Natural and Sustainable

Americans throw away enough office paper to build a 12-foot-hgh wall from Los Angeles to New York. Recycling one time of paper saves 17 mature trees, 7,000 gallons of water, a 380 gallons of oil. Making new paper from recycled paper used 30 to 50 percent less energy than making paper from trees, and it produces 95 percent less air pollution. Encourage everyone in your office to print and photocopy only when necessary, use both side of the paper when you do print, and try to reuse paper. Fro when you must print, here are a couple of accessories and ideas to help you work more green:

1. Recycled paper with 30 to 35 percent post consumer content, which is available at Office Depot stores.

2. Paper from nonwood fibers, such as Ecopaper made in Costa Rica from agro-waste. Paper made from agricultural residue is pricey, but this does encourage careful paper usage. The price will come down as production increases.

3. Recycled paper with 100 percent post consumer content, processed without chlorine, from The Green Office. Locating a green paper resource near your office will minimize pollution from transportation.

4. Use refillable pens made from recycled plastic.

5. Recycle your printer cartridges-for every ink or laser toner cartridge that is recycle, two quarts of oil are kept out of landfills.

6. Chlorine free and tree-free papers are the most ecofriendly choices to go.
(Source: Organic Gardening 2008)

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Always turn the lights out in a room or closet when you are finished. What’s the point of leaving the light on anyway?

VERY GREEN HOUSE: Building a new home or redecorating a room? Visit the Green House at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. It’s a 7,00-suare-foot re-creation of the Glide House, a low maintenance, affordable modernist home. Guests can check out 60 eco-friendly products from countertops to carpets. If you can’t make the trip visit the website for ides to use in your own home.

With Valentine’s Day coming up more and more people are headed to the supermarket for Valentine’s Day card retailer to grab “mass-producted” valentines. At our home we make eco-crafts whenever we can. From dehydrating fruit rings and making our own homemade potporri to handmade crads made with all-natural materials. Here is one craft that I love to make and it doesn’t just have to be made for Valentine’s Day, it can be made for any occasion when you just want to tell the one you care for that you love them.

Materials Needed:
• Freezer paper
• One cup of water, in a bowl
• Paper towels
• Iron and ironing board
• Towels
• Cardstock and envelopes
• Craft glue
• Scissors
• Soy Silk Fusion Kit
• Embroidery floss and needle
• Small paper punch
• Glitter
• Sewing machine and thread (optional)
• Decorative all-natural paper

To make the soy silk for projects:
1. Place a sheet of freezer paper (about 18″) shiny side up, on a flat surface. As if your were pulling apart a cotton ball, seperate the Soy Silk fibers. Lay seperate pieces out on the paper, overlapping and crisscrossing each layer while taking care to leave at least a 1″ border between the fibers and the edge of the paper. Make the final product about 1″ thick. You can also add some glitter or yarn scraps to the top layer.

2. Once you’re happy with the look of the fiber laid out, lay mesh over the whole thing. Mix one part medium to three parts water and sprinkle lightly over the fibers. Starting in the center and working outward, gently massage this mixture into the fibers, adding more water when necessary. Watch the fusion take place.

3. Slowly remove the mesh and set it aside. Keep the fiber backed by the freezer paper. Let it dry for several hours. Then, cover the fusion fiber with a towel and press it with a medium-heat iron for 15-30 seconds. Now you’re ready to create anything you want with the silk creation you just made.

To make a card:

Cut out soy sil in the desired shapes for your card design. Print out messaged in font on yoru computer on plain paper. You can cut a card out of a paper sack and what you don’t use you can print your messages on the discarded paper bag scrap. Use your imagination. To make a cupid’s arrow: Cut our a heart from the soy silk and attach it top a card front with your sewing machine. Just follow the edges of the heart or sew an arrow shape through it in a contrasting color with the soy silk. Use a little glue around the edges if needed.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Replace your lightbulbs in your home and office with compact fluorescent ones.

