Eco Friendly Holiday Lighting

With the holidays upon us, and inflation surging, now is a great time to make smart, energy efficient choices within your home to lower your overall operating expenses. LED (light emitting diode) holiday lighting is a popular, eco-friendly option, since it's both long lasting and 90% more efficient than incandescent lights.

Here's a great vendor with some great green options: HolidayLED.com. Holiday LED.com offers traditional holiday lights in a full range of colors, popular icicle lights and even pre-lit Christmas trees, all made from energy efficient LEDs.

Better yet, this vendor offers a special recycling program. Send them your old incandescents holiday lights for recycling and they will send you a 15% off coupon for new LED lights! Sounds like a good deal right? There's more!

They are offering an additional discount exclusively for IDOG readers: an additional 10% off by using Coupon Code "GKRIST." Offer expires 12/31/2008.

Happy Holidays!
Photo courtesy of HolidayLEDs.com. Read more!

Back to School Basics: Reusable Water Bottles

If you are providing your child with bottled water each day, you are potentially adding 200 water bottles to the landfill annually. Multiply this by 800 kids in my local elementary school and it makes 160,000. Yes, some schools have recycling programs, but is your 6 year old disposing of it properly? You see where I'm going with this. A much better alternative, a reusable water bottle. I recommend Sigg aluminum water bottles.

Of course, Madonna and Cindy Crawford's kids already use them, but who cares about them. The benefits of Sigg bottles are as follows:

1. Reusing is better than recycling and/or creating waste.
2. Aluminum bottles don't leach plastic bottle chems into the water over time.
3. Aluminum bottles actually keep the water cooler.
4. They come in about a million varieties - designs, colors and sizes- so that kids can find the one they love.
5. Your child will be setting a good example to others. Monkey see, monkey do.
6. The spill free design keeps things clean, and kids love to use them.
7. The flip top cap keeps the drinking spout germ free.

The only bad news is that they are next to impossible to find, due to high demand. I lucked out at the local Whole Foods and found one Paddington Bear bottle. It's so cute and my daughter loves using it. The price of the small bottle was $17.99 which was high but reasonable considering how much you could save on bottled water, plus the benefits to Mother Earth.

Visit the Sigg website, or go to Whole Foods, Dick's or other retailers. Try EBay if you are out of luck locally. Read more!

Your Plastic Recycling Checklist

Are you throwing out perfectly good recyclable plastics? If you aren't recycling the following list, you are adding garbage to the landfill for nothin'.

While it's important to recycle your plastic, it's a little known fact that plastic containers are not recycled to make new containers, but to make other secondary materials. Consumers who recycle plastics think they may be helping to reduce the amount of plastic used and our reliance on petroleum, however, recycling will do little to stop production overall. Not to discourage you from recycling though! Many new items are being made from plastics like shoes and even clothing, so keep it up. But the best thing to do is to limit consumption by purchasing items with the least amount of packaging.

Depending on your municipality, you can recycle most items with a recycle symbol with a number in it, like the one shown above. Contact your town to find out how high of a number they will accept.

Items to recycle:
Prescription drug bottles
Vitamin and supplement bottles
Yogurt cups
Pudding cups
Sour Cream, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, cream cheese
Peanut butter and honey
Ketchup, mustard
Mouthwash
Shampoo and conditioner
Moisturizer bottles, skin care, nail polish remover, most skin/body care bottles
Some Tupperware type containers
Cleaning supply bottles
Dish washing and laundry detergents
Plant containers from the garden center

Plastic supermarket bags are NOT included on this list, but again, ask your town (NYC does). Also, you can check your local market to see if they will recycle the bags. Stop & Shop takes the bags back to allegedly recycle, however, I would highly recommend that you use reusable bags.

For more info on plastics and their strange little numbers, go to the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code Read more!

Great Green Gifts: Housewares by Fire & Light

For anyone looking for a unique and meaningful gift, look no further! I was recently thrilled to stumble upon a little bit of "green" heaven in a line of gifts and tablewear from a company called Fire & Light.

