From Milk Jugs to Tea Sets

Ever wonder what happens to your gallon milk jugs you put in your curbside recycling bin? It's possible they were made into tea sets, dishes or other toys for small tikes by a company called Green Toys Inc. located here in California.

According to their website: "All Green Toys products are 100% made in the USA. To be more specific, they are produced in California, a state known for strict toy safety and environmental laws. It's cool to buy USA, but also think about this: transportation is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gasses. We all know driving less is good for mother nature, but did you ever think about how many miles a toy logs before it ends up in your local store?


Green Toys environmental mission even extends to our packaging. We strive to minimize packaging, and all of our boxes use as little material as possible. All Green Toys products are packaged in recycled corrugated boxes with no plastics, cellophane or twist-ties, and are 100% recyclable. So, not only are they earth-friendly and ready for your recycling bin, they are really easy to open for those little fingers just itching to get at the toys!!"


They're pretty cute too!  I'm thinkin' Santa is extra jolly when he sees these on a Christmas list...

Green and Frugal Holiday Ideas

Whether you've decided to scale back on Thanksgiving and Christmas expenses out of budget necessity, or just because you believe that "less is more", here's a few recent articles full of green and frugal Holiday ideas for everything from decorating your table to finding gifts for the eco-conscious:

How to Make an Inexpensive Holiday Centerpiece -  With a little creativity and items from your garden or pantry, you can make simply beautiful table centerpieces for the Season, with little or no money spent.


How to Recycle Last Year's Holiday Cards  - From scrapbook pages and wall decor to placemats and gift tags, there's a great way to recycle cards from previous Winter holidays.

5 Great Holiday Gift Ideas for the Eco-Conscious  - If you are looking for great gift ideas this Holiday Season for friends and family that embrace a greener lifestyle, or perhaps you yourself are committed to reducing your own carbon footprint, here are five ideas to consider.

"No longer forward nor behind 

I look in hope or fear; 

But, grateful, take the good I find,

The best of now and here."

[John Greenleaf Whittier]  

Green Networking - Connections with the Eco-Conscious

Looking for other eco-conscious folks to connect with? Perhaps you are consider a career move and want to find green jobs in your area...or you'd like to connect with an eco-activist group and get involved in a local (or global) project. Whatever the reason, know that there are tons of people in all shades of "green" that are looking to connect to!  Ecopreneurist.com has lots of helpful tips in their article Green Networking Made Easy, as does SustainLane.com's The Art of Green Networking: 15 Tips From a Reluctant Schmoozer. 

Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites can be good places to connect online (which can also lead to some offline connections as well).  I've recently started compiling my own Twitter Green list - feel free to snag a few followers -- we're all in this together.

Eco-friendly Homes for Greensburg - Check out the Winners

As you may have heard, in May of 2007 a tornado leveled the town of Greensburg, KY. In the aftermath, the town, along with several architects and other green-minded businesses embarked on a quest to rebuild Greensburg as a model green town. Check out the winners of the eco-home challenge held by FreeGreen.com. There are some truly inspiring home designs in this group! Who knows, you may be inspired to build your own green home (or neighborhood). FreeGreen.com has plenty of free and affordable house plans to get you started.

Think Green for Sports

Now that the Holiday Season is almost here, it's time to perhaps consider some eco-friendly options for the sports enthusiasts on your gift lists. There are a growing number of companies that are providing green sports products, from sports balls made from recycled materials to recycled wood golf tees, making it easier to "think green" when it comes to buying sports equipment. Here are a few green ideas to get you thinkin' :

• Check out Fair Trade Sports website which carries a line of sports balls for soccer, football, basketball, etc. that are certified green and fair trade.
• Beyond the "new" products, there's also companies like PlayItAgainSports which has over 350 locations in the US and Canada, where you can buy and sell used sports equipment (for parents, that can be a pretty budget-friendly way to get a few items from your Christmas list), or 
• LostGolfBalls.com where you can purchase quality used golf balls by the bucket. 
• Even big box stores like Target and Walmart carry eco-friendly gift ideas for the sports enthusiasts. Organic t-shirts, eco-friendly water bottles... just to name a few.
• Looking for an eco-friendly skateboard? Check out BambooSk8.com

For more reading, check out a great article on the eco-impact of professional sports around the world: "Blowing the Green Whistle on Sports" at Grist.org

Eco-friendly Driving - Lessening Our Carbon Footprints

For many of us, walking or using public transportation is not a viable option for getting around on a daily basis, however, there are still plenty of ways we can strive to lessen our carbon footprints.

• Combine errands that are usually spread out over a couple of days into one trip.

• Park and go inside to order food as opposed to using the drive-thru.
  
  
• Carpool with neighbors or co-workers at least once a week.
  
  
• Buy eco-friendly car parts (like oil filters)
  

• Keep your car maintained. Change the oil, check the tire pressure, and regularly replace the oil filter.

• Drive an eco-friendly car. Yes, there are some affordable options - The one pictured is the Alpin Hybrid Concept Car. More info here
  
  
• For more eco-friendly driving tips, check out the EPA's Drive Wise page.
  

