Dear treehugging friends: If only you guys had an ounce of marketing savvy. You could have tuned me into a green practice, plus saved me years of too-flat, uninspiring hair, and buckets of cash to boot. I know some of you have been washing your hair with baking soda and finishing it with a vinegar rinse for years, yet the only pitch I’ve ever heard on this practice is a limp, “It’s good for the environment!” Well, next time, try this instead:

Want to know the secret to shiny, voluminous, all-around gorgeous hair? It’s a specially formulated treatment guaranteed to take your coif to entirely new levels of excellence. We’re talking cascading waves of Penelope Cruz-level excellence. Try the BSV Treatment -- you’d pay upwards of $20 for it at a salon -- and see for yourself.

That’s a little more like it, eh? If I’d heard that, I wouldn’t have brushed off the idea of baking soda-vinegaring my hair so easily. The reasoning is sound: desire to avoid the chemicals packed into everyday commercial toiletries*, reduce plastic-bottle purchases, and old-fashioned thriftiness. Still, to a populace raised on the importance of lather-rinse-repeat, it sounds weird. When an old friend from grad school mentioned over lunch that lately she’d been cleansing with nothing but the baking soda-vinegar combo, I thought, What a nut. What’s next, homemade lemon-juice deodorant? Except her hair did look pretty sleek and luxurious.

So when I ran across yet another reference to the BSV hair-care regimen in a book about ecologically friendly home practices, I knew I had to try it. Advocates swear that baking soda naturally strips oil, softens, and removes weird buildup from whatever other crap you’ve been putting in your hair. The vinegar rinse is credited with adding shine, detangling, and clarifying. I’ve already learned firsthand about the magic that good old sodium bicarbonate can work on your kitchen counter and laundry basket. Why not on my head, too?

Each year, the New Year’s holiday brings us more than just a gingerbread hangover and a metric ton of empty champagne bottles -- it serves up a natural opportunity to pause and take stock of our lives. It’s that special time of year when we look back at where we've been and make plans for a brighter future. And it’s no different for the Greenie Pig.

You see, I've learned a thing or two from this year’s worth of green living challenges -- lessons that I've boiled down into five simple guidelines for a cleaner, more sustainable 2013. I think they’ll help me as I embark on another year of eco-experimentation -- and I hope they’ll help you on your own green lifestyle quests.

Every Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember, my extended family has gathered ’round the tree for a grab bag gift exchange. And every year, competition for the year’s hottest items -- garlic choppers, wine glasses, tasteful volumes of nude art photography -- is fierce. In a cheerful nod to the season of selflessness and giving, when your turn comes up you can either open a new present or steal an opened one from someone else.

This year was no different, save one twist: This year, we’d decided, all the gifts would be homemade. Because aren’t gifts that involved someone accidentally bashing his thumb with a hammer just that much more meaningful?

Curiosity had reached fever pitch by the time we circled up last Monday night, rum punch in hand. Would this handmade decree bear fruit in the form of 12 packages of Christmas fudge -- an easy-to-make option for pretty much everyone? Or would my relatives, inspired by this new challenge, reveal hidden talents and reach a level of DIY glory heretofore only seen in Martha Stewart publications?

Given the evidence at hand -- some of the gifts piled in the center of our circle were impressively big and bulky -- I suspected we all might be in for a treat. But I had no idea just how amazing it would be.

This holiday season, talk of having a “minimalist Christmas” or participating in Buy Nothing Christmas seems to be all over the place (maybe it’s the economy? An attempted Scrooge coup?). And I’m happy to report that my family continues to be on-trend. Last year, we were all about un-wrapping gifts, a practice just poised on the brink of widespread adoption. And months ago, we decided to switch up our usual store-bought grab-bag presents for all homemade goodies instead.

