What Can You Recycle?
To my beloved children, Despite the fact that you have lived in my house for most/all of your lives, during which time I have consistently demonstrated effective recycling behavior, there seems to be some residual confusion about what you can can and cannot recycle. It’s complicated, I get it. From the time you were small, the a profusion of different materials has exploded exponentially and therefore you were required to continuously improve on your knowledge. This is a problem for all of us — that’s why we have that giant plastic trash slick in the middle of the ocean and microplastics in our fish. And it’s why so many people…
Shop Drop Challenge Wrap
Editor’s Note: Check out the 2016 Shop Drop Challenge! Thank You. Seriously. The Mommy Greenest community rallied behind the Shop Drop Challenge and it was amazing! I started out just asking people to commit to a 30-day shopping pause—thrifting or swapping a preloved fashion fix instead—and this year the Challenge took on a whole new dimension!
Where Do I Swap My Style? Give + Take!
Remember the 2014 Shop Drop Challenge? That was when I encouraged Mommy Greenest readers to give up shopping for 30 days. The logic went like this: 160 million American women spend about $60 a month on clothes and dump an average of six pounds of textiles into the landfill; if we all stopped buying new clothes for one month we could save nearly one billion pounds of textile waste and $10 billion. So we didn’t quite reach six figures, but this January, 500 women saved more than $30,000 and 3,000 pounds of landfill waste, just by taking a 30-day retail shopping pause—and thrifting and swapping instead. We celebrated the culmination of that event with an event…
Mommy Greenest Approved: Retap Water Bottles
Ready to rethink your water bottle? In previous posts, I’ve talked about the impact of bottled water on your health. But as cities like San Francisco move to ban plastic water bottle sales in public places, more and more consumers are considering the cost—both to their wallets, and to the environment: Plastic bottles require more than 17 million barrels of oil annually to make, enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year. Enter Retap reusable water bottles, which are designed to make drinking water from the tap safe, easy and convenient. I’ve got FIVE to give away!
Mommy Greenest Eco Rules
Remember that house, back in high school? It wasn’t your house, but you felt comfortable enough to put your feet up on the furniture. It wasn’t your mom, but you talked to her sometimes about what was going on in your life. Sometimes an afternoon turned into dinner turned into movie night with the family. You knew where they kept the cereal, and got your own bowl. That’s my house. It could be because my kids are well-liked and well-adjusted—or it could be that we’re a three-block walk from the mall. But most afternoons, the doorbell rings and a gaggle of teenagers troops in. By evening, there are boys playing…
Shop Drop for Spit That Out
“Rachel Sarnoff of Mommy Greenest has created an entire campaign with her Shop Drop Challenge. She is challenging her friends and followers to stop buying any new clothing or accessories for the month of January 2014 – something I can totally get behind considering I almost exclusively shop secondhand anyway!” -Paige Wolf, Spit That Out
Recycled Angst
So I was cleaning the bathroom the other day, wondering to myself how three children can make one room smell like a subway station urinal in a matter of hours, when I spied the empty toilet paper roll on the counter. Of course, not one of my children had thought to put out more toilet paper—that would be far too much effort—nor had he or she endeavored to toss the roll into the trash can. But as I picked it up to throw away, I stopped myself—wondering, as I do a hundred times a day, if it can be recycled.
Aysia Reiner Swaps to Shop with MG
Not only is Alysia Reiner an awesome actress; she’s a super greenie with excellent taste. Which is why she’s the perfect partner for a clothes swap to shop at Give + Take in Santa Monica, CA. Why swap? On average, each of us dumps 70 POUNDS of textile waste every year because of fast fashion. Swapping–and upcycling, and thrifting–clothes can keep a lot of that in a closet, rather than a landfill. Plus, it’s SO MUCH FUN. Right?