As discussed in “Buycotting the Holidays”, this holiday you have the choice to support economically-challenged green small businesses as you prepare for the holidays. With predictions of a poor retail season, small companies who have devoted themselves to being environmentally friendly are at great risk. Show them your green and buy your holiday preparations here this season:
Solar Powered Light Emitting Diodes (LED) Holiday String Lights: Light your home this year with self-sustained, energy-conserving, environmentally-friendly Ecolites from Eco Geek Living, Inc. The lights recharge during the daylight hours and automatically turn on at night while using as little as 1/50th the amount of energy traditional light bulbs.
Bamboo Ornaments: Bambu has introduced certified organic bamboo ornaments - all hand shaped from a single piece of highly sustainable bamboo. Tied with recycled twine, these ornaments come in four shapes: Tree, Dove, Star, Person. Available at Whole Foods and Greenfeet.
Plantable Seed Holiday Cards: If you must keep this treasured tradition alive, please consider sending a holiday card that can be re-purposed. Green Field Paper Company (a tree-free paper company) offers Grow a Note cards that can be planted to produce wildflowers.
Bamboo Holiday Invitations: Smock makes fun and elegant holiday invitations with antique, cast-iron letterpresses on sustainable bamboo paper. Smock is an entirely wind-powered facility, uses vegetable-oil based and low-VOC inks and low-VOC and citrus based solvents and is a member of Co-op America Green Business.
Green Hostess Gifts:
Hostess Soaps:
- Luxurious triple milled soaps so fragrant and beautiful you will want to share. Bring a box of Earthworks paraban-free soaps which are wrapped in eco-friendly, pulp from fast growing bamboo and mulberry trees.
- Handmade natural soaps from Soap & Paper Factory makes elegant gifts. This pure, natural collection of products for home and body are handmade from start to finish. Founders Lisa Devo, Shannon Burch and Beth Grubaugh join to make traditional handmade and hand-wrapped home and body products in small batches for gifts as beautiful and unique as their packaging. Lisa and Shannon make the all-natural bath and body products by hand with as natural and organic ingredients as possible and then wrap them in Beth’s gorgeous hand-sketched, locally printed recycled paper and boxes.
Gourmet Baked Goods: Who doesn’t want to be in the Brownie of the Month Club? Especially when the brownies are organic and vegan. Or bring the hostess a basket filled with Allison’s Gourmet organic cookies, candies, teas, cocoas and fair trade coffee.
Soy Candles: Ka Nani Essentials and Soy 4M have partnered to create custom, 100% soy candles hand poured in refillable tin containers. These fragrant candles are chemical-free without dyes or preservatives.
Organic Tea: Numi Tea offers a lovely Velvet Tea Caddy. With a classic mahogany finish, glass top, this elegant tea caddy holds premium organic and Fair Trade Certified teas in style. A great gift for any tea lover.
Mary Beth Gonzalez
http://www.gonzalezgoinggreen.blogspot.com/
1 comment:
Hi Mary Beth,
I thought you might be interested in this...
Nearly 7.5 billion greeting cards are sold in this country every year, and most of them wind up in a landfill. In light of that, and with the holiday season upon us, I thought you might be interested in this design concept. An online company called ReProduct recently began offering "Zero Waste" Photo Cards:
http://reproduct.net/
ReProduct's mission is to eliminate waste. To do this, they design products out of materials that can be turned into new products again and again. For example, "Zero Waste" Photo Cards come with pre-paid, pre-addressed envelopes; after the recipient is finished with the card, they just put it back in the envelope, drop it in a mailbox, and it's sent to Shaw Industries to be turned into carpet backing. It's a totally waste-free process.
The photo cards also super easy to get—you can design and order them exactly the same way as you would on any other photo site. The company offers traditional box card sets as well.
A pretty convenient way of doing two good deeds at once, right?
They have a Facebook page too: http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=35027583943#/pages/ReProduct-Zero-Waste-Photo-Cards/35027583943
Let me know if you decide to post something. I'm trying to spread the word!
Thanks.
~GG
Post a Comment