Turn this recycling clutter into top of the line stylish recycle center

Mode™ Premium Home Recycling Center $299.95 from williams-sonoma.com
Perfect for the affluent neat-nick who needs to reduce clutter at any cost by home recycling in orderly and luxuriant style.

This Mode home recycle center has a built-in compactor to crush cans and plastic bottles to help save energy on reducing the frequency of walking to your outdoor recycle container or pickup. No electricity – just the power of the foot pedal – so you will need to expend some energy. The extra time you will spend neatly arranging your newspapers, magazines and junk mail to fit into the small area for paper will allow you opportunity to slow down from a busy, hectic day and perhaps reflect on why did you every buy this thing!

The North Pacific sub-tropical gyre has a massive spiral of floating plastic crap floating over an area estimated from the size of Texas to bigger than the continental United States. Most of this plastic is from run-off from rivers and streams from around the world, much of it gradually breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces that eventually become as small as plankton. Already in vast areas of the ocean these plankton-sized particles outnumber the real particles by greater than 7 : 1.

This plastic can also act as a chemical sponge soaking up and concentrating all kinds of nasty chemicals which then enter the food chain with devastating impact to all kinds of marine life, birds and perhaps eventually returning back to us in new deadly forms. This is an complex and urgent issue we should all learn as much as possible about and put pressure on politicians to reduce and eliminate plastic pollution as much as possible and to launch campaigns to start to clean up the oceans.

Here is a great video, The Sythetic Sea and below are some great links for information on this issue.

Synthetic Sea
World biggest garbage dump – plastic in the Ocean

Trashed great article and site by Mindfully.org on plastic in the ocean.

Plastic Soup Flash presentation on the Alguita oceanographic research voyage into the great pacific garbage patch.

The Trash Vortex Greenpeace article on this issue.

Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch wikipedia

Sea of Trash – NYT article 6/22/08

Here is another great You Tube video about electronic waste dumping.

When we think about green gadgets we need to consider where they will eventually end up. As this Greenpeace video shows, many of our computers, monitors and other electronics which contain many highly toxic components may be dumped in electronics waste yards in places like Ghana where extreme poverty and lax or non-existent environmental laws encourage e-waste dumping.This related article from Greenpeace explains further.

Make your own seltzer water and soda $89.00
Penguin Model from SodaClub

I’ve been a soda and sparkling water water addict for ages and despite always recycling I still feel guilt over using so much plastic or aluminum from my little vice. Now that I found from the EcoChick Blog out about how to indulge your fizzy jones without all the demon PET I feel even more guilty. One solution that seems promising is to join Sodastream, a Israeli company that makes home carbonation systems, 25 different flavored soda types, carbonating bottles and CO2 gas.

You just pour cold tap water into the device, press a button a few times to force the CO2 into the water (adjust for your taste in fizzyness) and you have a liter of seltzer water.

They offer various models, functionality and pricing of their fountain jet systems that are powered by proprietary carbonators filled with beverage-grade CO2 cartridges. When your cartridge is empty you arrange online to get a new replacement and send the empty to be refilled. The cheapest refill carbonator kit they offer is $25.00 (for 2 cartridges) – enough for 120 liters. Their pricing of other option on refill options are rather confusing on their website – be sure to check what your ultimate cost will be with the model you get and whether you want exchange cartridges or spare. You will also need to plan out when you’ll need a new refill as they don’t send it automatically.

The biggest advantage is in dramatically reducing the plastic in your life. Other perks are not having to lug heavy cases of soda and the reduced transportation costs of shipping ( do we really need to ship our sparkling water from France or Fiji?)

If you are a big soda drinker you could save some real money after awhile as their reusable 1-liter PET bottle goes for $0.20 per liter and flavored sodas for around $0.57 per liter. If you follow their instructions you can also save more money by flavoring your own water with juice or other flavoring of your own making. The flavorings cost $8.00 for a 100 ml bottle which makes about 40 liters of flavored seltzer.

If you want the classier designed Penguin model it will run you 249.99 for the model with all the perks and $199.99 for the “starter kit” version, it uses more elegent glass carafes rather than the PET liter bottles used with the less expensive Fountain Jet models. With the Penguin model you also get more soda mix.

If you are looking to save more money the Fountain Jet White Home Soda Maker seems a reasonable price at 159.99 which includes 3, 60-liter Carbonators makes about 180 liters of seltzer, 4 Carbonating Bottles, and you choose 8 Flavoring bottles (SodaMix) enough to make 96 Liters. Other models are also available.

