Blow Your Nose – Blowing your nose regularly throughout the day is one of the best ways to fight back a cold. It relieves pressure inside your head, clears out your nasal passages so you can breathe, and helps to push the virus out of your system. However, don’t blow too hard as to damage yourself or your eardrums. Blow your nose gently and often, and always wash your hands afterwards.

Get Some Sleep – Sleep can help your immune system recover from a cold. Give your body a rest by spending time reading, watching TV, or just sleeping. If you try to do too much while you have a cold, you could prolong it’s time with you.

Take Steamy Hot Showers – You can treat a cold with just a hot shower. The hot water beating on your chest can help relieve congestion, and the steam can help clear out your nose and even relieve a sore throat. They can also help to moisturize that nose you have been blowing all day!

Enjoy Hot Soups and Beverages – People don’t eat hot chicken soup when they have a cold for nothing! Hot soups and beverages (like tea) can help you stay hydrated and soothe your throat as well.

Take Zinc Lozenges – Zinc is a natural mineral that is found in all sorts of foods and seeds. It has been shown to possibly disable cold viruses from growing and thus potentially shortening the length and severity of your cold. For more on Zinc, check out ABC news.

Gargle with Salt Water – Treat that cold with some good old fashioned salt water! Gargling a few times a day with a mixture of table salt and water can help relieve a sore throat and give you some relief from the pain.

Here’s to hoping that some of these tips will help you treat a cold this season. No one likes to come down with a cold, but these are some ways you can help to minimize any disruption or discomfort that comes from getting a cold.

Help support The Good Human! If you do your Amazon shopping through my Amazon link, a very modest sales commission is generated. This is true for any product at Amazon, not just the eco-friendly ones. Please keep this link in mind for all of your Amazon purchases, as when you click through one of them and do any shopping, it really helps keep The Good Human going. -> My Amazon.com Affiliate Link. Thanks!

Plant A Garden. For the price of a few packets of organic seeds, you can provide plenty of vegetables for your family all spring, summer, and fall for just pennies.

Stop Printing. Could you manage with just saving the information you needed as PDF’s on your computer, rather than on printed paper? That paper you print out will eventually just be tossed anyway.

Organize A Magazine Co-op. Magazines are one of those things that everyone likes to read but normally end up in the recycling bin just a few hours after they are delivered. Set up a magazine share or co-op with friends and family to reduce the amount of purchased magazines and recycled materials!

Take Public Transportation. If at all possible, take public transportation instead of driving yourself to work. It could save you a ton of money while also being much more eco-friendly.

Sign Up For Organic Coupons. You can find coupons for organic food if you go looking for them. They are out there!

Use Washable Coffee Filters. When you buy a reusable coffee filter, you eliminate the need for the paper ones, which add up over the course of the year.

Shop In Bulk. This is a biggie. Not only does it save you money, but it also reduces waste. Bring your own containers to the grocery store and fill them up with granola, nuts, rice, grains, etc. – all without using disposable plastic bags.

Turn Off Your Lights. Your parents taught you to do it, so why aren’t you still doing it? When you leave a room, turn off the lights. It’s a simple way to save money and reduce your energy use.

Carpool To Work. Don’t have public transportation nearby? How about finding a carpool to join? It saves you money, reduces wear and tear on your car, and helps you go green by reducing your carbon emissions.

Give Up Paper Towels For Good. Keep a roll around if you must, but for most things a stack of cotton or microfiber cloths work much better and can be washed and reused for years.

Turn Your Thermostat Down A Few Degrees. Just a few degrees lowers your utility bill and is barely noticeable in your home, while also reducing the amount of fossil fuels you burn.

Clean The Lint Screen In Your Dryer. This makes your dryer more efficient and doesn’t cost a dime. It also can help prevent dryer fires.

Make Your Own Cleaning Products. I have talked about this at length on the site over the years, and it’s a no-brainer at this point. Why pay big bucks for cleaning products when you can make your own at home for just pennies? Check out 23 Ways To Use Vinegar For Nontoxic Cleaning for more.

Keep Your Electronics As Long As Possible. Chances are that you don’t need a new cellphone, iPod, or computer every year – you just want one. By making your electronics last longer, you reduce the amount of e-waste in the world while also saving yourself a bucket of cash.

Purchase Items Used Rather Than New. Clothing and furniture are great items to buy used when possible. Besides, older goods are usually made better than the new stuff, so you save money, reduce waste, and will have them for longer than if you bought new.

