Tag: eco-friendly

Showering the Bride-to-Be, the WasteFreeSD Way!

Today’s blog comes from ILACSD Education Manager, Erika! With more than half of the ILACSD team either getting married or involved in a wedding this summer, it was a no-brainer to put together some eco-friendly party planning tips! Read on to learn more about how you can plan a zero waste bridal shower for the blushing bride in your life!

Wedding season is quickly approaching. As people gear up for cocktails and bouquets, remember to ditch the disposables and choose eco-friendly alternatives. Here’s how I planned a zero waste bridal shower:

Last month, I threw my sister a bridal shower. We both live sustainably, so we tried to create a party which reflected our lifestyles. We focused on 4 aspects that most showers and for that matter, parties in general, include: invitations, decorations, food and favors.

Invitations: We decided on using evites rather than hard copies. There are many other similar online invitation options, including another staff favorite, Paperless Post. Included were green tips:

evite - bridal shower — Sending evites is great for the environment and it’s also a huge time-saver!

Other green options: Online invites aren’t your style? No problem! Try recycled content or seeded paper cards.

eco friendly invitation alternatives — If your heart is set on sending out hard copy invitations, check out some of these eco-friendly alternatives!

Decorations: We focused on decorating with items we already had, and only buying things that we would use again. We mainly used flowers and succulents in vases that we already had. For more cohesion, we bought burlap, cut them into strips to use as bows and accents. We also decorated with tons of framed pictures. With some of the pictures, I included text showing some of the grooms favorite things about the bride-to-be.

table setting - bridal shower — Use items you already have to reduce waste and save on expenses!

Food: We fixed a vegetarian brunch, which included, homemade granola, fruit from the local farmers market, and substituting mushrooms for chicken in an Asian fusion salad. Platters, plates, utensils, and napkins were all reusable.

erika - veggie brunch — Animal products account for California’s largest water use. Try some vegetarian recipes to help conserve water!

Eco tip: Animal products account for California’s largest water use. Try using meat as a side or going without!

Gifts: Guests went all out with reusable gift ideas! One gift was wrapped in a handmade blanket, one was in a basket, and others were wrapped in dish towels!

ditch the wrapping paper — No gift wrap = less waste and less cleanup!

Favors: We elected for making our own trail mix. Trail mix was bought in bulk using reusable jars and bulk bags. The mix was distributed into mason jars amounting to zero waste!

zero waste favors — There are tons of zero waste favor ideas! Find more on our Pinterest here!

Do you have other eco-friendly party planning tips? Share them in the comments below or on our social media networks: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

Be on the look out this June for our blog about eco-friendly wedding tips brought to you by our brides-to-be Natalie, Sarah and Emily!

Green Up Your Spring Cleaning!

Although the groundhog saw its shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter last month, it sure feels like spring has taken hold in San Diego! For today’s blog, Amanda, our Hotline Manager, has put together a variety of useful tips to help jumpstart your eco-friendly spring cleaning!

Some may argue that San Diego only has two seasons – summer and a slightly cooler and rainier version of summer. Nevertheless, it is officially spring! Along with visions of bunnies, tulips and warmer weather – you’ll probably think of (and dread!) spring cleaning when you hear the word “spring”.

Eco-friendly products are now more popular than ever, but how do you know if what you’re purchasing is really helping to protect the environment? The EPA is rolling out a new program this spring/summer, it is called the Safer Choice Label. These labels will not only help you choose products that are safer for our environment, they will also help you choose products that are safer for your family, children and pets. More information on the EPA’s program can be found here.

Per the EPA – “Only products that meet our Safer Choice Standard, which includes stringent human health and environmental criteria, are allowed to carry the label.”

If you aren’t able to find a product with the Safer Choice Label, there are a few things you can look for when choosing an eco-friendly cleaner on your own. Here is a list of harmful ingredients to avoid:

Phosphates and EDTA, or ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid
Butyl or 2-butoxyethanol and oxalates

In place of these harsh chemicals, look for sodium citrate, sodium bicarbonate alkyl polyglycoside, isopropanol and glycerol on the ingredients list. For more information, check out this article from Washington Post!

