Tag: Green

Green Thought Thursday: New Uses For Old Vices

Josephine ButlerBlog, Sustainability, , , 1 Comment on Green Thought Thursday: New Uses For Old Vices

Today we’ll hear again from Ashely Hurteau, our fabulous new intern and fellow lover of all things green.

As we embark on 2012, many New Year’s resolutions will involve kicking bad habits. In the spirit of going green, Real Simple has shared some ways to re-use items that you might have otherwise shunned. For today’s Green Thought Thursday, we’d like to share a few of those ideas with you.

  • If you can’t kick the habit of sweets, at least kick the waste. Take old candy wrappers and use them to wrap small presents. Aren’t they adorable?
  • Clean the air and your lungs by quitting smoking. Then use your old ash trays as cute little soy sauce dishes!
  • Cutting back on TV and don’t know what to do with the remote? Remove the batteries and make it your new hide-a-key compartment or emergency cash holder!
  • Give up gambling and use the numbered cards as gift tags. They’re great for birthdays, and the Queen and King of Hearts are perfect for Valentine’s Day!

I loved these tips from Real Simple so much that I decided to come up with one of my own: as a self-proclaimed wine connoisseur, I vow to re-use the corks by collecting them to make a cork board.

So whether you do it in stiletos or boots, in 2012 make one of your resolutions to reduce your carbon footprint while kicking your vices, and stay tuned as we share more ideas from Real Simple. In the meantime, we’re kicking it over to you. Please share your ideas in the comments section.

Read More

Green Thought Thursday: Leaf Me Hangin’ On

Josephine ButlerBlog, Sustainability, , , , , , , , 1 Comment on Green Thought Thursday: Leaf Me Hangin’ On
Leaves on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Fall is one of my favorite times of the year. I can’t think of anything that I love more than the beautiful array of colorful leaves on the trees. But once those leaves fall off, it’s a different story.

Surprisingly, I actually enjoy raking leaves (it’s great exercise)! It’s what happens to those leaves after I rake them up that really puzzles me (or should I say, it leaves me hanging on?). On the one hand, I could bag the leaves up and put them on the side of the road for pick-up – these leaves will head straight to the landfill. Or, I could opt to burn my leaves – this can also be bad for the environment, cause irritation to your respiratory system and even contains cancer-causing agents (thanks for the tip, Nat Geo)! For today’s Green Thought Thursday, I want to share a few different options with you on how to go green during your fall yard clean-up.

  • Skip the leaf blower and grab a rake. It’s a pollution-free alternative!
  • Rake leaves into a pile and leave them there. The pile will eventually decompose, and you’ll have a nice source of fertilizer.
  • Mow your lawn. Sure, you’ll need to use a little gasoline to get the process going, but shredded leaves will decompose quickly and do a nice job of fertilizing and insulating your lawn.
  • Collect leaves into compostable bags and take them to your local community yard waste collection center (if you live in Raleigh, check out the City of Raleigh’s Yard Waste Recycling Center on New Hope Road) – they’ll compost the leaves into fertilizer for you!

Does anyone else have any great (and green) ideas on how to get rid of leaves? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Read More

Green Thought Thursday: The Rules of Recycling

Josephine ButlerBlog, Sustainability, , , 2 Comments on Green Thought Thursday: The Rules of Recycling
Our giant recycling bin at the Longview Center -- a thing of beauty!

Green Thought Thursday is a regular feature all about the baby steps we can take to protect our Mother Earth.

I can’t tell you how many Post-it Notes I’ve picked out of recycling bins. Hundreds, at least.  And no, it’s not because I have some weird obsession with them (though, we do love them at Clairemont). It’s because in the city of Raleigh and everywhere else, you cannot recycle them.

Really.

I think you’d be surprised to learn what you can and cannot recycle here in Raleigh — I know I  was. And that’s why I wanted to dedicate this Green Thought Thursday to listing those things out. According to the Raleigh Recycling Division, you can recycle the following:

  • Newspapers and inserts
  • White and colored paper (that’s not too bright)
  • Open junk mail
  • Old phone books
  • Magazines and catalogs
  • Paperboard, chipboard, SBS board and tubes (think cereal boxes, paper towel rolls, shipping tubes, etc.)
  • Corrugated cardboard
  • Glass bottles and containers
  • Plastic items (coded No. 1-5 and No. 7)
  • Plastic bottles with a neck (soda bottles, peanut butter jars, laundry detergant bottles)
  • Gable-top cartons (milk cartons and the like)
  • Juice boxes
  • Aluminum foil and food trays (that are clean!)
  • Plastic beverage rings
  • Cans, of course!

Things you cannot recycle:

  • Post-it Notes (and other paper with adhesive backing)
  • Bold- or neon-colored paper
  • Paper with staples
  • Checkbooks or books
  • Carbon paper
  • Napkins, tissues or paper towels
  • Plastic bags
  • Boxes with wax coatings
  • Aerosol cans
  • Auto batteries
  • Containers that once contained hazardous materials (like fertilizers, auto fluids, etc.)
  • Egg cartons
  • Non-food cans and non-food glass containers
  • Pizza boxes
  • Frozen food trays
  • Containers made of thin, brittle plastic (these can really mess up the sorting process)

For a more complete list, visit the Raleigh Recyling Division’s website by clicking here. The site also does a great job of listing out alternative drop-off locations for your unwanted items so that they won’t end up in a landfill. A final thought from our friends there: “You can help recycling markets by buying products MADE from recycled materials. We have to close the loop, BUY RECYCLED!”

What are some of your favorite post-consumer recycled products? We sure do love our Staples recycled copy paper (and we don’t even mind paying a little extra for it)!

Read More