• Newspaper: Wrapping gifts in recycled newspaper is probably the most basic thing you can do to stay eco-friendly this year while sending a positive, green message. Feel free to decorate the newspaper with some blackout poetry, colorful drawings, or whatever you feel will make the presentation more creative.
• Eco-Friendly Wrapping Paper: If you’re not a DIY kind of person, you can always support green companies by purchasing pre-made wrapping paper. Smockpaper, for example, is a company that specializes in recycled papers; their wrapping paper is 100 percent recycled, and it’s also double sided! Another vendor is Sophia Victoria Jay, who also sells on 100 percent recycled paper and offers several holiday items aside from wrapping paper such as cards and gift tags.
• Reusable Grocery Bags: Sometimes people just need that extra push to stop using brown paper bags and go the cloth route. Help them get there by giving your gifts in reusable grocery bags. Once they have reusable bags, they’ll have no excuse when going to the grocery store. You can find holiday styles of these reusable bags in many stores.
• Thrift Stores for Ideas: There are plenty of great finds in thrift stores: baskets, bags, and snazzy containers are just a couple of things you’ll be sure to find there.

Now that you have the wrapping sorted, if you’re clueless about what to get as a gift, there are plenty of great ideas to choose from. Everyone loves flowers, and a potted plant would be sure to bring a smile to anyone’s face. Include a couple packets of seeds and that’s icing on the cake!

If the person you are buying for doesn’t have a green thumb, Etsy offers a bunch of cool handmade products, and there are many products on the site that are eco-friendly. If you search, you will be certain to find something perfect there. There’s literally everything you can think of, from watches made of recycled garage door openers to one of a kind necklaces made of bark!

Chances are, you already do quite a few of these already. These ideas certainly aren’t new or ingenious. However, they are simple, easy and attainable. So if you see something new on the list, give it a go. There are always things we can work on.

Your Two New Best Friends…

…are your reusable shopping bag and stainless steel thermos, of course. The thing about shopping trips and coffee runs is that they’re often unplanned, so you can’t realistically say no to plastic bags or paper cups. The problem is that these one time slip-ups really add up for the planet. But its easy to avoid if you always keep these two essentials with you. Never leave home without them!

Go Veggie Once a Week

It’s probably no surprise that meat production and processing requires an immense amount of water and land—more than is required to produce any other form of food. So even if it’s just once a week, eating a vegetarian meal makes a difference. As an added bonus, a plant-based diet has countless health benefits, including lower cholesterol and a reduced chance of heart disease.

If fussy family members don’t approve, try to make it exciting for them. Homemade pizzas (meat free), tacos and falafels are all great options that are both fun to make and eat.

Printing

At school and work, printing can often be unavoidable. But there are ways of making it a little better. First, try to suggest ways of avoiding printing to your boss or teacher. Other suggestions: go for recycled paper if you have the choice; print on both sides of the page; set your printer on the “draft” mode so it uses less ink; copy and paste only the essential parts of the document you want to print; and make sure to carefully proofread your work beforehand, so you won’t have to print it all out again.

Eco-Friendly Shopping

Although shopping really isn’t eco-friendly, at some point, things do need to be purchased. So replace your essential items (when they need to be replaced) with environmentally-friendly alternatives.  

For food, get to know your community by visiting farmers markets and sampling local eggs, produce, baking and more. Clothing can be purchased second-hand, produced locally, or made with environmentally friendly hemp, soy, bamboo, or organic cotton. Clothing-swap parties are also a fun way to get new clothes free and have fun in the process. Of course, choosing new appliances that use less energy is essential. Finally, try to purchase things (clothing, accessories, appliances, etc) that are meant to stand the test of time. The motto “Quality over Quantity” may not be part of our disposable society, but it’s important to embrace this values of previous generations.

No More Junk Mail!

Say no to paper junk mail by adding a simple red dot sticker to your mailbox. Check out the Red Dot Campaign’s website to get involved: http://www.reddotcampaign.ca/

Try Container Gardening

Even if you live in a condo. Even if they’re just herbs. Even if its just one container on your windowsill. There are tons of low-maintenance plants that require little water, and very little space. No green thumb required! Plus, there’s nothing like sprinkling your own parsley on top of your favourite spaghetti, knowing exactly where it came from, and that it’s 100% pesticide-free. Start with herbs like basil and chives, and veggies like cherry tomatoes and peppers.

