Boxed Water. Seriously?

In the category of "What Will They Think of Next?"... No, wait. In the category of "Greenwashing"... Um, hold on. I think I can do better. In the category of "Ways to Ease Your EcoConscience" comes boxed water. Yes, seriously.

Okay, okay, I'm a lover not a fighter, and I do try to see the best in people - and companies. So if you live in an area where your tap water is just undrinkable, (like the folks in Hudson, CO who can light their water on fire) maybe this is an option. But, in most cases, so are water filters, or those ginormous blue plastic jugs of water that get used over and over. The thing is, these cartons aren't all that recyclable, even though the company wants you to believe they are,

Our cartons can also be broken down to their original flat state, are recyclable in most areas, and will be everywhere shortly.

Using the link they provided, I found that they are recyclable in about 14 places in Colorado - Denver not being one of them. And considering the current state of the recycling industry in Denver (as well as all across the US) I really can't see recycling companies adding new types of containers to those that are already stacking up in storage facilities.

So who knows. Maybe the creators of this company really believe that this is a good idea, but the pessimist realist ecoist in me just sees greenwashing and a way to make people feel better about purchasing a resource that is readily available at their taps.

100% Reclaimed Handrail

While I worked on the basement playroom this weekend, the boys made a new handrail for the stairs from our driveway down to our house. We have a barn on our property that was used for horses at one time. It had two stalls, with beautiful logs separating them. Since we won't be keeping horses any time soon, we decided to remove the divider and use the barn as a workshop instead. Super Uncle carefully removed the logs and each and every spike used to hold them in place.

When it came time to do something about this rickety old handrail...

...we decided to use the logs from the barn to build a new one, and even used the old spikes to hold it together.

They (and I) were very impressed with the final result. I think it's much more befitting of a little house in the mountains.

The Vegetable House

Fletcher was so excited last weekend to be a "workin' man" with his dad and uncle. "We're building a house for vegetables Momma!" he told me. "And it's going to be green!" Eh, close enough. So here is the greenhouse thus far....




We wanted to use all reclaimed materials, but it's not quite working out. Most of the glass is from our neighbor. He had planned to build a solarium onto his home, but never did and is now moving. The glass doors are from our house - we recently removed our security doors and two sets of sliding glass doors and installed French doors instead. Much of the wood was left over from previous projects, left by the previous owners, or was already in place (the back wall and roof of the shelter used to be a wood shed).

We ended up purchasing some plywood as well as the plastic roofing, which we couldn't find used or at the building surplus store.

It was a glorious, sunny day. We all ended up with our first burns of the season, yet were happy about it. Unfortunately we ran into this a few days later...



So it might be a little while before the greenhouse is complete, trimmed out and painted. Such is life. At least during the spring in Colorado.

Mother Nature Doesn't Do Bailouts

This article, Mother Nature Doesn't Do Bailouts, by the Inspired Protagonist (aka Jeffrey Hollender, President of Seventh Generation) had me saying "Yeah!" at the breakfast table this morning.

In the article, Hollender quotes a recent NYT column by Thomas Friedman:

Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

Can I get an "amen"?

As a recruiter in the Information Technology industry in the late 1990's, I admit to being part of the problem. I can't tell you how many entry-level, 25k-per-year kids I took and put into jobs that were way above their heads at double or triple the salary. All of the sudden the people who were once perfectly happy in manufacturing or customer service jobs, making an honest and decent living, were thrust into the next higher tax bracket, and their old jobs sent off to China and India because the positions were no longer desirable to us. And besides, who could live on 25k per year anymore?

With all this new found money, everyone deserved a new car, owned a home, went on vacations, and spent without thinking. We all lived the high-life for a number of years, myself included. But, as Friedman says in his column, we can't do this anymore!

He quotes Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert (and blogger: http://climateprogress.org/):

We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children...You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior, but it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, "This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate ..." Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.

To that I say, "YEAH!"

Travel on the mind...

I made this little travel wallet and tote bag for our upcoming trip to Ethiopia. I'm still working on a tutorial for the bag, but I have one for the travel wallet up on the MIFS blog today. These were made from a set of tea towels that I bought at Target and were inspired by the bag that Jill made on Homemade by Jill.

Edited to add: It seems crafty minds think alike. Check out this completely awesome, puts-my-bag-to-shame bag from the Artsy-Crafty Babe. Yeah, I'm not quite to that sewing level yet!

In the world of Greenhab...

I'm afraid I don't have a whole lot of time for blogging lately. We are *hopefully* just a few short weeks away from heading to Ethiopia to bring our two newest children home, so my days have been filled with work, and my nights with packing donations and bags and cleaning and rearranging and organizing and purging and even a little sewing.


We're about 1/2 way through turning our (finished) basement from a storage / exercise / junk room into a playroom. Super Uncle built a monstrous book / toy shelf. I love that we have such a handyman in the family who is so happy to help us and eager to do something sweet for the kids. I'll take some photos once the room is done.


I'm also in the process of turning our guest room into a little girl's room. Admittedly, there's a tiny part of me that would love to be able to run out to Pottery Barn and order a matching bedroom set and coordinating bedding and accessories. However, that's not something that we can afford. I'd like to think if I hit the lottery that I would still go the sustainable, modest route rather than the over-the-top, expensive route. I guess we'll never know!


For our little girl, I found a pretty comforter on clearance at Target for $19.98. It came in a giant carrying bag, which I disassembled to make a window valance and a switch plate cover. Pictures forthcoming...needless to say I was pretty impressed with my creative genius there! ;) We also bought a beautiful old dresser at a yard sale last summer for $40 and a pretty vintage lamp at Goodwill for $2.99. I still need to paint the room but, after all is said and done, I think we'll have spend $90 - $100 total on the transformation. I couldn't even buy a whole bedspread from Pottery Barn for that much!


