Diary of a Green Renovation

There’s no other way to put it: if you want a completely green kitchen in your green home, it’s going to take a ton of time and work—not to mention many dollar bills, y'all. But any step toward helping the environment is worth the effort, so choosing one or two changes are worthy of a round of applause.

A journalist used 484 days of her life to make a green kitchen, but that’s just not a feasible extra workload for most people to pursue. Tackling individual projects will make you feel just as good inside. How are your cabinets holding up? Are they creaking when you swing them open? Replace them with bamboo, or other materials without formaldehyde in the fiberboards. If your old cabinets aren’t too beaten up, try recycling them for cash. This will help subside the cost of these green cabinets, which can run $1,000 a linear foot.

Take it a little bit further and recycle by trading in appliances you want to upgrade for a more energy-efficient version, instead of tossing them to the curb.  Eco-friendly options for floors and tabletops include scrap metal, glass, bamboo, concrete, wood, paper, cork, linoleum and recycled rubber.

Whew, this sounds tiring already! But that’s OK, remember, one step at a time. Thankfully, since going green is so popular, there are many resources available to guide you through the process of making your home safer for the environment. Have you done something lately to make your kitchen greener? [Wall Street Journal]