Hang Dry Your Laundry

Why waste the energy when it’s so easy to let your clothes hang dry? There’s something charming about that rustic, country look of a clothes line flapping in the summer breeze. Plus, it saves money.

Talk About It!

This may be the most important one. It’s great if we make choices ourselves, but we have to promote these ideas to others. And since you’re reading this blog, you probably already know that. So spread the word and try to get others involved.

Preaching and nagging can get annoying, so attempt it in fun, creative ways. Have family members over for an organic, 100-mile, vegetarian meal; ask your friend to help you garden; brag to your co-workers about the awesome organic cotton t-shirt you just bought; or ask your neighbour if she’d like some free-range eggs you got from the local farmer.

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and green new year!

Photo credit: ccarlstead

It wasn’t that long ago that I was a student, and I was using green ideas as a simple way of saving money. As a student, money is really tight, so you need to be economical in order to survive with the smallest amount of debt. So here are my top ideas that I used when I was at University.

Make your own meals in bulk
If you can learn how to cook easy meals such as Spaghetti Bolognese, Chill Con Carne, Chicken Curry, Beef Stew, you can make them in bulk and freeze the leftovers. I found that I could make at least 4 portions per meal, sometimes as many as 8. These meals typically scale very well. So when you make the meal, you get a fresh meal that evening and freeze the rest. When you’re feeling lazy, you just need to re-heat one of your frozen left-over meals. You just need to cook the pasta or rice to go with the meal!

You save money by buying the ingredients in bulk as well as saving packaging that you would otherwise get from microwave meals. I still use this tip to this day, giving myself a nice cooked lunch for work.

Don’t buy textbooks
Textbooks are very expensive in the UK, costing around £20 to £50 each ($40 to $100!). Therefore you can save a fortune by buying books with friends or borrowing books from your library. If you go to a library, remember to get there fast, before the other students borrow the books first!

Don’t have a car
Cars are costly things anyway, with fuel, tax, insurance and maintenance costs, they can be very pricey. Get used to using buses, trains, bicycles and walking. You’ll get to know the area better as well as saving money and the environment. Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had have been with people I’ve met on the bus or train!

Switch stuff off and use energy saving lightbulbs
Bills can be quite frightening when in a student house. Living with 5 other people, I found that electricity bills were sky high. Thankfully I managed to convince them to switch stuff off where possible and they were happy to use energy saving light bulbs.

The Advent Eco PC is made from 75% recycled plastics, comes with electronic manuals, uses 25 watts when idling and is said to save you £35 (about $65) a year on energy. The computers specs are surely enough for the average computer user: 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo T5250 CPU, 2GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, 802.11b/g, and Vista Home Premium.

But, the Advent Eco PC is almost one year late, it should have been released last Christmas. And this is a disadvantage for the computer. The design and specs are not as “mind-blowing” as they are on Dell’s new eco-friendly computer. To be fair, the computer looks like an ugly wifi router, and it’s a bit more expensive than similar green computers.

But if you want to have an eco-friendly computer that will save you money on your energy bill the Advent Eco PC is a good option for you to consider. The Advent Eco PC starts at £599.99 (about $1100).

“The EarthDrive takes our more than fifteen years of effort, design and quality implementation in the memory marketplace to the next level. Now, more than anytime in the history of our company, we are committed to creating products that take into consideration the environmental impact on our world and our global community.” says Michael Plaksin, ATP Vice President of Sales.

The USB drive is shock and water proof, has a built in security software, drive partitioning and password protection. It has a capacity of 8GB and costs $47.99.

The [re]Drive from SimpleTech is an eco-friendly external hard drive that would look great by the side of the new Studio Hybrid from Dell, or by any computer for that matter.

The [re]Drive is Energy Star Level 4 qualified and uses 30% less energy than other non Energy Star drives. The external hard drive is made and designed using recyclable aluminium and bamboo. According to the makers the packaging also comes from recyclable materials.

The external hard drive automatically powers on or off with your computer. It offers 500GB of storage capacity and 2GB free online. It works on both Macs and PCs and costs from around $200.

My name is Kim Rowe and I am the Co-Creator and Producer of golivegive.com, a green volunteer travel show.