You can make your drinking water purer with a home filtration system of any kind. Your options vary from brand to brand. The main systems are ones that treat the water as the water enters your home and water filters that treat the water straight out of the tap. Here are some of the common forms of making your water more purer:

• CARBON FILTERS: Removes cholrine, disinfection by products, pesticides, radon. Reduces heavy metals including copper, lead, and mercury. Be certain to check model as all carbon filters do not preform the saem filtration benefits. There are countertop pitchers, faucet filters and under-the-sink models. They are generally low in cost and they retain minerals in the water as well that are very beneficial to your health.

• DISTILLATION: Removes bacteria and heavy metals such as cadmium, chromium, copper, lead and mercury, arsenic, barium, fluoride, selenium and some sodium. There are countertop or whole house point-of-entry units, and some branda can be combined with carbon fiters. Without carbon filter additions, does not remove chlorine, chlorine byproducts or VOCs. The process removed all minerals, leaving behind acidic water.

• REVERSE OSMOSIS: Removes most disease-causeing bacteria, fluoride, nitrates, asbestos, metals including lead. There are under the counter versions that hit the water before it hits the tap. Without carbon filters, Reverse Osmosis filters fo not remove VOCs or chlorine. Removes all minerals resulting in acidic water.

**Want an extraordinary gift to give this year to someone on your Christmas list? Check out Making Swiss Cheese Candles over at Wax and Bubbles. Read how to make them by clicking here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Next time you hear “Paper or plastic?” at the grocery store checkout, surprise them with your answer of neither. A reusable tote or wicker market basket is one step toward reducing plastic in the environment. We use 100 billion plastic bags a year. Breakdown time for thse bags is up to 1,000 years. The manufacture of paper bags produces greehouse gases the trees are not there to absorb, because they have been cut down to make the paper bags. Here are a list of stores that currently offer cloth bags for their customers.
1. Walmart. $1 for 1 bag.
2. Whole Foods. Offers a discount when you bring in your own cloth or canvas bag.
3. Fred Meyer. Offers cloth reuseable bags and offers $.05 off your bill for each bag used.
4. Kroger. Has the same policy as Fred Meyer due to the fact they are owned by the same company.

Grass length is important to your lawn’s ability to ward off weeds, retain moisture, and develope strong roots. Cut grass to 2.5 to 3.5 inches tall and leave clippings to mulch back into the soil which will provide about 2 pounds of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet of lawn per year, and elimnates the waste issue. Grasses will preform better when the entire root zone is saturated and allowed to dry between each watering. On an average, a lawn needs about one inch of water per week which soaks to about 6 inches. 30% of water consumed on the East Coast goes to watering lawns, doubling to 60% on the West Coast. Water is not the only thing consumed in great quantities. There are 10 times as much chemical pesticides per acre of farmland.

Non-toxic and natural corn gluten kills weed seedlings within days of application while adding nitrogen to your soil. You may also need to change you soil pH. Dandelions love a pH of about 7.5 while grass loves a pH of about 6.5. Add limke to lower the pH. So go organic, Conventioanl lawn care is largely responsible for the staggering statistics surrounding the lawn. You already know how to care for plants organically in your garden, so use this same idea when trying to build up a healthier lawn. Start with these techniques listed and you should enjoy a healthy lawn all summer and into the winter months.

For more information on how to achieve a healthy soil, visit Safe Lawns, this is a non-profit group, dedicated to bringing about an industry-wide change to organic lawn care through initiatives such as their organic lawn certification program and efforts to legislate natural lawn care on schools and campuses.

**Looking for a last minute Christmas gift for that someone who has everything already? Does that person have a puppy? Over at Home Zookeeper, Lynn Little offers the idea of giving a dog as a Christmas gift this year. I think it is a mighty fine idea. Read how to get your hands on one of these puppy gifts, by clicking here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Bring your own mug or thermos to your coffee spot. Cutting down on paper waste in this manner is one way to live a more sustainable life style.

Packaging your presents in borwn paper sacks is the most paper-saving alternative to gift wrap. But, there are penty of pettier, eco-options out there this season. Three awesome ideas are:

• Three-Friendly Papers: Try Fish Lips Paper Designs’ recycled-paper gifts wrap and Paporganics’ hemp wrap. Or keep it totally tree-free with Moonrock Paper Company’s uncommonly elegant creations, handmade from cotton scraps discarded by T-shirt and hosiery manufacturers.

