Eco-Friendly Entry

I have not yet had to plea­sure of meet­ing Way­far­ing Wan­derer but since we live in the same town, a pho­towalk is planned. I hope we will finally get to meet in the very near future, maybe for a photo-snow-walk or a hike at the Hebron Rock Colony. When I read about her “Share the Love” green give­away, I had to par­tic­i­pate for a chance to win one of her lovely prizes and per­haps the book “Liv­ing Green”, a lovely pic­ture frame or a re-usable bag may also be in my future. I could think of plenty of eco-friendly things I do cur­rently to brag about but it was alot harder to think of ways to improve upon the many eco-friendly actions I take on a daily basis. 

5 things I do right now that are eco-friendly:

1. Use re-usable con­tain­ers for take-out food and re-usable bags for shop­ping; sup­port restau­rants which use recy­clable take-out con­tain­ers
2. Make my own home­made house­hold cleaners
3. Com­post throw-away kitchen waste
4. Recy­cle glass, plas­tic, metal, bat­ter­ies, CFL light-bulbs, paste­board, card­board, newspaper
5. Make a major­ity of healthy, nutri­tious meals at home

5 things I don’t do but can eas­ily start doing:

1. I hang out clothes on a clothe­lines mainly dur­ing the sum­mer but could do this more often in the fall and spring
2. Be more con­sis­tent with recy­cling & com­post­ing; some­times a few things that could eas­ily be recy­cled or com­posted end up in my trash because of pure laziness
3. Fin­ish rid­ding kitchen of plas­tic food stor­age con­tain­ers by find­ing inert alternatives
4. Save more food for left­over meals and make a plan to use these so they do not go to waste
5. Drive less; walk more

Nom­i­na­tion for prize: Blue Bird Hill

Good luck to all the entrants and much luck to every­one in achiev­ing their eco-friendly aspirations.

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Bamboo Anyone?

Green Daily pub­lished a story this past sat­ur­day about some really cool and sus­tain­able spec­ta­cles. The story claims they are really flex­i­ble so it is hard to break them but I won­der how the mate­r­ial will hold up to the rig­ors of every­day wear? They are also afford­able as I have rou­tinely paid at least $150-$200 if not more for frames in the past. I have bam­boo grow­ing in my yard. I won­der if they would cut me a deal if I donated some bamboo? 

 I also posted this over at the More Hip Than Hip­pie Forum.

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Are You a Thread Head?

 

The lat­est pod­cast show by the Thread Heads over at Thread­Banger is all about reusable shop­ping bags, one of my favorite sub­jects. Just ask any­one who has had to endure my inces­sant ram­blings about using them when I explain the great plea­sure I get every time I walk out of a store with my bags in hand. It did take me awhile to learn to bring them with me on shop­ping trips but now it has become a force of habit. I now remem­ber before I leave the house to bring my bags with me and you must form a habit of bring­ing them into the store with you as well. One of my local gro­cery stores used to give me $.05 off my total shop­ping bill for each cloth bag I would bring to put my gro­ceries in so that was a big help and a great reminder. They have just recently changed to giv­ing me points on my fre­quent shop­per card but it is still an incen­tive. I do find that if I have my bags with me at all times that I use them every­where I go. I love telling the cashier at any store I shop at, with a smile of course, that I have brought my own bag. It just makes me feel good and makes me feel like I am mak­ing a dif­fer­ence, how­ever small.

 

I have all sorts of dif­fer­ent bags. I have sev­eral Clas­sic String Bags and also a cou­ple of Pro­duce Bags. I have started a col­lec­tion of health food store reusable bags which are usu­ally made of can­vas. When­ever I go to a new health food store I always pick up a bag with their logo on it. I have one from Green­life Gro­cery, Nature’s Food Patch, Earth­fare and Whole Foods Mar­ket. My Whole Foods bag is so big and durable that I have used it like a back-pack to lug my stuff around. I haven’t picked up any chico bags yet but I do plan to get some of those awe­some bags at some point in the future. They are very con­ve­nient and com­pact so you can stuff them in your car so you don’t for­get. The other reuasable bags I take with me on shop­ping trips are just can­vas bags I have col­lected over the years with var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions logos on them. I have cus­tomized some of them by paint­ing or sewing over the logo. A friend of mine made this bag com­pletely from scratch.

 

One of the orga­ni­za­tions men­tioned in the Thread Head pod­cast was Mors­bags whose goal is social guerilla bag­ging. They give you a pat­tern for a really sim­ple to sew bag and give out their labels in print­able .pdf form, then you give away the bags you make for free usu­ally on a day set by the head orga­ni­za­tion. I really like this idea and so much so that I cre­ated a pod for my area called BlueRidge­Bags so if you want to make some with me con­tact me through the mors­bags site.

 

Other links of interest:

One Bag at a Time

She’s A Betty: Reusable SHop­ping Bag Guide

Reuasable Gro­cery and Shop­ping Bags Blog

Reuse This Bag

Feed Projects link via The Daily Green

Bags On the Run

U-HandBag Blog: Tuto­r­ial for mak­ing a reuas­bable bag with comfy handles

 

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