#eco-living

[kmmsthings]

Earth Day Craft Ideas for the Whole Family

Earth Day is a day the whole family can enjoy together. You can take advantage of this day to teach your children about caring for the earth. Also consider doing some pottery work together. I have come up with a few ideas that would be fun for all ages, and help bring the family together for one of the most important days of each year, for thinking about ways we can help Mother Earth. #1 Nature Walk/Art Project Go for a walk and have each family member collect five to ten items from nature. For example, they can pick up a leaf or a petal. Ask them to bring a bag so they can collect their belongings. Take them home and make a collage. You can use the collage to make place mats, wall art, or even a desk mat or mouse pad. What you also create gift cards using leaves as the design for the front of the card. I have a good friend who dries flowers from her yard and then applies them to the front of cardstock by gluing them. You will need: laminated sheets, card stock, scissors, clear glue or hot glue, and any other materials you have on hand. Be creative and have fun. Many of these items can be purchased at your local dollar store. If not, here are some options from Amazon - White Thick Paper Cardstock and Self Stick Laminating Sheets and Scotch 5" Soft Touch Blunt Tip Kids Scissors #2 Tie Dye Party Tie dyeing is fun! When natural food coloring is used, it becomes an eco-friendly activity. If you want to add some education to the project, talk to your kids about why you chose to use natural dye instead of chemical dye. Discuss how chemicals harm the planet. You can use carrots, beets, berries, turmeric and other natural products to make the dye. My family makes tie-dye for a living! You can check out all that they have to offer at https://jamminon.com/ #3 Stuffed Animals Make stuffed animals with materials you find everywhere in the house. For example, a black sock can be used to create the body of a penguin. Cut out the white t-shirt material and glue or sew it to make the belly. A few buttons for the eyes. A felt or foam triangle for the beak and legs. Kids and adults can also create fun monster animals. You can use old corduroy skirts or pants for the bodices. Buttons, ribbons and fiberfill take care of the rest. Each sample can be unique. Since you're using items you already have in your home, talk to your kids about why repurposing and repurposing items is good for the planet. #4 Bracelets or cuffs. Cuffs are in style right now, and old wool sweaters can make beautiful cuffs. Your children can have fun with this craft using buttons, flowers and old decorations. You can too! To make old wool sweaters work for this project, you'll want to 'feel' them. This means that you shrink them until the wool is thick. It won't come apart. Simply cut the yarn to size. Try it on your wrist. Secure it with Velcro, buttons, or even sew it closed. Add embellishments and you will have a beautiful fist. If you are a Taylor Swift fan? You can create friendship bracelets to wear in pride! #5 Can you garden? If you are a family of gardeners, start collecting cans. This is a recycling project and a garden project in one. Decide how you want to decorate the outside of the can. You can create your own labels using a computer, but you can also draw or paint them. Painting works well because you don't have to worry about water ruining the paper decorations. Yeah, If you are going to paint the cans, consider using a primer beforehand so that the paint adheres well to the can. You can also decorate it with stickers. Poke a few holes in the bottom of the clean can before decorating the outside. These holes are for drainage. Place some stones in the bottom of the can. Fill the can with potting soil and plant seeds or plants. Place in a sunny location. Your children will be able to see their plants grow. Note: If you each plant a different herb, you can create a herb garden on your windowsill. I would recommend herbs you know that you would use in your cooking overall. Basil, Cilantro, Oregano, Thyme, Parsley are the most common use daily. Once the herbs have grown, you can demonstrate how they are used to preparing dinner. This way, your children will also learn about the life cycle. Consider your children's age and attention span before choosing a craft. Earth Day is a day that can be both fun and educational. Help your children learn about caring for the earth in a fun way. Header Photo by Artem Podrez Read the full article

[reasonsforhope]

It’s an open secret in fashion. Unsold inventory goes to the incinerator; excess handbags are slashed so they can’t be resold; perfectly usable products are sent to the landfill to avoid discounts and flash sales. The European Union wants to put an end to these unsustainable practices. On Monday, [December 4, 2023], it banned the destruction of unsold textiles and footwear.

“It is time to end the model of ‘take, make, dispose’ that is so harmful to our planet, our health and our economy,” MEP Alessandra Moretti said in a statement. “Banning the destruction of unsold textiles and footwear will contribute to a shift in the way fast fashion manufacturers produce their goods.”

This comes as part of a broader push to tighten sustainable fashion legislation, with new policies around ecodesign, greenwashing and textile waste phasing in over the next few years. The ban on destroying unsold goods will be among the longer lead times: large businesses have two years to comply, and SMEs have been granted up to six years. It’s not yet clear on whether the ban applies to companies headquartered in the EU, or any that operate there, as well as how this ban might impact regions outside of Europe.

For many, this is a welcome decision that indirectly tackles the controversial topics of overproduction and degrowth. Policymakers may not be directly telling brands to produce less, or placing limits on how many units they can make each year, but they are penalising those overproducing, which is a step in the right direction, says Eco-Age sustainability consultant Philippa Grogan. “This has been a dirty secret of the fashion industry for so long. The ban won’t end overproduction on its own, but hopefully it will compel brands to be better organised, more responsible and less greedy.”

Clarifications to come

There are some kinks to iron out, says Scott Lipinski, CEO of Fashion Council Germany and the European Fashion Alliance (EFA). The EFA is calling on the EU to clarify what it means by both “unsold goods” and “destruction”. Unsold goods, to the EFA, mean they are fit for consumption or sale (excluding counterfeits, samples or prototypes)...

