Waste
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Thursday, April 28th, 2011I’ve encountered the coolest thing at two different friends houses recently, which makes me think there might be a bit of a trend happening: the Soda Stream enables one to make fizzy water at home, eliminating the need for plastic soda bottles (and for schlepping those plastic soda bottles home from the store). The company [...]
Electronics Eco-Dilemmas
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011I’ve been traveling a lot lately, and I’ve also been doing some web development for friends– so that means that my laptop is being bumped around on buses and trains while I’m simultaneously saving more data to it. All of this moving and shaking equals a serious need for computer backup! So I’ve re-dedicated myself [...]
Mark your Calendars! Take-Back Medication Day!
Friday, April 1st, 2011Here’s a heads up for something coming up soon in the US: The Second Annual Take-Back Your Medication Day! It’s coming to a collection point near you on April 30th 2010. We’ve written before about how pharmaceuticals are showing up in the drinking water – and this is contributed to by people who flush their [...]
Retiring a Dish Soap Bottle
Monday, March 21st, 2011It’s been a long time, but I think it’s finally time to retire one of our well-used plastic bottles. I started using this dish soap bottle from Trader Joe’s back in 2008, when I made my first batch of homemade dish soap. That was in June, 2008! and I’d been using it for at least [...]
Greener Advertising
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011A friend recently told me about a fantastic paper-saving advertising technique she witnessed at a bus station in Mexico: An man passed through the aisles of this particular bus station, handing out advertising flyers to all of the waiting passengers. When he reached the end of the row, he turned around and came back down [...]
Water-Saving Faucet Love
Thursday, March 10th, 2011I recently fell in love… with a faucet. While out and about one day, I visited a public bathroom and became reacquainted with a rarely-seen example of an incredibly green faucet: the Smart Faucet. When you’re ready to wash up, you press the lever and the water flows on-demand. This smartiepants device eliminates water waste [...]
Easy Peasy Tip: Rinse it out!
Saturday, March 5th, 2011It turns out that even though our recycling systems are super effective and can recycle just about anything (in any condition), it is even BETTER if you take a few minutes and rinse out your recyclables (or even wash them entirely) before dropping them in the bin. Investigative reporting over at Mother Jones gives us [...]
Reclaimed Materials
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011It should be no surprise to y’all that I love tiny houses – so even though I haven’t written a whole post about tumbleweed houses (but I plan to!) just let’s take it at face value that I subscribe to their newsletter, and I was really excited to read the most recent one. It linked [...]
Vintage Powder Compacts
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010This post is inspired by two points: Point the first: Tonight I was out picking up some last minute giftyness (NOT at the mall, don’t worry!) and when I peeked into the tote-bag-as-purse I’ve been using lately, I discovered unpleasantly that my compact of pressed powder had not just shattered, but spilled, and there was [...]
Convenience Foods
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010Yesterday I was at work super late – I got in before 8AM, and I left after 8PM – and on the way home I had to stop off at the store to get some contact lens solution. I don’t know about y’all, but when I’ve been working for a long day and have to [...]
Review: Brondell Simple Flush
Wednesday, December 1st, 2010I was visiting with my friends Aurora and Jesse in Pittsburgh, and they showed me something that I thought was really neat: the Brondell Simple Flush, a toilet converter kit to change your regular ol’ toilet to a super-duper dual flush model! Now, what really sold me to just pick up and order this kit [...]
The Story of Electronics
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010From Annie Leonard, maker of the Story of Stuff, comes a really super video all about electronics and planned obsolescence. You know, that awful design practice to make you consume consume consume? The video is 7-min. long, take a look: There are a few things I especially like about this video: The realistic physical responses [...]
Awesome Composting Toilets
Thursday, November 4th, 2010It’s no secret that Team Tiny Choices loves to learn and talk about bodily functions– so you can imagine my delight when I visited some friends at their beach house, and cozily ensconced in the bathroom was a composting toilet. Compost + bodily functions = awesome! The model they have is a traditional composting toilet, [...]
Using What You’ve Got
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010I recently stayed in a friends guest cottage and was so tickled by the way she’d given new life to things she already owned, and to bits that many folks might consider “trash.” First, and most striking to me, was that she took broken pieces of mirror and made an arty mirror mosaic from the [...]
My Moldy Razor
Thursday, October 28th, 2010A bit of slightly embarrassing personal information: the soft plasticy handle of my razor is discolored by a black mold. Yuck! I use a Gilette Venus razor, which I bought about three years ago. I wanted to buy a good razor which worked well, so I wouldn’t have to replace it. Of course I wanted [...]
Un-Wasting Food
Thursday, October 21st, 2010I had a friend over for dinner last night, and for dessert I cut up a papaya. Usually I’d have baked some kind of treat, but I’m trying to eat a little lighter these days… so even though papaya is out of season in my part of the world (and is never a local food [...]
Cleaning up the ballfield
Monday, October 11th, 2010Both of my partners kids play community sports – usually it’s baseball in the summer, and now football in the fall. It’s pretty nuts! There is a lot of time spent practicing, lots of games, and the dreaded sideline parent who can’t keep their mouth shut OR remember that there are SEVEN YEAR OLDS playing, [...]
Difficult Decisions
Thursday, September 30th, 2010Way down yonder in Central America there is an addictive ice cream sandwich called Trits, which is impossible to resist, especially when you’re having a bad day… or, well, a good day… or any kind of day at all, really. (If it weren’t addictive, it wouldn’t have a Facebook page, now would it?) Let’s start [...]
Recycling Organizations in the UK
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010Friend of Tiny Choices Claire sent along this amazing infographic for her organization: Infographic by Recycle – Don’t bin it, recycle it – which is a classified ad system that allows users to post ads for items they’re eager to get rid of. It sounds really similar to freecycle, but they do appear to charge [...]
Turning Plastic Back Into Oil
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010This is a story which could have easily made it into one of our “Happy Eco-News Fridays!” posts, but it blew my mind so completely that it clearly warranted a post of its own. Let’s start with a working definition of garbage: defined as “discarded or useless material,” it’s the stuff which doesn’t make it [...]
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