Green Options

Thank you Citizenpup for sponsoring our Green Lunch Giveway, and congratulations to Sonya of Sanity is for Those Without Children (love the name!) for winning.  Sonya wrote, “My kids love edamame and lots of veggies!”  My kids love edamame too, and I promise to grow the beans in my garden next year. If you do buy edamame, shop carefully to avoid beans [...]

Even a year gone since the failure of Lehman, fundamental questions remain regarding the core underlying assumptions of our financial system. Though currently derivatives trading and black boxes appear out of favour, what will replace them in terms of helpful and productive uses of capital still has yet to be determined. This question was what the Conference on Social Capital Market’s, or SoCap09 tried to give some structure to; while [...]

If you missed Green iPhone Apps Reviewed Part 1: Free Apps, you can see it here. After my first batch of reviews on the free green iPhone apps, I have gotten some great suggestions on green apps. If you have any you you would like to see reviewed, you can comment here, head over to my website www.danielhohler.com, or twitter me @danielhohler. I am not a hard man to find. I have already gotten a whole new batch that people would like to hear about, so it looks like by popular demand there will be green iPhone apps part 3, so stay tuned here on planetsave.com.

iPhone apps are sweeping the nation. For those of us who own iPhones, we know just how useful a good app can be. The problem is that there are so many apps floating around, finding a really good app is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. However, don’t fret. I am here to pick up all of those straws of hay and tell you if indeed they are hay, or maybe just maybe, a needle. Or with less metaphor, I’ll try them and tell you if they are any good.

Ever forget your wedding anniversary? Your spouse’s/partner’s birthday? Perhaps forgetting the anniversary on which you started blogging isn’t quite the same, but after six years and thousands of posts, I felt like a total dolt when I realized today that July 10th (not today, the 12th) was sustainablog’s “birthday.”

That’s right: six years (and two days) ago, I created a new Blogger account, and started wrestling with this concept of sustainability that I’d only recently discovered. There’ve been lots of twists and turns since then, but it’s really gratifying to look back and see the growth and development of my little blog in that time.

While most of us associate birthdays/anniversaries with gifts and celebrations, these dates are also the perfect time for expressing gratitude, and looking forward (as well as back). I owe many people thanks for their support, including

The folks at Green Options: sustainablog’s always been a little unique in the GO network: rather than narrowly focusing on a niche within the green world, we’ve always done a little bit of everything. That has its ups and down, and I’m grateful to my friends at GO (and new parent company Virgance) for their patience with and support of our model.

The green blogosphere: You can’t blog in a vacuum… or, at least, you can’t blog in a vacuum and expect to build much of an audience. From early on, sustainablog’s received a ton of support from both big and small players within the green online media space. Special hat tips to Grist (one of the first big sites to link to us), Treehugger (for the writing gig and frequent linkage), Worldchanging (for frequent early linkage and some guest posting opportunities), Triplepundit, HuffPo Green, Green, Inc., Greenbiz, Lighter Footstep… I’m just getting started. Whether you’re listed or not, know that I appreciate your support.

I know, I know–most of these holidays are just ploys by greeting card companies to get us to buy stuff. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day–it’s a plot by Hallmark to get me to spend my hard-earned money on a bunch of nonsense.

I have two little kids, though, and a loving partner. There’s no WAY I’m giving up the glory of Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, and heck, I’ll do my part on Father’s Day, too. And it is nice to have a sanctioned event handy to remind us to honor and celebrate our loved ones, to demonstrate our gratitude and appreciation of them. Especially when we’re honoring mothers. As in me.

Everyone in my family knows, though, that I only like gifts that are 1) handmade, 2) food (especially if it’s also homemade), 3) camera stuff, or 4) craft supplies. And nobody hardly ever gets me camera stuff.

So here’s a list of five nifty, crafty, handmade gifts that you can make in plenty of time for Mother’s Day. Just in case, you know, you don’t have a good camera store near you:

Even after doing this for years, I still get a little flustered with the requisite Earth Day post. No, it’s not a matter of saying “Screw Earth Day” (though I get that…); rather, it’s a recognition that there’s so much content out there that I’m unsure what I can add.  So, rather than taking a feeble stab at something, I’ll make my contribution by sharing some of the good stuff I’ve seen around the web and blogosphere today.

