Pretty Green - Resources

Being more eco-conscious goes beyond bringing your own reusable bag. Luckily for all of us, with the recent emphasis on sustainable living, there are many opportunities for us to learn how to be more environmentally friendly. We've gathered for you a collection of tips and informational sites on how you can be more "green" below. In addition, you?ll find "green" shopping links to products that we think are innovative and pretty cool.

Please check back regularly as you'll be able to find new information as we highlight them on our site.

Information and Online Tools:

Edward Norton: Bag the Bag A brief video from one of our favorite actors on bagging the bags.

Consumer Consequences: Find out if you are living a sustainable life"
An interactive calculator to determine how many Earths would be needed if everyone lived the same way you did.

MSN Battle of the Bags: Plastic vs. Paper Bags
An interesting presentation weighing plastic and paper bags.

China Bans Free Plastic Bags
This is a new law that just passed in China and will go into effect in June 2008. This law requires customers to pay for plastic bags and encourages people to use more reusable bags.

Global Stewards
This is a wonderful site filled with a lot of great tips and sustainable solutions. Do you know what a greywater system is? If not, you'll find it here along with tips on how to pack a "waste-free lunch" and how to reduce all that junk mail.

Carbon Fund
You can use the carbon calculator on this website to determine how much CO2 you're responsible for. Also, you can find tips on how to save energy and offset your carbon usage.

Catalog Choice
Are you getting catalogs you never requested or bought from? Catalog Choice is a free service where you can decline to receive paper catalogs to the ones you don't want and they take care of everything.

Earth 911
Looking for a place to recycle batteries, old paint or used electronics nearby your house? You can type in what you need to recycle into this website with your zipcode and it locates a local recycler or collector. This nifty site also has resource s organized by your home state so you can check out what's going on in your neck of the woods.

San Francisco Chronicle article "S.F. First City to Ban Plastic Shopping Bags"
Just in case you missed it, here is an article on the first U.S. city to ban plastic shopping bags.

Treehugger.com
If you haven't visited this site already, prepare to find many ways to get informed, interact with other users in online forums and discussion and learn ways to take action. This is probably one of the most popular and comprehensive green blog sites currently and it pretty much covers it all and with lots of pictures.

Low Impact Living
This site has a great section filled with green "home improvement" project ideas and information on eco-friendly products. It also provides a lot of great information on understanding what your impact is on the Earth. There is easy to read explanations on resource consumption and waste production topics such as natural gas, water and trash.

Shopping Guide:

Greenthology
Greenthology is a fantastic one-stop website for links to suppliers of earth-friendly products and environmentally-conscious businesses that make it easy to be green. You can find special deals in their Sales and Specials section!

Bookmooch
Love to Read? BookMooch is a very cool book-swapping community, with a simple and user-friendly points system, where every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch.

2Modern Ecofriendly Furniture
For those looking for eco-friendly furniture and home products, this site has a lot of great items. It features designers using reclaimed wood, recycled materials and other sustainable practices.

gDiapers
50 million disposable diapers enter landfills everyday and don't degrade. If you're expecting or have a little one running around in diapers, you might want to check this out. These are eco-friendly diapers are breathable, flushable and come in darling colors such as Giggle Pink and Genuine Vanilla Bean.

Terracycle
We think this company is brilliant. They convert trash into essentially - worm poop which is then used as slow-release fertilizer. For gardeners, this has been often called "liquid gold". Also, they reuse old soda bottles for their packaging.

Bonded Logic
Winter time chills at our house remind us how much we need insulation. This company makes an amazing insulation out of denim material. It's a little pricier than the old fiberglass stuff that makes your skin itch, but it's a natural fiber meaning that it'll be better for your home health environment. Plus, since it's all natural, you can practically install this yourself without hiring a contractor.