Guy Goes Green

Wannabe green guy going green

Posts Tagged ‘recycle’

Plans for the New Year!

January 2nd, 2011

It has been a while since I/we have blogged. I have been a little behind on my research on going green. I want to get back into learning how to be a greener consumer. For now, we will not have the same format as we originally planned. Ben has a lot of projects he is working on, so I will be doing some research/writing for a little bit until we can get back on track.

Did you have a Green Christmas? I originally intended on making all of my Christmas gifts, or finding gifts at Thrift Stores that I can reuse. I didn’t do that as I planned. This Christmas season came up so fast that I just didn’t have time. However, I did make some last minute gifts (truffles) and I had purchased some cute jars with a clip top that I gave as gifts. They were unique and reusable. The gift recipients will be able to use the jars again for whatever they would like, so there is really no waste on those gifts. Throughout this year I will be working on making gifts that I can give this year and I will blog about my progress. I still intend on making my own paper from all of the wrapping paper scraps that we have from 2009′s Christmas. I am proud to announce that from the 2009′s scraps, I was able to wrap all of my gifts this year with just what I salvaged.

There are also things that I want to accomplish this year. First, I want to make all of my gifts this year. This may be difficult because I have a niece and nephew that may not appreciate homemade gifts, but would prefer toys. I also have male family members that will be hard to make gifts for. I will see this as a challenge I will overcome. Second, I want to help one friend recycle. I already talked to my friend about this idea and she will get back to me. To me, recycling is really important for our future generations. These things that we recycle not only become new items, but also reduces the amount of garbage we bring to the landfill-thus releasing less methane into the atmosphere. Third, I would like to create even less waste than we already do. I want to do this by really focusing on packaging on the products that we buy. If you think about it, packaging may actually add cost to the items we buy. Reducing packaging may help us save money. I will keep you up to date on my research here.

I guess a few of these things will become my resolutions. Do you have any green resolutions. I would love to hear them if you can leave me a comment below. Thanks for coming back to our blog.

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Posted in Ashley's Posts

Tags: Christmas green packaging recycle

Recycling egg cartons

February 13th, 2010

We use too many egg cartons and we cannot recycle them in the traditional method. This week, I am going to change our behavior in regards to egg cartons. My challenge for the week is to find a product we do not currently recycle and find a way to recycle it. Egg cartons meet the description. I can think of a few things I can do with our egg cartons. They are as follows:

Seedlings for the garden. One of our readers mentioned this and it sparked the thought that gardening season is coming. Some plants, particularly tomatoes, can be started early and an empty egg carton is a great place to start.
Donate them to a local food group – I just recently joined a food group in the Fargo area where some chatter takes place on Facebook (Ancient Roots). They indicated that they can always use egg cartons, so I will save them for now on. As a side note, tonight we are eating the Amish chicken I bought from them not so long ago. YUMMY.
Stop Using Them! – No, we are not going to stop using eggs, but I wonder if I just can get eggs from a farmer and use our own carton. I asked my group if they provide eggs and am waiting for an answer. Also, I think that our local health food story, Tochi, might sell farm fresh eggs. I will check it out. The best kind of recycling stops consumption!

If you have any other practical uses for the egg cartons, please let me know in the comment area below.

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Posted in Week 16 Creative Recycling

Tags: egg cartons recycle upcycle

Rethinking my recycling habits

February 9th, 2010

This week’s green challenge is to find something new to recycle. Fortunately, we really do not send that much out in the trash anymore, so I am not quite sure where to go and thought I might try and ask my readers for any suggestions. I am going to list some of the garbage items we throw away and am looking for any advice you may have.

Bones – Generally, these are chicken bones, as we do not eat that much meat. Also, we compost quite a bit of our food waste, but we are not supposed to put bones in our NatureMill composter. Any ideas you could provide on how to recycle this would be appreciated. I live right across the street from a river… I wonder if it would be environmentally friendly to toss them in the river.

Egg Cartons – We get our egg cartons from the store and I do not believe that these are recyclable in our area. I wonder if there is a way that I can use these or if someone else can use these.

Certain Containers- We use some containers that we just cannot recycle and cannot find a good use for. Most of these are raisin packages and frozen yogurt containers.

Plastic Milk Containers – What to do with these suckers? We keep our green tea containers for certain things, but is there any use for the gallon milk jugs that you can think of?