How to Be an Eco-Friendly Reader

I'm an avid reader, but I rarely buy new books and magazines for myself. Originally, I was doing this because of my "genetically instilled" thrifty values - my mother was the queen of yard sale bargains when I was a kid, and I'm happy to say that particular trait didn't skip a generation!

Reading enriches our lives and creates lifelong readers and book collectors. Of course, that in itself is the main reason for the number of vast home libraries and collections. However, according to some reports, as many as 30 million trees are cut down in the U.S. alone to be used in the production of new books and magazines.
So how do you continue to enjoy reading, but minimize the effects on the environment? By becoming an eco-friendly reader. Here are a few ideas to get started: Read the full article here

Solar Energy - Can We Make a Difference?

SolarAid thinks so too.

"SolarAid aims to enable the world's poorest people to have clean, renewable power. Solar power leads to better education, health, safety and income by allowing poor communities to cook, pump water, run fridges, store vaccines, light homes, schools, clinics and businesses, power computers and homes, farm more effectively, and much more.

SolarAid carries out DIY solar projects - training local communities how to build small scale solar devices such as solar powered radios and lanterns - and installs small solar systems for community centres, medical clinics, schools and other such communal infrastructure."

Source: solar-aid.org

What do you think?

Hope, Medicine & Healing Freebies

With all the controversy swirling around Healthcare reform in the U.S., I decided to post some Healthy "freebies" :

Hope, Medicine & Healing is a *FREE* book that is being offered by the Oasis of Hope Hospital in San Diego, CA. Oasis provides alternative cancer treatments designed to improve the mental, spiritual and physical quality of patients' lives.




The Federal Citizens Information Center has a vast collection of informative brochures on health topics (as well as family, food, small business, housing, etc.). The majority of the publications you can order from the site are FREE. Under Health, here's a few of the interesting topics: Antibiotic Resistance, Sports Injuries, How to Get the Best Pharmacy Benefit, and Drug Interactions. Be informed and go green by opting for the PDF version of each of their publications.

The Oregon Dairy Council has a free downloads section that includes: Fuel for Training & Competition, Weight Management, Whey Protein Info and the MyPyramid mini-poster for kids.

And, lastly : Health Profile Organizer FREE pdf download. It's a 13-pg health history form available from Health InfoSTAT. You can print out and fill in all your pertinent info onto the form, or you can opt to download their software and keep a secure copy on your computer.

Alternative Stoves & Solar Ovens

An Alternative Stove Worth It's Weight in Gold:
Last Christmas I opted to support a variety of charities in lieu of buying gifts for friends and families. In the process of searching for organizations, I came across the Darfur Stove Project - a program that brought together a group of UC Berkeley engineers and the women of Darfur, who have endured not only poverty and displacement, but the constant threat of rape every time they leave a camp to gather wood for cooking.
Check out the project story, donate if you can, and please pass it on to others.

The Berkeley Darfur Stove® is four times more efficient than traditional 3-stone fires and two times more efficient than clay stoves. The efficiency and design of the stove has many benefits including:

• less time outside of the camps collecting fuel wood, reducing the risk of exposure to rape.
• fully enclosed flames reducing the danger of the dense straw and stick shelters from burning down.
• reduction of smoke production compared to other stoves, reducing smoke inhalation and lung disease.
• saving time by cutting down fuel wood treks, allowing women to pursue income generating opportunities.
  
  Source: darfurstoves.org
  

The website also has instructions for building your own Berkeley Darfur stove. What a great project this would be for a science class, a scouting adventure, or even a family project for your next camping trip.

Eco-friendly Solar Ovens

Solar Cookers or Sun Ovens harness the energy of the sun to bake, boil and steam a wide variety of foods. They're eco-friendly, relatively portable (depending on size), and uses a free fuel source. Even if you're not ready to cook full-time on a solar oven, it's a worthy investment for part-time use.

There are a variety of types of solar cookers: over 65 major designs and hundreds of variations of them. The basic principles of all solar cookers are:

• Concentrating sunlight: Some device, usually a mirror or some type of reflective metal, is used to concentrate light and heat from the sun into a small cooking area, making the energy more concentrated and therefore more potent.
• Converting light to heat: Any black on the inside of a solar cooker, as well as certain materials for pots, will improve the effectiveness of turning light into heat. A black pan will absorb almost all of the sun's light and turn it into heat, substantially improving the effectiveness of the cooker. Also, the better a pan conducts heat, the faster the oven will work.
• Trapping heat: Isolating the air inside the cooker from the air outside the cooker makes an important difference. Using a clear solid, like a plastic bag or a glass cover, will allow light to enter, but once the light is absorbed and converted to heat, a plastic bag or glass cover will trap the heat inside. This makes it possible to reach similar temperatures on cold and windy days as on hot days.

Alone, each of these strategies for heating something with the sun is fairly ineffective, but most solar cookers use two or all three of these strategies in combination to get temperatures sufficient for cooking. -- Source: Wikipedia.org

Prices for solar ovens can vary from $40 to a small model for camping or fishing, to more than $350 for a large model designed for use as a primary stove. Solar Cookers International has a great "Solar Cooking Archive Wiki with lots of information and recent news. The wiki covers a variety of topics from the basics of solar cooking to water pasteurization and global usage.