Eco Endorsement
Now that I’m a card badge carrying member of the eco-friendly movement, I try to keep my eyes peeled for environmentally friendly/conscious products and ideas. Below are a few that have recently come to my attention, but I don’t necessarily need them now. It’s not exactly environmentally (nor fiscally) responsible to purchase things you don’t need, so I’m listing these more as a reminder to myself than anything else. I apologize that, as a consequence, this may cross your path. Or maybe you’ll find one of these interesting as well.
New Soap, Old Bottle takes used plastic bottles and resells them filled with name brand soaps (hand soap, dish soap, other cleaning supplies – all natural options are coming soon). GOOD posted a blurb about these about a year ago, but this only recently came to my attention. I don’t know that it’s an ideal/perfect solution but it’s a good idea. And they take it a step further (or perhaps theoretically a step back) by selling their special “bottle fitting” spray, pump and squeeze tops and allowing you to partner with them by selling your org’s used bottles.
I’m not the best grocery shopper – I tend to make many “just-in-time” trips rather than a weekly “get-it-all” trip so I don’t need an army of re-usable shopping bags. I currently have a large bag and a small bag that I try to keep in the back of my car all the time. A friend of mine recently recommended the MY ECO Shopping Bag System. It’s a set of four bags (small, large, x-large, and insulated medium) that all fit inside a storage tote. Each bag is also labelled with suggested contents to help you organize your stuff as you deal with the stress of bagging your stuff while the guy buying a case of beer and a bag of chips impatiently taps his foot behind you at the self-checkout.
Everyone has their vices, and right next to tech stuff at the top of my list are bottles. It started in college when I would buy a bottle of Dasani and then reuse/carry it around for a week. Word got back to me that wasn’t such a good idea so I broke down and jumped on the Nalgene bandwagon. Then BPA joined every other multi-moleculed substance in being shown to cause cancer/health problems in humanoid lab rats, so I had to update my large bottle collection with BPA-free bottles. Now plastics in general are on the outs and since no one is building anything, there’s apparently a surplus of steel lying around. This now brings us the rise of companies like SIGG and Klean Kanteen. I currently have a couple of Klean Kanteen options in my arsenal, but I’m looking to add this. It’s not economical ($30), but I love that it’s wide-mouth and that it would fit in my cup holder (I have a non-insulated version of the same bottle and it’s tops in my collection as far as I’m concerned).
That’s it for now. I’d love to hear about any “green” products that you’ve discovered and now can’t live without.