Archive for the ‘Recycling’ Category
December 1st, 2008
Green Gifts for Kids Are Groovy!
Stumble it!
Are you scratching your head wondering what to get little Sally, Ben or, if you’re in Los Angeles, baby Dakota? Well fear not– eco-assistance is on the way. Consider these groovy green gifts for kids– we’ve got gifts for babies, toddlers, little ramblers and even too-cool-for-school teenagers. Like, whatever.
Green Gifts for Babies
What little baby wouldn’t love to snuggle the night away in this cozy 100% organic cotton one-piece from Under the Nile? It’s so smart with its polo stripe design. The baby will kiss you and say, “Thank you– I love it!” Wait, no it won’t. But it will think it.
For the slightly more avant garde baby, how about this smart “I’m with the band” t-shirt from Focoloco? This organic, hand-dyed shirt will make even the fussiest aspiring rock-star-baby pleased as punch. I absolutely love the designs this company does….to see more click here.
Okay we’ve got to get some stuffed animals in the mix. These adorable sock monkeys from Maggie’s Organics are made from “less than perfect” Maggie’s Organics cotton socks. These monkeys are made by a 100% worker-owned co-operative in North Carolina. To make these monkeys extra special they are all hand sewn and one of a kind. Get a barrel full of ‘em!
Green Gift for Toddlers and Little People
Kids need toys, but let’s say no to plastic this year, shall we? (To learn more about the No Plastic Holiday Challenge, click here.) Why not get them a wooden toy that is sustainably made and will last for generations? ImagiPLAY is a great company that makes wonderful, safe wooden toys for kids of all ages. How neat is this Artic Expedition Playset at left? You can also educate the child about the danger to the Artic posed by global warming!
Little people will also love the toys from Plan Toys. Plan Toys are made from sustainably-sourced woods (like recycled rubber wood) and are colored with vegetable dyes. I love this prop plane and pilot set… but there are hundreds of other super toys from this company as well.
Another excellent educational gift for kids is Dr. Seuss’ classic book The Lorax. What makes this a green gift, you ask? Let us refresh your memory on the books central theme: ”Way back in the days when the grass was still green and the pond was still wet and the clouds were still clean…. there was a Lorax who spoke for the trees.” Seeee? It’s a wonderful, cautionary tale that never grows old. It should be in every child’s bookshelf!
Green Gifts for Teens
Teens are very hard to shop for– they hate everything their parents give them, right? Well you might win some serious Cool Points if you get them an eco-friendly skateboard or snowboard. Arbor is a hard-core green company and they have been making eco-smart boards since 1999. They use eco-materials to improve the performance and style of their boards. All of these natural materials are sustainably sourced. They also reclaim woods and bamboo for many of their products. Check them out!
Another groovy gift for an older kid is a solar-powered backpack. These packs have solar panels in them, and kids can use them to charge their iPod, cell phone or whatever other gadget them may be carrying around. They will look pretty sly carrying one of these bad boys on campus.
And click here to see more green gift ideas for mom, dad, wife, husband, and more!
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November 28th, 2008
Take the No Plastic Holiday Challenge
Overwhelmed by all the wide-ranging eco-advice for greening your holidays? Then keep it simple by focusing on this: The No Plastic Holiday Challenge.
Organized by Amy Gates, a.k.a. the Crunchy Domestic Goddess, The No Plastic Holiday Challenge is simple: Try to de-plastick your holidays. After all, every bit of plastic ever produced — minus the tiny bit that’s been incinerated — is still with us today, whether buried in landfills, floating in the oceans, or littering our streets.
Holidays come and go but plastic is forever, so challenge yourself this season to find non-plasticky gifts — in non-plasticky packaging. We at Low Impact Living have endless tips to help you on your de-plasticking way:
* First, start simple with our basic tips for getting plastics out of your life. Reach for the low hanging fruit first — like taking your own bag to the grocery store or opting for a reusable water bottle instead of a disposable one.
