Guy Goes Green

Wannabe green guy going green

Archive for December, 2009

Is it possible to stop using packaging?

December 28th, 2009

It is a new week and time for a new environmentally friendly challenge! For those just joining me, my wife is greener than me and she has been giving me a new environmental task to research and complete every week. This is the eleventh week and I have learned quite a bit so far. This week’s new green challenge is to reduce and try to eliminate the use of packaging.

This might be a difficult task to follow through on completely. It seems that everything has some sort of packaging. Even yesterday, when I was at the grocery store, it was difficult to find certain kinds of vegetables that did not have a bag around it. Having completed some previous tasks that touched on kinds of packaging, I know that this may be a hard one to successfully complete.

This should be an interesting topic to research since packaging likely takes up a good percentage of our land. Take some time to subscribe to follow this week’s adventure further. Also, if you have any interesting information for us going into this week, let me know in the comments area below.

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Posted in Week 11 End Packaging

Tags: green packaging

10 weeks down! Recycling Christmas wrapping in review

December 28th, 2009

It has been a great holiday week for us and I hope you all had a great one as well. I could think of nothing better to do with our free time than to spend it with friends and family. Even though we may have had a break from work, there is no break for going green. This week’s green challenge was to recycle as much Christmas wrapping paper as possible. It has been challenging, since we have a pretty large family, but have really enjoyed following through on this task.

We took in 12 garbage bags of wrapping, bows, boxes and miscellaneous junk. Of that, we have been able to reduce the actual scrap down to 3 bags that we will need to find creative uses for. I think we are going to try and make some homemade paper out of that and I will make sure to keep you all up to date with our progress on that.

We collected a pile of wrapping paper and tissue that we will be able to use throughout the year. Also, we now have a box of ribbons and bows that will be usable for us throughout the year. We did have a small amount of actual garbage that we had to throw away and some newspaper we put into the recycle bin.

Thanks for following us this week and let me know your green Christmas story in the comments area below. Also, stay tuned for this week’s green challenge that will be posted later today.

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Posted in Week 10 Gift Wrap

Tags: Christmas recycle

Pictures of our recycling Christmas

December 27th, 2009

This week’s green task has been very interesting and in the Christmas spirit. Ashley’s green challenge for the week has been to recycle the wrapping paper we collect from our families. We have collected all of the recyclables and started the process of going through this today. Below is a picture outline of what we have done today.

I have to be honest that Ashley really came through and did most of this today. Since we have been hit with a massive snowstorm in the upper mid-west, I have spent a good chunk of time clearing our driveway and my awesome wife spent a good part of the day separating useful paper, recycling, ribbons/bows, boxes and the scraps. My count was off the other day and we ended up with 12 bags of gift wrapping.

She then went through all of the paper and separated all of the paper that can be reused as wrapping paper:

Then the tissue for bags:

Bows and ribbons:

We did end up with a little garbage:

We now have 4 bags of scraps that we are going to try and do some sort of craft with and a little newspaper that is going into the recycling. I am not exactly sure what we are going to do with the scrap wrapping paper, but I would like to make some of our own homemade paper out of it. I will keep you updated on what we decide to do with the scraps and let me know if you have any great ideas. Also, I know it is a little late… but enjoy my online video Christmas Card.