recycle

Green DIY Projects From Instructables.com

thegreenconnoisseur — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:17:20 -0400

Looking for a fun green project for a rainy afternoon (or a bored, vacation-weary child)? Check out Instructables.com, where high-quality tutorials on a huge range of subjects are at your fingertips. The "green" category features hundreds of projects for people with many different types of skills and interests.... http://thegreenconnoisseur.com

The Green Queen: Eco-Designer Kelly LaPlante

thegreenconnoisseur — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:26:19 -0400

Getting ready to do a fabulous new look in your sitting room, kitchen or the whole house? Fashion conscious homes are important to many, but often times, designers are more about the 'new' things they can bring in rather than the things they can recycle. To see this full story and more follow out blog link on our homepage @ ( http://thegreenconnoisseur.com )!!

VivaTerra – Living in Harmony with Nature

thegreenconnoisseur — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:00:17 -0400

Helping consumers live a healthy life and make the world a better place for future generations, VivaTerra (which translates into 'living earth') is dedicated to marketing products that promote a harmonious existence with nature. Supporting VivaTerra means...

(To see this full story and more, follow The Green Connoisseur Blog link on our homepage @ http://thegreenconnoisseur.com )!!

How to Recycle Those Old VHS Tapes

jplatt — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:00:00 -0400

My wife and I are finally getting rid of most of our old VHS tapes. It's about time. I mean, we haven't plugged our VCR in for more than a year. Those old tapes were just sitting around gathering dust, and some of them can be re-used, while others can be recycled.

Our first trip was to the local library. Many of the older patrons in this town still use their VCRs quite heavily, as do the vacationers who have cabins here and haven't upgraded to DVD yet. Our library stocks a supply of video tapes for patrons, and also runs a very nice used book store which sells tapes for a few bucks each. So a few boxes of tapes went there.

Next stop was another nearby used bookstore, which also sells used VHS tapes. They took another box. (Did I mention that we had a lot of video tapes?)

Thrift stores could have also been an option. There are three within a few miles of our home, but the library and the used book store took so many, we didn't need to make another stop.

A few rarities (old horror movies and the like) went up on eBay or Amazon's Marketplace. There wasn't a huge market for these flicks, but collectors did pick up a few that weren't available on DVD.

That got rid of 99% of our pre-recorded tapes. But we also had several boxes of movies and TV shows that we had taped off the airwaves. You can't sell or give those things away, but we didn't want to chuck them in the trash, so it was time to look into recycling.

GreenDisk served our purposes pretty well. They'll take a 20 pound box for $6.95, and every additional pound costs just 30 cents. The price goes toward a shipping label, and you send them your video tapes (or anything from a whole list of products) for recycling.

There, problem solved! Give it a shot yourself. Free up some space, put old tapes to good re-use, and keep that trash out of the landfill in the process!

How to Recycle Your Old CDs and DVDs

jplatt — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:00:00 -0400

How many old CDs, DVDs or computer disks do you have lying around your home or office? If you're not using them any more, do you know how to dispose of them?

CDs and DVDs contain a variety of substances that make them bad candidates for landfills. In addition to plastics, there's aluminum and other materials that can be re-used rather than thrown away. So if you're planning on throwing some old CDs away, consider recycling them instead.

Your local community might accept and recycle CDs, so check with them first. If not, there are a number of companies that will collect your disks and recycle them for you. All of them will properly dispose of data disks so your data will be safe and them recycle the materials so they can be re-used for a variety of purposes.

In addition to the disks themselves, most of these companies will also recycle your old jewel cases and even the paper inserts that came with the disks!

Now, there is a catch: you'll need to pay for shipping to send your disks to any of these recyclers. But if you collect them instead of sending them one at a time, it should be worth the cost. (For example, you can set up a recycling program at your workplace to collect a great big pile of data disks before you send them in.)

Here are a few recycling companies worth checking out:

Oh, and don't forget: a used compact disk or a DVD might not have much value, but in addition to recycling, you can also re-use a disk for a variety of craft projects. Check out this list for some fun ideas.

It's Spring, So Start a Virtual Garage Sale to Benefit a Green Charity!

jplatt — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:00:00 -0400

Today's the first day of Spring -- are you ready for your first garage sale of the season?

Don't worry, you don't need to leave your house or open your doors to strangers. Now you can search for "garage sale" items or sell your own through Facebook's Marketplace app. And the sales you make or the items you buy can support green charities in the process!

Take Sierra Club's virtual garage sale for an example. Their members are posting items for sale, and a few celebrities have also offered up some pretty nice goods. If the items sell, the money goes to Sierra Club. As the organization puts it, "If every Facebook member sold just one item for $10, more than $1 billion would be raised."

Now, this isn't an automatic donation. To be honest, it's really more of a classified ad system. But the people listing their items for sale can pledge to donate their proceeds to charity, and every item that sells is something that gets re-used and doesn't end up in a landfill.

So give it a try. Come on, you know you're looking for an excuse to spend a few more minutes on Facebook anyway.

