Green Patchwork

If you are conscientious about the foods you eat and are a label reader then I hope you do the same when it comes to the products you put on your skin. Anything you put on your skin is the same as putting it into your body and just like there are a lot of foods out there that are harmful there are a lot of skincare products that are harmful. Even if the label says it’s natural, organic, or herbal doesn’t mean it really is. Buying truly safe and natural skincare is harder for me than shopping for natural foods, because with bodycare products you have all these long and scientific names and you don’t know what the heck they really are. Luckily, there are people out there that write books about natural shopping and start watchdog organizations to protect the public from unsafe activities. (more…)

Last year we subscribed to Mother Earth News‘ bimonthly magazine, but for the sake of budgeting and saving natural resources we decided to not resubscribe. Instead, we go to their online site or go to the library to read the most current issues. If you have never read a Mother Earth News they offer information on organic gardening, real food, sustainable energy, native plants, and simple living. I was recently looking through their site and saw that they have tons of new information on real food and healthy food choices and thought I would pass it on to you all.

The Exxon-Valdez oil spill is one of the world’s worst environmental catastrophes and the damage it has caused is greater than was previously thought. After many studies, scientists are realizing how large the impact is of this single event on the greater ecosystems. To learn more about oil spills read the Wikipedia link. Also, I just found an interesting video about how scary an oil spill can be and how much it impacts wildlife.

Jonah and I had a VW Jetta TDI last year that we ran on bio-diesel and got incredible gas mileage with, but most of the time the car just sat in our driveway while we rode our bikes around town. It was an expensive luxury that we decided we could go without so we sold it last fall. Since then we’ve been biking, bussing, and using his parents’ extra vehicle when we have lots of errands. (more…)

I have had a lot of people looking at my posts about felted sweater crafting, and realize that I should include a post about recycling the actual wool sweater for the yarn. Quality wool yarn is pretty expensive, but if one were to buy a nice wool sweater at the thrift store for about $7 and unravel it you could potentially get about 2 pounds of yarn which would cost almost $80 new at the yarn stores. (I’m basing that on a 3.5oz.  skein of Irish wool yarn I bought recently for $9.50.) (more…)

I just stumbled upon an interesting link for fair trade condoms. French Letter condoms are made in the UK under the same fair trade conditions applied to products such as coffee, chocolate, and bananas. Now workers in rubber plantations can enjoy the benefits of fair wages and good work conditions while you enjoy the benefits of French Letter condoms.

For those of you who live in Madison and want to eat meat, but without all the antibiotics, steroids, growth hormones, and anything else that goes into an animal before and after it is slaughtered, there are many retail options to find organic or naturally raised meats. I haven’t been to Artamos’ Specialty Meats and Deli yet, but I have eaten some of their products and think their store is a conscious carnivore’s delight. “All the organic meats featured at Artamos’ are free-range and raised without hormones, antibiotics and steroids. In addition, the animals are fed an all-organic vegetarian diet (no animal by-products), which is particularly important. (more…)

You may be wondering what healthy teeth has to do with sustainability and the environment and why I would write about them. I am writing about healthy teeth because sustainability is also about human health and the increased awareness of protecting our bodies against harmful substances. Just as we want to protect our global natural environment we want to protect our individual bodily environments for a healthy and long life. A healthy mouth is just as important as a healthy body or clean air and water. (more…)

Next time you get something in the mail that is packed with packing peanuts don’t just throw them away. And definitely don’t burn them in your trash! Polystyrene packing peanuts are not biodegradable and will not decompose in the landfill for a very very long time. Instead, reuse them when sending outgoing mail or bag them up and bring them to your local UPS store or Mailboxes Etc. These stores will gladly accept your peanuts, because it saves them money, time, and resources. (more…)

After a Capri Sun juice drink is drunk the container gets thrown away and sits in a landfill for decades or centuries. When I was a kid I loved these juice drinks and their convenience, but I never thought about what happened to them once I threw them away. Kids love these drinks and I bet if we went to a local elementary school we would find tons of these empty containers in the trash.

A women’s cooperative in the Philippines has found a useful solution for these bags and created a business out of it, called Doy Bags. They collect, wash, sanitize, sort, and sew these drink containers into functional bags that are also stylish and fun. The cooperative uses the bright colors and designs of the drink containers to their advantage by sorting and sewing them accordingly.

Wild Child kid’s clothing store on Monroe St. has a good selection of Doy Bags if you would like to have a look at them up close and see for yourself how unique they are. Renee at Wild Child uses her personal oversized Doy Bag totes for grocery shopping.