Wash All Your Clothes In Cold Water. I have been washing all my clothes in cold water for years with no ill effects. So don’t listen to anyone who tries to make you believe you need to use hot water on your clothes. Washing in cold water saves you money and helps your items last longer, too.

Install Compact Fluorescent Bulbs or LEDs. Saves money and reduces energy use, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. Change out those bulbs and see the difference in your electric bill.

Hang A Laundry Line. Remember the dryer I mentioned above? Eliminate it altogether by hanging your laundry outside when you can. Free is always better than a higher utility bill.

Properly Inflate Your Car Tires. Saves gas and wear on your tires, and at most costs you a quarter at the gas station. Check your tires at least once a month for proper inflation.

Skip Bottled Water. Talk about saving money by going green! Bottled water is mostly just filtered tap water, but at their prices our monthly water bills would run $9,000 were we to sell it. Save a ton of money and eliminate plastic bottles from your waste stream all at once.

Use Bar Soap Instead Of Soap In Plastic Bottles. What’s the difference between bar soap and bottled soap? The plastic bottle that needs to be recycled once it’s empty. Save the bottle from even being needed in the first place, never mind the recycling of it, by switching to bar soaps instead of body wash.

Invest In Well-Made Goods. Can’t afford to “buy green”? Well then, how about buying well-made instead? You can save money on green products, but you can save even more by purchasing stuff that lasts a lifetime.

Walk or Bike to Work. Walking and biking are free, provide good exercise, and emit no emissions. What’s not to love about that? Talk about saving money by going green!

Install A Low-Flow Shower Head. Low-flow shower heads are not the same as they were years ago. They provide plenty of water pressure now, and should be on everyone’s to-do list for their home. For just a few bucks you can save a fortune on your water bill.

Take Shorter Showers. Along with a low-flow shower head, take shorter showers. I know, I know – everyone likes a nice hot shower. But it wastes a lot of water and increases your hot water bill!

Shut The Damper On Your Fireplace. If you don’t use your fireplace, make sure the damper is shut, especially in winter. If not, all the heat from your HVAC system goes right up the chimney, costing you a ton more than necessary to keep your house warm.

Unplug Appliances When Not In Use. Even better, put every electronic device in your home on a power strip. That way, you can turn them all off at once and save yourself from paying for “vampire” energy. All those items in your home that have “standby” mode use energy even when they are off; so make sure the power to them is cut entirely to save yourself some money.

Turn Off Your Car When Idling. If you are idling for more than 30 seconds, turn the car off. Modern cars are OK with it, I promise.

Use A Push Lawnmower. While it’s winter here, I do plan on getting another push mower at the house I am renting. While it may not be feasible for a large lawn, if you only have a small plot of grass why pay for a gas mower and emit all those pollutants? A traditional gas powered lawn mower produces as much air pollution as 43 new cars each being driven 12,000 miles!

Start Using Online Banking. This costs you nothing at most banks, but eliminates the need for stamps, envelopes, and mail coming to your house. Plus, it makes life easier having everything on auto-pilot. It’s going green without spending a dime!

Turn Your Water Heater Down To 120 Degrees. There is no need to keep your water heater temperature above 120 degrees, so keeping it at this level saves you money on your bill. Don’t turn it lower than that, though, as it needs to be 120 to keep bacteria from growing in your tank.

Use Washable Food Containers Instead Of Plastic Bags. Reusable glass or stainless steel containers can be used forever – plastic bags cannot. So invest in a few of these and stop using disposable plastic to store your leftovers in.

Insulate The Water Heater. Your water heater stores hot water. When it’s not being used, it works hard to keep that water hot. What makes more sense than insulating it so it doesn’t have to work as hard?

Insulate Doors & Windows. With weatherstripping or plastic sheeting, you can insulate your doors and windows so that heat you are paying for inside your home doesn’t escape and heat the outdoors. This can drastically reduce those expensive heating bills and is easy to do in just a weekend.

Run Your Clothes Washer & Dishwasher Only When Full. Why use all that energy and water to wash 1/2 a load of clothes or dishes? Wait until it’s full to reduce the amount of washes you do over the course of the year.

