Campus Clean Up/Earth Day Activity

April 16, 2013 By Anne

Last Wednesday, my daughter’s school hosted a Campus Clean Up. The Recycling Committee hosted the clean up. We decided to do it last week to get the children in gear for Earth Day coming up on April 22nd.

We brought in garbage from our own homes. Bins were brought in as well and labeled: “Garbage”, “Compost”, “Recycle”, “Terracycle“* and “Donate”.

We explained how not all garbage is garbage. There is so much more we can do with items we no longer need.

It was fun! We dumped the garbage on the floor and had children come up and see if they knew which bin to place the items in. The older children seemed to understand more than the little ones. But even the little ones knew about recycling.

Check out this craft one of the moms brought in – all made from recycled materials.

We then had the children color on long strips of paper some Earth Day pictures.

Then it was time to go outside and clean up! The little ones picked up trash on the playgrounds and courtyards. (We did have to add some “trash” as the school was pretty clean.)

The bigger kids had buckets of soapy water and cleaned the playground.

*About TerraCycle  TerraCycle, Inc. is an international upcycling and recycling company that takes difficult-to 
recycle-packaging and turns it into affordable, innovative products. Founded in 2001, TerraCycle is the world’s leader 
in the collection and reuse of non-recyclable post-consumer waste. TerraCycle works with more than 40 major brands in 
the U.S. and around the world to collect used packaging and products that would otherwise be destined for landfills. 
It repurposes that waste into new, innovative materials and products that are available online and through major retailers. 
For information on how to join a TerraCycle Brigade and on purchasing TerraCycle products please visit www.terracycle.com.

This is not a sponsored post. I love Terracycle!!

Anne

I'm a mother of 2 who likes to get involved in too much! Besides writing here I started a non-profit, I'm on the PTO board, very active in my community and volunteer in the school. I enjoy music, reading, cooking, traveling and spending time with my family. We just adopted our 3rd cat and love them all!

Earth Day Activity Guide/April 22nd

April 15, 2013 By Anne

Green Kid Crafts — an earth friendly craft kit subscription service for kids — has produced a free, downloadable Earth Day Activity Guide for Kids available at GreenKidCrafts.com/Earth-Day.

Looking for something to do with your young children to support Earth day? This guide explains the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling with fun facts, kid-friendly challenges, and creative craft projects and games. Content is appropriate for ages 3-8.

This is not a sponsored post. I just wanted to share the information. I am a big advocate for recycling and reusing!

Anne

Make Money This Spring

March 13, 2013 By Anne

Spring is coming. At least I hope it is….I’m tired of all this cold weather.

What does spring mean for me? Yard sales and spring cleaning!! (Not so much cleaning…)

I am setting up a community yard sale for our new community sometime next month. I love to clean out my house and make a few extra dollars at the same time. We did one in the fall and I promised I would get another one going in the spring. We had about fifteen households participate last time and am looking to double that number. Our community is still growing so we have new families moving in every week.

One thing about having a yard sale I don’t like is not getting the price you think you should get for an item. Or how about when the sale is over and you still have stuff left…. I normally donate everything right away but sometimes I wish I could get a little cash for it. You know how many DVDs and video games we have that no one watches or plays with anymore? A lot.

One alternative to donating these items is to sell them on-line. I found this website MusicMagPie.com that will buy your unwanted DVDs, Blue Rays, CDs and Video Games for cash! Looking through the site it looks easy enough and you ship them free. Just type in the item’s barcode and you can see how much money you will get.

Another smart way of making sure that you are not overspending today is to consider an alternative to a brand new smartphone and save hundreds of dollars through buying a pre-owned or refurbished phone. SellCell’s price comparison for refurbished and pre-owned phones enables you to view prices from the biggest sellers and will get you the very best deal. This means saving a lot of money for a phone that looks and operates as well as a brand new one.

There are also some places on-line you can sell your child’s clothing. I have not tried this either. Most of my daughter’s clothes are yard sale finds and they get pretty beat up. But I do have some pretty dresses and clothes hardly ever worn. I may look into this after my next sale instead of just donating. Although I do like to give back. ________________________________________________________________________________________

What do you do with your unwanted items? Do you have a yard sale? Just donate?

Anne

Going Green in Baby Steps

January 28, 2013 By Anne

This is a partnered guest post.

Haste makes waste, and with the current state of our environment, we can’t afford to be much more wasteful. Climate change has blanketed its harmful ramifications from the polar ice caps to mountainous inlands. While behavioral change is an urgent matter for our society, going green isn’t as easy as flicking a switch.