Support Green Charities by Buying or Selling on eBay

jplatt — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:00:00 -0400

Looking for a way to support a green charity, but you don't have much cash on hand? Try selling something on eBay and donating the proceeds to the enviro-charity of your choice.

eBay's Giving Works program lets any seller choose to donate 10-100% of the proceeds of their sales to any of 14,000 charities.

Green charities registered for Giving Works include all of the biggies: the World Wildlife Fund, Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, the NRDC and many others.

There are a few restrictions and details that sellers need to know before they list their items:

A donation of at least $5.00 is required if your listing sells (so no selling $1 items)
The donation will be collected from the payment method you put on file for donation payments (so you'll get what's left over if you donate less than 100% to charity)
You still need to pay listing fees to sell your items on Giving Works, but you'll get a 30% fee credit if your item sells
MissionFish, a registered nonprofit, collects and distributes your donation. According to eBay, they "retain a small portion of each donation to help cover their costs."
Your donation earns you a tax deduction, and you'll get all the necessary paperwork to support that deduction

You can also take advantage of this program as a buyer. Just search the Giving Works site, or search their database to find a charity that you want to support and the auctions that support the chairty of your choice.

eBay says this site helps to support non-profits while also living up to the old environmental credo of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Give it a tree and see how much you can donate as a result!

Upgrading Your Cell Phone? Go Green with Refurbished Phones

jplatt — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:00:00 -0500

How often do you replace your cell phone? Every two years? Every year? More often than that? How many cell phones have you gone through in your life so far?

Think about all of those old phones you used to own. What happened to them? Did they end up being recycled, or did they become electronic waste that is poisoning our land and water?

Or... did they get refurbished and resold to a new owner, someone who got an extra six months or two years of life out of a device you didn't want any more?

Buying refurbished phones is a great idea. Not only is it green -- it's better to keep a device in use than to make and sell a brand new one -- but you can often save a lot of money by purchasing a pre-used cell phone. For example, AT&T is selling refurbished 8G iPhones for just $99 -- that's half price!

Okay, that AT&T deal is only if you get a two-year contract, but they're far from the only source for refurbished phones. Credo Mobile offers several models (some of which are free with two-year contracts), as do other cell phone companies.

So think about this next time you decide to replace your phone. Do you really need the newest, hottest device with all the bells and whistles, or will last month's model do just as well? Check with your cell phone provider to see if they have refurbs for sale, or Google "refurbished cell phones" to find dozens of sites selling refurbished phones online. (You might need to check with your carrier to make sure they can activate your new phone.)

Save Paper, Ink with Free Software

jplatt — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:00:00 -0500

I first wrote about GreenPrint World -- a great computer program that helps you reduce the amount of paper and ink you use in your computer printer -- several months ago, but a little voice told me it was time to write about it again. And that voice was right. Because now, for the first time, GreenPrint World is available for Macs.

GreenPrint World is free for PC users (or $29 for a premium version that does not display advertising), and $29 for Mac users (you can also get a free 30-day trial). Each version of the program analyzes your print job, then lets you decide what elements to print and which ones to skip (say, photographs, or the legal disclaimers at the bottom of a web page). It keeps track of how many pages you don't print, allowing you to "track your impact" (how much paper you have used, or how much ink you have saved) and monitor your overall printing habits.

You can also use GreenPrint World to generate PDFs of any document, allowing you to keep a digital copy of a web page instead of printing it at all.

According to GreenPrint Technologies LLC, "GreenPrint saves the average user over $90 and 1,400 wasted pages per year and allows enterprises to quantify the ecological and cost-saving benefits that result from using the software."

There's one more new thing -- the GreenPrint EverGreen font, which has been designed to use less space and ink while not sacrificing readability. Says the company, "Compared with common fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman and Helvetica, EverGreen reduces paper use by 15-20%." The EverGreen font costs $10 and works for PCs or Macs.

Businesses looking to save money on their printing expenses can also purchase enterprise editions of the software.

What are you waiting for? Give it a try today!

A Blow to Cell Phone Recycling? Recycled Phones Found to Still Have Your Data

jplatt — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Hundreds of thousands of new cell phones are sold every year. Most of them go to replace older phones, which can end up being donated, refurbished and resold, thereby keeping them out of landfills and extending their life cycles.

But now comes word that, in a study of 2,000 recycled phones, a shocking 99% of them still had some amount of private data stored in their memory. This even included personal data like passwords and private emails, according to Regenersis, the UK-based cell phone recycler, which conducted the random test on the phones it was recycling.

Now, if your cell phone is a golden oldie like mine, there's probably not a lot of data on it. But if you're been migrating to smarter phones, or if you use yours for any type of online services, this could be more of a problem in the long run.

There are a few steps you can do to help ensure that your data is safe when you donate or recycle your phone:

1. Remove the SIM card. (This contains a good chunk of your private data.)

2. Take the time to clear your memory of your contacts, bookmarks, photos and other data.

3. Reformat your cell phone yourself, wiping out all of the old data in the process.

4. Confirm that the company recycling your phone wipes out all data, and does it well. (I think it's important to note here that Regenersis does not seem to be one of those companies that wipes phones clean. They rely on the people doing the donating to do that, which is kind of weak.)

Here's an earlier post that offers more tips on recycling your old phones.