* Then challenge yourself further by helping others help you. Ask your drycleaner not to plastic bag your clothes, or your favorite restaurant not to give you plastic flatware.
* For those plastics you just can’t avoid, find out what plastics are most recyclable so you can make the best choices. To get you started, Here is some city-specific recycling information.
If all this de-plasticking information’s new to you and you need some help getting started — or want to help a newbie eco-friend get going — The 2008 Pollution Solutions gift bag could be the holiday package you’ve been looking for. This gift bag comes free with a $135 donation to Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that provides important information about health and the environment to consumers while pushing for national policy change.
EWG’s done illuminating research work about plastic hazards and pollution, among other issues, so your money would not only go towards a de-plasticking cause, but help you de-plastic yourself! The gift bag includes a Jumbo Enviro-Tote made of recycled plastic, a 6-piece Pyrex glass container set, and a Klean Kanteen stainless steel bottle — all three of which will help you embrace the reusable and ditch the disposable lifestyle. You’ll also get a EWG cosmetics guide, pesticide magnet, notepad and bookmark, a copy of Green Goes With Everything (limited to first 500 donors), $25 in free product coupons from eco-companies, as well as some holiday treats — a box of 6 Crummy Brothers organic chocolate chip cookies!
Ready to sign up for the The No Plastic Holiday Challenge? Head over to Crunchy Domestic Goddess and write a comment about your commitment to get started.
Top image via CDG; bottom image via EWG
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November 24th, 2008
Is Recycling Worth It? Popular Mechanics Investigation
Americans haul 82 million tons of trash to recycling centers each year. But does it pay off—for the environment or the economy? Popular Mechanics has some real answers.
Written by Alex Hutchinson, appearing in the December issue of Popular Mechanics
The modern era of recycling began in the meandering wake of the Mobro 4000. The infamous garbage barge spent much of 1987 traveling up and down the eastern seaboard looking for a place to dump its 3000-ton load of New York trash. It was refused at every port. By the time the spurned vessel returned to Long Island, still ferrying its fetid cargo, it had become the poster child for what was trumpeted as a national crisis: dwindling landfill space. Faced with the scale of their own refuse, Americans took action. Nascent recycling programs blossomed into major operations. Municipalities invested in trucks for curbside pickups and in facilities to handle mountains of castoff material. Kindergartners were taught the virtues of separating clear glass from green. Almost overnight, it seemed, recycling was embraced by the public as a kind of all-purpose absolution for our environmental sins.
Yet doubts remained. Some critics wondered if, far from being an environmental panacea, recycling is actually a giant placebo that makes us feel virtuous but wastes both money and resources. Take the much- maligned plastic water bottle. It’s almost always made from petroleum, a resource that certainly seems worth conserving, and if you chuck it in the trash, the container will live on in a landfill for centuries. But how much diesel fuel does the truck that collects these bottles burn? How much energy does the recycling plant consume; what fumes does it emit into the atmosphere? And what does it all cost, anyway?
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Click here to learn about 5 Recycling Myths Debunked
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November 19th, 2008
Green Your Thanksgiving, from Travel to Turkey
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday – I show up, stuff myself with some of my favorite foods, help clean up a little, and then lay on the couch and watch TV. No agonizing over the perfect gift, no holiday crowds…I don’t even have to cook.
But all of that gluttony does have a price that’s paid by the environment. From travel to turkey and beyond, there are many ways that this wonderful holiday can be more eco-friendly.
The not-so-friendly skies
Getting to your destination is half the battle, but the other half is what all of our travel does to the environment. If you can avoid flying, particularly short-haul flights, do so. Buses and trains are less expensive, and can be a bit of an adventure because you actually get to see things along the way. Regardless of your mode of transportation, consider offsetting your emissions. The money you pay for offsetting goes to projects that reduce carbon in the atmosphere, like reforestation and renewable energy.
Reduce, reuse, recycle
If you’re hosting Thanksgiving at your house, make sure to pay attention to what waste is being generated. Having a big crowd over for dinner can make it tempting to use disposable products instead of the real deal. This is especially true of cups, since we all tend to set them down, forget which one is ours, and grab another. If sheer numbers dictate that you must use disposable cups, have each person write their name on theirs so that they’ll only need one for the day. Then wash them and save them for next year.
