Eco Garden Girls At West End Celebration

Eco Garden Girls At The West End Celebration    
Yesterday I attended the West End Celebration in Sand City Ca. One of the booths I stopped at was the Eco Garden Girls their product is simple yet unique and very green. You can check out their products at Eco Garden Girls on Facebook They work in an office that gets a lot of Styrofoam boxes in the mail. They were tired of throwing these boxes away, which are the size of those small ice chests, so they found a way to reuse them. They paint them on the outside fill the bottom with broken Styrofoam and the rest with dirt. Then they paint beautiful scenes on the front mostly fish or different designs and plant plants inside. So, you end up with a very unique beautiful planter that is made from a recycled product. The West End Celebration is  a really great event where all the local artists open up their studio spaces and you get to see their finished products as well as the ones that or works in progress. I like seeing that whole process and they get a chance to explain it to you as only they can. Another thing the West End Celebration is known for is being green. They have a green philosophy about everything from people at the recycling / trash containers helping you decide what is reclyclable and what's trash to all the products they displayed from the many green companies around the area and the state. Along with the artists and green products they have 12 different live bands over 3 days and good food and beer or wine to go with.  Today is your last chance to check it out until next year. Have fun.

Recycling Everything or As Much As You Can

What Do You Recycle
     What do you recycle? That's pretty simple right. We all recycle cans, bottles, and paper right? We should be anyway. But what else do you recycle? Most things are recyclable. From the computer monitor your looking at to the batteries in the keyboard your using right now it's all recyclable. Heck, even your cell phone. I know you have a few old ones laying around. However when we are done using these items there is not a truck that comes around and picks them up on the curb every weekend. So how do you  recycle them? That's easy, What you need to do to recycle your  E-Waste is save it until you go to a place where it's collected for recycling. The best way to do this is in a small Tupperware container say under your sink. When those batteries are dead throw em in. When that cell phone gets old and you want the new fangled  model throw it in. So, the next time you go to your electronics retailer like Best Buy or Fry's they have a bin where you can drop all this stuff in. Not as good as a truck that picks it up weekly with the yard waste but good enough. Oh yeah don't forget that computer monitor taking up space in the garage. So tell me in the comments, what do you recycle?

Bike Commuting When You Can't Bike Commute

Bike Commuting is the new thing and it helps the environment and the shape of our bodies but let's face it some people out there in America are facing 45 plus minute commutes. So how do you get past the idea of a 45 plus minute commute by car on your bike. Well, here's how if you live in a high traffic place the bike may actually be faster so the 45 minutes may cut it down to like only 30 minutes. What's that you say I can commute faster by bike than car? Yes, it can be done if you live in a high traffic city it can be done. Now the other extreme to that is you travel 45 minutes and it's all highway 65 miles an hour. There is no way you are going to be able to cut your commute by cycling to work and back. This is also for the person who just has that job where you can't just be sweaty for the day or your boss just isn't up with the times and doesn't have a shower installed at work yet. We will have to work on that. So for whatever reason you cannot commute on your bike so here is a plan for you.  So what are you to do. Simple you don't bicycle commute. You simply look at a google map and draw a 5 mile radius around your house and simply ride your bike to anything you have to do in that circle. It really makes it pretty simple. You get to save a lot on gas and you get to stay in a lot better shape without going to the gym. Basically you skip the bicycle commute but every other trip becomes a bicycle trip. Pretty simple really. It will kind of make you consider do you really need to go clear across town for that item or can you get it closer to home.  I think this is a great idea. What do you all think about it?

G Diapers The Future of Diapers

G Diapers

G Diapers

     G Diapers are a new and unique product in the diaper industry not quite a disposable but not quite a cloth diaper either. That has always been the question to parents right after is it going to be a girl or a boy?   

Are you going to use cloth diapers or are you going to use disposable basically is are you going to be going to the extra trouble the not send all that extra waste to the landfill by using a cloth diaper. Then there is the thought of well the extra expense and water use of washing the cloth diapers is it really that much better? What is a parent to do you are kind of stuck either way. Now comes the G Diaper. It gives you the best of both worlds. Basically the G Diaper comes as a two part diaper the inner liner and the outer detachable cover. The inner liner is made of paper just like your normal disposable diaper and it's made to be thrown in the toilet and flushed into the sewer so you have no hazardous waste in the landfills. Then you have the outer plastic cover that comes in many colors and designs. The outer cover gets reused over and over and you simply buy G Diaper refills for the inner liners as you need them. I believe this G Diaper and the G Diaper refill system will make a significant impact on the amount of landfill space devoted to soiled disposable diapers. Not to mention the amount of water and the expense of having a diaper cleaning and delivery service. What do you think?

Vac From The Sea

Electrolux Vac From The Sea
     Recently when The Electrolux vacuum company was having trouble sourcing recycled plastic at a good price in the marketplace they came up with an interesting and useful idea. Remember that big plastic wasteland the size of Texas floating in the ocean it's known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Well what if they took a boat out there and picked enough plastic up to make their vacuums. They would save all that money on buying plastic they would pull a bunch of trash out of the ocean and they would get PR literally by the boatload so to speak. So they get to go from this company that's a large user of plastic to someone who at least on the surface looks green. That's worth a lot in today's marketplace.
     So, what if this idea spread to other users of plastic that instead of making more we just sourced it out of the ocean. Now do I think we could get rid of the garbage patch. I don't know I almost think it could be self sustaining resource unfortunately as we use more plastic more goes into the ocean and we take it out to produce more things. Then those things go into the oceans in a cycle. Terrible thought isnt' it.
     This could start a whole new industry. Instead of Electrolux going into the ocean and picking up plastic or whatever company decided to do this next,  there would actually be an industry that got built around best practices and the most efficient uses of technology and ships and crews. Then the price of getting this plastic would drop substantially and more of it would be used. Because who knows it might have cost Electrolux more to get the plastic then it was worth on the market but it was worth it from the PR side of things. So what company will be next. Who can you think of that uses large amounts of plastic that would love to have a cheaper supply and could use a dose of PR.
     Think of all this plastic as oil. Because when you break it all down it's oil. That's what we use to make plastic. We don't want it in the Ocean. It would be nice if it was in a fuel efficient vehicle but it's in the ocean instead we need to find a way to get it out. I think this is the beginning of a way and a reason. It just has to be economically viable to work.
     Can't you see the Craigslist add now? Large amount of recycled plastic you pick up.

Cyclist Friendly Vilnious Mayor Crushes Car With Tank To Clear Bike Lane

Vilnious Mayor Zuokas has spent his time in office promoting cycling and other forms of alternative transportation. He has installed miles of bike lanes throughout the city only to see the citizens use them as parking lots. So he took matters into his own hands and crushed one of the cars with a tank. Then he posted the video on You Tube for all to see. I guess that is a warning to future bike lane parkers. Just give me a ticket please. How do you explain that one to the wife. Umm the car got crushed by a tank while I was at the store. Good luck with that.