If you have a little more time to invest, DIY cleaning products are great alternatives as well! You can make anything from glass cleaner to furniture polish to carpet cleaner with some basic products you may already have at home. You can clean your toilet bowl with vinegar and baking soda – yes, just like the volcanoes you made as a kid! Find more tips on our Pinterest board “Clean and Green” including this great Buzzfeed article about DIY household products!

After your house is spick and span, remember to repair, recycle, donate, reuse and/or properly dispose of the excess items, putting things in their place. If you need a refresher on what is considered trash, recyclable, and household hazardous waste turn to www.WasteFreeSD.org! Our database also has lots of information about donation and recycling centers to help you get rid of unwanted items!

Find this handy resource on wastefreesd.org! — Find this handy resource on WasteFreeSD.org!

diy donate eco-friendly EPA Household hazardous waste Pinterest recycling repairsd repurpose Spring cleaning wastefreesd

Cupid’s Cleanup and other Green Valentine’s Day ideas!

Have you found it increasingly difficult to be creative each Valentine’s Day? Well, you’re in luck! Today’s blog comes from our Marketing Coordinator, Sarah, who has put together some great eco-friendly, Valentine’s Day-themed ideas! Read on to learn how to celebrate with the environment in mind!

Celebrate your love for the environment at Cupid’s Cleanup!

Switch up your dinner and a movie routine! We want you to join us on Sunday, February 15^th for a street-sweep cleanup and Valentine’s Day-themed mixer hosted by AleSmith Brewing Company! Complimentary beer tasters will be on-hand for adult volunteers as a “thank you” for your hard work and to celebrate our love for a cleaner community. This is also a great way to connect with like-minded singles, couples or even new friends. Take Ken and Julie for example!

In 2007, Ken and Julie met for the first time at Cupid’s Cleanup…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1WQcKG-g-M]

Fast forward to 2015, they are happily married with two children, ages 2 and 4 years old! They have since moved to Oregon, and continue to protect our environment by instilling environmental values in their children who, by the way, already enjoy putting trash in its place!

Although they won’t be joining us at this year’s event, Julie shared these kind words with us…

“We have not forgotten about you (ILACSD) or where we met.”

For more information about how to get involved with Cupid’s Cleanup please click here or email Lexi at lambrogi@cleansd.org!

If you cannot join us for Cupid’s cleanup, here are some other festive Valentine’s Day-themed eco-tips!

Candy

Let loose, get your valentine some sweets! Instead of the cliché heart-shaped box of candies, head over to the bulk section and fill up reusable glass jars with more variety and less waste!

Flowers

Instead of buying flowers that are going to wilt and die within a week, choose a sustainable and earth-friendly drought tolerant plant! Here are a few of our favorites:

Recon Native Plants has a variety of affordable native plants!

If you do decide to go with a dozen roses, remember they are compostable!

Skip the card – give with purpose

Although most cards are recyclable, why not give a gift with a purpose? If you have children, this link is especially good for low waste, kid-friendly Valentine’s Day gifts!

These are just a few of our ideas – share your earth-friendly Valentine’s Day ideas in the comments below!

AleSmith Brewing Company cupid's cleanup eco-friendly gifts love low waste recycle reduce repurpose reuse sustainable Valentine Valentine's Day

Make the Season Bright with These Eco Holiday Tips!

Today’s festive holiday guide comes from one of ILACSD’s Program Assistants, Emily! She has done a lot of research to bring you the best of eco-friendly holiday ideas, including everything from party planning to gift wrap! But first, let’s start off with a eco-inspired holiday poem!

T’was three weeks before Christmas and all through the scene

People were wond’ring how to make Christmas green.

From Red Solo cups used up at a party

To the tin foil covering fudge for Uncle Marty,

Many holiday items end up in the trash,

Increasing the heap in our landfill stash.

The plastics! The glass! The tinsel! The paper!

Oh, the waste piles higher than a city skyscraper!

As they pondered wrapped gifts topped in bright, shiny bows,

They knew there must be a way to reduce how much is disposed.

When what to their wondering eyes did appear

But a helpful blog post written by eight tiny reindeer.

As you head out to shop, to craft and create,

Rejoice in the choices now there on your plate.

Keep the land clean from Del Mar to Borrego

Because no gift is greater than a clean San Diego!

