Make Your Kitchen and Living Room Eco-Chic: Five Tips to Green it Up

You can have most luxurious living room in town—the party’ll still end up in the kitchen. Get yours a little greener with these tips from Anna Rosemann of EcoConsulting LA. A good composter dramatically reduces the waste that you send to the landfill and can help counteract black thumb in the garden department. Through maintenance of O2 levels, temperature and automatic agitation, the trashcan-style Nature Mill Composter creates healthy soil in two weeks—plus an air filter eliminates odors. Inefficient gas burners send roughly 60 percent of their heat into the surrounding area rather than into your food. Induction cook tops limit this heat loss to 10 to 15 percent—plus the stove heats faster than gas or oil models, meaning your fuel time is lower. In addition to saving energy, the use of electricity instead of natural gas limits the CO2 emissions of your kitchen. The big drawback is price tag—units are typically priced at $2,000 or more—but as with most sustainable appliances, the stove begins to pay for itself in energy savings as soon as it is installed. Best values can be found from Kenmore and GE, but you can also go high-end eco with Viking or Thermador. Redoing your countertops? Forget quarried limestone or soapstone. Instead try the eco-friendly combination of recycled paper, recycled glass, coal fly-ash and cement that makes up the lookalike hand-cast “slabs” of Squak Mountain Stone. And what about floors? Try stripping down to concrete floors that save on materials and look amazing, or if you’re looking for wood, check out reclaimed wood like the gorgeous grains from Old Barn Wood Site. Lights, camera…burn out? Instead of short-lived CFLs, invest a little more money on LEDs from Eco-Lights, which generate gorgeous light for a long, long time. Now get cooking, already! P.S. Far be it from us to put words in our experts’ mouths, so we’ll settle for a post-script: Anna didn’t mention it but after checking out Kelly Ripa’s limited-edition Electrolux washer-dryers in April (and planting a tree for Global Green), we’re coveting the brand’s gorgeous line of eco-friendly, ENERGY STAR® appliances. We think an Electrolux Dishwasher that uses 40 percent less water and 41percent less energy (and lets you skip the pre-rinse) or a Standard Side-by-Side Refrigerator that’s 20 percent more efficient than the federal energy efficiency standard would look pretty darned good in our kitchen right about now. Want a smaller carbon footprint? EcoStiletto.com is giving away a free pair of eco-friendly shoes worth $500 or more every month! Get the lowdown on shrinking your carbon footprint from an Ugg boot to a Manolo with daily green fashion, beauty, lifestyle, parenting, celebrity and eco-events nationwide and change the world, one small step at a time. Stiletto-size me!