It all started years ago when the oldest recycling community in the nation got together to discuss ways of resolving the issue of shipping their glass for recycling, which was very expensive and cost prohibitive. After discussing their options, a solution emerged. Fire & Light was created to utilize the post consumer recycled glass and in the process, create jobs for the community. ( Who said that green business can't save our planet and our ecomony? Pishaw.) Currently, Fire&Light produces a delicious line of glass tableware, home accessories and art glass in colors that take your breath away.

Here are some of my favs.

Splash Bowl. It's shape, color and the swirls of color within it make it a true work of art. As with many of their products, it comes in a wide range of hues. And at $46, it's a deal.

The Goblets and other barware. At left. This colorful glassware make that beverage extra special, and a set of 4-8 make a eco fab gift.

Purchase their dinner plates in one color and salad plates in another. This creates wonderful contrast and texture.

Soap dish & Footed Jar w/ Lid. Add some natural lavender soap and you have yourself another special gift.

All of the Tealights. The candlelight reflects into the glass for a special effect. Love the Splash and Conch Shell in particular.

Many of the items come signed by the artisan, making it a true piece of art!

See for yourself at http://www.fireandlight.com/.

Read more!

Recycle your Batteries at Retailers Nationwide

Finally. I have a bag of old rechargeable batteries next to my recycling bin, but I was unsure of what to do with them. Thanks to the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation, a non-profit public service organization, you can now drop off your used Energizers as well as rechargeable batteries for cameras and camcorders, portable cordless phones, power tools and laptop computers at convenient locations nationwide. They even take old cell phones too. Participating retailers include The Home Depot, Lowe's, Staples, and Target. So clean out this spring and dispose of your old batteries properly!

For more info, go to:
http://www.call2recycle.org/

toll free 877-2-recycle

USA & Canada Read more!

Recycle your Christmas Tree

Did you know that, according to the National Christmas Tree Association, there are between 30 and 35 million Christmas trees cut down each year? They plant another 56 million each each to make up for it, but imagine 30 million Christmas trees sitting in some landfill somewhere, taking up space and taking years to decompose. Not ideal.

The I Dream of Greenie alternative: recycling your tree, which is my plan this year. My neighboring town is offering this service. I just bring it to the designated location, and they mulch it up and use it for ground cover on city and Adopt-a-spot locations. Some municipalities actually pick up at your house- what a deal! You can also go to the National Christmas Tree Assocation and enter your zip code to find a location near you. Read more!

Green Gift Guide - Eco Jewelry

If you are looking for a gift for your girlfriend, wife or mother, or yourself for that matter, a piece of jewelry is sure to make most women on this Earth pretty darn happy. Some like silver, some like gold, some like diamonds or other gem stones. Unfortunately, there are some serious environmental implications with mining, from the chemicals used in the mining process, to the health effect of the miners, as well as humanitarian concerns in some conflicted regions. So what's a greenie to do?

The answer is simple: REDUCE, REUSE and RECYCLE some of your old pieces. Before you click off this page and think its lame, hold it! Think custom made, personally designed jewelry. The only women who are able to afford these luxuries are Princess Di or Paris Hilton types! OK so here's how. Many of us have our old "kiddie jewelry"- stuff that family members or old boyfriends gave us that sits at home in the back of some drawer somewhere. I'm not sure of your experience, but mine indicates that most men have fairly terrible taste - it would be my pleasure to recycle it! Take some of those pieces and combine them to make a pretty new pendant for your chain. You may have to buy a new setting but that's nothing considering you are getting a custom design that's "minimally invasive" to the planet. If you are not creative, surf designer jewelry websites, go to a professional jeweler that you trust, or ask your spouse to design something for you. Now that's not only romantic, it's sentimental. More so than buying you the Kay Jewelers Xmas special from the mall like a million other dopey spouses. And you'll look and feel like a princess! A green one.
Read more!