As a kid, I loved traveling downtown to the local Woolworth’s. I could find anything I needed there (or so it seemed). As a green-leaning adult, I’ve often longed for a Woolworth-like shopping experience—a one-stop shop with a variety of sustainable products all under one roof. Oh, hey…did someone say Priscilla Woolworth? 

In addition to green household products, PriscillaWoolworth.com sells a variety of fair trade items from around the world. Photo Courtesy PriscillaWoolworth.com

PriscillaWoolworth.com markets itself as an eco-friendly general store. It sells all kinds of everyday products a green consumer might want: CFL light bulbs, solar-powered flashlights, biodegradable trash bags, bamboo hangers, organic cotton balls, recycled school supplies and more. A descendant of the founders of F.W. Woolworth, one of America’s original five and dime stores, Priscilla wanted to make green living a little easier by providing a selection of practical, high-quality products at affordable prices. 

PriscillaWoolworth.com supports fair-trade companies. In addition to practical household items, the website also sells a variety of decorative fair-trade products from around the world: hand-woven recycled-plastic baskets from Africa, Vietnamese tea pots, Haitian bird houses, Nepalese market bags and more. 

No, it’s not your mother’s Woolworth’s. But I bet she’ll love it nonetheless.

Nutritious food is an important factor in how well a child performs at school. So I’m constantly appalled at what my kids report is available in their school cafeterias: fast food and junk food, highly processed and loaded with fat. How can it be that school cafeterias encourage kids to load up on empty calories, preventing them from getting the nutrition they need? In my mind, this is nothing short of a crime. 

The Lunch Box is an online resource that encourages schools to reform their lunch programs to include more healthy options. Photo Courtesy Whole Foods Market.

Thankfully, a growing chorus of activists agrees. Recently Whole Foods teamed up with Chef Ann Cooper to create The Lunch Box, an online resource that encourages schools to reform their lunch programs. When The Lunch Box website is fully functional, it will offer schools: 

• Priced, scalable recipes that have been nutritionally analyzed

• Training for lunchroom personnel

• How-to videos and photo manuals

• Business tools to help schools budget, make the transition to a made-from-scratch cooking program and work with smaller scale, local vendors who sell natural food.

The Lunch Box also offers parents a way to get involved. Eat lunch with your kids, volunteer to teach a cooking class, plant and maintain a vegetable garden at your child’s school or simply make a donation to keep this important, free website running.

Before my 11-year-old graduates from high school, I’d like to believe that fast food joints will be out and fresh, local cuisine will be in at her school cafeteria. Kudos to Whole Foods and Chef Ann Cooper for helping to make that happen.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has introduced a new iPhone app that lets users search by brand, manufacturer or product category to find out if a product has been tested on animals. The application, “Be Nice to Bunnies,” gives users access to the digital version of PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide database. 

Download the "Be Nice to Bunnies" iPhone app for access to a digital version of PETA's Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide. Photo Courtesy PETA.

The constantly updated Cruelty Free Shopping Guide database includes personal-care, household and animal companion products and also notes vegan companies and products.  

The easy-to-use app lets you mark your most-used products and brands by adding them to your “favorites” list.

The “Be Nice to Bunnies” app works with iPhone or iPod Touch. Download the app for $1.99 at the iTunes store. Fifteen percent of each download goes to fund PETA’s work.

Have you downloaded this app? How do you like it? Tell me about it in the comments section.

When did finding safe, reusable water bottles get so darned complicated? When I learned several years ago that my reuseable plastic water bottle contained bisphenol A (also known as BPA), a chemical believed to have an adverse affect on the brains and reproductive systems of fetuses and small children, I replaced it with a Sigg bottle. I figured I was safe.
Reusable water bottle giant Sigg came under fire last month for not divulging that, until last year, its bottle liners contained BPA. Photo By Jeffrey Simpson/Courtesy Flickr. 

