droolicious : recycling

Big Green Box for Your Old Dead Batteries

Aaron Burgess — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

If you don't have easy access to a community recycling center, it can be tempting just to trash the seemingly never-ending stream of spent batteries from the kids' toys. But with the Big Green Box, you can recycle not just batteries, but also potentially hundreds of dollars' worth of pooped-out electronics, without leaving your doorstep.

Order the Big Green Box and place it somewhere convenient (but out of kids' easy reach); then, as you burn through batteries, upgrade to new cell phones, realize you haven't used your PDA since 2004, and finally accept that your ancient laptop won't boot again, just toss the spent stuff into the pre-labeled, prepaid shipping box. Once it's full, call UPS and have 'em take the dead weight off your hands.

Residential and business boxes start at $63 each -- learn more and order at the Big Green Box.

Go Green for Lunch - And We're Not Talking Lettuce

JeanneSager — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Sandwich bags are a necessary evil of sending your kids off with lunch. So how do you fight the bag lady shame?

Chuck the plastic baggies in favor of Go Green Pouches, the machine-washable bags from a set of stay-at-home entrepreneurs who are intent on teaching their kids the three Rs (that would be reducing, reusing and recycling, natch) .

Aimee Mancuso and Emilia Teta make hundreds of bagged lunches every year, and they decided they needed to get away from adding hundreds of bags to landfills. Their pouches come in funky prints for girls, boys and their parents, lined in nylon to prevent leaking and sized for sandwiches, snacks or even baking up the perfect potato. Pack up the PB&J for your little punk in pink skulls or stow the sweets in soldier camo.

When your kid brings ‘em home, chuck them in the washer and you’ve got a sandwich bag for tomorrow . . .and the next day. Now that's reusing. Or is it reducing?

Image: Go Green Pouches

Green Baby: Your Very Own Recycling Truck

Meredith Broussard — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Encourage your kid to go green with this recycling truck from Playmobil.

If you've ever stood with your toddler and watched a recycling (or garbage) truck empty a dumpster, you can probably imagine the utter joy your child will experience upon receiving his or her very own recycling truck with dumpster lift.

If you haven't had the pleasure of this particular experience... what are you waiting for?

Playmobil recycling truck, $49.99 at Amazon.

NatureMill Indoor Composter: Looks Like PC, Ends P-U

Aaron Burgess — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:03:00 GMT

After reading Elizabeth Royte's Garbage Land: On The Secret Trail Of Trash a few years ago and learning the life cycle of nearly everything my family had been discarding, I became obsessed with the idea of zero waste. Unfortunately, after a few days of separating garbage and recyclables into "good" and "bad" (and stinky) piles on the kitchen floor, the family became just as obsessed with the idea of zero Dad.

Anyway, Russ Cohn also had a similar problem with mucking up his living space, and in response, he created the NatureMill indoor composter, an under-the-counter device that turns food waste into fertilizer with minimal effort and zero stink.

Unlike many indoor composters, the NatureMill doesn't require you to transfer its innards to an outdoor compost bin before making the final journey to your garden: Drop your leftovers into its waiting maw, and it mixes and heats the mess until it's ready to use.

The individual-batch results are smaller than typical bin composters' output, but considering that it's capable of handling 120 pounds of waste per month, the NatureMill should work well if you're keeping a small garden or are an urban-dweller with limited green space.

Pictured above, the NatureMill PLUS is available now for $299, but in March, the NatureMill PRO ($399; shown in red below) will add a number of color choices, as well as some bells and whistles -- e.g., a foot pedal, stainless-steel components and a vacation timer -- to the PLUS' core features.

Green Me, You, Them With a GreenDimes Kit

Aaron Burgess — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:03:00 GMT

Earth Day is still a few months off in the horizon, but if GreenDimes has its way, you could help to eliminate literally tons of waste by then. The Silicon Valley-based company offers two online services: Free Me! ($20), which vows to eliminate up to 90% of your real-world junk mail (no more catalogs, yay!) and plants 10 trees on your behalf; and Green Me! ($36; pictured above), which pairs the junk-mail-killing, tree-planting base service with a kit designed to get you and yours on the road toward a greener lifestyle.

I'm digging the latter because it's packed with stuff I'll actually use, and also because it includes a book from one of my kids' favorite series, Mercer Mayer's Little Critter. I'm also digging the transparency of GreenDimes' site: The company uses a real-time stats counter to show how much junk mail it's stopped: to date, over 3.1 million pounds' worth. Take that, Pottery Barn Kids!

Specifically, here's the loot included with Green Me!: In addition to the Free Me! service (which does let you stay on catalog lists you actually enjoy), you get a reusable ChicoBag; an American Apparel tee in your choice of size and color; two compact fluorescent light bulbs; and a book, Mercer Mayer's Little Critter: My Earth Day Surprise. Slip into your shirt, pile recyclables in your bag, show the kids how to change a bulb to save energy, and end the day with a good read: voila! instant family project.