• Gift Bags: Endlessly reusable, bags are your best colution for green gifting. Lucky Crow’s super stylish gift bags are machine washable and adorned with sock monkeys and other adorable designs.

• Do-It-Yourself Wrap: Rummage through your closets and cabinets to uncover old paper products such as calendars, newspapers, maps, wallpaper scraps, old magazines and fabirc such as scarves, and bandanas that are destined to be discarded. Tie up your packaging with biodegradeable-cotton ribbon and skip those needlessly wasteful gift tags.

**Over at Wii Rally, Lynn Little reports that Nintendo had record sales during Thanksgiving shopping weekend with more than 653,000 Nintendo DS systems and 350,000 Nintendo Wii consoles were sold in the United States alone. Read the whole story here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Decorate responsibly by purchasing eco-sensitive accessories. Check out Viva Terra for some ideas.

• Use a dime-sized portion of shampoo and conditioner when washing your hair. Then when you get halfway through the bottle, add a little water to make it last even longer.

• Love cut flowers? Weel, most are treated with pesticides and flown thousands of miles, and usually die in about three days. Instead opt for indoor plants such as hydrangeas, which come potted.

• Try to buy local over organic when in the supermarket. Of course organic is important to your health as well as your families, but buying local you support local growers. It not only forces you to eat seasonlly, when produce is freshest, it also eliminates the energy coasts of shipping food from around the world. Also, small farmers are more apt to care about their environmental impact than industrial agriculture, since they live on the land they work.

• Bring a tote to the supermarket when you do your shopping, and try to remember plastic produce bags as well, so you are not collecting more and mroe each time.

• Test your own drinkinbg water yourself with a water purifying kit from a local hardware store. Or get an easy-to-install water filter. So instead of buying plastic bottles, use a carafe of water in the fridge.

• When you order take-out ask for the condiments of only what you plan to use. Who really needs 12 packets of soy sauce, eight packages of ketchup or four pairs of plastic knives? It’s sad to see them all end up in the trash eventually.

• Opt to pay a few cents extra to support wind-powered electricity, which comes from a renewable energy source. Your power company won’t hook you apt. or your house up to a different generator, but it does make sure that a comparable amount of wind energy is used in another place and it will overall make a tiny difference for a better world.

**Looking for tips on what stocks are up and what stocks are down? Check out Rick’s suggestion over at My Stock Winners. He states that The Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payors Index (HMO – 1,798.6) is facing long-term resistance at the 1,800 level. Read more here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Swap, don’t buy (Try eBay, Craigslist, and Freecycle.)

1. Reflect on what’s important: Have a family discussion about what everyone is thankful for this year.

2. Experience Diversity: Incorporate other cultural and religious customs into your holiday celebrations.

3. Valunteer Where Ever You Can: Assist at a soup kitchen, children’s hospital or animal shelter.

4. Pick A Family Cause: Collect loose change and allowance money and donate it together.

5. Give Gifts That Count For Something: Instead of material items, give charitable donations in the names of friends, family, teachers and coaches.

6. Give meaningful gifts: Buy fair trade and ethically-sourced products from retailers such as World of Good Trade as One and Ten Thousand Villages.

7. Share In The Name Of The Holidays: Contribute new or gently used clothes and tous to the Salvation Army, Goodwill, toy drives or families in need.

8. Spread The Joy: Ask you child’s teacher to have students create handmade greeting cards. Then deliver them to a local senior citizen’s home.

9. Spread The Love: Compose a poem, song or testimonial telling someone that they are special. Create an eco keepsake: Write it on recycled paper and put it in a reclaimed wood frame.

10. Spend Time With Family: Cook together, talk with the TV off or just get on the floor and play games.

11. Care For The Earth: Conserve wrapping paper, reuse ribbons and bows, send greetings on recycled paper, or send e-cards online.

12. Celebrate Your Family: Appreciate the gifts that they are just for being themselves.

**Do you have bad habits? Over at Write Anyway, JM jokes about her bad habits, and how bad habits aren’t all that BAD. Read the whole story here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Compact your nonrecyclable trash and use fewer bags when throwing things away.

Get your crafty on with the natural Christmas gifts. They are quick and painless to make and they are a lot better to give than gifts that are mass-producted.