With a little forethought, you can also reuse packaging to send leftovers home with guests. For those treats that you’re keeping yourself, don’t use plastic containers. Plastic leaches chemicals into food, especially when heated, so even if you store food in plastic transfer it to glass before reheating. Forgo disposable plates and utensils altogether, if possible. After all, it’s Thanksgiving – what better opportunity to use the good china and Grandma’s silver?
Gobble, gobble!
Thanksgiving is all about the food (well, other than that whole “giving thanks” part) so the choices you make with the menu are important. As you plan your shopping trip, consider what you might be able to buy at the local farmers’ market, and look for organic options.
Local food travels fewer miles, so it’s often fresher and more nutritious. It also saves on transportation-related emissions – do we really need to ship in an orange from Australia when we have Florida and California right here at home? Organic choices reduce your exposure to chemicals, which also affect the earth. Look into the organic, pasture-raised turkeys available at many stores and on the internet. As for produce, since organic is often more expensive than traditionally-grown, check out this list of the most chemical-laden fruits and veggies if you’re watching your budget. It will help you to get the most organic bang for your buck. Also, look back on last year’s Thanksgiving post for some great resources and recipes!
Finishing touches
A beautiful centerpiece can really make the Thanksgiving meal feel special. This year, forgo a short-lived flower arrangement – cut flowers are often flown in from developing countries that don’t have the same environmental protections that we rely on in the U.S. Try a green plant or several small pots of herbs, which will clean the air and season your cooking long after Thanksgiving is over. Oh, and FYI, those cute combination pots of different kinds of green plants don’t generally live very long either, due to the different watering needs of each variety. Stick with a single, hardy plant for best results.
If you enjoy breaking out the candlesticks for a little added ambiance, consider using soy or beeswax candles. Traditional paraffin wax candles are made from a petroleum derivative and create toxic fumes when burned – they have even been linked to bladder and kidney cancer in lab animals! Similarly, scented candles can contain artificial fragrances, as well as toxic chemicals like benzene and acetone. Look for candles that use essential oils for fragrances.
Go Cowboys!
If you’re not the one slaving away in the kitchen, odds are you’re in front of the TV for the parade or a football game. If you’re considering a new TV (maybe as a Christmas present for your football-loving honey?) make sure to look into energy-efficient EnergyStar-rated versions. New, more stringent requirements for achieving the rating make this an even more important consideration when buying a TV. Some models are also using new technologies to improve their impact on the environment. For example, Philips’ new EcoTV is a lead-free model that senses the amount of light in the room to automatically adjust screen brightness. It’s HD and 42”, so there’s no sacrificing quality for the environment on this one. Just don’t forget to properly dispose of your old model.
Black Friday
For many people, the day after Thanksgiving is the real highlight of the weekend, with millions hitting the malls for deals. If you’re into the thrill of the hunt, just keep in mind that poorly-made goods will live a short life that ends in a landfill. Think quality over quantity, and consider what your friends and family members actually need. Does your father-in-law really need (or want?) a fake singing bass nailed to a board? Does your child need another plastic toy that they will bore them by December 26th? Think about gifts that enable you to spend time with the people you love, like family outings to the aquarium or books that you read together. Ask for gifts that help the community, like a donation to your favorite charity. These gifts bring meaning to our lives, and can even save a few dollars – what better gift is that?
Do you have other ideas for ways to make your Thanksgiving more environmentally-friendly? Share them with us!
Also be sure to check our Green Holiday Gift Guide.
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November 10th, 2008
Recycling Myths Debunked by Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics has just published an excellent piece by Alex Hutchinson called “Recycling Myths: PM Debunks 5 Half Truths about Recycling.” Even those of us who consider ourselves Recycling Jedis will learn a thing or two from this great feature!
Myth Number 1: We have to recycle because we’re running out of landfill space.