We want to show people how they can vacation green and volunteer while traveling. We shot our first episode in Los Angeles and provided viewers with a green hotel, organic restaurant, eco-friendly fashion and a volunteer option they can do in a day.

We will, from now on, be publishing our episodes right here on Green Blog for you to enjoy. You can check out the first episode below or on golivegive.com.

On April 17th we are off to Hawaii where we will be profiling Jack Johnson’s Kokua Foundation. In store for our viewers is an inside look at Jack Johnson and the Kokua Festival that he sponsors and plays at annually. We will go behind the scenes to show you all the amazing things he’s doing for Hawaii and how you can get involved in the cause. We’ll also be scouring all over the island to provide you with the best possible green hotel, restaurant, entertainment and adventure options on Oahu.

Our show hopes to integrate the ideas of ‘going green’ and ‘traveling in style’ while demonstrating that becoming more than just a consumer on vacation can be a very rewarding experience. Please contact me at happyearth@golivegive.com to find out how you can get involved in the cause. I will also be updating you on amazing green vendors to check out when you travel, so stay tuned!

Thanks!

It wasn’t long ago since Western Digital teamed up with Kanguru in marketing a green hard drive for consumers and businesses. Now Western Digital is releasing a 500GB “green” hard drive that uses 30 percent less power than other hard drives.

The Caviar GreenPower 500GB hard drive is a 3.5-inch SATA drive that, according to the makers, only use 6 watts while working and only 3.3 watts while idle. According to them this is equal to a reduction of CO2 emissions by up to 13.8 kilograms per drive, per year.

So what will this new hard drive cost you? Well, each 500GB drive is estimated to cost you around $149.99. If you want to read more about it’s specifications and other features check out Wdc.com for more information.

Lenovo recently released the ThinkCentre A61e, a brand new green computer. The ThinkCentre A61e uses few hazardous materials, consumes little power and is easy to recycle. Because of that it has received the desirable EPEAT Gold status.

Peter Schrady with the really long title of vice president and general manager, Emerging Products Business Unit says that “the importance of maximizing energy efficiency and being environmentally conscious is touching all aspects of our daily lives, from the light bulbs we use to light our homes to the hybrid cars we drive to the green technology we rely on to run our businesses.”

Un-customized it uses an AMD Sempron LE 1150 processor, 512MB ATI Radeon X1200, 512MB Memory, 80GB hard drive and costs $399. Not too shabby. Sure the computer is ugly (or shall we say retro?) but it’s still one of the more high performing green computers out there.

According to Lenovo using the energy-efficient AMD Athlon X2 dual core and AMD Sempron single core processors can help save up to 50 percent in energy costs annually.

Another good thing is that Lenovo ranks high in the Green Electronics Guide from Greenpeace. They are currently on the 4th place being beaten only by Dell (on third place).

Press Release: Lenovo Raises Energy-Efficiency Bar with Its Smallest, Quietest Desktop PC

I have posted about the new tower server Primergy TX120 from Fujitsu Siemens Computers that is said to be the world’s most energy efficient server. Not everyone can afford to buy a server, so here is something for us more ordinary bloggers.

Western Digital, one of the most well known hard drive companies, has teamed up with Kanguru in marketing a green hard drive for consumers and businesses. These GreenPower Hard Drives are all internal drives which are available in capacities from 320GB and up to 1TB (1000 GB).

Western Digital claims that these new GreenPower Hard Drives is saving up to 40% in power consumption. Western Digital says they accomplish this through several technologies such as balancing spin speed, transfer rate and cache size; automatically unloading the heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag and calculating optimum seek speeds.

These new GreenPower Hard Drives goal is to be “Energy Star 4.0” compliant. That means a minimizing their carbon footprint while realizing savings in electricity costs.

According to Western Digital data-centres that use “10,000 drives can save $100,000 in annual energy costs, and reduce CO2 emission by 600 metric tons”.

Also, don’t forget to check out Kangurus eco-friendly hard drives. These eco-friendly hard drives have three power modes that allow you to save up to 75% on the energy usage. The drives are fully RoHS compliant (no hazardous substances).

http://www.wdc.com/en/company/greenpower.asp
http://www.kanguru.com/35ecohd.html