Think Chair designed by Glen Oliver Low for Steelcase $769.00 (varies options and pricing)
from Unica home.com

If you want the absolute best Green office/work chair then consider not buying anything and just go to the thrift store or fix up an older chair. They won’t result in any new pollution from manufacture, probably won’t off-gas any toxic crap and will keep one more thing out of the landfill a little while longer. The more people get serious about reusing stuff the better. However, you might be in the position to want your business and/or persona to put out a more “professional, stylish, successful and contemporary” aura as well as being a comfy chair that is also eco-friendly. If so, then you might want to consider the “Think” chair by Steelcase.

An ergonomically design-based chair that is also has some serious green cred. This “Think” chair has up to 37% recycled content and is 99% recyclable. Weighs 32 pounds which saves energy in shipping and the energy used in manufacturing this chair is reported to be much less than as similar chairs. Also the chair is shipped fully assembled to reduce packaging and they manufacture these chairs closer to their markets in Europe and North America to reduce shipping and energy use. While this chair is designed to make recycling simple, I doubt you’ll need to anytime soon due to it being built exceptionally well and generally cool and comfortable chair to keep around. The chair has won varies certifications, labels and declarations on its green design, see Steelcase’s website for more info.

Earth Drive 4 Gig drive 34.99 at Costco

Now that almost everyone is using the USB flash drives to transfer and store their files we are facing the same issue that we have with CD’s and floppies – they get thrown out eventually. Our landfills are already overflowing with electronic junk so it’s a great idea that ATP has come up with a fully recyclable USB flash drive, called the EarthDrive. What makes the EarthDrive so special is that it is made from bio-recycled materials and is completely shockproof, waterproof and dustproof. You might freak out when you see their inflated prices (Costco sells the 8 Gig drive for 60.00) but the bite out of your wallet is less painful when you hear that ATP donates a portion of all their proceeds to planting trees all around the world. (hopefully not too near the Arctic circle.)

CAN-RAM Aluminum Can Crusher $17.50 from Conserv-a-Store

Yesterday I looked at the BigBelly trash compactor bin, here is another trash crushing device, the CAN-RAN, this time its priced for average people serious about their recycling and not just crushing beer cans in their hands to impress onlookers with how high their testosterone levels are.

You could use it to save space in your recycling bin by crushing used cans to a third of their normal size. If you are industrious you could bring the volumes of crushed cans to your handy aluminum scrap facility and they will reward in silver coin. Being green doesn’t stop you from being mean, so you could use it to piss off homeless people rooting through your bin for cans on recycle pick up days.

Seriously though, this could be handy for the family who uses way more aluminum cans than is good for them.

Seventh Generation Brown Paper Towels 30 rolls $54.95 at amazon.com

I was in a BJ’s (giant box store) yesterday and stopped to consider their display of paper products. They have an enormous display of various brands of huge packs of 30 or so rolls of paper towels for ridiculously cheap prices. Needless to say it’s a popular item as busy people are lured by the convenience of using paper towels. Almost every cleaning task imaginable is now commonly used with paper products; from drying your hands, wiping the counter, floor, windows and pretty much anything else. As they are so cheap, many people mindlessly use them for everything and then just toss it.

It wasn’t that long ago you that people didn’t use paper towels, they used linens in the kitchen. They used a cloth for washing the dishes and yet another for wiping up counters. A hand towel in the kitchen for drying your freshly washed hands. Old rags could be used in a mop head. Cloth napkins. Newspapers for washing windows. All of them washed and reused time after time. It worked just fine for centuries.
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Bag-E-Wash from Bag-E-Wash.com $9.99

Plastic food baggies are both a godsend and a curse. They make storing leftovers a snap but with this convenience comes the guilt over throwing out yet another perfectly good bag as you are too busy to bother with washing and drying it.

Thankfully some creative folks came up with the Bag-E-Wash, a plastic dishwasher attachment that lets you easily wash and dry the bags. Bag-E-Wash can take a single use bag and have it work for you anywhere from 25 to 50 more times. Since you can now reuse the bags you not only save money but you are doing your part to help keep yet one more plastic bag from an early grave in the landfill – where they will sit for a thousand years or so before biodegrading.

You may think, who cares, its only a one lousy plastic bag but when you have millions of people thinking the same way it adds up quickly. There are already trillions of various kinds of plastic bags in landfills and many plastic bags fly away in the wind after they are discarded—getting caught in fences, trees, sewers, even the throats of birds, fish, and other animals. While seemingly insignificant, if we all start to change the little simple ways we live to be more eco-friendly it will inspire others around you to do likewise.