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sustainablog’s Top Posts of 2013

new year 2014

Happy New Year, everyone! I’ve been relaxing heavily during the Christmas-New Year downtime, and just finally got around to what’s become an annual activity: figuring out our top posts for the past year.

I had quite a surprise this time around: efforts to create “evergreen” content over past years worked so well that all of the actual top ten posts in 2013 came from earlier years… apparently, lots of people want to learn about rocket stoves! I’m OK with that – I’m glad those posts are still serving people’s needs – but there were posts published during the past year that also did quite well. Here are the ten from the past 366 days that stood out for our readers:

sustainablog’s Top Ten Posts Published in 2013

10. The Many Benefits of a Whole Foods Diet: An Interview with the Co-Author of WholeFood and nutrition continue to be big topics in the sustainable blogosphere, so I wasn’t surprised to see that Brian Toomey’s interview with Howie Jacobson made it into the top posts of the year.

9. Sugar vs. Salt Body Scrubs: Recipes & Tips to Make All-Natural Skincare Remedies – Do-it-yourself content continues to do well with sustainablog readers; I’m glad to see that works not just for outdoorsy-type projects, but also health and beauty products. Lots of people came by to check out the tips Talancia collected on making and using these homemade scrubs.

8. How to Make Your Own Biodegradable Seed Starting Pots: 5 Plans – I love both gardening and pulling together DIY plans, so once this post on seed starting pots that you can plant right in the ground was a natural. I used cardboard egg carton sections and toilet paper rolls myself last year – the latter was definitely the better of the two.

7. 5 DIY Plans for Greenhouses Made from Upcycled Materials – Haven’t gotten around to trying any of these – space is at a premium in the McIntire-Strasburg yard – but really enjoyed pulling these various greenhouse plans together.

6. Cut Your Heating Bill & Carbon Emissions with a DIY Candle Heater – I used to be much better about finding little articles like this and sharing them – clearly, I should get back in the habit! A candle heater won’t serve all of your heating needs, but if you’re sticking to one room, and it’s not insanely cold out, this can save you some money and impact.

5. Showcase Your Furniture Recycling Talents to Help Save Endangered Animals – Most of our content on fundraising efforts over the past few years has been focused on crowdsourcing projects; this post on an effort to raise funds for wildlife is a bit unusual for us. But we’re always happy to help, and I’m glad to see that Talancia’s post got quite a bit of attention.

4. Water Proof: the History and Future of Water Conservation – After a period of being really generous (perhaps too generous) with guest authors, I started to get much more picky in 2013. DJ Miller has often come through with solid content for sustainablog; this post on water conservation facts is just one of two of his that did well in 2013.

3. Make Smart Green Choices with these Fifteen Smartphone Apps – Consumer technology almost always does well with readers, so I was happy to accept Philip Cohen’s well-written guest post on environmentally-themed smartphone apps.

2. The DIY Soil Block Maker: 7 Plans – See #8 above for my motivation for curating these plans for DIY soil blockers.

1. Thirteen Elements of a Dream Green Home [Infographic] – Like most of the blogosphere, infographics have become a regular part of our content mix. DJ Miller’s overview of green home elements did quite well (and also generated some discussion).

Those are the posts that generated the numbers for us in 2013; if there was one you liked that didn’t make the list, let us know in the comments.

Image credit: ruei_ke via photopin cc

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