Tips for an Eco-Friendly Holiday Season

Fast Facts
- Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the average San Diegan throws away between 3 and 10 extra bags of trash.
- Recycle these items: Aluminum pie tins, empty aerosol cans (like whipped cream), wine and cider bottles, cardboard boxes, and paper packaging can all be recycled. For any question on what can be placed in the blue curbside bin, click here.

Gift Wrapping
- Recycle all non-metallic wrapping paper and any paper-based ribbon.
- Go paperless! Wrap gifts in items like towels, t-shirts, or pillowcases.
- Use your child’s grade school artwork to create unique wrapping paper.
- Create gift tags from wrapping paper scraps or last year’s greeting cards.
Check out these gifts wrapped in brown grocery bags, newsprint, and t-shirt scraps, with tags from cereal boxes! http://makezine.com/craft/upcycled_gift_wrapping/)

Eco-friendly Gifts
- Give a succulent in a pot made from reused items, such as decorated yogurt cups.
- Choose reusables! Encourage friends and families to ditch disposables and choose reusables such as shopping bags, straws, mugs – the ideas are limitless!
- Buy nuts, berries, and chocolates in bulk and present them in reused glass jars. Arrange them in a basket, giving two gifts in one. Check out these examples on Pinterest for inspiration!
- Non-material gifts are essentially free of packaging and create stronger memories than giving the latest gadget. Consider zoo memberships, hang gliding lessons, a painting class, or gift cards to local camp sites.
  - One of my favorite gifts I’ve received falls into this category. My friend jokingly lamented that he couldn’t buy me a beluga whale (my favorite animal), so he made a donation in my name to the National Wildlife Foundation toward the cause of the beluga whale. I was impressed with how thoughtful and creative he had been.

Pine Cone Centerpieces — By not adding paint or glitter, these pinecone centerpieces can be composted once the holiday season has passed. http://www.familyholiday.net

Decorations
- Decorating with natural items, such as cranberry and popcorn strings, leaves you the option of composting them post-holidays. Be sure to check out our Pinterest for other decor ideas!

Party Planning
- If you know ahead of time who’s coming, print out old photos of each guest and tape them to glasses as “identifiers.” This encourages people to use the same cup throughout the event, and it’s fun to play, “Guess Whose Bad School Portrait That Is.”

For more ideas, like and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest!

Other sources:

http://www.sandiego.gov/environmental-services/pdf/geninfo/news/091204HolidayTips.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/04/green-gift-guide_n_6261474.html

http://glassdharma.blogspot.com/2014/10/2014-holiday-gift-guide.html

eco-friendly gifts holidays reduce reuse upcycle wastefreesd

Making reusables fun! ILACSD teams up with Kill The Cup

It is no secret that I Love a Clean San Diego loves reusables. We provide everyday reusable tips, sell stainless steel straws at our events, and encourage volunteers to B.Y.O reusable supplies to clean ups, all in an effort to reduce waste. Now, we’re proud to partner with other organizations that are doing great environmental work! Today’s blog comes from Drew Beal, Chief Environmental Optimist at Kill the Cup — a waste reduction program that encourages consumers to bring a reusable cup when they get coffee. Kill the Cup is now turning into a nationwide environmental initiative on college campuses, and Drew is here to share some tips on making it FUN to go green!

Did you know that 50 billion paper cups get discarded in America each year? This creates a lot of landfill waste… but it’s not just the end of the lifecycle that matters. The manufacturing process of those 50 billion cups results in the same amount of co2 emissions as adding 1.1 million passenger vehicles to the roads. Clearly, we have a cup problem!

Paper cups represent just one piece of a much larger problem: consumer waste. But what incentives are in place to encourage us to change our behavior? Many coffee shops offer a 10-cent discount when you bring your own cup, but that’s not going to move the needle. And most people get tired of environmental messaging. If we’re serious about changing behavior, we have to make it FUN!

So that’s what we did when we created Kill the Cup — a social-media inspired game that offers prizes and rewards to coffee drinkers who share photos posing with their reusable coffee cups. We’ve implemented our waste reduction campaigns on college campuses across the country, including a few right here in our backyard: UC San Diego, University of San Diego, and Cal State San Marcos.

