Earth Hour 2011

Hey fellow environmental enthusiasts! Its that time again! That's right Earth Hour. What will you do for Earth Hour this year? What will you do beyond Earth Hour to help make a sustainable world for your children or your children's children. If you want to make a difference but don't know where to start, try Earth Hour and go from there. Its amazing what we can do when we put our minds to it. Saturday, March 26th at 8:30pm no matter where you are in the world shut off your lights for one hour to make a stand against climate change. Last year's Earth Hour was the most successful yet so lets make this year that much better!

Plastic State of mind.

As some of you know I am an avid reader of Alicia Silverstone's Kind Life Blog and she always has great information and tidbits to share. Today she posted the coolest video about banning plastic single use bags. So I thought I'd share it! Great message and cute video!

Our Valentines gift.

So as I said before, Andy and I aren't keen on giving each other more stuff. We have enough stuff to get us through a lot of years. So this year instead of giving each other cards that would end up in a landfill if we weren't avid recyclers, we decided to take that money we would spend on gifts for each other and put it to good use. We took that $50 and put it towards clean water by donating to Charity: Water. Just $20 can give 1 person clean water to drink so even if you have only a little cash to spare you can still make a difference for one person. Its amazing what we can do when we're not going through life thinking only about ourselves. I think we're going to make this a tradition for all holidays.

I just gave to charity: water - you should too! 100% goes to clean water projects for people in developing countries. http://bit.ly/TmWS

Valentines day for sustainably minded people in love

My husband, Andrew, and I are about to spend our first Valentines day together as a married couple. We don't ordinarily do anything at all but get something to eat and go shopping together because Andy isn't the best shopper when left to his own devices. I have heard from several of my girl friends that their significant others suffer from the same problem. This year we've been trying to donate and declutter all the masses of things that collect after combing two homes and receiving a multitude of gifts for our nuptials. So in this respect we weren't so keen on going out and buying each other more stuff. We've come to a point where we're not all that materialistic. I mean we like stuff, but who doesn't. We just want less stuff so we can actually enjoy what we have. In addition we're not so keen on buying new stuff to create more waste. Sustainable Valentines shopping seemed to be the way to go. If we were going to buy something it was going to be something we were going to use and something that was repurposed. In my search I found quite a few interesting sites of fully repurposed items, sustainable goods and Eco friendly products.

Here are a few of my favorite sites:

http://www.modernecohomes.com/gifts/for-him/

All the products in this site have been made from something else. My absolute favorite item is the bookends made from salvaged street signs. Very cute!

http://www.goodcleanlove.com/

The products from Good Clean Love are all Eco friendly, intimacy products. They call it chemistry without the chemicals. I am a big fan of having some V-day love without all the yucky stuff that generally comes with your prophylactics.

http://www.nature.org/

This site was my absolute favorite. Basically you can do one of several things. You can order organic flowers for your loved one, which is pretty sweet but I'd probably go with a potted plant as flowers with eventually die. With this site you can also adopt an acre of several different kinds of Eco Systems in your love's name. Among the choices are an acre of Australian outback, an acre of rain forest or even an acre of humming bird habitat.

http://www.sweetfreedombakery.com/

And last but not least don't forget the lover of sweets in your life. Sweet Freedom Bakery is an amazing vegan bakery based out of Philadelphia. You can order your special honey some vegan, allergen-free goodies and they'll ship them UPS for you. I am presently trying to stop myself from ordering as many double mint chocolate chip cookies as I can.

No matter what your special love's passion is in life there is a site out there to fulfill their needs with Eco-friendly, sustainable products. If you're really looking to make it as Eco-Friendly as possible, cook at home and forgo all the waste that can be accumulated by restaurants. At least at home you can reuse your dishes as well as recycle any packaging you're going to use. Andy and I are probably going to make ourselves a little picnic on our living room floor, with some organic wine and watch a few movies. If you ask me, that's way better than anything else we could have done. Happy Valentines Day!