Usually, our extended-family grab bag works thusly: Each participant brings a crowd-pleasing gift, typically under a predetermined price cap, to place ’neath the Christmas tree. We draw numbers, then, when your number is up, you choose between unwrapping a new present or stealing an opened one from a cousin or uncle (how festive!). If your present is stolen, you get to open or steal another, so in the end, everyone has something -- and incidentally, you don’t age into this grab bag until you graduate from college, so the kids still get their toys.

This is a fun system, and we’ve always been able to count on a good haul of wine glasses, board games, tree ornaments, and kitchen gizmos. Last year, I got a salad bowl that looks like an alien.

This year will be a little different. In one small way, we decided to reduce the glut of Christmas consumerism -- by making everything ourselves. This, we thought, would result in more thoughtful, meaningful gifts, gifts that have been labored over and loved, gifts that will mean so much more than a mini-blender ever could.

That, or we’ll all just get a shitload of Christmas cookies.

Imagine, if you will, a Thanksgiving table of plenty not anchored by a meaty, glistening bird. In its place of honor, rather, sits a bowl of sea-chilled, slimy oysters. No? Don’t like that? How about a plank of grilled salmon? Venison steak? Mushroom casserole?

Heresy it may seem, but perhaps defaulting to the time-honored turkey isn’t the best choice when planning Thanksgiving dinner. After all, many greenies spend the other 364 days of the year caring deeply about how sustainable, humane, and local their meals are. Why should a Thursday in November be any different? Why shouldn’t we examine our menu choices more closely before going with the venerated poultry?

To tell the truth, I love traditional holidays almost as much as I love a good turkey breast. But this year, I decided to do some digging to find out if any other main dishes could beat out the old gobble-gobble when it comes to eco-friendliness.

The criteria for judging contenders for my holiday table are as follows: The dish must be sustainable -- that is, farmed, hunted, or gathered in a way that minimizes pollution and other harmful environmental impacts, plus preserves the population of the food in question. It must be humane. It must be local, to reduce shipping-related carbon. It must be as healthy as possible. Cost and flavor will be considered as a secondary factor. Also, the dish needs to have a low risk of me accidentally shooting myself in its pursuit -- so that means game like wild turkey, deer, bobcat, moose, and mountain goat are out. (All of which you can hunt in the great state of Washington, where I live.)

So, what should be on my menu for the greenest Thanksgiving possible? Here are the results, in ascending order.

7. Conventional turkey

Surprise! The regular old grocery-store turkey was the hands-down worst option.

This past month, I’ve discovered a groundbreaking method for turning ordinary foodstuffs into fuel. The potential is boundless, as practically any food item will do -- pumpkin seeds, cereal, and salmon fillets can all transform into the energy required to get you almost anywhere you need to go, while emitting almost no extra greenhouse gases.

Here’s how it works: Eat food. Allow your digestive system convert it into glycogen, which provides energy to your muscles that can be used to power physical motion. Then walk.

True, this method is not exactly swift if your destination is, say, Anchorage.* Within two miles, though? Food-fueled transportation -- a.k.a. walking, biking, hopscotching, what have you -- can be just as efficient (and when parking is involved, often faster) as hopping in the car. And when you consider that 40 percent of all automobile trips occur within a two-mile radius of wherever we are, the so-called Two-Mile Challenge becomes a truly viable option for putting a cork in the carbon emissions spewing from the typical American lifestyle.

Right now, we’re living in a reuse renaissance -- and I, for one, am thrilled. I love the idea of reusing stuff that would’ve ended up in the trash. I love that you basically have to know how to knit a clutch purse out of gum wrappers and dog hair to sign into Pinterest these days. I love that reusing stuff is so hot right now that we’ve coined an entirely new word -- upcycling -- because “reusing” just cannot encompass the awesomeness of what we’re doing with all this garbage.

