By Juliet Ames •
February 18, 2008
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My new favorite word is “upcycle. “A German chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough coined the term in their 2002 book, ‘Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.’ To upcycle simply means to use waste products to make useful things.
Upcycling is what Tsia Carson, one of the brains behind SuperNaturale, is all about. In case you have not seen it yet, SuperNaturale is a fantastic site dedicated to all things DIY with an online magazine, bulletin boards and blogs. Carson’s book ‘Craftivity: 40 Projects for the DIY Lifestyle,‘ is based on her website and features 40 projects to turn your trash into treasure. As Anda from Etsy Storque says, “After only a few pages, you should be itching to visit a local thrift store, the back of your closet, or the dumpster behind your apartment for interesting (and free) supplies.”
Where does much of the world’s plastic trash end up? It ends up in a floating, Pacific gyre of “garbage soup” that’s now twice as large as the continental U.S. If the image of the jellyfish [...]
How does the city of San Carlos, California, show it’s love for a citizen who recycles, composts or Craigslists everything, bringing his household waste down to zero: definitely, not by giving him a Valentine’s Day card.
Image courtesy of user Gengiskanhg at Wikimedia Commons.
By Jennifer Lance •
December 6, 2007
Diane, who blogs at The Mommy Spot, won our free giveaway of Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Motion by Loree Griffin Burns. Diane asked her child, “When you throw something away, where does it go?” This is the comment Diane left in response to the question:
I’d really like to win a copy. I asked my son what he thought, and he just said “no”. See, he’s only 18 months. “No” is his favorite word. Somehow, though, I think he managed to hit the nail on the head!
Out of the mouth of babes, the truth is revealed. We should all say, “No” to waste, refuse, trash, etc. Imagine a day when everything is reused or recycled and trash does not exist…is it possible?
The city of New York is the latest government considering restrictions on plastic shopping bags, with a proposal in the works to require large stores to offer in-house recycling and reusable bags for sale. But is action like that enough to stop the plastic bag scourge?
From Africa to Canada, Australia to Ireland, and in the oceans in between, plastic bag trash has become a pestilence seemingly without end. And
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By Gavin Hudson •
October 9, 2007
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 admit it: I feel virtuous when I drop off a few bags of glass bottles and aluminum cans in the county recycling bin (we don’t have curbside recycling where I live) or stuff a few months’ worth of plastic shopping bags into the big cardboard bag collection bin at Walmart (though, yes, I feel less virtuous when I shop at Walmart). But there’s always a nagging doubt: is recycling really as
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By Max Lindberg •
August 23, 2007
She’s the mother of eight, the grandmother of 15 and a great-grandmother to seven, she enjoys crossword and jigsaw puzzles, and quilting. Marjorie lives in Nicholson Township, Pennsylvania and, like many people enjoys an occasional walk along the road in her rural area. There’s nothing unusual about that, but Marjorie makes that walk a study in environmental consciousness.
That’s Marjorie on the right, out on the road with her trash bag [...]
By Gavin Hudson •
August 14, 2007
Anyone who has ever tried to be a good roommate also has an idea of what it means to be an environmentally responsible citizen. Just mentally replace the rooms with ecosystems and the roommates with other animals (for some of us, this isn’t much of a stretch!). There are the inevitable struggles over shared areas, the vying for food in the fridge, and the ever-present question of cleanliness. What do we do with all
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Have you been curious about the impact that your home has on the environment? Maybe you’ve tried carbon calculators, but weren’t sure what to do with the results? If this sounds like you, check out Los Angeles-based LowImpactLiving.com.
The easy to use site provides a breakdown of the resources a typical home in your area uses, as well as waste produced. Though the company is working on a personalized tool to calculate
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By Rebecca Carter •
April 18, 2007
You clean out your medicine cabinet and oops, expired. Even though we usually receive prescription drugs for exactly the amount we need, we always wind up with something that didn't get finished and now it is unwanted or expired. So what do we do with it?