Green practices take a real, concerted effort in order to make them valuable. If you’re interested in making an earth friendly shift, start small and work your way up. There’s no need for a massive, all-or-nothing overhaul. Here are four simple steps to get you going:

Wash in full loads. This one’s about as easy as it gets; make your laundry cycles count. Washers and dryers use up a boatload of electricity and water every time they’re run. In fact, it’s said that the typical American family of four does about 540 loads per year, which adds up to about 1,500 gallons of water. By avoiding half loads and long rinse cycles, you’ll be able to relax your strain on the environment pretty handily. And plus, you won’t be doing laundry as often!
Stop the junk mail. Even in the midst of the digital age, junk mail still seems to pile up in our mailboxes faster than ever. It’s annoying, it’s cumbersome and it’s an environmental plague considering all those envelopes and papers that get tossed directly into the garbage. Check out the FTCs website and see how you can stop junk mail from showing up at your door.
Try a green energy plan. Many U.S. consumers now have the ability to include green provisions into their natural gas and electricity services. If you live in a deregulated area, it’s particularly easy to make the switch. Just call up an electric supplier and you can get moved over to green energy plan without any lapse in service.
Switch your light bulbs. As you probably know already, incandescent bulbs use a lot of electricity. Plus, they don’t even last that long. The answer is to switch over to CFLs or LEDs. Both of these types of light bulbs are efficient and relatively inexpensive. The tiny extra you’ll pay for them will be easily accounted for and then some once you see the savings that show up on your energy bill.

See? It’s as easy as these four steps. None of them are going to throw you off your routine, but in combination, all of them could help you ease off your environmental impact. And don’t be afraid to expand your horizons! There are all sorts of ways to go green without sacrificing your comfort.

Kristina Ross

Blogger at http://www.saveonenergy.com

Anne

Things You Never Knew You Could Recycle

January 25, 2013 By Anne

I signed up for Earth911 a long time ago. They have some interesting stuff on there. Yesterday was 30+ Things You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle. It was broken down into categories. I picked a few out of those to share with you….

Plastic Baggies:

Now I knew I could take those plastic shopping bags to my local grocery store and recycle them, but I did not know I could take sandwich baggies too. According to Earth911 you can recycle all of those gallon bags, snack bags and sandwich bags all at the same place! You o need to make sure they are cleaned. I try not to use them, but with kids in school, I do end up using a few. I try to use containers instead.

There are over 15,000 drop-off locations around the country for plastic bags, which helps make recycling them much easier. Some stores take bread bags too!

Old or Unwanted Dishes:

You can always take old or wanted dished to the thrift store and donate them. Or even Freecycle them.

But broken dishes? Broken ceramic dishes can be donated or used for art projects such as mosaics. Check your local artists’ organizations to see if they’d like your dish pieces.

Another option is to check with local recycling facilities that accept concrete or brick. Some of these facilities may accept ceramic plates, National Geographic reports, in addition to broken construction materials. Often, ceramic materials are ground up and turned into gravel.

Old Pillows:

I wrote a post about this last year. I had some old pillows that I hated to throw a way, so I repurposed them to make pillows for my patio. I cut the pillow in half and placed in some pretty material I found at the store. perfect!!

Pillows are not something that you can just donate. You could turn one into a dog bed or use while gardening to pad your knees.

Glasses:

I worked at an eye doctor for many years and always had people calling in asking where they can take their old glasses. Lions clubs will accept glasses through their Lions Recycle for Sight program, which collects the glasses, sorts them by prescription and sends them to people who need them. Some optical stores will collect them, ours did not, but my son’s school would take and donate them to the Lions Club. So I always had a bag under my desk with glasses.

Shoes:

You can donate old shoes to a thrift store, but if they are too worn out, you can still donate them to a different cause.

For those athletic shoes that you’ve worn out, you can send them to Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program, which will actually shred the shoes and use the materials. The rubber, foam and fabric can be used in many ways and often find their way into athletic surfaces and playgrounds.

My son’s school used to have a donation box where you could drop off those old, unwanted shoes.

Hair:

Really? Yup! Human hair is compostable and recyclable. My son’s new roommate also says doggy hair can be used to put around your house to keep critters away. She is a groomer and saves her dogs fur for just that reason.

Donating your hair could help clean up future oil spills. San Francisco nonprofit Matter of Trust collects human and pet hair to create booms that soak up oil. Currently, warehouses are full, but you can be placed on the email alert list when the need arrives again.

Wine:

Another, really? But thin k about it. After you drink the wine, the glass is recyclable. The corks are recyclable. And any leftover wine can be tossed in the compost pile! Look for drop off locations for your corks at ReCORK America

Keys:

This is a great idea! We all have a drawer full of miscellaneous keys, but you don’t have to toss them in the trash. They’re made of valuable metal, after all. Keys For Kindness is a small, family-run program designed to raise money through metal key recycling for the Multiple Sclerosis society. The donor pays for shipping, but we’re sure karma points are said donor’s future.

Trophies:

We have lots of these! We even threw some out last week! I never knew I could donate them to be recycled. I will not throw another on away!

Total Awards & Promotions, Inc. has a trophy recycling program to benefit charities. Through a mail-in program, the company recycles your defunct awards or re-engraves and donates them to nonprofit organizations. One of many trophy recycling programs offered nationwide, the company also manufacturers its own awards made of recycled glass and newsprint.

Want more ideas? Check out Earth911.

Most pictures and information taken from Earth911. I added my own opinions and thoughts as I saw fit.