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?