The question of what happens to these unsold goods if they are not destroyed is yet to be answered. “Will they be shipped around the world? Will they be reused as deadstock or shredded and downcycled? Will outlet stores have an abundance of stock to sell?” asks Grogan.

Large companies will also have to disclose how many unsold consumer products they discard each year and why, a rule the EU is hoping will curb overproduction and destruction...

Could this shift supply chains?

For Dio Kurazawa, founder of sustainable fashion consultancy The Bear Scouts, this is an opportunity for brands to increase supply chain agility and wean themselves off the wholesale model so many rely on. “This is the time to get behind innovations like pre-order and on-demand manufacturing,” he says. “It’s a chance for brands to play with AI to understand the future of forecasting. Technology can help brands be more intentional with what they make, so they have less unsold goods in the first place.”

Grogan is equally optimistic about what this could mean for sustainable fashion in general. “It’s great to see that this is more ambitious than the EU’s original proposal and that it specifically calls out textiles. It demonstrates a willingness from policymakers to create a more robust system,” she says. “Banning the destruction of unsold goods might make brands rethink their production models and possibly better forecast their collections.”

One of the outstanding questions is over enforcement. Time and again, brands have used the lack of supply chain transparency in fashion as an excuse for bad behaviour. Part of the challenge with the EU’s new ban will be proving that brands are destroying unsold goods, not to mention how they’re doing it and to what extent, says Kurazawa. “Someone obviously knows what is happening and where, but will the EU?”"

-via British Vogue, December 7, 2023

[timelordoflumpyspace]

Patio Tile in Brisbane Patio - mid-sized contemporary backyard tile patio idea with a roof extension

[ibcleaning]

Painting the widebeam again

[aprilcarstairs]

Tile Patio Inspiration for a mid-sized contemporary backyard tile patio remodel with a roof extension

[sidewalkchemistry]

or temu haul

[gentlemanmotorslifestyle]

[byler-alarmist]

Do people know most paper receipts are harmful to their health?

I'm going to get up on my soapbox for a minute, but do people realize how pretty much everyone is being overloaded with endocrine disruptors like BPA/BPS on a near-daily basis??

I don't think many people understand that ever since most of the world transitioned to thermal paper receipts (cheaper than ink), almost every receipt you handle from the gas station to the grocery store to the Square terminal printer at the local co-op is coated with Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its chemical cousin Bisphenol-S (BPS).

These chemicals have not only been proven to cause reproductive harm to human and animals, they've also been linked to obesity and attention disorders.

Not sure if your receipt is a thermal receipt? If you scratch it with a coin and it turns dark, it's thermal.

BPA/BPS can enter the skin to a depth such that it is no longer removable by washing hands. When taking hold of a receipt consisting of thermal printing paper for five seconds, roughly 1 μg BPA is transferred to the forefinger and the middle finger. If the skin is dry or greasy, it is about ten times more. 

Think of how many receipts you handle every day. It's even worse for cashiers and tellers, who may handle hundreds in a single shift. It is also a class issue, since many people who work retail and food service are lower-income and will suffer worse health consequences over time from the near-constant exposure.

Not only that, receipts printed with thermal ink are NOT recyclable, as they pollute the rest of the paper products with the chemicals.

People don't know this and recycle them anyway, so when you buy that "green" toilet paper that says "100% recycled"? Yup, you are probably wiping your most sensitive areas with those same chemicals (for this reason, I buy bamboo or sugarcane toilet paper as a sustainable alternative to recycled paper).

This page from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has some good links if you want to learn more.

As consumers, we need to demand better from our businesses and from our governments. We need regulation of these chemicals yesterday.

If you are a buyer or decision-maker for a business, the link above also contains a shortlist of receipt paper manufacturers that are phenol-free.

If you work at a register, ask customers if they want a receipt. If they don't and you can end the transaction without printing one, don't print one!

As a consumer, fold receipts with the ink on the inside, since that's where the coating is. Some more good tips here.

And whatever you do, DO NOT RECYCLE THERMAL RECEIPTS

[dansimsfantasy]

The sims 4. Fantasy objects/ Bottles

Objects to decorate a shelf or counter at the reception of a business based on the sale of plants, potions, alchemy and also for herbology or nurseries. In this part you will have small bottles (you can change their size with the keyboard), some of them with lighting to contribute to a magical appearance.

VIRIDI BOTANY : POTION BOTTLES

[arc-hus]

Gardenhide Studio, London - Commonbond Architects

[apricote]

just a miguel doing things montage

[fearlessplatinums]

seeing headline after headline about how this summer is the hottest summer on record, and the year before that was the next hottest and the year before that was the next hottest and the year before that

[petula-xx]

International Compost Awareness week starts today!

Running from May 7-13 2023.  https://www.compostfoundation.org/ICAW/ICAW-Home

Hooray for compost!!!!!!

[mywaysthehighway]

I like meeting real anarchists. Anarchist do things. Things for their community, for the maintenance of every crucial aspect of their communal infrastructure. Anarchists don’t wait for the government to pave broken roads, the police to patrol the neighborhood for safety, or the messed up food industry to provide them with staple foods in times of need. We can do it ourselves. I love that.

[oldfarmhouse]

🌿Looking to start living a waste-free life? These 7 eco-friendly products for a sustainable home will help you make the switch to reducing the use of plastic and other harmful materials. Remember, small changes can have a big impact!

via https://choosingchia.com/7-eco-friendly-products/https://choosingchia.com/

[fy-girls-generation]

kyc13525