Go Green | Better Hens and Gardens

Green Gift Wrap

The idea of buying wrapping paper, wrapping gifts in it, opening the gifts, and throwing the wrapping paper out drives me crazy - it’s just so wasteful. During the winter holidays, 4 million tons of wrapping paper and shopping bags are thrown away. So, last year we started using fabric gift bags (see Green Gift Bags and the picture at right) and this year we added Furoshiki gift wrapping. Furoshiki is the Japanese tradition of wrapping gifts in beautiful swaths of cloth – that you can reuse rather than throw away. In addition to using fabric for wrapping gifts this year, I also cut the tags [...]

Continue reading Green Gift Wrap

Green Gift Bags

My friend Doris had the best idea at Christmas time; she made sewn gift bags to hold all the presents she was giving.

The bags are not difficult to make, don’t take much fabric, and are re-usable year after year. I thought the idea was terrific; and it could be used for gift giving any time of year. So, I’m saving the ones I received, will add more through the year, and hope to accumulate enough so I won’t need to buy wrapping paper or paper gift bags in the future. If all the friends and relatives were to use them, [...]

Continue reading Green Gift Bags

Green Gifts

This year as we’re scrambling to find new and unusual gifts for those that have it all, I hit on the brilliant idea (well I thought it was good) of gifting a few of the green items we’ve found over the past year to encourage eco-friendliness. Each of these gifts can help replace plastic throwaways, reduce oil consumption, and save landfill space – how cool is that?

The first is the nice reusable shopping bags at Envrirosax. They describe them as follows:

Envirosax® designer reusable bags are spreading the eco-friendly message with style! Chic, inexpensive and compact, Envirosax® eco-friendly shopping bags carry the [...]

Continue reading Green Gifts

Reusable Shopping and Produce Bags

Last year, it took an estimated 12 million barrels of oil to make the 88 billion plastic bags consumed in the US ($80/barrel x 12 million = $960,000,000 sent to foreigners for oil). After learning this, I committed that we would start taking reusable shopping bags to the store (see 11 Ways to Save in 2010). Since its Earth Day tomorrow, it seems like a good time to share what we’ve found to replace the throwaway plastic bags:

Shopping Bags

I found some nice reusable shopping bags at Envrirosax. They describe them as follows:

Envirosax® designer reusable bags are spreading the eco-friendly message with [...]

Continue reading Reusable Shopping and Produce Bags

Reusable Water Bottles

After learning that US bottled water consumption in 2009 required the energy equivalent of 50 million barrels of oil, I committed to finding some reusable water bottles (11 Ways to Save in 2010), and make sure we used them.

I found some at klean kanteen (http://www.kleankanteen.com/) that had the following features:

BPA free & eco-friendly
Made of 18/8, food-grade stainless steel (no liner needed)
Round corners so they’re easy to clean
Stainless steel threads
Fits large ice cubes
Dishwasher safe

They have quite a variety of sizes and cap configurations, I went with the 18 oz. classic model, and we’ve been pleased. They are a little pricey (approximately $20 depending on size), so I also looked on RetailMeNot [...]

Continue reading Reusable Water Bottles

11 Ways to Save in 2010

Making Us Poor

I suddenly realized that we’re sending billions of dollars to foreigners for oil ($500 billion annually), making them rich and us poor, and it can’t go on. I don’t know why it never hit me before – the making us poor part just never sank in.

Oil consumption’s just beginning to rise in China and India, and there’s nowhere else to get the stuff. That means prices will continue to go up, and the oil countries will get richer while we get poorer. Maybe it’s only small things we can do about it individually, but collectively we can make a [...]

Continue reading 11 Ways to Save in 2010