Green Options

Welcome to the fifth Carnival of Green Crafts!

Another carnival, another bunch of craft-a-licious green goodness.  A bunch of, um, somewhat disturbing craftiness.  Glue sniffing.  Hitting things with sticks.  Metal saws.

What the heck are you people up to out there?

Before we begin, a few administrative notes: The sixth Carnival will head to Canada on October 2nd to be hosted at Smidge! Send in your posts via the carnival submission form today! The Carnival of Green Crafts home page has background info.  And if you missed it, the fourth carnival was at Whip Up and others are linked at the end of this post.

Now on to the carnival!

Milbrae, a small city south of San Francisco, celebrated its millionth gallon of restaurant grease-to-biogas energy conversion today.

The program wasn’t a shoe-in for success when plant superintendent Joe Magner and former superintendent Dick York started it in 2007. While San Francisco has plans to build grease-to-biodiesel plant and San Antonio has turned to poop-power, the two Milbrae men had a different (albeit smaller-scale) idea that had not been fully tested.

My teenage son calls me the crazy green hippie lady. When did he get so grumpy and cynical? I think it comes with being a teenager. He’s become so disenchanted with everything and claims he believes in nothing… except money. He’s a hard worker, he goes to work even on his days off when they call him in. He works all the time after school and on the weekends, and when he’s not working he’s looking for other ways to make money. His main way…collecting scrap metal and taking it to the metal recycling facility. He doesn’t realize that’s a very green thing.

Every time I buy a new gadget it’s like welcoming a new pet into the family. You go to the store, select the perfect little tyke, and rush home to introduce it to your existing collection. The best part? No jealousy among your older electronics: they’re made to play together.

But electronics rarely last as long as a real pet. As faithfully as it might serve you, within a few years it’s time to put that gadget out to pasture. This is your guide to the greenest pastures around.

Earlier this week, I talked about printing with recycled paper and how the decision on which stock to select goes beyond merely “recycled” to include other factors, including the percentage of postconsumer waste content and whether or not the paper is elemental chlorine-free.

Printing with recycled paper ought to be a no-brainer. Not only do you save trees, but according to Friends of the Earth, the production process used to create recycled paper uses up to 70% less energy than for virgin pulp. It also requires fewer chemicals.

Some marketers sniff at recycled paper, however, because it’s not quite as bright as virgin stock. Yet, one could make the argument that the positive social image associated with recycling can easily offset any loss in brightness—if that was ever really important at all.

More Reasons to Use Recycled

If the points above aren’t enough to overcome the “brightness” appeal, here are just a few more reasons to favored recycled stock. This list is compliments of Barefoot Press of Raleigh, NC.

File this in the “pretty cool” folder: a Chicago-based company has found a way to make paper without using trees (and it doesn’t involve recycling used tree-based paper).

GPA calls Ultra Green Film an “eco-friendly substrate” that not only doesn’t require trees, but doesn’t need water or bleach to make either. Instead, the paper is limestone-based, made of mineral powders bound together with small amounts of high-density polyethylene and a non-toxic resin.

Sea Bags ~ Custom Tote Bags Made From Recycled Sails

“Since 1999 we have been making custom tote bags out of recycled sails. Every bag we make has sailed around the world before it even leaves our shop …”

The Sea Bag creators have big hearts, they’ve made special editions for the Maine Tri for a Cure race and our US Olympic Women’s Sailing Team.

It’s a bang-up baseball season here in the Windy City.  With both the Cubs and the Sox in first place (hopefully my writing this won’t jinx my home teams), everyone is talking about baseball almost as much as we are talking about our favorite son (Obama) and attendance at the ballparks is at capacity.  Adding to all the excitement, US Cellular Field, the home of the White Sox is hitting home runs with its recycling effort.

We St Louis bloggers all know Mae Mason, otherwise known as  MuthaMae.  She’s the mother of a three who not only blogs, but video-blogs (vlogs) and produces her own online show, Word To Your Mutha.  Mae’s blog discuss all kinds of parenting and family issues in a lighthearted, humorous way, and in her latest show, she tackles how to instill the value of recycling in her four-year-old and two one-year-olds…when she doesn’t really recycle herself.  Best of all, she used Green Options to help her figure it out…

Upcycling, a phrase coined by Cradle to Cradle authors William McDonough and Michael Braungart, is the act of creating useful products from waste materials.  You’ve probably seen several upcycled products on the market today–reusable bags are often made from old plastic bags, t-shirts, or other upcycled materials.  TerraCycle is now upcycling many products, including juice pouches and cookie wrappers.  Among design junkies, craftsters, and green folks, upcycling is the latest challenge to combat climate change.  My only gripe is I keep seeing the same upcycling ideas–the aforementioned reusable bags, the old t-shirt revamp–and they’ve been done.  Fortunately, places like Ready Made Magazine and Instructables continue to facilitate new upcycled products.  Here are six creative, practical upcycling projects that, with a little time and skill, you can do at home.

Three years after Subaru introduced America to landfill-free car manufacturing, General Motors has announced plans to turn half of their 181 factories waste-free by 2010—and they’ve made the process profitable.

The company explains that while lessening their environmental impact is a main goal, they’re now seeing realizing a high cash flow from the sale of their recycled materials. Scrap metal, cardboard, wood, plastic, and oil will be spared from the junk yards that surround 80 of General Motors’ factories, including 10 in the United States and 33 in Mexico. The company began its recycling program in 2000, but its few test projects cost the company $32 million to operate, but through streamlining and some creativity, they’ve moved the program out of the red.