Reusable fabric gift bags - Green Christmas!

Happy Holidays to all! If you are celebrating Christmas this year, let it be green. Green is the color of life, the trees that stand full in winter, and the frogs dug deep in their mud puddles.

This is the time when consumer spending is highest throughout the year, so remember to look for gifts that have less packaging.

Here are some tips to minimize waste through all the wonderful gift-giving:

1) Make (if you know how to sew) or buy REUSABLE FABRIC GIFT BAGS! Your family and your friends can reuse them every year, so you only spend the money once & they can be utterly beautiful. You can make them look like the sack Santa carries around, or you can make them different sizes to fit the individual gift!

2) Reuse this year's calendar for the tiny presents! Just tie a pretty ribbon around it.

3) Use the comic section of the paper.

4) Bring your own shopping bag when you shop!

5) Support eco-conscious sellers online or in local stores.

6) Buy gifts from local businesses! You don't have to travel far, so you save time and gas.

7) Check out local farms who raise their own meat. Support local farms for Christmas dinner.

HOLLY, JOLLY, and JOY! Keep it green & keep it simple.

Calls for Peace

Saturday, Sept. 19, 2009 I will be at the Peace Sanctuary in Amenia, NY with the RecycleYourPants project for their annual gathering.  

Also, Sunday Sept. 20, 2009 "Hope Out Loud" will hold their annual gathering in Bushnell Park from 12-5pm.

Hope to see you there.  We can't wait for peace.  We must take action, remembering that each step must be taken with love.  

Peace, Love, & (              )

Thank You for Individual Donations!

I would like to thank all of the wonderful people who have donated to the Recycle Your Pants project.  Previous blogs have mentioned thanks to the organizations and thrift stores that have helped me.  Now here is a shout out to the individuals:

Nina Buesing Corvallo:  www.ninacorvallo.blogspot.com

                                    - fine art:  www.ninabuesing.net

Rolande Duprey:  www.purplerock.org

Amy Ferrell, Artist - Printmaking/Mixed Media

Barrie, owner of Happy Rainbows located in Sherman, CT

Also, thanks to all of my customers at Elephant's Trunk today!  Please let me know if you have any special requests, comments, or would like to donate to the project.  We will add you to the list.  Contact: Adelka's email:  info@RecycleYourPants.com

Buy for Sustainability

I am pleased to announce that for those of you who are not interested in making your own beautiful recycled bags, you can now buy them online.  My online shop is www.EarthBlues.etsy.com.  I will continue to post new items on the site, so you can have a look at all of the different designs, especially as I create new ones.  While not every bag for sale is made from recycled materials, I have a commitment to using the resources that I have available to me and making high quality items that cannot be found in a factory.

Etsy.com is a wonderful site that allows small businesses to be created by artists and craftsters. Everything on the site is homemade or vintage.  Check it out.

Click on the title above to get redirected to the shop!  Enjoy.

 

Ecological Logic

Now here is a performer who is making sense of all of our environmental nonsense.  Rolande Duprey, a supporter of the RYP-project, has created a new show called "Ecological Logic."  The creation of this show, which premiered on 4/24/09, is what inspired the Plastic Soup entry.  The nonverbal show, using 3 puppeteers & 1 live musician, features a tremendous plastic sea through a nightmare sequence.  I hope that more schools and public libraries add this to their list of events, because it deals with crucial issues we currently face in a high-spirited and whimsical way.

Thank you, Rolande, for creating with love and concern for our world.  You Rock, Purple Rock!

Fish Soup for the Plastic Soul

Well here we have it.  We have one more reason to use reusables.

I cannot believe that I am only hearing about this Plastic Soup now, more than a decade after it was first discovered by a man on his yacht.  In 1997 a man sailing 500 nautical miles off the coast of California discovered this giant mass of plastics floating just under the surface of the Pacific Ocean.  This mass is so gigantic that it actually spans close to Japan, putting Hawaii just South of the middle of this mass of floating garbage.  People have called it "Plastic Soup."  Items are beginning to break apart and degrade in this landfill of the sea, but plastics actually take years to completely degrade.  We have a mass of garbage caught in ocean currents swirling around in the Pacific.  Congratulations, Plastic Junkies.  (The article reporting on this from 2008 is enclosed in the title to this Blog.)

While no evidence has been found about the long-term effects this could have on the ocean, there are ongoing reports of whales, fish, and birds dying due to plastics caught in their systems.  The fish and birds mistake the plastics for fish, so they gobble up our less than precious disposables.  Just imagine us accidentally eating our plastic fork that came with our lunch.  I am pretty sure our systems wouldn't be able to handle it well either.  Maybe we need to educate the big and little sea creatures.  Rather than teaching them to do tricks, let's teach them the difference between a fish and a plastic bag.  Anyone for a deep sea seminar?  OK, so which is simpler educating the fish or educating the humans?