Green your recycling

Recycling is the third component of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ mantra – the “3R’s” of waste minimisation. Whilst this mantra has become commonplace, it is a cornerstone of saving our environment, and the recycling bit is the part we can easily get on top of. Some …

Bestselling BPA-Free Water Bottles

BPA in plastics may become the lead in gasoline and paint of our times. In fact, US Senator Chuck Schumer (Democrat-New York) is proposing a legislative ban on the sale of children’s products and food containers containing bisphenol A (BPA).We’ve been reviewing BPA-free products on …

Reusable Shopping Bags for Kids

My carbon footprint is pretty small, considering I live off-the-grid; however, I have sometimes slacked on the little things I could do to help the environment. I often leave my reusable shopping bags in the car, forgetting to take them into the store. …

Recycline Preserve 100% Recycled Plastic Kitchen and Green BBQ Products

We’ve long been a fan of Recycline Preserve toothbrushes and razors, now we have recently tried out a multitude of Preserve products. All of these products are made from 100% recycled plastic in the USA. This is number 5 plastic, so you don’t …

Plastic Bags: Can We Kick the Habit?

Adventures in the development of truly biodegradable plastics are showing that technology can help us with our environmental challenges, but make no mistake technology on its own will not be able to deliver us from our environmental quagmire. This will only happen when we are …

Fabulous Recycled Fabric Paper from Soolip

This week in Fabulous Fabrics, I’m venturing a little outside the normal to include a recycled fabric product that’s halfway between fabric and paper. On Kim Kight’s yummy fabric blog True Up, I saw this recycled paper/fabric hybrid from a company called Soolip. It’s …

Primo Corn Plastic Bottled Water

We have all been scared about BPA in plastic water bottles, and we know that petroleum-based plastic water bottles are bad for the environment; however, there are times when even the most eco-minded individual needs to buy bottled water. As a rare consumer of bottled …

American Consumption - American Self Portrait

This may be off the topic of building a house but this blog is a fluid thing that will hopefully continually evolve. Next week we hope to bring you some posts relating to the construction of this house.

Turn manure into fuel for cooking and electricity.

Sintex Industries, a plastics and textiles manufacturer in Gujarat, India, is betting it can find profit in human waste. Its new biogas digester turns human excrement, cow dung, or kitchen garbage into fuel that can be used for cooking or generating electricity, simultaneously addressing two of India’s major needs: energy and sanitation.

Should I Cancel My Newspaper Subscription?

The environmental pros and cons of reading online.

Human Impacts on Ocean: Shocking

Researchers unveiled the first detailed map of human impacts on the world’s oceans last week, and the news is not good. A team of 20 acclaimed marine scientists from around the world collaborated on the project, finding that humans are having a major impact on marine ecosystems, leaving only four percent of the world’s oceans unaffected by human activities.

The world’s rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan

A “plastic soup” of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.