divine green: Sustainable Home, Beauty, & Lifestyle

By Alorie Gilbert

Can you relate to Katherine Heigl in the movie 27 Dresses? Even if just one or two bridesmaids garments are gathering dust in your closet, take a look at Donatemydress.org.

The site, just launched by publishing giant Hearst, offers a national directory of organizations that collect special occasion dresses for teens in need of prom gowns that won’t break the bank. The site also provides details on upcoming dress drives (prom season is underway!) and giveaways, and features photos of teens in donated duds.

I applaud Hearst, publisher of Seventeen and Cosmogirl, for promoting dress donation, but why not take it a step further? Why not tell gals that recycled dresses aren’t just easy on the wallet, they’re easy on the earth, too.

Find out where to donate your old frocks here.

Recycling old cell phones or digital cameras just got a little easier. The U.S. Postal Service said this week that residents of Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego–among 10 U.S. cities that are part of a pilot program–can drop by their local post office and use a postage-paid envelope to send small electronics like iPods and personal digital assistants away for recycling. (Clover Technologies Group, the recipient, pays for the postage so that it can refurbish or recycle the goods.)

Companies like Green Citizen offer a similar service in cities like San Francisco for a small fee, but if the post office’s “mail back” program takes off, many more people could get rid of their electronics without harming the environment. The post office, which uses packages and envelopes that are made of nearly 100 percent recycled material, said it aims to launch the program nationally if it gets off the ground, so to speak.

Egg shells, cucumber peels, fajita leftovers–they often don’t find their way into the recycling can because of the messiness and stink factor (if people even own a compost bin). In fact, food waste is the No. 1 least recycled material in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency; and yet it and paper goods comprise the bulk of landfills. That waste, which can’t breakdown naturally for lack of oxygen in the landfill, adds to our global warming headaches because it produces more carbon than necessary.

San Francisco-based NatureMill wants to rectify this problem by bringing composting to the masses. In recent weeks, it introduced a line of automatic home compost bins that take some of the ickyness and inconvenience out of turning food into fertilizer. (more…)

By David Rittenhouse

TOKYO–One recent morning while I was hurrying into Shinjuku station here to catch the metro, I stopped at Starbucks for a small coffee and one of those really tasty sweet brown rice scones that they have in Japan.

When I finished my breakfast on-the-go I took my plastic tray with ceramic plate and paper cup to the return point/trash bin and had a sudden moment of conscientiousness. There were at least five different holes into which to separate and place the garbage–paper cups, plastic cups, tops, ice-liquids, other combustible and non-combustible items. (The Japanese government requires the recycling measures.)

This got me thinking. (more…)

Evite and greeting-card sites have seemingly done wonders for the environment with respect to saving paper. But sometimes the electronic note can’t replace a holiday card or paper invitation—especially when it comes to occasions like weddings, baby showers or graduation. Don’t sacrifice the green. Send a handmade recycled-paper card that when planted grows into a wildflower. Botanical Paperworks and Plantable Paper both sell customizable seeded cards, invitations and giftwrap. Once potted, planted and watered, the pulp mulches down into the soil and the seeds can turn into California bluebells or another flower within a month. Now that’s a gift.

TOKYO–”Eco” as fashion statement has definitely hit Japan’s capital–a jam-packed city of 8 million-plus, not including outlying areas.

Just visit one of Tokyo’s most eclectic home-shopping stores, Tokyo Hands, located in Shibuya. It’s eight floors of do-it-yourself and oddball items ranging from teak wood slabs for making your own coffee table to plastic toe stretchers. It’s also sprinkled with the latest environmentally friendly goods.

Here I found these “Eco Home Kitchen Bags” from Benetton–a rainbow-colored tastemaker in the 80s. A reusable bag for grocery shopping, the eco sack rolls up into a tiny case that you can port around in a pocket or stick to the refrigerator when not in use. Doubtful you can find this exact product in the United States, but similar gear is common in cities like San Francisco, which just banned the use of plastic bags in major grocery stores.

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After the kids grow up (or grow out of whatever fit last month), parents are left with a glut of stuff—Baby Bjorns, cradle swings, snuglis. Some parents hand down the bounty to friends or family, while others store the goods in the basement (just in case). But a growing group of parents are turning to grassroots Web sites to unload unwanted items and alleviate their consumer guilt.

Zwaggle.com, which I wrote about here, is a social network designed to let parents donate baby goods to others in need. In exchange for charity, that member will earn points to pick up something else from another parent. Members pay only for shipping for their desired item.

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Consumer electronics are the fastest growing hog of electricity in U.S. homes. That’s according to Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the National Resources Defense Council, who said at a recent event that all those plasma TVs and Playstations now suck up as much as 15 percent of the household energy bill.

For example, Horowitz said, a 50 inch plasma TV uses 500 kilowatts of energy annually (if “on” an average of two to three hours daily), or about 4 percent of the household electricity bill. That’s the equivalent of adding another refrigerator to the house, he said.

Horowitz blamed the problem on designers of consumer electronics, who aren’t thinking about energy efficiency at the outset. Consider the DVR. Many of the digital recording devices don’t include an on/off switch.

“It’s on 24 hours at full power even if you’re not using it,” Horowitz said. “With the uptake of DVRs in homes, you could eliminate the need for new power plants if the box was designed better.”

One solution is to unplug (more…)

What happens to all those Goodwill throwaways when they don’t sell in a local thrift store? As much as 75 percent ends up in landfill. Or equally bad, those too-tight Nike shorts and low-slung Gap jeans are shipped to third-world nations, where they clothe the poor.

That last part sounds noble, but the resulting glut of last-year’s baby-doll blouses and cargo pants from the U.S. ends up squelching demand for locally made clothing in underdeveloped countries desperate for their own self-sustaining economies. (That clothing might also layer landfills in places like India and Africa.)

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