Photo Via: New America Media
As part of an outreach program to help parents better understand the effects of lead on their children, there’s a great group of folks that deserve a bit of recognition this holiday season for their efforts to educate and protect kids in California from lead poisoning.
It turns out they’re working off part of a $1.5 million settlement between major toymakers and the state of California after the public outcry over lead in toys that turned into a nightmare for parents, legislators and toymakers not so very long ago.
And in particular, this group of educators from the Center for Environmental Health is focused on those who need the most help understanding what all the fuss is about when it comes to lead in toys by working to educate parents who often don’t speak English by taking their lead testing equipment to the streets in locations they often frequent.
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Photo Via: Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette
If you’re looking for a more eco-friendly way to create a festival of holiday lights in the future, consider what Pennsylvania homeowner Jim Berroth has taken on as a more environmentally friendly approach to dealing with holiday decorations that’s stopping traffic in his neck of the woods. It’s a unique twist on your tired old Christmas tree, and his six grandkids, already schooled in the necessity to recycle what once filled landfills, call the creative display "Pap's pop can trees."
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Photos: Via Nativa.
In our recent
How to go Green Holidays, we’ve made the point: this time of the year is not about presents and errands, but about sharing with your beloved. Keeping that in mind, if you still need to get some presents and didn’t find anything in our
Green Gifts Guide, here’s a last minute option to shop while doing some good.
Via Nativa is an online store that markets responsible products by Argentine and Nicaraguan artisans under fair trade practices, but with reasonable prices as well. Some of the products include bags and purses starting at 20 USD and adorable kids booties at 28 USD. The initiative also has a base in Brooklyn, at the design shop and art gallery
Urban Alchemist.
Find out more about the project and more of the products you can find in the extended....
Our friends at
Inhabitat posted this ingenious list of eco-friendly ways to wrap presents and we had to pass it on. Called
Future Present, they are the result of a challenge to fellow designers to find alternatives to the waste that is our usual Christmas wrapping.
Twenty of the best ideas -- all tape-free -- are shown, on the design agency's
website. For anyone still packing up presents tonight, there are some very creative ideas. The wrappings include foil, clothes pins, socks, string, brown paper and fabric. Get inspired by the cool pics after the fold. ...
Citing the example of Washington University in St. Louis, students at Penn State are pressing administration to enact a total ban on the sale of plastic water bottles on campus. And doing it in a somewhat humorous way like gathering to sing parodies of Christmas carols with lyrics like “December’s hotter than J. Lo,” and “O Scorching Night” to the tune of the more traditionally acclaimed “O Holy Night”.
But the question is; will it work?
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Photos: Courtesy of Cargabags.
Cargabags --
which we first introduced two years ago- is a line of bags and totes produced with recycled wool felt and in fair trade conditions by Argentine entrepreneur Mauro Bianucci.
Now, just in time for the holidays, the label has launched two new models. Find out about them and catch pics in the extended....
Photo courtesy of Spitting Out Teeth
Attention green music fans—how much do you love rock music? Are you such a huge Clapton fan that you'd clothe yourself in his guitar's byproducts? Do you love Queen enough to press that which guitarist Brian May's fingers once caressed upon your arm? Would you don Keith Richard's,
Jack Johnson's, or Jack Black's silvery strings as proud evidence of both your greenness and devotion to all that rocks?
Or maybe you've just been patiently waiting for the day when rock memorabilia would finally at long last intersect with eco-wear. If any of the above applies, rejoice, friends. The time for you to wrap your wrists in jewelry made from rock gods' rusty old guitar strings has finally come.
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Image credit: Valli Ravindran/Flickr.com
Like any good TreeHugger, I love
Lush's natural ingredients,
minimal packaging, and the fact they
won't sell out to the highest bidder. I was, however, always irked with their use of sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in solid shampoos. But the tides have shifted (thanks to customer demand), and most Lush Sampoo Bars are now SLS-free!
What's the big deal with SLS, you ask?...
Santa's red suit - classic fashion at it's best, right? The baggy pants, the furry coat, the black plastic belt. Well, you'll appreciate Santa's level of cover up after you see the hilarious (and somehow, slightly gross and sacrilegious specter) of Santa stripping it all off, right down to his BVD's.
Of course, Santa has a right to strip - global warming has pushed Arctic ice into a
death spiral and opened up the
Northwest Passage. And, Santa is also stripping for a good cause: a whole boatload of good businesses (including TreeHugger fav
Patagonia) have over the last six years joined 1% for the Planet. Like the name says, this organization makes sure 1% of the annual sales from member companies and uses it on environmental restoration and protection, but we're obviously not at Happy Planet yet. Hit the jump to see Santa strip and find ways to contribute....
Today’s TreeHugger Deal comes to you from Gwen Designs and its adorable baby wear line called Little Chickie Wear. Each whimsical design is created by owner Gwendolyn Gardner, inspired by a cute antic from her daughter, and is truly a work of art. The baby wear is offered for both boys and girls and sizes range from 3 months to 6T. Little Chickie Wear onesies, tees, and hats can be found at stylish boutiques and online. New designs are added several times throughout the year and we love the
new holiday onesie (“Twas the Night Before Christmas”) and “
Local Catch,” in addition to “
Inside Me.” All Little Chickie Wear pieces are printed on 100% organic cotton and are made in the U.S.A. ...
Photos: dqb studio.
Art director and photographer formed in Milan and New York, Dominique Besanson returned to Buenos Aires a few years ago and started thinking what she could do creatively. It was then when she thought of gathering her love for handcrafts and knitting with her care for the environment and created DQB, a line of accessories produced with discarded materials from the textile industry.