That was the rallying cry for recycling advocates back in the 1980s, when the Mobro 4000 garbage barge wandered up and down the East Coast searching for a place to dump its moldering load. It’s a bit of a red herring, though. After all, we have pretty much unlimited space to dump garbage—if we’re willing. In practice, for every town that refuses permission to build a landfill, there’s often another town eager for the revenues that a landfill site can bring.
According to the National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA), the United States has about 20 years of disposal capacity left in existing landfills. There are, however, places where space is getting tight…. read the rest about this myth.
Myth Number 2: The trucks that collect recycling burn more energy and produce more pollution than recycling saves.
Collecting recyclables isn’t cheap—it eats up about 50 to 60 percent of the budget of a typical curbside recycling program, according to Lori Scozzafava of the Solid Waste Association of North America. And the trucks burn gas and emit pollution as they go. That said, “You’re going to collect waste one way or another,” points out Jeff Morris, a Washington-based environmental consultant. A recycling program should allow garbage collection to become less frequent (or to use fewer trucks), offsetting the cost and energy involved. Plus, new truck designs can collect both recycling and garbage (at different times), avoiding the huge capital expense of an extra fleet. They can also self-dump specially designed bins, saving time and manpower.
But all that turns out to be pretty much irrelevant to the question of whether recycling makes environmental sense. Scientists have conducted hundreds of “life-cycle analyses” to compare recycling with other options like landfill and incineration, following the entire chain of events from the manufacture of a product (using either virgin or recycled materials) to its disposal. The dominant factor in virtually every case is the enormous amount of energy required to turn raw materials into metals and plastics compared to the energy needed to reprocess products that already exist. Read the rest.
Myth Number 3: Thanks to the sky-high prices of raw materials, cities are getting rich by selling recyclables.
In the past year, prices for almost every kind of recyclable have hit record highs, sparking a frenzy of activity in the recycling industry. “If you’re wondering where all the used-car salesmen have gone, they’re rushing into recycling,” says Jerry Powell, an industry veteran who edits Resource Recycling magazine. That translates to profits for many players—in fact, Powell says, “if you can’t make money in recycling right now, you should get out of the business.”
Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your local city council is getting a cut of the action. “Some cities are still locked in unfavorable long-term contracts and paying tipping fees,” says Ed Skernolis of the National Recycling Council. That means that these cities have to pay to collect and sort their curbside recycling—and then pay someone to take away these now-valuable materials instead of being paid for them. Read the rest.
Myth Number 4: All the paper, plastic, metal and glass dumped in recycling bins has to be painstakingly (and expensively) sorted by hand.
When municipal recycling was first catching on in the 1980s, it wasn’t clear how carefully people would sort their recyclables. “Some towns used to have a dozen different boxes for different types of bottles, cans and so on,” recalls Richard Porter, a University of Michigan economics professor who authored The Economics of Waste. Not everyone was eager to devote that much effort to sorting up front—but it was either that or pay people to do it by hand at the end of the line, which was prohibitively expensive.
These days, processors are beginning to move toward “single-stream” material recovery facilities, which allow homeowners to dump all their recycling in one bin and rely on machines to do the dirty work. According to Eileen Berenyi, a consultant who studies solid waste management, the number of single-stream facilities in the U.S. jumped from 70 in 2001 to 160 in 2007. Read the rest.
Myth Number 5: Most of the plastic put in recycling bins ends up in the garbage.
This one is true now, but changing quickly. Sorting plastics is tricky for recycling processors. Bottles can’t be separated out with a magnet; small pieces like coffee-cup lids get flattened and mixed into paper bales; bags get caught in the spinning disks of sorting equipment, forcing frequent shut-downs. Trying to decode the recycling numbers on plastic products is also a pain for consumers. Read the rest.
Are you certain you’re recycling as much as you can at home? Get the Low Down! Click here to learn How to Recycle to the Max in Your City. And if you need to recycle dangerous, toxic or large items, be sure to check our nationwide directory of local recycling centers.
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