eco-conscious wardrobe.

The field of personal and home eco-consultants is relatively new. GenGreen, a Colorado company that offers a national directory of businesses marketing themselves as green at gengreenlife.com, says it has just over 3,000 listings under the umbrella term environmental consultants, up from 657 when the database was started in 2007. They include energy auditors, health and wellness experts, interior designers and “eco-brokers,” real estate agents who specialize in green homes. While real estate agents can get training and certification as “eco” or “green” by trade organizations, and states like New York run energy audit programs with accreditation rules, there are no industry standards for most eco-consultants, who can range from environmental engineers to the self-taught.

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Susan Carpenter breaks California state plumbing code three times a week. Her accomplice is her washing machine. Rinse water from washing machines usually goes into the sewer — so what if you could recycle it? That’s what Carpenter does, using it to water plants at her Southern California home.

“The washing machine is filling up with water, and it is going through its normal process of washing clothes,” she says. “And after about eight minutes, you’ll start to hear it spin and we will run outside and see it squirting through the tubes.”

The “it” is gray water, which looks like its name — a bit gray, a bit cloudy. After all, it’s the wastewater from bathtubs, sinks and washers.

The gray water lapping up Carpenter’s dirty clothes will soon be lapped up by her passion fruit trees — and no, the fruit won’t taste like Tide. She uses a special type of detergent that doesn’t contain salt or boron, compounds which dehydrate plants.

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