Bee Condo

Do you love having a great garden or flowerbed in your backyard?  Some people have massive, beautiful gardens that include brightly colored flowers and gorgeous plants.  However, to really get the most out of your flowerbed, you need your flowers to get pollinated.  Bees are a great method for this, but how can you attract bees to your backyard?  Easy—set up a bee condo.

The bee condo is a very inviting place to the orchard mason bees.  These bees can be found just about anywhere in the United States, and they will help pollinate just about all types of flowers and other plants.  Now, if you’re scared of being stung by bees, you may be thinking that a bee condo is the last thing you want around your home.  However, the good news is that the orchard mason bees are non-stinging.  In fact, they are very gentle insects and won’t cause you any harm at all.

The bee condo is made from recycled wood, specifically reclaimed fir, so it’s very ecologically friendly.  On the off chance you don’t have any orchard mason bees in your area, the bee condo also comes with information on ordering bees (yes, you can actually order them).  It also tells you how to attract bees to the condo and gives you information about various companies that can help you order your bees.

Having a great garden is possible without bees, of course, but having a number of orchard mason bees in your garden to help pollinate flowers is an easy way of boosting your garden’s appearance.  It makes it easier for your flowers to grow and reproduce, and that means less work for you as a gardener.

Recycled Plastic Trash Bags

It seems like we all use a lot of trash bags every week.  How many bags of trash do you take out to the garbage for pickup?  Two?  Three?  More?  Now think of how many trash bags that would be every year.  It’s a huge number, and all of that plastic ends up in a landfill somewhere.  However, the Seventh Generation recycled plastic trash bags are made from recycled plastic, and using them will help save a ton of resources.

According to a study, if everyone simply swapped out one box of brand new 20 tall kitchen bags with a box of recycled ones (made from 65% recycled material), it would be enough to save 3,900 barrels of oil and would cut down on 720,000 cubic feet of landfill space.  It would also cut out 15,000 tons of pollution.  That’s just by replacing ONE box!  Imagine what would happen if every household started using recycled trash bags for all of their trash needs?

The savings only goes up if the bags are made from more recycled material.  Bags made using 80% recycled materials, for example, could save 81,000 barrels of oil and cut down 30,000 tons of pollution if every household purchased a 20 count box.

These recycled plastic trash bags aren’t that much more expensive than those made from virgin plastic.  They come in a variety of sizes, including 13 gallon tall kitchen bags and 33 gallon trash bags.  They’re made out of tough, quality recycled plastic, too, so they won’t rip or tear easily.

Sometimes, it seems like going green requires a huge change, but there are some things we can do that are small yet have a huge impact.  Changing out a box or two of traditional trash bags for recycled ones can be one of those small things.  If you want to go green but aren’t sure how, this is a great place to start.

Coffee Cozies—Get Rid of that Cardboard!

Every time you get a hot cup of coffee or an espresso at Starbucks, you probably get a cardboard cup cozy to help keep you from burning your hand on the warm cup.  But how much cardboard does Starbucks go through in a day?  And how many people recycle these cozies?  Most end up in the trash.  However, several companies have started looking at ways to get rid of these cardboard cozies altogether.

The silicone Cup Cooley is sold by a number of different companies.  These silicone sleeves can be found in several different colors, and they cost about as much as one of those fancy coffees.  They insulate, are slip resistant, and will protect your hand from heat.  They also fold flat so you can store them in your jacket pocket or purse.

Of course, if you’d rather create a custom cozy, that’s certain an option, too.  One idea is to take a sock put your cup down in it.  Get one of the short ankle socks and roll down any extra at the top.  It’s cheap and easy!

You can also find a number of crocheted patterns for creating cup cozies as well.  What’s nice about these is that you can use the cozy as a wrist band as well.  There are also patterns for creating cozies out of several different items, including old neckties or the sleeves of an old shirt.  No matter what kind of coffee you love, these types of cozies can be easily customized and decorated in any way you like.

