Green Daily

When you get to the end of mitten weather, you are bound to have a mitten or two with no mate leftover, unless you are extremely responsible and over the age of 30 or so. If you find yourself in this predicament, there are several things you can do.

• Wear mismatched mittens next year.
  
• Make a new pocket on a hoodie or even a sweater.
  
• Make a cozy for a phone, iPod or other electronic device.
  
• Make it into a little drawstring bag.
  
• Fill it with rice, sew the end shut and use it as a handwarmer in your pocket.
  
• Fill with rice and make it into an eye pillow or bean bag toy.
  
• If it's cute, make it into a Christmas ornament, tiny stocking or other decor item.
  

So, I've certainly pointed you in the direction of many projects involving felted wool sweaters of your own or from the thrift store. What I failed to notice was that some of you may not actually have experience felting sweaters. So, some tips along with the nice tutorial on how to felt sweaters from Crafting a Green World.

• Don't try felting something in with your other laundry. The sweater, not used to being in hot water, could impart it's color onto your other clothes. The process won't work as well with other items in the wash with the wool either.
  
• High efficiency washers sometimes take more effort to get things felted. I have one and it never does quite as well as an older washer which has a lot more agitation going on. So, if you know someone with an older washer, you might work on your felting there so it takes fewer tries to get things just right.
  
• You do have to cut things apart to get them to felt really well. I tried to skip that step and ended up with a sweater that wasn't a whole lot different than when it went into the washer.
  

Have you tried felting yet? What are you using your wool felt for?

I am admittedly new to this whole gardening thing. I have a track record of jumping in headfirst with many of my projects and gardening is no exception. As I was rinsing out a used yogurt container last night, I got to thinking about how many more items I was reusing lately rather then dropping them in the recycling bin. In fact, a lot of fancy gardening equipment can be avoided if you just reuse what you are already throwing away.

Here are a few observations. Please feel free to add your own!

Cary Tennis writes an advice column for Salon. A recent letter asked advice concerning a husband who becomes irate when his wife uses the clothes dryer rather than hang the wash outside. This was a wife that worked outside of the home fifty hours a week and had already made changes in her life for the environment like becoming a vegetarian and giving up the family car.

Tennis responds with an amusing prophecy as to where this husband's life will end up. But I couldn't help but think about how my house is run. When it came to cloth diapers as well as recycling, I tried to implement each change with as little upset as possible. I wanted these changes to be convenient to appease the members of my household.

Sometimes I wonder about the green ideas presented by people like Martha Stewart. Occasionally they are pretty nifty but sometimes there is way too much purchasing going on for my comfort. There is a list of 25 Eco-Chic Ideas for Your Home written up by Danny Seo that has a few winners in amongst the not so fabulous.

• Use sweaters to recover chair seats. Looks nice, and is easy to do with outgrown, worn or thrifted sweaters. Just make sure the main body of the sweater is in good shape.
  
• A tiered tray made from vintage or mismatched china plates and cups. Would be very cute in the right decor.
  
• Shirting napkins. Use old button down shirts to make cloth napkins or dish towels.
• Carpet Coasters. Use old carpet, cut into squares, for coasters. You might consider backing them with felt or something to keep from scratching the tables.
  
• Scarf blanket. Sew together scarves you no longer wear, or you find at the thrift shop, into a nice little throw blanket.
  

Have you ever tried to find an ingredients list for a bottle of dish soap? It's nearly impossible. Sometimes mainstream corporations will publish ingredients on their website but more often than not, their formula is so secret that they won't tell you what you putting on your dishes. This very issue is what drove a lawsuit against the likes of Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive by environmentalists.

Six different organizations including the Sierra Club and the American Lung Association have banded together to file suit against several detergent making companies. Representing the claimants is Earthjustice, a non-profit public interest law firm in New York.

The crux of the suit falls on the New York's Environmental Conservation Law passed in 1976 that requires companies to file ingredients lists semiannually with the State of New York. Not surprisingly, the only two companies who have been in compliance are Method and Seventh Generation. The rest were put on notice last September.

I would like to see more ingredients listed on detergents that line the shelves. Then again, I spend most of my time cleaning with vinegar.

For the last few years, Dubai has become the land of retardedly opulent dreams, some that seem designed to single-handedly kill the planet (ahem, Ski Dubai) and even some supposedly green celebrity pet projects. Man made islands, record smashing sky scrapers, and sprawling developments have sprung up like a playground for the super rich in an environmentalists worst nightmare -- all in the vastness of the Arabian desert. Not exactly the most sustainable place to put a 21st century Las Vegas. Of course Las Vegas isn't exactly a great place to put a Las Vegas either.

Having sex regularly can be quite good for you and, in some ways, good for the planet. Treehugger detailed a list of 15 Healthful, Green Reasons Why You Should Be Having Sex... Right Now and here are some of the highlights.

• It's an immunity booster - you can skip those vitamin C tablets and hopefully, skip some of those yucky colds buy having regular sex. Once or twice a week can boost your immunity by up to 30%.
  
