Green Options

Tired of being tired?  It tends to go with the season.  Everyone is still catching up from the holidays and getting ready for spring.  With work, school and social lives who has time for sleep?

With a little help, you can still look your best even if you are running on less than a full night.

Another wave of caterpillars is moving through crop fields in Liberia eating their way through plantains, bananas, coffee and cocoa.

The current wave is a different species than the first. Experts say the second caterpillar is black and white, while the one responsible for the damage in January is black and yellow (Achaea Catocaloides). The first damaging caterpillar has moved into the Ivory Coast and is eating crops there. Ivory Coast is the top cocoa producer in the world.

I am a stay-at-home mom of three.  I wake up at 4:45 a.m. every morning to help my husband get ready for work.

I drink a lot of coffee.

I’m not alone.  More than half of Americans are coffee drinkers, and many of them procure that morning cup of coffee outside their home.

In 2007, Starbucks alone used 1.9 billion disposable paper cups. That’s a lot of non-recyclable paper headed for the landfill, not to mention the water, trees, and energy used in production!

Here’s some tips to shrink your coffee footprint:

Crazy Rumors vegan-friendly lip balms have come out with a new line to compliment their coffee and tea flavors.  A La Mode Lip Balms combine the most

delicious ice cream flavors with nature’s most moisturizing ingredients for a totally sweet experience.

Available in six luscious flavors, like Banana Split and Mint Chocolate, these fun little balms will keep lips moisturized and are good for you and the environment.  Made with organic Shea Butter and Jojoba Oil for maximum softness (without the ”greasies”) and vitamin enriched.  A hint of natural Stevia makes them super yummy!

This morning I stopped at Starbucks for a treat - a soy gingerbread latte.  As I walked through the door berating myself for not bringing my travel mug, I noticed again all of the disposable cups and associated waste we now accept as part of our morning coffee ritual. 

Over 50% of adult Americans, more than 150 million people, consume coffee daily.  That’s a lot of joe, and a huge opportunity to caffeinate more sustainably.  Here are a few tips to green your morning coffee.

1. Brew Your Coffee at Home

Or, in the words of Bon Appetit, become your own barista.  In addition to reducing landfill waste, you’ll save money and have more control over the beans you brew, not to mention any sweetener or milk you add.  I’m currently in love with coffee made with a French press, and ask for a medium grind when I buy beans at my local specialty roaster.

As the mercury drops this winter season, the Grande Latte is in vogue again - but will set you back almost $4. Here are 5 tips for how to have your cup o’ Joe without breaking the bank.

I’m in love with Baby Blend Tees!

The images are super cool and only organic cotton is used.  The shirts and onesies are packaged in unbleached coffee bags, which are easily then reused at the coop for organic coffee.

The bag lists the ingredients, “one unbleached organic cotton t-shirt roasted with love, laughter and comfort”.  Thus, Baby Blend Tees are T-Shirts for the Daily Grind!

My fave shirt is the Beach Cruiser; I’d wear it if it came in my size!  Of course, the tee or onesie is made from 100% organic cotton and printed with water based inks. Why organic?

We, at Baby Blend Tees, buy organic fruits and vegetables and shop regularly at all of the environmentally friendly stores around, yet it is very difficult to find hip, fun clothes that are made with organic cotton for our children.   We decided to look into printing our designs on organic cotton and found it to be a feasible idea - so along came Baby Blend Natural Tees.

Conventional cotton farming makes up less than 3% of the agricultural farmlands in the world, but it accounts for 25% of the insectcide [sic] and pesticide use.

Like many of the eco-friendly companies we feature on Eco Child’s Play, Baby Blend Tees was started by a mom and is socially responsible. The company is a member of 1% for the Planet.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

Ecopreneurist.com asked me to post a few more ideas on what an Ecopreneurist might give for the holidays.

I wanted to approach the idea from two points. First, I am in the promotional items business. For our industry the main purpose of gift giving is to say thank you to the clients you have done business with in the past year, and to keep your name in front of those clients so that they do business with you next year.

Second, as an Econpreneurist gift giving gives my business a chance to show off our green credentials but also - maybe - influence our clients, not all of whom are green, about becoming more green in their own businesses.

In this article I want to point out two everyday items your clients likely already use that are now being produced with eco-friendly materials and that would make great end of the year client gifts.

Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner - Did you know that Day-Timer now makes an eco version of their most popular portable planner? The Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner from Leed’s is an example of a very useful, very popular and well regarded brand that is now available in a new green formula.

The rich bonded leather cover is made from recycled leather fibers and natural latex and includes nickel-free rings and zipper pulls. Recycled paper used in the planner is certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Other than that it is a standard Day-Timer® featuring two-page-per week format, with each day’s space including areas for to do list, appointments, diary, monthly tabbed calendar/dividers, loose-leaf address and phone directory, monthly planning pages, set of reference sheets, etc.

The usefulness of the Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner makes it a great gift because people will use it and hang on to it, plus in 2009 you can send your client a refill of the inside planner pages, giving you both an opportunity to touch your client again and promote a core green idea of reuse. Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner runs about $39 including your organization or company logo.

Researchers are reporting they have successfully made a high quality biodiesel from spent coffee grounds. They estimate that the coffee ground biodiesel industry could generate as much as $8,000,000 in profits annually using waste from US Starbucks stores alone.

One of the main limits to the acceptance of biodiesel as an alternative fuel is its price premium above regular diesel. To bring the price of biodiesel down, the industry uses as much waste material from other industries as possible to make it — such as used fryer oil and animal fats from poultry processing.

In holding with the idea of cheap biodiesel feedstocks, a team of researchers in the Chemical and Materials Engineering Department at the University of Nevada figured that maybe spent coffee grounds would fit the bill too.

By now, we’ve all heard about the environmental and social costs of large-scale coffee farming: lost biodiversity, unfairly reimbursed farmers, pesticide pollution and more. Another downside, though, might be less familiar: ecosystem damage caused by coffee-processing wastewater.

According to the EPA, “The wastewater produced from the wet-processing of coffee places a heavy burden on the local ecosystems. Currently, there are few environmentally sound measures that monitor the discharge of this effluent. It is often discarded in a manner that disrupts both streams and the local water supplies.”

What’s the solution? A team of students at Appalachian State University, located in Boone, North Carolina, think they might have the answer. You might call it (as the EPA has) “fair-trade ethanol.”

Earlier this month, Starbucks took a beating by environmentalists when it was reported that the coffee chain was wasting up to 6 million gallons of water daily. Just a few weeks later, the are making environmental news again, but this time for something positive they are doing.

Yesterday, TransFair USA and the Fairtrade Labelling Organiations International (FLO) announced that

Starbucks, one of the largest buyers of Fair Trade Certified coffee, will double its purchases to 40 million pounds in 2009, making the company the largest purchaser of Fair Trade Certified™ coffee in the world. Marking a new phase in their nine-year relationship with Starbucks, TransFair USA and FLO will join Conservation International as key partners in the Starbucks™ Shared Planet™ commitment to ethical sourcing.

In addition to doubling the amount of Fair Trade Coffee they purchase, Starbucks is also making a commitment to expand the work they do with the Fair Trade farmers. According to the press release