But here’s the thing: Not all of these reuse tactics work for me. One reason is what I’ll call the Law of Limited Utility. Repurposing a few old bread-closure tabs as cord organizers -- great! Now what am I supposed to do with the other 450 of these things that are cluttering the drawer? My second reason is what we shall refer to as the Law of Limited Skill. Tote bags woven from chocolate bar wrappers are creative and cool, but I just don’t have the expertise right now to make those intimidating projects happen. And then there’s the third reason: the Law of the Really Ugly Upcycle. Look, I do think it’s amazing that you made a vest out of 227 disposable plastic forks, but hey, that’s just not my style. No offense.

Last week, we brought you recipes for three homemade laundry detergents. Then, we quickly slapped a disclaimer on them and warned you not to use them on penalty of testicular atrophy. Turns out one of the main ingredients in all three detergents, and indeed, a longstanding favorite of the DIY cleaning crowd -- borax -- isn’t as squeaky clean as originally thought.

So what’s a concerned clothing-wearer to do? Rebecca Sutton, PhD, a chemist with the Environmental Working Group, pointed me to an alternative, borax-free concoction. This one swaps out the b-word for good, old-fashioned baking soda. Not only does baking soda fluff up your cookies, advocates swear that it also brightens fabric colors, removes odors, and softens the water for better overall washing.

OK, sounds good -- but can it hold its own in a wash-off? I had to see for myself. I assembled another typically representative laundry load: towels, socks, undies, sweaty T-shirts, and dirty pants. Into the washing machine they all went, along with 1.5 tablespoons of the new laundry soap; a rinse and spin later, the clothes were ready for judgment.

UPDATE: Several alert readers have raised questions about the safety of borax, a.k.a. sodium tetraborate or sodium borate. Though borax's power as a green cleaner has been touted in dozens of DIY recipes for years -- it’s even on a list of recommended “environmentally preferable cleaners” on the EPA’s website -- other sources point to evidence that the stuff is an irritant to the skin and mucous membranes and worse, a hormone disruptor that affects the reproductive system (yikes).

To borax or not to borax? There’s a ton of conflicting and confusing information out there. A different page on the EPA’s site warns that “Borax, commonly considered a safer DIY ingredient, actually presents concerns for potential human health effects.” The National Library of Medicine’s HazMap page  reports both that “Studies of workers exposed to sodium borate dusts found no evidence of pulmonary function or reproductive impairment” and “In high-dose reproductive studies of animals, boric acid causes testicular damage and fetal loss.” (Boric acid isn’t exactly the same as borax, but they’re closely related compounds.) A kids’ page from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences advises kids to “use fewer chemicals in your home!” by mixing borax and powdered sugar … to control cockroaches.

I called Rebecca Sutton, senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, for some clarity. Bad news: “It’s something we should be watching out for,” she said, noting that several studies have tied testicular atrophy (in animals) and reduced fertility (in men) to borax. Sutton also pointed out that a European hazard system has classified borax as possibly harmful to development. Bottom line: There are enough concerns about this once-revered cleaning agent to take it off the shelf -- and out of our DIY detergents.

Thank you to the readers who brought this to my attention. Though borax seems like a great laundry alternative at first glance, I should have dug deeper to ensure its safety. I’m looking into non-borax detergents this week and will report back on even better formulations.

Maybe I’m late to the party on this one, but I had no idea that laundry detergent had such a long rap sheet.

I’ve bought all-natural detergent for the last year or so, yes, but it hasn’t been a reasoned consumer decision. My shopping rationale usually goes something like this: Aw, crap, I have 36 other things to pick up and we’re out of detergent, too. Let’s see … go for the cheap one with Triple X Stain-Stomp? Or shell out for the plant-based one with the soothing water droplets on the bottle? Better go for the hippie one, just in case.

Recently, I was finally curious enough to check into this purchasing pattern of mine. I started looking into the case against conventional laundry soap -- and let me tell you, I was shocked. Those super-fresh soaps I grew up with are actually toxic stews of optical brighteners, synthetic fragrances, dyes, surfactants, and other weird chemicals. And they stand accused of some scary s**t