Sponsored by National Geographic, The Green Guide is one of the most comprehensive and qualified sources you will find on the Web for making your everyday life green.

There are seven major categories that can you can go green in: Home & Garden, Personal Care, Kids, Health & Safety, Travel, Food, and Go Local (buying from local resources). Did you know that you can go green with virtually anything? Recently featured buying guides include fertilizer, plastic containers, and baby bottles.

For each specific product, The Green Guide provides a brief 101 on the topic, introduces its environment impact, outlines a product comparison, and presents a “smart shopper’s list.”

It will tell you the product that has the best value. For example, the best value fertilizer is Intervale Organic Compost, which is merely $12 for 37 pounds, is certified by the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA), and made from grass, lawn clippings, and other organic waste. It also will tell you the greenest product, which you may have guessed, in the case of fertilizer, is homemade compost. Homemade compost is easy to make and “keeps valuable kitchen scraps and lawn clippings out of landfills.”

What you may not know about conventional fertilizers is that that they are commonly derived from petroleum! “A single 40-pound bag contains the equivalent of 2.5 gallons of gasoline.” However, you can find out that organic fertilizers are not perfect either.

The Green Guide provides a very thorough analysis on each product; you can be sure that National Geographic has done its research before offering its large scope on, well, everything. Ziploc, a familiar brand, is noted as having the best value for plastic containers, while a less familiar name, Preserve Food Storage, is rated as the greenest product (it is 100% recycled and available from recycline.com).

All of the products reviewed by The Green Guide are independently chosen without influence from the product manufacturers, so the Web site is as objective as a Web site can strive to be. The next time you plan to make a purchase, check out what The Green Guide has to say, and you might find some helpful information, whether you are buying hardwood floors or household cleaners.

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