• Festive Fire: Show your appreciation for the little deeds neighbors and others have done with a bundle of kindling. For a pretty presentation wrap a ribbon and greenery or a fragrant sprig of willow-leaf peppermint. Slide ribbon through a matchbox wrapped in festive paper for an all-in-one gift.

• Picture-Perfect Mailer: Treat relatives to an easy-to-mail album that recaps the year in photos. Layer and staple small sheets of paper along one edge of card stock. Fold over stapled edge twice; flip paper to inside, creating aflap. Crease card stock; insert opposite edge under flap. Use photo corners to attach photos to paper.

•Sparkling Towels: Embellished tea towels are a gem of a stocking stuffer. Just bejewel and be done. Iron a rhinstone transfer for decorating jens onto a smooth-texture towel. Following manufacturer’s instructions, such as a twig design resembleing a Christmas tree, but the towel is still versatile enough to use year-round.

• Snowy Village Ornaments: Replicate a friend’s house or build an entire village with paper abodes. Use patterns you hae made out of cardboard and transfer onto card stock. Create a wintry scene by sprinkling glitter on crafts glue spread on the roof and base of the houses. Or attach icicles formed from hardened hot glue. Decorate with a miniature tree and a wreath made from chenille stem (pip-cleaner). Hot-glue a clothespin or candle clip to the base to attach the ornament to a tree. Pick up patterns here.

• Snow Globe Centerpieces: Snow globes are a Christmas classic. With an oversize spheres put on an impressive display. You can use 7-8 inch flower aquariums with magnifying qualities that give the contents added pop. Look for the aquariums, which include a globe, rubber base, and plastic stand, at floral shops or online. Use epoxy to attach ceramic or plastic ornaments and figurines to the rubber base, which also serve as the lid. Fill the globe with distilled water to just below the opening; add about 1 tbs. of liquid glycerin (found in the soap-making sections of hobby stores) to thicken the water. Sprinkle with glitter. Working over a sink, slowly invert the decorated portion of the rubber base into the water. Stretch the seal of the rubber base over the lid of the globe. Attach the plastic stand, turn the globe upright, and watch the snow fall. FOr extra sparkle, stand the snow globe in a silver wine bottle coaster.

•Merry Paperweights: Glass paperweights decked out for the holidays make a practical and gender-neutral gift. Idal for co-workers and teachers to organize paper. The super-simple project starts with a glass paperweight kit, availiable at crafts and hobby stores or online. Decorate the paperweight with scrapbooking paper gift wrap, or an old Christmas card. Thin foam letters glued on one paper sends glad tidings.

**Arkansas is getting ready to head to South Carolina in an SEC game that is talked about as ‘big news.’ Read the rest of the story here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: This winter if you plan on using a wood-burning fireplace, consider an eco-friendly one or eco-friendly buring options. Ones that are earth-friendly options include fireplaces that use clean-burning ethanol; no chimney required, such as the ones from EcoGreen Fire and crackling logs that burn for three hours; made from coffee waste and vegetable oil, and packaged in recycled materials from Java-Log Fireplace Logs. You can also opt for ones like Duraflame that use petroleum-free logs that burn for three hours and use 80% fewer resources than regular firewood.. Either one you choose is great for the earth-conscious consumer that wants toasty hands and feet this season.

Here are simple wasy to celebrate the season in a more sustainable way.

You wake up on January 1st with piles of crumpled wrapping paper, tissue paper everywhere in every color imaginable and gift bags laying all around filled with gifts of uselessness that you may only use once or twice before it ends up in a yardsale or donation box the following year. Not only the gifts lay about but also mounds of leftovers. All of this means, mind-boggling amounts of waste.

Americans toss away an extra 2 billion pounds of garbage weekly between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. From an environmental prespective, consumption, wheather of matiureal goods or energy, poses the greatest threat of anything we do on the environment.

Being environmentally conscious also reduces your holiday stress. Cutting back on the overdoing and overspending helps keep your immune system strong and winter-cold-resistance. It also brings more personal value to a celebration. Environment consciousness as taking a step back and focusing on the season. You have all your friends and family around, so take advantage of that and spend time with people rather than focusing on gift giving. Do yourself and the earth a favor: Before you decorate your home, wrap your gifts, and set out your buffet, consider these paths to a happier holiday.