Invest In Rechargeable Batteries. I have the same set of rechargeable batteries that I bought nearly 5 years ago and they are still going strong. I haven’t had to buy new batteries (or dispose of any) in that long for just a small investment in batteries and a charger. Everything uses batteries these days, so stop having to buy and throw away disposables and pick up some rechargeable batteries.

Turn Off The Dry Cycle On The Dishwasher. Let your dishes air dry in the dishwasher. They don’t need a blow-dry!

Take One Less Flight This Year Than Normal. Airline flights emit tons of CO2 pollution, so if possible take less flights this year. If you still need to travel, consider traveling by train!

Fix Any Water Leaks, Even Small Ones. Small water leaks not only cost you on your water bill but can also lead to bigger problems in your home down the line. Fix any water leak to save our most precious resource from being wasted.

There you have it, 39 ways to go green and save money at the same time. There is no need to spend a fortune on “green” products when there are so many simple things you can do today to make your life more eco-friendly!

Please share this list with your friends, family, and co-workers if you can. Everyone should be doing their part, and this list is a good way to get started.

Photo from BigStockPhoto

Help support The Good Human! If you do your Amazon shopping through my Amazon link, a very modest sales commission is generated. This is true for any product at Amazon, not just the eco-friendly ones. Please keep this link in mind for all of your Amazon purchases, as when you click through one of them and do any shopping, it really helps keep The Good Human going. -> My Amazon.com Affiliate Link. Thanks!

When so-called environmentalists spend their time flying to “green” conferences every month, you have to wonder just how all the carbon emissions from their trips could possibly be offset by anything they could learn at the conference – which, mind you, was exactly the same as last month’s conference. Plastic swag, dance parties, free trips to resorts and auto shows… how does this actually do anything for the benefit of the planet?

It doesn’t. And that’s why we’re in big, big trouble.

Tim DeChristopher, who is currently serving years in jail for “disrupting” a federal oil- and gas-lease auction, said the truth when he said:

“I wish I could say something really nice today that would make everyone feel really good. But sometimes the truth isn’t very nice, and it needs to be said anyway. … The truth that our movement has not been willing to talk about is that it’s probably too late for any amount of emissions reductions to prevent the collapse of our industrial civilization.”

Do we still really believe that changing a lightbulb, while certainly a nice gesture and the right thing to do, will actually do enough to prevent collapse? It won’t.

Most of the time my statements about some “greens” being anything but “green” are are ignored. I imagine they are too busy being jetted to an organic wine tasting, attending a comped vegetarian dinner for 12, or out test driving a new hybrid at an auto show in a distant city – an expense which an auto manufacturer covered for them in exchange for good PR. No one likes to think they are part of the problem while they are being provided for by corporations only interested in the bottom line – profit – and not the big picture – planetary survival – and thus my voice often echoes alone through the graffitied walls of the green blogosphere.

That is, until I just read this article in Orion Magazine. Finally, another voice for truth is letting itself be heard over the din of green evangelists. Paul Kingsnorth is fed up with the state of the environmental movement, and his reasons for being so are crystal clear and on-point:

Today’s environmentalism is as much a victim of the contemporary cult of utility as every other aspect of our lives, from science to education. We are not environmentalists now because we have an emotional reaction to the wild world. Most of us wouldn’t even know where to find it. We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called “sustainability.” What does this curious, plastic word mean? It does not mean defending the nonhuman world from the ever-expanding empire of Homo sapiens sapiens, though some of its adherents like to pretend it does, even to themselves. It means sustaining human civilization at the comfort level that the world’s rich people—us—feel is their right, without destroying the “natural capital” or the “resource base” that is needed to do so. It is, in other words, an entirely human-centered piece of politicking, disguised as concern for “the planet.”

Exactly right. And it’s why environmentalism, as it’s currently exemplified and pimped around the globe in popular culture, is dead in the water. It will not solve anything. It will not fix anything. It will not change anything. At the rate we’re destroying it, we’re lucky if we get a few more comfortable decades on the planet. Why?

Because not many people will admit the truth.

• No one likes to find out that their favorite environmental organizations take donations from chemical companies – so they pretend it doesn’t happen.
• No one wants to hear that the majority of food in the grocery store is genetically-modified, so they stop listening.
• No one wants to believe that sacrifice is going to be required of them if we want to continue to survive on planet Earth, so they stop believing.

