"Green" Potpourri

Series Summary

With global warming and other environmental issues constantly in the news these days, you may be wondering how to do your part to save the planet. In this series of free videos, our conservation expert Nili Nathan interviews Anne Reichman, director of the popular Earth 911 website. They demonstrate several very basic steps you can take in your home and home office to reduce your footprint on our environment. These steps include using eco-friendly inks and papers, low energy light bulbs and canvas bags at the grocery store. Reichman also demonstrates how to conserve water while washing dishes, how to reuse cleaning rags and cloth napkins and how to determine what garbage can be recycled.

The basic ideas of conservation around your home are best summed up with what Reichman calls "The Hierarchy of Waste." The first level in this hierarchy is to REDUCE your amount of waste from the source, i.e. buy only what you need. The second level is to REUSE products when you have the opportunity. Last of all, RECYCLE, and you will be well on your way to a green home. Let our eco-friendly experts on show you how!

Video Transcript

"Hi, Nili Nathan here with Great Living TV. I love to make natural room fresheners and one of my favorite things to do is to make a green natural potpourri. It's so simple and easy, I'm going to show you how to do it. I use a brown bag, you can always use a jar or a cannister with a lid but a brown bag works just as good. First you get your flowers. These are dry passion flowers that I have right here. Just take about a handful. Put that in the bag. Next I use hibiscus flowers. These are very pretty and lovely, let me show you, very colorful. My theme in this potpourri is a flower and fruity scent, that's what I'm going for. Sometimes you never know what you're going to get. Then you need a fixative to kind of bind all of the scents together. I use orris root. You can find these ingredients in a natural herb store. Now, my orange peel. This is very yummy. Orange helps to clean the air and it also has an uplifting scent. A few juniper berries. And just a touch of sandalwood, this is red sandalwood, I like it for the texture and I love this scent. Now what I'm going to do is add my essential oil. So you pick your essential oil based on the prominent scent you want so if you want a flowery scent, then you pick a flowery essential oil. Since I'm going for a fruity flower, I'm going to use the essential oil of orange to help those dry orange peels in there even more. So you want to put about eight to ten drops in. And that's it, close it up, give it a good shake, store it in a cool dry place. The longer it ages, the better it will be. A couple weeks, six weeks is even better but if you're throwing a dinner party or you're having company come over, you can use it right away, I always do. Oh, you're wondering what these are, dry pomegranate's, aren't they pretty? I just took a pomegranate, it was nice and fresh, I sliced it up, I put it on my window sill for about a week and let the sun dry it out naturally, that's all I did. And it's so decorative. Ah, this is smelling really good. Pour that in a bowl, look at how pretty my babies, isn't that nice? Wow, so cool, it's going to look really pretty with the pomegranate's tossed in there and you know what, then you can make your adjustments. Ah, this is great, for example, I want a little more of the sandalwood so I'll just decorate it on top like that, isn't that pretty? How fun is that? Okay, you go bye bye, and there you go, there's your natural green potpourri that will naturally freshen your home."