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IKEA has been a green innovator for years since it’s at the core of their business practice to take responsibility for people and the environment.
Good design in and out of the box
IKEA is known for affordable design in sleek packaging. Many of us admire how well all the pieces fit into the box, even when we struggle to get their furniture together. This packaging is not just to cut down on shipping costs. The more boxes they can fit into a shipment, the less trips are made, the less fuel, and less waste. And now IKEA is doing even more to make their stores, and warehouses eco-friendly.
Lighting the way
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What do you have lying around the house that might be made into something else? For Anthony Regole, he had a collection of old hockey sticks. He also has quite a story.
According to Anthony,
“It all started when I was a freshman in high school and one of my projects for English class was an assignment to do something you have always wanted to do but you never followed through with doing it.”
Anthony's father was a trim carpenter and he had always had big dreams of building something original all his own. He had heard of other people building chairs with hockey sticks. Anthony decided to try building an Adirondack chair with his used hockey sticks. He received an A.
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Last week I stepped into a little eco-boutique in a small New England town and saw a display of beautiful colored circles. Upon close inspection I realized it was a collection known as Smart Glass Jewelry. Each piece is handmade from recycled glass bottles of every color, plus sterling silver or gold fill.
Glass jewelry is an art
I decided to look up the artist, Kathleen Plate, and found out she was a stained glass artist who had learned the skill from working with her mother. While in graduate school, Kathleen was in need of a gift for a friend so she decided to make a pair of earrings from stained glass. The gift was a hit with her friends and later with festivals and the collection took off when Aveda placed an order after seeing a necklace made from their own glass bottles.
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I had heard about Preserve toothbrushes from a friend – a toothbrush that comes in their own mail-back package so that you can return them to the manufacturer be recycled! Dentists love the idea because they recommend you change your toothbrush every three to four months. (Raise your hand if you only get a new brush during your annual dental check-up). And we eco-friendly folk love it simply because they have made it easy for us.
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What's old is new again when you take something such as the wood from an old barn and turn it into a functional and beautiful piece of furniture that will most likely be one-of-a-kind.
I love scouring etsy and eBay for hardware that has been taken from old cabinets or windows that have been removed from homes before they were gutted with so many ideas of how those things could take shape as a key rack in the front entry or a funky stained glass window separating a pass-through as my friend did with hers.
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It was bound to happen. I get so excited about all the things I see and I'm trying to be a good little greenie, but sometimes, you just get suckered into buying something that may not be as green as you though after all.
After almost a month of staring at my naked little porch, I decided it was time to add a little color in the vein of some good old fashioned planters. Of course, I was struck by this fancy when I was already at the store on my quest for a fly swatter, as my children seem to have been born in a barn. I'm a little bit spatially challenged in that I almost always over or under estimate the size I need to fill a space - by a lot.
Wandering up and down the aisles of planters is all shapes, sizes and composition, I finally decided that a much safer bet would be to get the brackets to attach to our posts and add some pretty hanging baskets overflowing with brightly colored goodness.
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Reusing things keeps them out of the waste stream. Reusing gives “stuff” another life but it can also get your creative juices flowing. Take a look around your home, in your recycling bins, and even in your trash pile and see if you can come up with another use for it ... maybe in a different format. Think about cutting it up, adding something to it, or using it as building material.
Need some inspiration? Here are a few ideas.
Building with glass bottles
Check out these glass bottle buildings on Prince Edward Island, Canada. These structures take reusing to a whole new level. Glass bottles stacked within cement create a beautiful look, and keep thousands of bottles out of the landfill or recycling centers. What can you build with glass bottles?
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If you are like me, you actually save your spring cleaning for the really hot and humid days of summer break. We are in the midst of one of those right now here on the East Coast with temperatures reaching over 100.
As I'm tearing everything out of my “junk closet” I'm starting to sort it all out in my head and this year I'm going to need a number of bins to help me keep things organized. One of my favorite stores for storage solutions is The Container Store.
Lucky for me and my new “green” self, The Container Store has a lot of eco-friendly storage solutions that seem both fun and functional. Here's what I found, what makes it eco-friendly, and how I envision using it:
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As the weather has warmed we've found ourselves outside on the patio more and more and each day I think of another outdoor accessory I'd love to have. I decided before I buy to do some research and see what eco-friendly options are out there. What I found are several solar powered patio accessories that would look great in any outdoor space, and save money too.
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