What I’m Lovin’: Zoya Nail Polish Exchange

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Diana

I realize that this may be old news to some of you, but I’ve only recently started learning about all the nasty chemicals that are in most traditional nail polishes. Ingredients like Formaldehyde, Dibutyl Phthalate (DBP), Camphor and Toluene are all frequently used in nail polishes, and can be very toxic to your health.

Zoya is one nail polish company that refuses to use any of those ingridients, and they have a gorgeous array of colors to choose from (they’re vegan too!). To encourage you to give up your old nail polish, they have a Nail Polish Exchange promotion going on for the rest of this month. If you send them six or more bottles of your old nail polish to recycle, they will match you bottle for bottle with their polish at half price ($3.50 a bottle), no shipping added. I only have three bottles of old polish, so I’m going in on this with some friends. I think that this is a really great deal, and it’s a great opportunity to make your beauty routine a little bit greener.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Wine Bottles as Boot Shapers

Posted on June 4, 2010 by Diana

This past winter, I acquired my first pairs of boots as an adult. It’s crazy, I know, but living in Florida my whole life, I just never had any. As I started to acquire more boots, I began to realize that I needed a way to keep them in shape and upright when stored in my closet. I looked up boot shapers on several websites, but I was disappointed with how expensive they were, and I was concerned that they were likely to eventually fall apart and end up in a landfill. Then, I read somewhere about using wine bottles as boot shapers, so I saved up a few, and tried it out. It works like a charm! It’s works best with thinner, smaller wine bottles, which are what I usually buy anyhow. The bottles are easy to take out when you wear the boots, and easy to put back in when you’re done. Plus, I think it looks pretty cool. Since wine bottles are glass, they’ll hold together for a long time, and if I feel that I don’t want to use them anymore, I can just recycle them.

One word of caution though: make sure that the wine bottle isn’t wider than your boot shaft, or it may stretch out your boots. I have found this to be an issue with the ankles of some of my slimmer boots.

Green Gift Giving: Mother’s Day

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Diana

Cards from Tweeprints
Lavender Soap from Mamacita

Purchased at Why Not Boutique and Tampa Street Market

A lot of people focus on green gift giving for Christmas, but they don’t always think about it for other holidays.

I have a set way of choosing gifts for friends and relatives. The kiddos always get books (I am a librarian after all) or handmade toys. I prefer to give kids things that will last rather than some cheap plastic toy that will either be broken or sitting in the back of a closet by next year.

For adults, I like to give handmade items as much as possible. For Christmas, I always bake something. For other holidays and birthdays, I like to get local handmade gifts, and of course, I frequently get things from Etsy.

This Mother’s Day, I got my mom and my newest nephew’s mom (it was her first Mother’s Day!) beautiful cards from a local stationary designer, Tweeprints. I’m also getting my mom a manicure at Becky Shop, which is a sister store to my favorite hair salon. For my nephew’s mom, I got a lovely bar of lavender soap from a local soap-maker (and Etsian) Mamacita.

So, next time a birthday or holiday comes around (Father’s Day, anyone?) think about shopping local and handmade for your gifts. It helps the Earth, it helps your local economy, it’s unique, and it just plain feels good.

What I’m lovin’: Global Footprint Network

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Diana

I just found out about Global Footprint Network when a class was using it in my media center for a worksheet. I haven’t fully explored all this website has to offer, but I have checked out one feature of it that I really like: the Footprint Calculator. To find it, look under resources on their menu bar.

This quiz lets you calculate how large your ecological footprint is. It asks a variety of questions, such as how much you drive, whether or not you eat local produce, how much your energy bill is, etc. It lets you choose between general questions and specific questions, so you can be more or less detailed, depending on your preference. While it doesn’t go extremely in depth, it does give you a good idea of what habits you may have that are taking a large toll on the earth. At the end of the quiz, it offers some suggestions for how to reduce your footprint.

One question that I found particularly interesting was a question on how many new clothing purchases you make each month. I wish that this one had been more detailed, because it didn’t offer an option for saying that you purchase more second-hand clothes than new clothes. As I’ve talked about before, buying new clothes all the time is not the most sustainable practice, because it keeps adding more things which will eventually end up in a landfill. Buying second-hand is like recycling – it gives clothes a second life. Also, I would have liked it if there had been a question about buying natural vs. synthetic fabrics, since many synthetics don’t biodegrade.

Still, this quiz is a valuable tool to get people thinking about the impact their actions take.

I got a score of 4.5 earths, which is how many earths it would take to support the world if everyone had my lifestyle. How did you do?