We cannot shop our way to a clean planet. We cannot compost, change a light bulb, wear eco-fabrics, drive a hybrid, or build energy-efficient McMansions and hope it’s going to stop the inevitable. Those are all necessary things to do, of course, but it’s not enough; and it’s time for environmentalists to stop pretending that it is. We need to get away from that idea and promote real, true changes in behavior and lifestyle. We need to lead by example… that is, if we can stop pretending to be pampered celebrities running through the green circuit of parties long enough to catch a shot of ourselves in the mirror.

“Once noble and redemptive, environmentalism has devolved into an engine of consumerism and a platform for partisanship.”

Amen, Mr. Kingsnorth. Let’s put an end to the simple greenwashing of green and get with the program. Time is no longer on our side.

Image from BigStockPhoto

Help support The Good Human! If you do your Amazon shopping through my Amazon link, a very modest sales commission is generated. This is true for any product at Amazon, not just the eco-friendly ones. Please keep this link in mind for all of your Amazon purchases, as when you click through one of them and do any shopping, it really helps keep The Good Human going. -> My Amazon.com Affiliate Link. Thanks!

If cleanliness is next to godliness, then we have a lot of work to do if we want to enter the pearly gates. From carbon emissions to plastic containers washing up on our beach shores, our waste production keeps on going up as our global population increases. It’s pretty obvious what needs to be done, yet the critical question is why is it taking so long? We are all in this together whether we want to realize it or not, this issue derives from a source that has been rarely touched upon. Like all human actions, they all originate at the source of consciousness and awareness, and it is here where the real problem lies.

Our current state of wastefulness is a direct reflection of how far we need to go with our overall collective consciousness. Don’t get me wrong, the human race has attained extraordinary feats building structures, paving roads, and developing technology. Yet within all of these accomplishments we have yet to successfully solve one of the greatest challenges ever yet: the problem of waste. As a college student I worked several jobs that provided me a decent income and invaluable experience. One of the many jobs that I had during this time was that of a groundskeeper for a local apartment complex, and needless to say my tenure there was short lived due to an unhygienic work environment. I was told that my job would be simple, to go around the property grounds and pick up any little trash that I may see. Yet they forgot to tell me about “Pile Up Monday,” which is when trash would pile up from the weekend. It was my responsibility to literally climb through the pile of filth and toss each trash bag one by one into the trash compactor. It was amazing to see first hand the amount of garbage that was produced in such a short amount of time.

This experience made me realize that a lot of people suffer from what I like to call optional ignorance. This is when a person chooses to ignore a problem thinking that it will go away, similar to sweeping dust under a rug and thinking that the room is clean. The problem with this is that if you continue to sweep more and more dust under the rug eventually it will begin to bulge to a point where it will burst out into the open.

I recently went into a local food store to purchase a small item, small enough that I could comfortably carry it with one hand. I approach the cashier with the item in hand she scanned it and automatically proceeded to place the small item into a plastic bag when there was absolutely no need for it. I went ahead and told her that the bag wasn’t necessary; she gave me a look as if I had said an inappropriate comment, and granted my request. This was a prime example of the level of consciousness that the average person has towards waste. There needs to be a sense of understanding and awareness that everything that we throw away will eventually end up some where.

I believe that educating people on conserving energy, waste reduction, and supporting environmental organizations are great ways that provide insight on solutions to the current situation at hand. However in order to really get to the fundamental issue, we need to address the subject on personal level. Human consciousness is a necessary attribute needed in order address our environmental issues. The example provided earlier on my experience with the cashier sheds light on how narrow in focus we are in regards to the cause and effect of our actions. This issue needs to be approached not only through awareness of solutions but also through awareness of ourselves. It’s a universal principle that applies to all areas of our lives, that what we put out into the world comes back to us and in this case it’s absolutely no exception. Our level of consciousness should be a universal kind that encompasses all of our actions. This is the true source of our current environmental problems.

Luis Rosario is the Director of Communications / Event Relations for MorningCoach.com Personal Development Community that focuses on prosperity & abundance, Lifestyle design, quality of life, and motivation. With an educational background in Sociology and Inter-cultural Communications, his mission is to change the world for the better one event at a time! Images from BigStockPhoto.

Help support The Good Human! If you do your Amazon shopping through my Amazon link, a very modest sales commission is generated. This is true for any product at Amazon, not just the eco-friendly ones. Please keep this link in mind for all of your Amazon purchases, as when you click through one of them and do any shopping, it really helps keep The Good Human going. -> My Amazon.com Affiliate Link. Thanks!