Sew U: The Built By Wendy Guide to Making Your Own Wardrobe
Sew What! Skirts: 16 Simple Styles You Can Make with Fabulous Fabrics
Doodle Stitching: Fresh & Fun Embroidery for Beginners
Bend-the-Rules Sewing: The Essential Guide to a Whole New Way to Sew
Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts
The Complete Illustrated Stitch Encyclopedia
Clean: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing
Recycling Link Roundup
Thanks to the great response to my post about using recycled packing materials (and marking them with a cool stamp), I’ve decided to share a few reusing and recycling related links.
- Fairythreads has a very nice article about recycled packaging, with lots of suggestions for how to incorporated reused materials, or just more earth friendly materials, into your packaging.
- G2BGreen has an excellent post about taking reusable bags with you to the store, complete with statistics about the impact of plastic bags and a list of cities that are banning or thinking about banning plastic bags.
- Eco-Libris reminds us that every book we read used to be a tree, and thanks to them, we can now plant a tree for every book we read. (You buy Eco-Libris stickers to put on your book, they plant a tree for each one you buy.)
- While you’re at it, why buy a new book when you can find a gently loved copy at BookMooch or PaperBackSwap? Recycle books you’ve finished and get new books from someone else’s personal library. I’m already in the middle of reading my first BookMooch book. (Want to know more about why you may want to share books, instead of buying new? Check out Read More, Consume Less.)
- Did you know you can recycle the Tyvek envelopes you get from the post office? DuPont, the manufacturer, has a program to recycle them and provides instructions here.
Also, there were some great suggestions in the comments to my last post. Felicia shared that she uses a rubber stamp to put her return address on packages, which saves on labels. And Erin wrote that she uses pretty paper scraps from scrapbooking and other projects to re-cover used padded envelopes. She prints the recipient’s address on white paper and pastes this on top of the decorative paper. Great idea– I bet those envelopes are lovely! Plus, of course, reuse boxes, tissue paper, bubble wrap, and packing peanuts that find their way to you. Thanks for the great suggestions! I’d love to hear any more you may have.
Thanks for the tip on Tyvek! Good to know.
Thanks for including my article, read more, consume less, which talk about the paper industry’s impact on the Earth as well as all the book swapping (international and US based) for people to swap or rent books. I like the tyvek idea.
Like Erin, I hoard my packaging materials because I collect hand held electronics for the schools and send them off in the old packaging materials. Whatever I don’t use, I take over to my UPS store who reuses it.
I love your stamp idea. Consider selling it in your Etsy store!
Plus, your post gave me an idea to put a little note in when I send the electronics to ask them to reuse my packaging materials or recycle with UPS. Anna http://www.green-talk.com
Love your blog!!! :-)
Thanks for mentioning Eco-Libris together with all the other great green links.
We also try to use only recycled packing materials – for example, when I send materials to bookstores we work with, I use used boxes from the local natural food store.
We also use only envelopes made of recycled paper with window (from http://www.greenlinepaper.com/) when we send the stickers to customers so we don’t need to use extra labels for their addresses on the envelope.
btw – we also collaborate with bookmooch – you can check it out here: http://ecolibris.blogspot.com/2008/01/green-mooching-eco-libris-is-partnering.html
Thanks again,
Raz Godelnik
Eco-Libris
Thanks for this great post! Very informative -especially about the Tyvek bags. I’ve tried to avoid using them, but if they’re recyclable, that’s great!
I love reading your blog! Im so glad Ive made the time to start blogging again lately because Ive really missed it! Thank you for being so informative, especially when it comes to recycling : )
Thanks for including my post about using reusable shopping bags.
The Eco-Libris idea is great.
Loved your site…