If you’re a big coffee drinker, think about purchasing or making one of your own cup cozies.  You’ll save a good amount of cardboard, especially if you purchase a coffee every morning before work.

UK Launches Recycle Week with Recycled Sculpture

While the Coca Cola company hasn’t always been eco-friendly (there have been rumors regarding pesticide use and Coke has been involved in battling some recycling legislation), they’ve also worked to help the environment.  The company has electric delivery vehicles and they’ve added wind power to some of their manufacturing plants.  Well, now the company has done something else—they’ve trashed the UK coastline with millions of aluminum cans!

But wait, before you judge the company harshly, know that this was planned.  Coke has created a huge recycled sculpture to celebrate and support the UK Recycle Week, the week between June 22nd and June 28th.  The sculpture is more than 50 meters across and is made completely from used aluminum cans.  The image created is from Coke’s 1949 summer poster and features a woman relaxing on the beach with a large bottle of Coke behind her.  The sculpture has been dubbed the world’s largest sculpture to be created out of all recycled materials.

Recycle Week and the giant sculpture were created to help bring more attention to recycling and what it can do for the environment and the amount of energy we use.  Throughout the rest of the week, various recycling programs and activities will be held across the UK.

In addition to creating the sculpture and sponsoring many Recycling Week activities, Coke has also launched an educational program promoting recycling and is actively working to create recycling stations in shopping centers, parks, and airports.  The idea here is to make it just as easy to recycle when out in public as it is when at home.  While aluminum recycling is certainly a part of these stations, it’s not the only focus: paper, glass, and other materials will also be recycled.

China Saves 1.6 Million Tons of Petroleum in Plastic Bags

While several countries, including the United States, are looking at banning those really thin plastic shopping bags, China has already gotten rid of more than 40 billion plastic bags.  This has actually saved the country more than 1.6 million tons of petroleum!  All in all, China has reduced its plastic bag usage by almost 66 percent.

While China’s government has passed some controversial laws on human rights, the country has been seen as a leader in ecological and environmental practices.  In fact, their bag law is often hailed as one of the best examples of ways governments can help implement environmentally friendly policies.

While some have been skeptical of China’s bag ban, studies show it is working.  However, while more than 80 percent of all Chinese citizens support the ban, surveys also show that more than 80 percent of stores in the rural areas of China are completely ignoring this law.  How long such an act will last is uncertain, but it appears some stores simply aren’t willing to change their old habits.  The State Administration for Industry and Commerce has been sending out regulators to inspect stores, however, and they’ve been imposing very steep fines.

One of the reasons going plastic bag-less has really caught on in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing is that tote bag makers are marketing to the hip youngsters.  They’re making tote bags in a number of different styles, colors, and designs.  These tote bags have become quite the fashion statement, especially among the younger generations.

The United Nations has picked up on this movement, and the chief of the U.N. Environmental Program has actually called for countries to enact a global ban on the production of plastic bags.  Following in a somewhat similar vein, several cities in the US have adapted a bag tax or even a bag ban, although some cities have since relented on their anti-plastic plans.  Ireland has taxed plastic bags since 2002.

Recycling: Does It Really Help?

People have heard things like “it costs twice as much to create something from recycled material as it does to make a new product” or that recycling just doesn’t work.  So is recycling really worthwhile?  Are we really saving the planet?

First of all, the rumor that it takes more to make something out of recycled materials than it does to make a new product is false.  Companies can make twenty aluminum cans out of recycled materials using the same amount of energy it takes to make one aluminum can out of non-recycled materials.  This means that if you recycle one can, you’ve saved enough energy to power your television for three hours!  Throwing away an aluminum can, on the other hand, is like filling that can half full of petrol and throwing it out the window.

Recycling glass is also very beneficial to the environment.  Glass is one of the few materials that can be recycled over and over without losing any quality.  More than 80 percent of recycled glass bottles are made into new containers.  In fact, there really isn’t such a thing as new glass anymore—almost all new glass is made with recycled glass.  Recycling 20 glass bottles equals a savings of about two pound of carbon emissions.

