Go Green day 7

It’s day 7 and the halfway mark of EcoStreet‘s Go Green challenge. The challenge today is a simple one, just join Freecycle. I’m a huge fan of freecycle. You can give away your old stuff to people who want it and find stuff that you’ve been looking for yourself. And best of all it’s free. There are local groups nearly everywhere, but if you can’t find one you can easily start your own.

Day 3 of Go Green Challenge

Today is day 3 of the Go Green Challenge at Eco Street. The challenge today is to get yourself some reusable shopping bags. There are a lot of differnet options out there. You can reuse the bags already given out by stores, buy some of the great reusable shopping bags out there, or try making your own. If you’re really feeling crafty you can knit a reusable bag from plastic bags. Or if you’re not the knitting type you can use an iron to fuse plastic bags together into one strong reusable bag.

We have a couple dozen Chico Bags that we use for shopping, going swimming, taking recycling, and more. I got them from Reusable Bags, where you can get almost any kind of reusable bag for any purpose. A friend of mine has several awesome baskets that she uses to shop with. They are cute, functionable, and she feels better using them. Not just from an environmental standpoint either. She ordered her baskets from Basket Africa, a Fair Trade company that provide healthcare, school fees, and community buildings for the weavers and their children.

Show some compost love.

Remember when I told you green was sexy? Well TreeHugger agrees. Check out this sexy vase that holds food scraps for composting. Composting can be sexy? Who knew? What about a hot pink toilet? Is that sexy? What if I told you it was a water-less composting toliet? With a little flare I guess even composting can become sexy.

 In fact, composting has become so sexy that entire cities are jumping in with the love. Seattle is going compost crazy by making food recycling mandatory by ’09. Though their plan has a few problems, like not checking to make sure people are doing so and charging those who compost in their own homes. But overall it seems like a pretty good step forward.

Though some people dislike composting (is this for real?) it’s getting more and more popular. Heck, there’s even an Annual Conference for composters.

Interested in composting? You can learn how to do it yourself, share composting with kids, and even composting inside your house.

Recycled fashions are hot

I’ll start off with a confession, i ripped two big holes in my jeans. Now they were old jeans that I have had for at least 3 years, and I bought them used at a second hand shop so who knows how much wear they got before I got my hands onto them. Having them this long and only now getting two holes shows they were pretty durable. But the holes are, well… across the seat. And I’m not the kind of girl that likes sharing her assets with just anyone walking by. So it was time to make a decision.

Eco-Chick has a great post about eco-shoes, that included a really interesting link to a site with information on making your own shoes. There were also the cutest homemade shoes ever that makes me wish I had the time to learn to knit. Learning how to recycle for fashion is gaining momentum and more people are being inspired. Hey, no one said conservation had to be bland. Taking thrift store fashions and reshaping them into new outfits can be a lesson in creativity and  fun. Some people are even making a business out of recycled fashions (check out this fish dress, so cute!).

So what am I going to do with the ripped jeans? I’m thinking maybe making a bag out of them. It could be a hit. I’m no stranger to sewing. I created my own diaper bag that I’ve used for the past 2 years. And this January I made a small tote bag for my preschool neice to carry around. But I have never worked with deniom before, so this will be challenging and fun.