The Curly Light Bulb

Here at The Curly Light Bulb, we believe that Earth Day is a great day to start making changes in your life that ultimately benefit the planet. Today I’ve been twittering some tips for going green. I figured I’d share them here as well.

1. Save water in your bathroom. If its yellow, let it mellow. If its brown flush it down! Save 3 gallons!
2. Paper nor plastic, what you read before leaving your market bag at home.
3. Have a nice bottle collection? Make drinking glasses!
4. Bring your own refillable water bottles.  True cost of bottled water on treehugger.

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• Disposable diapers take up over 450 cubic feet of landfill per child. That is the size of a studio apartment! Consider cloth diapers. Pocket diapers are easy to use and maintain and with a little bit of help you can start out on the right foot.

• Have friends or family members who refuse to recycle because it isn’t convenient or they claim there is not a center near their area? Send them to earth911.org. There they can search for the nearest recycling center based on zip code. Better yet, go there yourself and draw them a map.

• Kicking yourself at the checkout stand because you left your bulky canvas totes at home and you have to bring back yet another dozen plastic grocery bags? Next time bring your own bags that fold up very tiny so you can keep them with you at all times. You can probably fit five in your purse. Oh, and they are really cute too.

• Barbara Kingsolver’s latest non-fiction, Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life, tracks her family’s culinary adventures over a one-year period. The family of four attempt to sustain themselves through local sources including their own hillside farm. Kingsolver’s usual frankness makes it personal.

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Buying things you love which are made from recycled materials makes you cherish them twice as much. Here is a list of picks to get you started:

• It is easy to get lost on Etsy going through all of the great hand-made things but especially the goodies made from reconstructed or reused items.

• These glasses made from recycled bottles by Green Glass are beautiful. They make you want to invite your friends over for a cocktail.

• Remember those chains and bracelets we used to weave from gum wrappers in grade-school? Bazura is making and selling bags that mirror that look out of recycled juice and drink boxes. Not only do they keep up to 50,000 pieces of trash out of the landfill per day, the company is supplied by a co-op relationship which pays school children in the Phillipines in exchange for collecting the boxes. And local women sanitize and sew the bags. The women actually have a stake in the operation so they are eco-preneurs as well. Ecological, fair-trade and fashionable, what more could you ask for in a purse? Even Amazon is getting in on the action. Anybody got a straw?

• There are a ton of bags out there. These are made from repurposed vinyl billboards. That is huge. No, really, those blown up images look sleek and modern sewn into a bag.

Previously owned goods can make a difference as well. Why buy something new when someone might be giving it away? Reusing doesn’t have to cost you. Whoever thought of Freecycle was a genius. The concept is that you get on a Freecycle email list with people in your neighborhood and when someone is getting rid of their couch, instead of letting it go to the dump on heavy trash day, they send out an alert and you can go pick it up. People offer up everything from canned vegetables to perfectly new sunglasses. Need some baby food jars for that art project? Email the list and you’ll be picking them up in a few hours. They may not be new but they’ll be new to you! For the price of on the house.

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