It's Easy Being Green

With just a few days left before Christmas, many people are probably busy switching gears into wrapping mode.  All of my wrapping is done but I know many last minute procrastinators who don’t wrap until the 11pm witching hour on Christmas Eve.  There are many ways you can make the wrapping process a little greener this year.

First, consider alternative ways to wrap your presents instead of using the traditional roll of paper purchased from the store.  You can use just about anything.  One of my personal favorites is using the “funnies” from the newspaper.  It’s colorful and fun!  You can also old posters, maps, sheet music and any other piece of recycled paper you can think of.  People have also suggested wallpaper scraps, scarves, pillowcases and fabric remnants.

If you’re more into bags, a lot of the shopping bags you get while doing the holiday shopping could double as gift bags once you get to wrapping.  You can just use some ribbon and tissue paper to dress it up a notch.  Clothing can be rolled up tightly and tied with a piece of ribbon before sticking in a stocking or placing it under the tree.  Large items in a box can be hidden with a blanket or by tieing a scarf around it.  Small items like jewlry or cell phones can be hidden inside the tree.  I’ve done this a couple of times and have gotten a lot of enjoyment watching my recipient trying to find their hidden gift and then see their surprise when they finally pull it out of the branches.

It’s also good to think about how you can recycle all that wrapping paper.  A lot of municipal recycling programs can’t recycle the glossy, printed wrapping paper.  If that’s the case you might want to consider going for the old fashioned look by using plain craft paper.  You can use rubber stamps to dress up the wrapping paper and decorate it yourself.  Than you can rest a little easier knowing that mountain of paper won’t be headed toward the landfill.

Do you have any suggestions on how to reduce, reuse or recycle your gift wrapping?  Please share them if you do!

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Have you ever thought about the environmental impact of all those paper coffee filters you might use to make your pot of coffee every morning?  Our last coffee maker required a special kind of paper filter.  But we tried to make the environmental impact of those as little as possible by purchasing unbleached filters and composting them, complete with the coffee grounds when they were done.

Reducing that impact can be simple and save you money in the long run.  You can buy a reusable hemp or gold coffee filter to fit your coffee maker’s filter basket.  They range from as little as $3 on up to about $15.  You could even to make filterless coffee by picking up a french press, a fun way I’ve found to make an unusual cuppa morning joe!  Do you have a reusable coffee filter?  If so tell us how well it works and any challenges you’ve faced!

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Last week, Arizona’s newest renewable energy project went online and started generating enough electricity to supply about 9,000 homes.  Renegy’s Biomass Power Plant is located near Snowflake, AZ.  The plant takes forest waste generated from thinning projects, chips it up, dries it and then burns it in a boiler more than 10 stories tall.  Renegy claims that the process is 98% cleaner burning then if forest crews just burned the slash piles like they normally do.  Plus, we’re getting electrcity out of it.  Some of the first fuel that came to the plant is actually being cleaned out of the devastating Rodeo-Chediski burn area in Arizona’s eastern White Mountain region.  The plant has about a 2 year supply of wood chips already spread across 120 acres of land and expects there will be plenty more fuel coming from forest waste over the years.

The plant actually sits next to the old Abitibi pulp paper mill.  The plant takes all of the recycled paper from the Phoenix area and turns it into new paper.  Some of the recycled paper pulp can’t be reused again so that is normally sorted out and dumped into a landfill in the area.  But now, that waste paper that can’t be used again is dried into chips and burned along with the wood chips.  It creates another steady fuel supply that would normally just go to waste.  Both APS and SRP are purchasing power from the Snowflake Biomass Power Plant which I think is a great demonstration of renewable energy ideas we need to pursue full speed right now.

To read more about Renegy or their new plant in Snowflake, AZ head to their website.

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