All Entries in the "Green Products" Category
Reusable Sandwich Bags
Packing a lunch every day is a great way to save time and money and it lets you tote along healthy food choices. But think about how many plastic bags are thrown away every day and what that does to the environment. Fresh Snack Pack makes a reusable plastic bag that is smart, easy to clean, and made from PVC free EVA plastic. You can fill it up and take it with you over and over again. The envelope style pouch opens up with a tab to make food inside easy to get to, or you can fold it open flat and use the inside as a placemat. It’s a great solution to an everyday dilemma. Visit the site at www.freshsnackpack.com for more information.
Bio Bags for trash
You fill up a recycling bin each week and cart it to the curb. You bring your own cloth bags to the grocery store and skip the plastic ones. But when it comes to the really messy stuff, like cleaning up a pet accident or lining the kitchen trash can are you still using plastic bags? Most people are, and the stuff you put in those bags will stay around in landfills a very long time unless you use a BioBag.
Bio Bags are the world’s largest brand of 100% biodegradable and 100% compostable bags. And the variety of bags produced insures there is a solution for every type of waste collection. The tall kitchen bags fit in most trash cans and can be used for any type of trash. For food scraps the 3 gallon bags can be used for fresh fruit and vegetable storage in the refrigerator where their breathable composition keeps food fresher longer, as well as the compost pail. Don’t like messy, stinky compost pails under the sink? The company also manufactures a Max Air bucket for use with the 3 gallon bags. Since the bags breathe (without leaking) they allow food scraps inside to dry and they inhibit bacteria growth, which in turn controls smells.
Cleaning up after our furry friends just got easier with Bio Bags for Dog Waste. Many parks and recreation areas are already using this system, as it allows waste to go into a compost pile or be buried in the ground where the bag will decompose in as little as 10 days. Bio degradable cat pan liners are also available.
For more information visit the Bio Bag site at www.biogroupusa.com.
A Green Halloween
Fall is finally in the air and we are ready for it. It’s time for brilliantly colored leaves, the smell of hot apple cider and fresh pumpkin pie, and . . . pvc halloween costumes?
Halloween is a major industry, with consumer spending reaching almost $6 billion US dollars. What was once a Celtic tradition known as Samhain is now one of our largest consumer holidays. But what impact does that have on our environment? The carbon footprint alone is tremendous.
Did you know that most Halloween costumes and masks are petroleum based? Store bought costumes are, on average, used once and discarded. Since they’re not recyclable they end up in the landfill, along with all the plastic wrappers on the gobs of packaged candy given out to trick-or-treaters. Same with most of the bags and plastic pails that kids use to collect the candy.
Want to make this Halloween a little greener? Skip the store-bought costumes and get creative with materials you have at home. That carved pumpkin that is sitting on your front porch is great for the compost pile, as opposed to the landfill where they take up valuable space and release greenhouse gases as they decompose. And what about all that individually wrapped candy? Sure we have to be concerned about safety, but there are so many products available that are made with organic ingredients and come in recyclable packaging — many of which are actually nutritious as well. Kids love candy, but they also love treasures like soy crayons, polished stones, playing cards, craft items, trinkets, recycled pencils, etc. And don’t forget the candy bags. There’s always the tried and true pillowcase, or if you’re feeling a little more creative you can make bags and appliques from old clothes, sheets, towels, even old Halloween costumes. With a little imagination you can create some Halloween magic that won’t hurt Mother Earth. Green Halloween.org is a great source for environmentally friendly costume ideas and other green tips.
Sonic Fabric gives recycled audio cassettes new life
Photo courtesy www.sonicfabric.com
Whatever happened to all those cassette tapes we used to have lying around? Remember when you had to flip a tape over to hear the other half of the music? Bad experiences with leaving the tapes lying in the sun? Or what about the older tapes that you played so much that the tape would get loose and start jamming up in the cassette player. Did you ever wonder what happened to all those leftover audio cassettes? As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Sonic Fabric has created a unique “playable” fabric that is woven out of the audio tape from the inside of the cassettes. It’s playable because the tape retains its magnetic quality throughout the weaving process. According to the fabric’s creator all you have to do is run a tape head over it, connected to headphones to be able to “hear” what’s on the fabric. A Sonic Rhythm stage dress was created for phish percussionist Jon Fishman, made from his own personal collection of cassette tapes. Jon had gloves with tape heads mounted in them for playback on stage.
The concept itself is beautiful — a cross between the imagination of a child watching tell-tail cassette tape streamers on the back of a boat while thinking about the music that was on those tapes, and Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags with blessings to be sent off into the world, carried by the wind. The fact that the finished product is “playable” wasn’t really considered during its creation. The idea was simply to record a collage of music onto the cassette tapes with personal meaning, that could then be turned into a wearable object.
You can read more about the project and order products directly at Sonic Fabric.
The i-House. Eco trailer park of the future?
There has been a lot of talk lately about mega mansions and suburban developments filled with oversized, overpriced homes that waste energy as well as the natural resources required to construct them. Over the past few decades the American home has been steadily growing larger and the pricetag has grown along with it. Sometimes it takes a catastrophe like our current global economic crisis to shake things up and make way for new ideas and new ways of doing business. Take Clayton homes for example. Clayton homes started building modular housing and mobile homes during the Great Depression. In 2003 the company was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway . Warren Buffet wrote the following in this year’s letter to shareholders, “This innovative ‘green’ home, featuring solar panels and numerous other energy-saving products, is truly a home of the future. Estimated costs for electricity and heating total only about $1 per day when the home is sited in an area like Omaha.”
The i-house is a highly functional small mobile home with a “V” shaped roof designed to collect rainwater, solar panels to offset power costs, and even a rooftop deck. At an average cost of $100 per s.f. this is a great example of creativity and forward thinking, in a place that few would have ventured to go. We’re sending out buttercups to Warren and the Berkshire Hathaway team as well as all the creative minds at Clayton Homes that went into this one. The I-house is one small step in the right direction and we look hope there are a lot more to come.
And you thought buttercups were yellow . . .
What a morning. I thought I knew a thing or two about editing software. But, sadly I’m not as informed as I thought I was. Still, here I am, typing away at the computer and magically words are appearing that will be sent out all around the world. Is that what I want? What if I say something stupid, or irrelevant, or worse yet — what if I’m completely wrong? Sigh.