But last month Sigg CEO Steve Wasik issued two apologies, on the Sigg website and on the Huffington Post, for not informing buyers that Sigg water bottles had contained BPA.  “I am sorry that we did not make our communications on the Sigg liner more clear from the very beginning,” Wasik wrote. 

Though Wasik says Sigg never marketed the liner as BPA-free, he does admit that the company could have done a better job informing the public about the liner. He says Sigg plans to become fully transparent and will post details about all their bottles’ materials—in easy-to-understand language—online. 

Sigg also plans to create an independently managed grant program to fund BPA and chemical research, which it hopes will help “eliminate confusion and concern about this issue,” Wasik states. Noting that Sigg has stopped using BPA, Wasik said he’s concerned with its use in other products. 

Sigg implemented a new BPA-free liner in August 2008. The company is offering a voluntary exchange program for older bottles containing BPA. If you have a bottle purchased or made before August 2008, you’re eligible to exchange it for a new one via mail or in person at an authorized retailer. 

A list of retailers participating in the exchange and guidelines to help you distinguish whether your bottle is eligible are available on the Sigg website. October 31 is the last day to send in your bottle.

Test your water bottle knowledge with this quiz that may have you second guessing your hydration habits.

Bamboo emerged about a decade ago as a promising eco-alternative to wood. It requires no pesticides to grow, and because it grows quickly, bamboo forests can be replenished in less time than it takes other crops to grow. But when bamboo fabric hit the market a couple years ago, many people wondered how such a stiff plant could be turned into a soft, silky textile.

Turns out that’s a really good question. 

An expensive chemical process that emits pollutants turns bamboo into rayon.  Photo By iheartlinen/Courtesy Flickr.  

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced last month that clothing and other textiles labeled as bamboo are actually made of rayon. To turn bamboo into a fiber, the plant must go through the same chemical process used to make rayon. The bamboo is treated with toxic chemicals that emit hazardous air pollutants, and the end result is a manufactured fabric with none of the plant’s original traits left. So, even though the label on your sheets and shirts may say bamboo, they’re actually made of rayon. 

The FTC has already charged four companies with falsely labeling and advertising their clothing and textile products as made of bamboo. Sami Designs (Jonäno), CSE (Mad Mod) and Pure Bamboo have settled with the FTC and agreed to stop making the false claims, but The M Group (Bamboosa) has so far refused to settle. 

In a letter to Kevin Tuerff, blogger and CEO of Green Canary Sustainability Consulting, The M Group principal Morris Saintsing wrote, “With our upstream suppliers calling it ‘bamboo fiber,’ how would we know they were using the wrong terminology? The fiber is ‘rayon from bamboo’ or ‘viscose from bamboo’. So, it is a ‘fiber from bamboo’ but not ‘bamboo fiber.’ That’s a pretty fine line.” 

The FTC is now requiring companies to provide reliable evidence, such as scientific tests and analyses, to show that their products are made of actual bamboo fiber. The FTC has put out alerts for both consumers and suppliers. To file a complaint or get more information, visit the FTC’s website.

For more than a decade, I’ve wanted to participate in Burning Man, a weeklong Leave No Trace arts festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert that comprises the world’s largest temporary community (and, for one week, the third largest city in Nevada). This year, I became a Burner—with renewed faith in what can be accomplished within community.

Burning Man is a huge experiment in radical self-reliance, radical self-expression and a gift economy—all of which combine, as Jay Michaelson points out on Huffington Post, to create “an ideal place for self-reflection and self-transformation.” The Burning Man mission is “to generate society that connects each individual to his or her creative powers, to participation in community, to the larger realm of civic life, and to the even greater world of nature that exists beyond society.” 

A massive human figure sculpture by Dan Das Mann and crew is made from metal scraps, nuts and bolts.

