Green Options

Makena Brown, grade 8, has a plan to help keep the planet healthy and make money, too. Makena collects all of her family’s recyclables and stores them in the back yard. About once a month, she and her family load up the car with the many bags of bottles and cans and take them to the local recycling center. Because it’s her project, Makena gets to keep the money paid by the recycling center

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Sustainability is making its way into mainstream periodicals. It seems like almost every magazine in the past year has featured a "green" issue, some credible, some not. My friend just gave me the green issue of a magazine targeted at the marketing industry. So it’s no surprise that Edutopia, an education magazine for teachers and administrators published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, used sustainability as a theme for their

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As a species, we must look pretty silly in a number of ways. Here are fifteen weird things we do from a squirrel’s point of view, along with some daily ways that we can be a little more like the other animals.

15. We spend as much effort packaging our food as finding and eating it. So much of our food these days comes pre-packaged that we don’t think twice about it. In order

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Warning: the online "edutainment" game at www.freerice.com is addictive. Side effects include the ability to sound smarter, increased levels of altruism and good karma, and the possibility of warm tingly feelings in your stomach.

What’s unique about the vocabulary-building game at Freerice.com — and the reason we think you should give it a gander — is that as you play you’re donating rice to feed hungry people through international aid agencies. A sister site

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Creating new bags is an simple way to recycle used materials destined for the landfill and create a unique fashion accessory. Here are eight bags you can easily make for next to nothing, on your own, without special materials, although a few projects do recommend a sewing machine.

1. Handbag knit purse from plastic shopping bags.

You’ve probably seen similar projects to this one: maybe a rug braided from plastic grocery bags. This

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For Columbus Day, my cousin and I took the "Not Martha" challenge and created our own little sun jars. The project was quick with a total of 30 minutes to complete not including the wait time to store the sun rays and shopping of the supplies used. Also, it was fairly inexpensive at about $20 to make and fun to boot. Definitely a great way of showing how you can have a little green tech

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Continued from Greening Your Groove.

The environmental movement has been rolling along fast this year, and rocking to boot. A green rhythm is beating in the heart of today’s music scene and music lovers young and old have their fingers on its pulse.

This summer, the SOS Live Earth Concert brought together musicians to stages around the world for one glorious day of music and festivities. The message: take personal action

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Several contests launched this month in honor of Fair Trade month. From free chocolate to trips, there’s a chance for everyone to win.

Divine, a delicious Fair Trade chocolate company, has a tasty deal for all the top chefs out there. They’re looking for recipes that have "heaps of creativity, Divine appeal, and powerful statements about why contestants are hungry to change the world through Fair Trade." The sweetest

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Are you a green music pirate? (ARRR!) Free music downloading has generated a lot of debate, with some artists for and others against it. Well, here’s a positive note for all you lyrical plunderers: downloading music is more environmentally friendly than buying it on CD. But you don’t have to be scurvy about it either: these days, it’s arguably much easier (and cheaper) to buy your music fair and square on iTunes than it

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I once had someone suggest to me that environmentalists didn’t have enough fun. Granted, that person was a flame-throwing stilt walker, so her idea of fun might be a bit different from yours and mine. But the question remains: do environmentalists take themselves too seriously?

Now you may be shocked by this question. I was. I mean, if you can’t see the fun in trying to save the world from global warming and mass

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"Be a force of nature" is the motto of Xeko, a trading card game created by the Matter Group in collaboration with Conservation International. This eco-game asks children (and adults) to take on the critical mission of creating the strongest ecosystems in the threatened hotspots of our planet. By playing Xeko, children learn about the complexities of ecosystems while trying to save them.

Xeko doesn’t just talk the eco-talk, though:

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