• It burns calories - you might even lose a little weight without prepackaged diet foods, hard to follow plans or scads of new exercise equipment.
  
• It can replace pain relievers - sex releases oxytocin into the body, relieving pain without aspirin or other pain relievers.
  
• Lift depression - sex can help lift the blues of depression naturally.
  

Overall, a healthy sex life can do lots of great things for your health, and all naturally. Not to mention it's fun. So... get busy!

Take your green cleaning to the next level.

No, I did not say have a Naked Party. A Naked Lady Party is apparently the new green term for a clothing swap. I just want everyone to be up with the trends and all.

If you haven't been to a clothing swap before, the upcoming spring season might be a great reason to try it out. Invite some friends, let them know they can invite friends too, and have everyone bring clothes, accessories, and even household items and books, that they no longer want.

Then, get to swapping. Score some new-to-you clothes and get some of those that just weren't right for you out of your closet.

Have a plan for the leftovers that you can give guests the option to participate in. Maybe you can donate the clothes to a women's shelter or a thrift shop that supports a charitable cause. Let everyone know that they are welcome to leave behind any leftovers to be donated and have bags ready so guests can help you pack them up and even put them in your trunk on their way home.

This would be a great way to score some kids clothes as well, if you and your friends all have little ones.

I've heard the saying if it's yellow let it mellow, but this is the first time I've ever heard of it attached to a financial incentive. Due to the severe droughts plaguing Australia, officials are kicking around an idea to tax citizens based on their sewage output, thus encouraging them to take shorter showers and -- you guessed it -- let it mellow. The current sewage system which is admittedly disproportionate and old-fashioned, taxes households based on their home's value, not usage.

The tax plan is modeled loosely after the system currently in use in Bellaire, TX (a Houston suburb) which taxes sewage using volumetric meters. By repricing sewage on a pay-as-you-go basis -- pun intended -- the plan would theoretically provide an incentive to go easy on water consumption. According to Adelaide University's Water Management Professor Mike Young:

"It would encourage people to reduce their sewage output by taking shorter showers,recycling washing machine water or connecting rainwater tanks to internal plumbing to reduce their charges,"

Of course, using the reverse logic, it could also encourage people to dump water on the ground to avoid the tax -- which would be highly counter productive.

If you're gardening for the first or 40th time this year, there may be some special variety of seed you are looking for that is proving difficult to find. After disappointing garden results last summer, I set out to find varieties recommended for my specific gardening region this year.

Some varieties have been easy to find and others have proved very elusive. I'm convinced that big box stores all over the country receive similar shipments of seed packets - generic varieties or those that might grow well in most (but not all) areas. Where to turn besides trying your luck with Google?

Mother Earth News. The magazine that has been promoting self-sufficient living since the 1970s has an expansive database of seed varieties offered from a large number of mail order companies. Just type in what you are looking for and you will get a list of where you can find it. You can also search for organic pest control products you might not be finding in your local garden center or nursery.

You'd better order those seeds soon though. Gardening season is beginning already in the South.

If you're battling some gray hairs, apparently, the humble potato can help you out. Kitchen Cosmetics has a long list of hair products that come from the pantry, but the first on the list of natural treatments for gray hair is potato peels.

According to the site, you simply boil the potato peels in water, strain, cool and use the water as an after shampoo rinse. Other possible solutions include sage or apple cider vinegar.

There are plenty of other suggestions for natural hair coloring and highlighting of other colors of hair as well as recipes for rinses, conditioners and more.

[Via Planet Green]

If you sometimes feel like you'd have to move to have a more eco-friendly home, check out the Nottingham Eco-Home. An old Victorian townhouse was retrofitted to be a super green home.

From a solar water heater panel on the roof, to a system for composting toilet waste in the basement the entire home has been changed out to make it all as energy-efficient and eco-friendly as possible. The CO2 emissions have been reduced by 18 1/2 tonnes! And the natural gas bill is only $30 (US) per year! Of course, the return on investment on all those changes will take quite awhile, but the project is inspiring.

Instead of going out and building a shiny, new LEED certified, eco-home, why not do the very best you can with what you already have?

[Via Treehugger]

Stanford Professor Byron Reeves wants to set up a new system that would reward World of Warcraft (or other games) players for saving electricity. Through a smart metering system, Reeves idea would be to give those conserving resources in their real life extra in game benefits and rewards.

Considering World of Warcraft has something like 11 million players all over the world, it could be a very beneficial program. Of course, all it makes me think of is some gamer, sitting in the dark, shivering because they want to get more points. You have to wonder if they might take those long, hot showers at the gym or take the laundry to Mom's house just to keep the points going up, in which case they aren't conserving more, they're just being more creative.

The spirit of competition can be a good thing though. At our house we compare each month's electric bills to the same month in previous years and count it a victory if it is significantly lower. It will be interesting to see if game developers go for the idea.

[Via PlanetSave]