During the week, a dried-up lakebed known as “the playa” became home to a vibrant, thriving community of 42,000 people in which every individual is responsible for his or her own survival. No money changes hands during Burning Man; there are only gifts—amazing, unthinkably generous gifts. One day we ate grilled tuna, offered up by Alaskan fishermen who had caught it the day before; every morning we ate pancakes provided by a nearby camp and drank coffee served up to the entire community by our campmates. We danced to the beats of celebrity D.J.s, who were there just because. We prepared a candlelight dinner for 45 people using only a grill, with garbage bags and boxes as pans and serving dishes. We fed our camp chili cooked in our solar oven (in only three hours). 

In the hot desert sun, a solar cooker heated up a batch of chili in just three hours.

And in all of this, the playa remained pristine. Radical self-reliance and the Leave No Trace ethic meant there were no garbage receptacles—not even ash trays. Littering was perhaps the only act in this crazy circus that would garner judgment; it was not done.

We brought our own cups and carried them home when we stopped for a drink. We gathered up the smallest specks of moop (a Burner term for “matter out of place”) and put them in the sack of garbage that we would carry out. Knowing we would live with our garbage for the week, we made very little. I’m still in awe that this could happen; one of the many Burning Man lessons I took away was that we humans can do anything—when we’re working in conscious community.

The man burns.

I learned many, many things at Burning Man. Chiefly, I learned to be responsible for my own stuff and be generous in community. I learned the beauty of radical participation. And I learned, on some primal level, how to love—truly love—this crazy mass of humanity that I belong to.  I want nothing more than to return each year bearing greater gifts—and to spread this burning love throughout my world.

For many of us, evaluating the way we use our space is a difficult task. Rather then looking at ways we can improve our current space, we jump to remodeling as the only solution. Increased space may be one solution, but there are other options to consider first such as rearranging, reorganizing, adding natural light and decorating the space in an easy, practical way. 

You don’t have to wait for the spring season to declutter your home. Here are a few cleaning guidelines: 

• Pass along things you and your family no longer need or use. Donate them to thrift or consignment stores—or have a good, old-fashioned garage sale!

• Reorganize those cluttered storages spaces like your closets, understair areas and kitchen cabinets.

• If your space is lacking storage, create places for commonly used items such as a coat rack or shoe storage. When choosing furniture, pick versatile pieces that double as storage spaces.

Dark rooms are sometimes uninviting and appear smaller than they actually are. Adding natural light to darker rooms will make your space feel expansive. Here are a few ways to brighten up a room that won’t cost a fortune:

• Open rooms removing part or a whole wall.

• Add windows, glass doors or a skylight.

• Add a lighter coat of paint.

Non-biodegradable plastic bags take hundreds to thousands of years to break down in landfills. Americans toss billions of plastic shopping bags every year, putting tons of toxic chemicals into the trash—and into the environment. Progressive communities are discouraging shoppers from relying on the bags by placing fees on their use—but, sadly, Seattle won’t be among them. Last month Seattle voters rejected a proposal for a 20-cent fee on plastic bags. 

Plastic bags can pile up in your home—or in the landfill. Photo By evelynishere/Courtesy Flickr.

Had the fee been approved, it would have instituted a 20-cent charge per disposable (paper or plastic) bag at grocery, drug and convenience stores, encouraging consumers to bring reusable bags. Small businesses (those that receive less than $1 million a year in revenue) would have been allowed to keep the entire 20 cents, while bigger businesses would have kept 5 cents. The remainder would have gone to Seattle Public Utilities to maintain the program and to provide free reusable bags to low-income families. 

The race may have come down to money. The anti-fee side, which included the American Chemistry Council, Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil and other major plastic bag producers, raised $1.4 million for its campaign, while the pro-bag side raised only $80,000. 

The good news? Other cities in the United States and across the globe have implemented fees on plastic bags or banned them altogether. In January, China banned all shops from providing customers with free plastic bags. Plastic bag use is already down 66 percent, eliminating 40 billion bags total. Ireland’s PlasTax campaign in 2002, which created a 33-cent tax on plastic bags, reduced Ireland’s plastic bag use by 94 percent. In the United States, San Francisco and Oakland, California, banned large retailers from providing non-biodegradable plastic bags. 