More info and beautiful pictures in the extended....
Style Will Save Us is the cool, hip and gossipy eco-website that brings the latest in design, food, clothes and beauty products to the web on a weekly basis. Now , with the introduction of on-line shopping--get ready to look--and spend.
Here's how they describe their new offerings: "uber-styish ethical fashion, eco-chic interiors, slinky sustainable lingerie, green gems for kiddie winkles, cool organic menswear, indulgent organic beauty products, an exciting array of eco-friendly accessories and some real hotties for our eco gift guide." And it's true, there is a great selection of very cool things to choose from for family, friends and you.
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Image courtesy Voltaic Systems.
Would you love to have a solar-powered laptop bag that really works? Here's your chance to get the hottest, most-effective bag on the market (it literally just hit the shelves) at a sweet deal. The new-and-improved Generator by Voltaic Systems uses bleeding-edge technology to charge your computer faster than any other bag out there. With a battery that juices up in as few as five hours, this is by far the most advanced solar-powered laptop bag available.
Read on for more details about how you can get this bag for less through TH Deals.
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With the Global Financial Crisis in full swing, most everyone is tightening their purse strings. It is not just retail sales which are showing a steep downturn, but so too are charitable donations. Not-for-profit organisations rely heavily on philanthropy from businesses, foundations and people on the street for their livelihood. So it’s not a pretty picture for charities right now. Take on example, when the
Association of Small Foundations surveyed about 200 of their members, they found that more than half said “they would eliminate support to some charities in order to be able to fully support the rest of their grantees.”
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Credit to
nyki_m
As their website says directly on the front page:
“Hand-me-downs is a new classifieds website for moms (and dads), where you can buy, sell, give away, or donate your new and gently used baby gear, clothing, toys, childcare services, and more. We find the best items from around the web and combine them with our own listings—the next step is up to you!”
Sounds great in writing, but what exactly is this new website all about......
Textile hemp plant photo by Eric Martinez @ flickr.
Quick, what do you picture when you see the word "hemp" - old-fashioned hippies in rope sandals and scratchy shirts? Or do you go right to the 'evil weed' cannabis-hemp connection? Whatever you imagine, you are probably not alone, influenced by decades of government's viewpoint equating the industrial hemp plant with its close cannabis-genus cousin marijuana (the U.S. forbids domestic hemp crops, though two North Dakota farmers are fighting in court for the right to do so). But the sturdy, fast-growing and pesticide-resistant
hemp plant has made its way into many, many eco-friendly imports -
clothing,
insulation,
biodiesel, biodegradable packaging, and even foods such as
granola bars and vegan milk. Hemp is great. Now a well-known hemp grower wants you to drink hemp seed oil daily to get your essential fatty acids, but is this a good idea?...
According to a recent study released by researchers for the Michigan-based Ecology Center, one in three toys tested was found to contain toxic chemicals such as lead, flame retardants and arsenic.
It turns out that researchers tested more than 1,500 popular toys for lead, cadmium, arsenic, PVC and other harmful chemicals and said they found that one-third of the toys contain "medium" or "high" levels of chemicals of concern, which are not bad for the environment from a manufacturing standpoint, they're also terrible for the health of little ones.
Wondering whether or not that gift you were about to purchase made the list? Click through to find out.
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Astral Buoyancy, makers of PFDs for kayakers, rafters and sailors, went seeking an environmentally benign alternative to the petrochemical foams, like PVC, commonly used in Personal Flotation Devices. They found the answer, as a guy called Bob once famously wrote, ‘blowin’ in the wind.’
More precisely they rediscovered Kapok, the wooly floss-like fibre that protects the seed of the
Cieba pentandra tree. The fibre, eight times lighter than cotton, assists in the wind propelled propogation of the seed, which is normally only released about five years or so. What Astral also discovered was that this fibre has even more remarkable properties that saw it used for marine lifejackets, as late as the 60’s....
Welcome to our new "TreeHugger Deals" column, which offers discounts and specials exclusively for TreeHugger readers. TreeHugger never receives monetary compensation or proceeds from these promotions.
This week’s TreeHugger Deals comes to you from Pangea Organics, makers of the Ecocentric Bodycare and long-time friend of TreeHugger. It’s apparently taken two years of development, but Pangea just launched a series of
holiday gift sets with packaging that actually grows Spruce Trees. All you have to do is soak the box for a day, and then plant it in the earth. If everyone plants their holiday gift box and bar soap box this year, collectively, they will have planted 122,000 trees which is equivalent to not driving 30 million miles in one year!
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The Bivouac project—I think that’s what it was called—was a scheme, from aeons ago, whereby a bunch of mountaineers organised for their fellow adventurers to donate old outerwear jackets and sleeping bags, those gathering dust in garages, basements and attic. They then dispersed these goods to homeless folk. Climbers and backcountry skiers voluntarily chose, for recreation, to camp out in wintery weather. For many people, however, there is no choice, they brave the same conditions out of the dire necessity of daily urban survival. Alas, that project is no more.
But all is not lost. For outdoor inspired apparel company Horny Toad have just launched their
Spread The Warmth program, which traverses much the same terrain. “The clothes taking up space in the back of your closet could keep someone warm this winter. We're asking you to dig deep and give them a new home by donating to an organization that can get them to people in need.”
What’s more, if you let Horny Toad know that you’ve given your clean functional preloves to a local shelter, Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc, the frogsters will happily give to you a 30% discount on their clothing. Kinda like a trade-in....
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.