• Green Living Ideas points to a couple of new films that may be worth checking out: Disney’s Earth, and A Sea Change.
• Cleantechnica profiles a family that’s tweeting its energy use today. Triplepundit covers this one, also.
• Speaking of “Screw Earth Day,” Grist wishes all a “Happy F’ing Earth Day!”

Editor’s note: The following post was originally published on Green and Clean Mom in August 2008, but the information on BPA is still relevant and important to consider. “Green & Clean Mom can inspire you to try a little harder, be a catalyst for change and to offer you some new tips and news on how to be the green, sexy and sassy mom…I know you are!”

Okay, war sound harsh but it’s a battle of sorts. Is BPA safe or isn’t it? Is it a myth that BPA is harmful and the media is fooling us because we don’t have the facts?  Well, according to Mom Style News or Mom Myth Busters (same author), yes. If you follow me on twitter you might know, Friday there was a big twitter debate going on over this. The Good Human, Safe Mama, To Think and Nature Mom , twittered their opinion.

Here is it is folks, BPA might not kill you if your child drinks out of a sippy cup or has some canned food lined with BPA. Sure, I conceded to this. BPA is a chemical and the FDA and EPA has limits of safety so companies use this and then hide behind it, because they can. Companies that have gone with BPA free products have done so because of consumer demands. Why are consumers demanding this? Duh, because there are risks. Who’s most at risk? The fetus, infants and children are most at risk. Even the reports sited by Mom Style News don’t discount that, she just says they are minimal. Well, my son has a minimal risk of getting hit on our road when he crosses it because of the traffic statistics or what I observe. So I should let him just take that “minimal” risk. It’s just a possibility and not a fact! That’s how ridiculous this debate is!  Here are the facts that have led ME to know that choosing BPA FREE is the right thing to do and since Mom Style News is all about the facts and going by what the facts are and not just reading mommy blogs (which I love, support, read and rely on) here it is…

FACT: The government sources are basing their decisions and statements on assessments with hundreds of flaws and errors. The FDA has based it’s decision on two studies, funded by the plastics industry.

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The Gort Cloud:
The Invisible Force Powering Today’s Most Visible Green Brands
by Richard Seireeni with Scott Fields
240 pp. Chelsea Green

It is like what Van Jones called the “invisible network of networks.” Everyone who is in it (and some who stand outside it) know it is there, but they just aren’t sure how to define it, or what shape it takes.

In a new book called The Gort Cloud, branding expert Richard Seireeni takes a stab at capturing the moving target of social networks, sustainability, and green business and captures it with the perfect metaphor — a cloud. But Seireeni doesn’t use any old cloud for his metaphor, the book gets its name from an amorphous field of stellar debris called the Oort Cloud. Seireeni writes:

“I began to think of this particular green network as something tangible with a mission and with a collective membership of like-mined people. It wasn’t a single community. It wasn’t a movement, It defied easy definition.”

If there was such a thing as a crafty recycling Must List (What? No such thing as a crafty recycling Must List? I’m totally going to write one), vintage buttons would be at the top of that list (…and I’m going to put vintage buttons at the top when I write my list).

Not only has the entire CraftyStylish blog declared March as button month in celebration of West Coast Crafty’s new book, Button it Up, but we here at Crafting a Green World are known to love our buttons, too–check out these vintage button monogram pillows, or the felted wool weekend projects that include button-topped flowers. Flowers!

So if you finish all those up and you’re STILL craving yourself some button crafting, check out five more crafty little projects that will let you get your button on:

After you’ve followed my felted wool tutorial, you will find yourself left with–what else? Felted wool!

What to do, what to do?

The best thing is that there are loads of cool projects designed for felted wool, and its versatility means that there are just as many projects for beginners as there are for the most advanced crafters.

What to do with felted wool?

Well, here are five things to start with:

There is an entire world of craft radio out there in the ether. In the same way in which I blog, obsessively, every single day about my crafty life on my personal blog and read the crafty blogs of others, there is also an audio/video version of that same crafty obsession that can be watched or listened to at one’s leisure.

While you grade papers, or wash the dishes, or eat your lunch, or walk home from school at night, you can listen to craft news (the CPSIA, although delayed, is still a big deal), craft opinion (which type of knitting needles are the best?) and interviews with other crafty people (Alicia Paulson has a lot of interesting things to say about the process of writing a craft how-to book).

I heart podcasts.