Even if your home city hasn’t banned the use of plastic bags, make a statement by carrying reusable bags. Use the plastic bags you do have for fun crafts projects: Try making a quirky lunch tote or check out Craftzine for more plastic bag craft projects.

We all know that saving energy saves money by lowering our utility bills. But, wait…there’s more! Now your can get paid for saving energy at home by registering at MyEmissionsExchange.com. This free website pays registered users for lowering their monthly utility bills. 

After you sign up, you can earn rewards by showing that you’ve reduced your electric, natural gas, propane or fuel oil bill from the same month a year ago. You must prove 12 months of bill history before you start earning rewards; most utility bills display a year’s worth of billing history. All you have to do is input a recent utility bill. As you reduce your energy use, you gain “personal carbon credits,” verified by MyEmissionsExchange.com. 

The website pays you for the credits by selling them on the Voluntary Carbon Market. This international carbon market auctions off carbon credits to companies that have exceeded their limited on carbon emissions in order to “offset” their extra emissions. 

The ability to sell carbon credits used to only be offered to businesses, until MyEmissionsExchange.com brought it to consumers through a partnership with OceanConnect, a global brokerage service that handles personal carbon credit trading. The profits from the sale are then deposited into your Paypal account. 

What do you think of this website? Are you going to try it out? Leave me a comment and tell me what you think.

Hemp is one step closer to becoming a legal crop in the United States. On August 5, Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signed a bill into law that made it legal to produce, trade and possess industrial hemp in the state, making Oregon the sixth state to pass a pro-hemp law this year. Other states include Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Vermont. 

Hemp  is one step closer to becoming a legal crop in the United States. Photo By bartpogoda/Courtesy Flickr 

The law sets up a state-regulated program for growing industrial hemp. While some states have faced difficulty in getting the federal government to grant the licenses needed to grow hemp, the new Oregon law does not require a federal Drug Enforcement Administration permit to cultivate the crop. 

Hemp has been illegal in the United States for decades. A relative of the marijuana plant, hemp became closely associated with its hallucinogenic cousin after World War II, and farmers in the 1950s were discouraged from growing it. However, cultivating hemp wasn’t illegal until the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Since then, all industrial hemp sold in the United States has been imported from Canada, China and Europe, where it’s legal to grow hemp.

By outlawing the growth of industrial hemp, U.S. lawmakers have deprived the American economy of an environmentally friendly and profitable crop. In 2008 the Hemp Industries Association estimated that sales of industrial hemp in the United States reached $360 million, money that could be going back to American farmers—and a struggling economy.

Love this idea: A Minneapolis public relations firm, Haberman & Associates, is sponsoring an organic vegetable garden for employees. The company donated the land and fronted money and resources, while employees provide the labor. Three days a week after work, when most people are heading home for the night, nearly two-thirds of the company’s employees head to the garden to pull weeds, hoe the pumpkin patch and pick vegetables. They’re rewarded with  organic produce to take home home; leftovers are donated to local food banks. 

Haberman & Associates employees enjoy fresh vegetables from the company-sponsored organic garden. Photo Courtesy Haberman & Associates.

Haberman & Associates started the garden as a way to walk in the shoes of some of their clients in the sustainable agriculture and organic food industry, and now the firm hopes company-sponsored organic vegetable gardens will take root in other parts of the country. These gardens offer a low-cost benefit at a time when many businesses are cutting employee benefit packages, and they also enhance employee health by sending workers home with nutritious, organic food,  provide a way to relax after work and promote bonding between employees. 

The company-sponsored organic vegetable garden is similar to community supported agricultural programs, or CSAs. By involving businesses, they bring the importance of nutritious, organic food out of the home and into the workforce, making healthy eating a corporate matter as well as a personal one.