Green Thinking Blog

With over 500 exhibitors, there is no way Laurel and I could ever share all the great stuff from each booth. So, we decided we would each pick some of our faves (it was a close call) to share some interesting companies, products, and services we learned about at Green Expo 2008.

My boyfriend and I are suckers for relaxing with the scent of incense in the air, so imagine my happiness when I picked up free samples of Lama Chodpa Incense. Lama Chodpa Incense is handmade incense from the Nub Gon Monestary in Tibet. Monks of this society make the incense from carefully ground herbs and let it dry in the sun. Each ingredient is blessed and one is blessed first for a 9 day ceremony and then for a full year by a meditation master. Not only is this incense free of chemicals and pesticides, it smells great!

Next, we went to visit the gents from Wildlife Solutions, a wildlife removal company that practices humane ways. With their outback theme from down under, these guys gave us a cute magnet with a baby raccoon on it, fake plastic snakes to scare our friends, and introduced us to a real snake—to scare us. The most important thing they shared, however, was their service. This company offers humane removal of animals such as raccoons, snakes, rats, bats, and squirrels. They remove the animal, clean up after it, find out how it got in, and then perform any repairs to prevent you from having any more unwanted roommates and preventing the animal from getting hurt.

100Fires.com caused Laurel and I to kick ourselves the minute we walked in the door. One thing we do best is shop, and we forgot our wallets, which we realized the minute we walked to a booth dedicated to books. This bookstore is dedicated to providing literature on sustainable living. While we encourage you to partake in your local library system, in the event you can’t find a book you are looking to borrow, 100Fires can find books that are hard to find. Important genres to search, the kids section. Educate early and save the future Earth.

Continuing on the subject of shopping…we also stopped by Ten Thousand Villages booth. Ten Thousand Villages is a fair trade store that sells products made by artisans in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These stores allow the artisans to practice a trade that provides a decent wage and a chance at a higher quality of life. They featured the best gift ideas for anyone on your list. From sculptures to jewelry to trivets, they have it and it is made beautifully!

Laurel provided links earlier to seeing if the Green Expo is coming to your area, if it is, we highly recommend you go—but be sure to set aside the whole afternoon!

If your area doesn’t have a local grocer, don’t fret.  A lot of mainstream grocery stores are offering organic products on their shelves.  Organic Earth Day supplied a flyer at my grocery store to provide coupons and steps for going organic.  Their website has some great ideas for recipes and highlights companies that create organic food items. 

Some grocery stores that are making the movement:

Publix recently took their Greenwise Market products and created a whole store!  Their first location is in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida and they have four more locations planned. 

On a recent (and rare) trip to Wal-Mart, they are now selling organic products too! Like Laurel & I’s faves: Amy’s organic foods and Stonyfield Yogurt amongst others.

For those of you on the other side of the country, Safeway’s website has a whole organic section to browse before you order online or go to the store.

And, do not forget to continuously check Laurel on Health Food  for the most recent information on what organic foods can do for you.  This is an excellent resource to encourage healthy things to go into your body, things you never knew could happen if you just ate the right things.   

With Earth Day this past week, I wanted to do a little something to get back in touch with nature. So, this weekend I decided to plant a few summer flowers on the porch of my apartment. I thought I’d share what I bought and how easy it was. It was a fun little project for a Saturday morning. For those of us who don’t own a house, planting a few flowers or plants on a back porch is the closest we can get to tending a real garden.

I bought:

• One large 14 in. clay pot and tray
• Two bags all purpose potting soil (10 dry qt. size)
• Gardening gloves
• Four small “sun annual” flowers: white geraniums, zinnias, celosias, and marigolds

First I brought everything outside on my back porch. I opened up one bag of soil and dumped it all into the pot. Then I took the first flower pot and ran a dull knife around the edge to loosen the roots. I turned it upside down and slid the flowers out. Then I took the knife and cut the roots to help loosen the soil and placed the flowers in the pot before packing the dirt around it. I repeated this step with the other three flowers. To finish, I poured a few cups of water down in the pot to help the flowers settle into their new suroundings. The entire process only took me ten minutes!

Note: I’m in a hot, Florida climate here and my porch gets full sun all day. So, I chose “sun annual” flowers that can withstand full sun and heat. Choose whichever flowers will work best on your porch.

Also, I got a new Flip Video camera and was trying it out for the first time. I just took a couple shots of the flowers, soil, and pot so you could see what it looked like. I plan to bring more video blogs to you soon!

Happy planting!

I was browsing an issue of Slap Magazine at my boyfriend’s house the other day. What do you normally look at in magazines? Pictures. So there it was, a full page advertisement featuring green shoes. Not green in color mind you, but eco-friendly kicks.

So I took my search to the world wide web. You can find shoes made of all kinds of earth-conscious materials: bamboo, hemp, recycled car tires and bike tires (which probably make you walk faster), and vegan- and vegetarian-conscious shoes that remove all animal products, by-products, and animal testing for the devout. One of the most interesting and beneficial sites I came across was SimpleShoes.com. Simple is educating their consumer and allowing you to shop right there—two of my faves combined!

This company is not only concerned with the why of their earthly cause, but the how. Dedication to using earth-friendly materials (organic cotton, water based glue, hemp, recycled rubbers, and so many more!) in production makes their shoes 100% sustainable. By using the entire recycled tire, they are saving it from going to a landfill. That same recycled tire is then saved from sending poisonous gases into our air because, if it were in a landfill, it would be burned to make more room in that landfill. Hello?! Save a step and make some shoes!

Planet Shoes features Simple shoes along with other companies that are in touch with the greeness of the feet (Earth, Acorn, and Patagonia to name a few).

Check out each link, and when you shop, think of lil’ ol’ me. You could be green from head-to-toe so easily!

When driving down the green-way of life, don’t overlook the smallest room in your house—the bathroom. There are plenty of ways to convert your potty to that of an eco-friendly environment through the basics: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Reduce: Something as simple as cutting down on one square of t.p. per meditation period could reduce how much packaging is wasted because it will cut down how much toilet paper you have to purchase. Grocery saving: BONUS!

Reuse: While we don’t recommend reusing those squares, look at incorporating a plastic, washable cup for your toothbrushing routine instead of purchasing Dixie cups.

Recycle: Save those cardboard rings and either use them for arts-n-crafts with the kiddies, throw them in your hamster cage, or place them in your neighborhood recyling pick-up. A double use makes scraps that much more useful.

A not-so-basic investment: a hemp shower curtain. You may not have ever thought the thin plastic lining of your shower curtain could create so much waste—and a waste that can last a lifetime! Hemp is naturally resistant to mold and bacteria, is quick drying, and will bring a natural feel to your bathroom. It will get wet, but the water will not go through the fibers, so no liner is needed: BONUS! I am not going to lie, it is a little bit pricier than your average $11 shower curtain from Bed, Bath, & Beyond, but wash wisely and you won’t need to buy another one again.