Overall, every pound of recycled materials saves landfills and two and a half pounds of carbon emissions.  Here’s the bottom line, though: the average person actually recycles about one and a half pounds of mixed solid waste every day!  That’s about a third of all the solid waste we create.  Not bad, but it could be even better.  If we were to recycle 50 percent of all solid waste, we’d save almost 2,500 pounds of carbon emissions per house per year.

So does recycling work?  The answer is a resounding yes.

E-Cycler Caught Lying

Many companies have started what they call e-cycling, or ecologically friendly recycling of items that really can’t be thrown into your local garbage, such as computer monitors.  Some e-cycling companies hold large events every few months in which they collect things that cannot be recycled by local city recycling, and for the most part, these companies do a great job at taking these items away and actually recycling them.  These companies deserve a lot of praise for their work.

The EarthECycle company, however, doesn’t.  They recently had two e-cycling events in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The owner of EarthECycle went on record as saying that all the materials collected at these events would be recycling at a local facility.  The company also promised the local human society that they would donate $10,000 for every 100,000 pounds of recyclable materials they collected.

However, despite what EarthECycle officials said, the Basel Action Network, an environmental watch group, discovered something very interesting.  BAN members followed the EarthECycle trucks to warehouses, and later that day, they witnessed the waste being loaded into shipping containers.  Six of these containers where then transported via ship to Hong Kong, while another was shipped to South Africa.  These containers and the waste they held were set to be delivered to landfills.

However, BAN’s quick action has led to five of the Hong Kong containers and the South Africa container being returned to the US.  However, EarthECycle isn’t the only company that collects materials and then ships them off to other countries for disposal.  This doesn’t just happen in the United States, either—these types of scams occur all around the world.  To make certain it doesn’t happen to you, your city, or any group you’re a part of, be certain to check into the background of any recycling company you agree to work with.

Eco-Friendly Personalized Coffee Mugs - ECOMUG

EcoMug is based out of California. They personalize ceramic 15 oz mugs and 20 oz EcoBottle's using organic water-soluble inks. Water bottles are clean-tasting and made from a ZERO BPA, non-leaching polypropylene, known as pp#5. These products are reusable, and 100% recyclable.

The Pacific Garbage Patch, is a garbage stew twice the size of Texas floating off the coast of California

Recycled Gift Wrapping Paper

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Reusable Bags Can Be Dangerous

Everyone wants to use cloth, reusable bags.  Everyone believes that these bags are much, much better than both plastic and paper bags.  They don’t destroy the environment, they can be used for many other things besides grocery shopping, and they can be decorated and customized for each person.  But a new review by the Environment and Plastics Industry Council (EPIC) recently announced that reusable cloth bags can be dangerous!

EPIC conducted their research after Toronto considered putting a ban on plastic bag usage.  What did EPIC’s study reveal?  According to them, a reusable bag may contain much more mold and TPC than used Tupperware!  If just a bit of water or other moisture gets inside one of these bags, it can create the perfect environment for bacteria to grow.  This is because the inside of these bags are dark and many people leave them in their cars.  During the warm months, the temperature in the car can get quite high, creating a warm, moist environment.

What this means is that food can get contaminated if the bags are used over and over without being cleaned.  Because yeast has been found in these bags, there’s a very good chance that other microbes are also growing inside the bag.  This can result in food poisoning or worse.  According the EPIC’s study, at least three out of every 25 bags examined had coliform contamination in them.

How can you help protect against this?  Wash your reusable bags on a regular basis.  Make certain meats and any other food that may leak is wrapped tightly and securely.  Don’t leave your bags out in the hot car, either.  Remember that these bags are, in a way, like your dishes—you wouldn’t eat off of a dirty plate, so don’t put your food in a dirty bag.

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