• Decorate Your Tree With Sustainability: Every year, roughly 35 million Christmas trees are cut down and sold, serving a major source of holiday waste. First of all, don’t feel guilty about buying a tree. Trees are grown as a sustainable crop. In fact, 1 acre of Christmas trees produces enough oxygen to support 18 people, and provides habitiats for birds and wildlife. Buying an artifical-tree isn’t a better choice, since most faux foliage is made from earth-toxic PVC. The very best thing you can do is buy a live tree, with a root-ball, not a cut one. Live tress can be found at most nurseries and some tree lots. When the season ends you can plant it in your yard or a park. Whether you go cut or live be sure and always recycle your trees. Being a live one to your garden or a cut one to a local tree recycler. To find one in your own area go to Earth 911 or call you city’s public works department.

• Decorate With The Earth In Mind: Decorating for the holidays is a way to show personal expression, yet so many people fall back on petroleum-based products like tinsel, and plastic lawn ornaments. People not only use these products they also use the old fashion lights that blaze forth waste. We waste 40 precent more energy during the holidays than during the rest of the year by burning lights and doing extra driving.

Look for energy-eicient LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs, which burn just as brightly as regular tree lights by use 5 precent of the energy and last up to 100 precent longer.

Rather than filling the house with store-purchased decorations, which typically are mass-produced, easily broken and destined for landfills, make your decorations personal or biodegradeable such as winter squash and pomegrantes accented with fragrant cinnamon sticks and nutmeg into wreaths and centerpieces. Or buy a biodegradeable wreath made from birdseed for your front door. Let meaningful souvenirs and phtographs take the place of glass and aluminum ornaments on your tree as well.

• Put Some Sustainability Thought Into Gift Giving: Most of the precents you buy in December will be discarded by January. Skipping gifts altogether ay beem Scrooge’ish, but some meaningfullness can be put into the gift other than something “throw away”. First, don’t shop the mall on the day after Thanksgiving, which is the busiest shopping day of the year, by observing Internation Buy Nothig Day. Then consider ways to avoid the shopping ills while coming up with ideas for gifts that mioght actually be appreciated. Handmade gifts are the ones more cherished.

Back in the earlier gift-giving days, manufactured goods become more and more available to the masses, the idea of a store-bought gifts gained ascendant, but that era is now coming full circle. For many, a return to handmade gifts has put the fun back into the holidays. People use and keep nomemade gifts because there’s a memory associated with them. As an alternative, gifts of service such as: Car washing, dog walking, foot massaging, have no environmental impact and plenty of personal significance.

Rather than asking friends and family members wha they want, ask them what they want to do. We often give tickets to shows or concerts, it has a certain intimacy.

•Wrap It Up Earth-Friendly Ways: If you take the time to come up with personalized gifts, it’s a shame to not use better wrapping paper to wrap it up with, pasticularly when you are trying to think more green. The paper industry has one of the largest ecological footprints in the world. Using recycled paper is very, very important to do during the holidays. You not only reduce forestry waste, you also reduce water, energy and global warming impacts.

Americans waste more paper during the holidays during any other time. Christmas card waste could be cut back by a 10 precent reduction in the already 750 million greeting cards sent anually. This cut back could save 30,000 trees. And if every household in America reused just 2 feet of ribbon this year, the result would be 38,000 miles saved could be used to tie a ribbon around the Earth. Try to reuse and create your own wrapping paper by using old magazines or newspaper.

**If you need to catch up on what’s happening on Law and Order Criminal Intent, why not read all about the latest on the show over at Crime Drama TV here at 451 Press. Read the latest on L&O Criminal Intent by clicking here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Always recycle your old print cartridges. HP has an offer for a prepaid envelope to use when you purchase new cartridges to send back to the company your old cartridges for recycling.

Each year the average American recieves 41 pounds of junk mail. That’s about an annual average of 560 pieces of unwanted mail, which breaks down to about 11 pieces a week. That unsolicited U.S. mails sent annual will:

• Consume more energy in production and disposal than 2.8 million cars.

