Green Options

See a battery, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck. Especially if you take the battery that you found and safely recycle it, keeping dangerous toxic poisons out of our seas and drinking water.

I found this used battery near the ocean in Pacifica, right across from our friend Rick’s Salada Beach Cafe. It has since been safely recycled, and kept from polluting our waterways.

Our oceans are already turning into acid. We have to start today to try to make things better. Keeping one more toxic battery or piece of plastic out of our oceans, collectively, will make a difference. Once you start looking, you may be really surprised just how many “disposable” batteries litter our streets and sewers. Next time you see one, pick it up; what you do matters.

Like it or not, at least for the near future most of us are stuck with internal combustion engine powered cars. While a lot of hype is behind future cars and technology, from electric to hydrogen to everything in between, a lot of improvements can yet be made on the ICE engine.

To that end, the Department of Energy has awarded GM with $2.7 million to develop a working prototype of a Shape Memory Alloy engine. In theory, this engine could recycle the waste heat and turn it into electrical energy, perhaps one day even replacing alternators and improving fuel efficiency.

If you are going to be anywhere near San Francisco City Hall this afternoon, please consider going to the fourth floor to voice your support for greywater recycling. There will be a meeting at the Building Inspection Commission today to vote on a SF city amendment which is attempting to make it more complicated for city residents to recycle and conserve our own water.

Time: Wed, Oct 21, pm @ 2pm

Where: SF City Hall, Room 416

Rain barrels made from recycled food grade containers for water conservation.

The new green-themed Reclaim made by Samsung is more than your standard phone with slick green branding — though there’s a bit of that too.

What’s green (or blue), smaller than a deck of cards and will remind you to unplug the charger from the wall after charging? The Reclaim, the new green-themed smart phone made by Samsung for Sprint, is loaded with a bunch of green content, a handful eco-conscious accessories and an attention to sustainable packaging that make it more “green” than most other phones out there.

But you can’t just slap a case made from forty percent corn plastic, dip it in green paint and call it green, can you? The folks at Sprint sent me the new Reclaim so I could answer those questions myself.

When the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced that it was deaccessioning part of its textile collection, artist Robert Fontenot was on the scene. He hit up three separate auctions and acquired 50 pieces, almost half of the items the museum was getting rid of. The resulting work is sometimes arty, sometimes functional, and all beautiful! He embroiders the accession number into each finished piece.

The project is still a work in progress, and I just love this quote from his artist’s statement: “Although each item has not yet been used, each item can have a use.” Yes! I think that can apply to materials in a much larger sense, and his work is a fantastic reminder that old pieces can take on a whole new life with just a little bit of love.

Want to get your upcycle on? Thrift stores and even the back of your closet are full of textiles that can take on a whole new life! Here are a few ideas to get you going:

Last week, Craftzine linked to an awesome tutorial for deconstructing cans over at Adaptive ReUse. Since then, I’ve been sort of obsessing with ways to reuse the metal that would normally hit our recycling bin.

Some of these projects involve taking the tins apart, while others use the entire thing to create something fun and new. There are project ideas for a bunch of different skill levels, so don’t fret if you’ve never done any metal crafting before!

Ready to get reusing? Me, too!

For some people the act of walking in to a shopping mall during a huge sale makes them sort of shake like they are on crack and for me and my friend Mouse, walking into Scrap for the first time, it caused a similar reaction. How could I not have known about this place? True, the location could not be less in the middle of nowhere and in San Francisco that is quite a trick. But still, I have no excuse.

Scrap, which their pamphlet calls “a creative reuse center and workshop space” came about in 1976, way before recycling and Green became trendy, as a resource for artists and teachers. Scrap also set out to promote environmental awareness and creative reuse.

I recently found the book Choose to Reuse (a green touch & feel book) while looking for an environmentally sound gift for a two year old.

What I like about this book:  It’s produced sustainably.  This fun story carries the message of reuse, which is the ultimate in recycling.  In the story, a box becomes a princess castle and an old blue towel becomes a superhero cape.  This delightful story entertains youngsters while giving them ideas for playtime and teaching a valuable lesson.

Our house is over-run with books because I fully believe in the value of reading.  I also believe that owning books (and reading them together) is vital to a child’s development.  (Disclaimer- Yes we do borrow a lot of books.  We also frequently purchase secondhand books).  If you are looking for a way to shed a few books (to make room for more, of course) or you want to start a service project with your children, check out EnviroMom’s suggestion for reusing old books.

If you own a few books which are beyond repair, here are some tips for reusing much of the book (remember to recycle whatever cannot be reused).

Most people committed to going green have switched from using bottled water to reusable water bottles, but that’s not the only disposable product you can eliminate from your life. Earlier this month, Jennifer Chait posted a long list of ways to replace your disposables. Some of my favorites:

• Instead of store plastic produce bags use cloth produce bags.
• Instead of ice pops from the store choose reusable ice pop molds and

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Miami’s Metrozoo is recycling 1,400 pounds of elephant poop, 750 pounds of rhino dung, and 500 pounds of giraffe excrement per day.

In an innovative effort to save landfill space and reduce the zoo’s ecological footprint, the organic waste is used as fertilizer, and also to “decorate the zoo grounds.” In addition to the “big producers” - elephants, rhinos, and giraffes - other herbivores are [...]

In some respects, waste is immeasurable—it touches every aspect of your business, from the scrap paper that fills your waste bins to the fuel you use for business travel.

And while we know that that aiming for zero waste is a fast, cheap and effective strategy for combating climate change, its not always easy to do. You can’t find the resources, it involves trips here and there, its expensive. There are all sorts of obstacles. However, these six companies (some are actually non-profit organizations and government agencies) make recycling easy.

1. Earth911.org is an excellent site with good recycling information.  Their recycling search tool makes it easy to locate waste collectors and drop-off sites.  It covers resources for paper, metal, hazardous waste, plastic, glass, electronics, automotive, household, garden, and construction waste. Two of my favorite resources are: 1) a great list of manufacturer and retail take-back e-waste programs and 2) an awesome free widget for your website that can not only give your customers access to the world’s largest database of over 100,000 recycling locations, but can pre-populate recyclable materials search to fit your readers. For example, a blog focused on car care can auto-populate the widget to search for locations that accept used motor oil or car batteries.

2. LampRecycling.com is a new online resource for facilities that need a simple and cost-effective way to recycle their fluorescent bulbs, CFLs, batteries, ballasts, and electronic waste. These guys make it super easy to recycle. You can order recycling containers for multiple types of waste and return them via pre-paid FedEx. Once the waste has been received for recycling, a recurring order is triggered and a new EasyPak container is shipped out automatically. You can view recycling reports that give totals of all waste you have recycled and every time waste is recycled with EasyPak, you are issued a certificate of recycling that verifies your recycling efforts and details exactly how much waste was recycled.