In case that wasn't enough to accomplish in two weeks time, Mr. Greenhab and Super Uncle have started construction on a greenhouse. This is the old wood shed:


They'll be using the sliding glass doors that we removed from our house recently, as well as some large windows we procured from a neighbor.

So that's what's happening in our neck of the woods. I hope you'll forgive my sporadic blogging!

EcoCanteen Winner!

Congrats to Mrs. Modern Tightwad, winner of the Eco Canteen Giveaway! Mrs. MT blogs at http://www.moderntightwad.com/. Green living and common sense are high priorities for her family, along with paying off debt. She adds that "Keeping my sanity might be nice too."

I hope you enjoy the Eco Canteen!

If you were hoping to win, but didn't, visit the Eco Canteen website. They're offering an insulated tote for just the cost of shipping.

Memory Matching Game

I just put up my Friday post on the Make it From Scratch blog. It's a version of that Memory game you used to play as a kid, and it's easy to make with supplies you already have at home. Have fun - and be sure to post photos of what you've made!

Eco Canteen - Review & Giveaway!

The folks at Eco Canteen recently asked me to review their metal water bottle. Great timing on their part! Mr. Greenhab seems to have taken ownership of both of our SIGG bottles. A few weeks ago he left his in the car overnight and, after freezing, the bottom is now round and it sits/leans kinda funny to one side. Bummer. So now he's commandeered mine too. But he can keep my sloppy seconds, because I have a new water bottle in my life.

The Eco Canteen is made of food grade stainless steel and is non-porous. There's no lining, therefore it is completely BPA Free. It's a wee bit smaller than my SIGG - 26 oz for the adult size and 12 oz for the child size - but it also fits in the cup holders in my car, the stroller and our wagon. (What a "mom" thing to say! Hey, we spend a lot of time at the zoo in the summer. What can I say.) It also comes with a ring and carabiner on the top, so you can clip it onto a backpack, diaper bag or belt.

Best of all, the Eco Canteen is about half the price of the bottles we have. I paid $20 for each of ours (and $15 for the baby version). The Eco Canteen is $9.99 for the large and $8.99 for the small.

So here's the part where I climb up onto my soapbox. I know I've said this all before, so I'll just recap here:

• Most tap water is perfectly safe to drink.
• Plastic water bottles can leach chemicals into your water that are harmful to your body.
• Recycling plastic bottles is an energy intensive process.
• The bottles that do go into recycling (rather than the trash) are often shipped to places like China, where labor and pollution standards are lower.

And now for the giveaway....

Leave me a comment on this post and you'll automatically be entered to win you very own Eco Canteen. I'll draw a name this Sunday evening, so be sure to either check back and see if you won, or make sure I know how to reach you.

Earth: The Sequel - coming to a TV near you!

Fred Krupp's book Earth: The Sequel—The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming has been on my library list for some time now. You know, the list that just keeps getting longer, since I don't seem to find any time to actually read? Lucky for me - and others crunched for "me time" - the Discovery Channel has made this book into a one-hour show that is airing this Wednesday, March 11th.

You can check your local listing HERE for it. Commit to watching it HERE. If you do, the Environmental Defense Fund will email you a reminder that day. And if you're just not sure about watching it at all, you can see a preview of the show HERE.

Quilted Coasters - great little hostess gift!

Check the Make if From Scratch blog today for my easy tutorial on these handmade coasters. I think they'd make a sweet hostess gift. Invite me over for dinner and maybe I'll make some for you! ;)

Crunchy's Food Waste Reduction Challenge

I took Crunchy Chicken's Food Waste Reduction Challenge, but have yet to check in, so here goes...

My name is Kellie, and I waste food. I never realized how MUCH food until I started this challenge.

Yesterday I threw away a whole cucumber...at least I think it was a cucumber. It sat in the fridge for a long time before I finally gave it a proper burial in my compost heap.

Mr. Greenhab threw away a bag of green fuzzy hamburger buns.

Little Greenhab, well, he's probably the worst offender as he throws away about half of every meal. Which probably means that *I* should be doing something different, like giving him less food to begin with. But as you probably know, kids tend to love a food one day and refuse to eat it the next. Or grumble about how hungry they are, then only eat 2 bites of dinner.

Anyway...

The stats that Crunchy provides on her blog were surprising to me:

• 50% of the garbage that goes into the landfill is edible food.
• 40 to 50% of U.S. edible food never gets eaten. That's $100 billion worth of edible food discarded every year in the US.
• Food waste is the largest landfill contributor to methane gas production.

I never would have guessed that half of our landfill garbage is food - and edible food at that. Although we do waste more food than we should, we are able to compost it, so that it's at least not adding to the landfill. Still, there's reason to waste it in the first place.

So I've started keeping closer tabs on what's in the fridge. Making sure nothing gets pushed to the back, or put behind the pickles, and left to morph into something unrecognizable. I'm trying to be a little more creative and throw things together that I normally wouldn't.

I'm also attempting to use everything to it's fullest. We get those roasted chickens from Costco every so often and usually eat the whole thing. Last week I went one step further and used the bones and some onion to make homemade chicken stock. It's the first time I've ever tried anything like that and it left me feeling so domestic!

Part of Crunchy's challenge is to weigh or photograph your week's waste and post it to your blog each Sunday. I'm going to try my best to keep up with that.