• Require 100 million trees for paper.

• End up in the trach (44 precent never opened), bulking up landfills by over half.

• Waste time when you preuse or recycle mail.

• Cost you money if you give into purchasing things you ultimately do not need.

Here are some ways to cut that loss in more ways than one:

1. Remove your name from the Direct Marketing Association list. There is a one dollar fee to do this, but it is worth it in the long run.

2. Remove your name from credit card and insurance mailings. “Opt Out” here.

3. Contact retailers and mailers directly to strike your name from lists for catalogs or contest. If you purchse again, your anme usually gets added back to the list, so you may have to repear the request.

4. Whenever purchasing somethng online or subscribing, check the box that says, “Please do not rent, sell, or trade my name or address.” IOf no such option is available, make a request to that company by phone, e-mail or a personal letter.

5. Support the movement for Junk Mail legislation that allows people to opt out of all direct-mail advertising (much like the Do Not Call registry).

The following companies will contact direct mailers for you for a small fee:

• 41 Pounds: Offers fundrasing opportunities for schools. (866-417-4141)

• Green Dime: Lifetime subscription with 240 tress planted.

• Stop the Junk Mail Subscription: This includes a catalog removal tool and tree planting. (866-769-5885)

**Lynn Glessner over at Renton, WA blog on 451 Press talks about the recent beef and chicken recall that affected most if not all of the Northwest U.S. Read the while story here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Use concentrated soaps and cleaners since less packaging means less waste for the environment.

Take one great wrapping paper and yse it in three distinctly different ways.

1. Stackables: A paper with both patterned and solid sections allows variety when wrapping stacked bopxes. Unify boxes with a common ribbon.

2. Gift tag: Use the solid section of the paper to wrap the gift, cut a piece of patterned section for the tag.

3. Paper ribbon: Eke out the last bit of paper by cutting strips of the patterned section to use as ribbon. To make the casual bow, hold each of tha strip and twist until it coils. Tape the ends to each other; tape coil to gifts.

Little Ribbons:

Tiny rolls of barrow “Bobbin” ribbon available in dozens of colors and patters caost usually about $1 each. Keep bunches of them on hand to creat many gift-wrap loos with ajust a few papers. And an even better earth-friendly option is to save all dicarded ribbon from the previous year or even at birthdays and other holidays and reuse and repurpose those ribbons.

Stylish tree garland:

1. Old-Time Garland: Get the look of vintage ornaments strung together. Shop antique stores and pay less for old-fashioned glass ornaments. String them together and use as garland for your mantel, tree or even your door-frame.

2. Metal Spiral: This dynamic shape is super fun to use. Try using aluminum foil and cut in a circle and hang on your tree after unraveling it.

3. Hand-Felted Pows: So adorable and fuzzy you could practically wear them as a scarf. By in a fabric store, needle and thread them together and hang. You can even pick up older pow pows at vintage stores or second hand stores.

Garland isn’t just for a tree as stated above, you can use it in many ways, such as:

• Coil inside a clear glass bowl
•Swag across a bed footboard or over a head board of a guest bedroom.
• Use as a drapery tie-back
•Drape across a kitchen window
•Wind amont accessories on a shelf or mantel
•Wind along a handrail going upstairs or downstairs
•Drape across a door frame or archway into the sitting room

**Looking for somethings new for your wedding? Try fitting in some dance lessons and wow your guests. Over at Wedding Tactics, Stacy Ochsman talks about a Boston company that offers lessons for bridal couples. Read the whole story here.**

**Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: If you currently hold a major credit card why not think about switching your current balance over to a credit card that gives you more than just an interest rate each month. You’re going to buy stuff anyway. Might as well earn carbon offsets or monetary donations while you’re at it; they’re small (usually around 1% of spending), but they add up. Some cards offer personal rewards as well as giving to charities or CO2 offsetters, and all are affiliated with major card companies like Visa. Less worry about whether or not your rewards points are gonna expire, since the points go straight to the good cause. Try: Earth Rewards Mastercard, World Wildlife Fund Visa, or Working Assets Visa. And if you have a credit card issued by a bank, check its website to see if you can earn rewards for good causes.