After learning a few things about encouraging environmentally responsible consumer behavior on college campuses, we’re confident that many of these tactics can work just as well in office or community settings. Whether you’re seeking to increase reusable behavior at your home, school, office, or community, here are 5 tips to make it FUN to go green!

1) One step at a time. Establish a specific goal for your reusable campaign. It can be tempting to launch an all-encompassing “go green” initiative that targets cups, bags, bottles, and everything under the sun. But you run the risk of alienating people by asking them to do too much. Target a single reusable action, and keep the length of the campaign at about four weeks. (They say it takes about 30 days to form a new habit.)

2) But first… let me take a Selfie. Recent studies report that 93 million selfies are taken each and every day. How about doing something productive with that self-portrait? Sharing a photo of environmentally friendly behavior can make a difference. When you see pictures of a colleague or classmate engaged in eco-friendly behavior, you become more likely to also engage in a green activity.

3) Keep score. Photos are fun, and so are leaderboards. Whether people are getting rewarded for taking alternative transportation, or for bringing reusable cutlery to the office — they love getting points! Create a scoring system for your campaign, and make sure it’s easy to understand. In our recent University Challenge, for example, students received 5 points per photo, with a maximum of 1 photo per day.

KTC - Sales Data across 5 UCSD campus coffee shops. — Reusable rate & sales data across 5 UCSD campus coffee shops.

4) Create teams. What do people love more than getting points? Winning! Many reusable activities are viewed as actions taken by individuals. By forming teams, you can help establish social norms around the desired behavior change. Instead of “Hey Jim, bring a reusable bag to help the environment,” it becomes, “Hey Jim, bring a reusable bag to help us win the Office Challenge!” Completely different perspective.

5) Measure, measure, measure. Photo-sharing campaigns are a lot of fun, but let’s not lose our focus on the overall objective: waste reduction. Identify metrics that will capture the desired behavior change. At Kill the Cup, we partner with coffee shops to measure the reusable rate — the percentage of drinks served in reusable cups. When we see an increase in the reusable rate, we know the campaign is working. And when that happens, everybody wins.

And that’s it. I hope you found these tips to be helpful, and I wish you the best of luck with your reusable initiatives. It’s an uphill battle we’re fighting to encourage environmentally responsible behavior, and it’s people like you that will help us get there. Visit the ILACSD website for more information about our pollution prevention programs and feel free to contact KTC with any questions, comments, or feedback. We look forward to hearing from you!

eco-friendly reusable

Ditch the Disposable Lifestyle Part II: California Bag Ban

This week’s blog comes from Monica, an ILACSD Environmental Educator! You may remember her last blog, Ditch the Disposable Lifestyle: Choose Reusables, where she provided us with many useful tips to help reduce our waste, including using reusable bags. Now that SB 270, also known as California Bag Ban, has been signed into law, Monica is here to share helpful tips to make reusable bags a part of your daily routine!

Some Background: In late September, California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 270, making California the first and only state in the country with a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags. While some applaud the effort, others are frustrated with it. However, unless an appeal is successful, come July 1, 2015, single-use plastic bags will no longer be available at your favorite grocery store or pharmacy.

Grocery stores will continue to carry paper bags for 10 cent each and plastic produce bags will still be available, which many people reuse to dispose of pet waste. Regardless of your position on this issue, our staff can assure you that the transition to a plastic bag free state will be easy, with a little practice.

Here are my top 6 tips to help get you in the habit well before July 2015 when the ban goes into effect.

Bag Ban tips from Monica! — This bag is machine washable and made in the USA!

1. Hold off on buying a lot of new reusable bags.

Look around your house, in the closets, under the kitchen sink, under the bed. It’s likely that you already have reusable bags, or the materials to make your own!

2. I don’t have any bags. Which ones should I buy? Quality is important. You want to buy a bag that will last you a long time. Think years!

Materials: Cotton cloth bags are my favorite. They can hold a lot of weight and they’re machine washable. I’ve had one of my cloth bags since 2010 and still use it all the time!
Close the loop! Look for bags made from recycled materials.
Carbon footprint. American made bags would be great! You’ll be supporting American business and know that those bags traveled less to get to you and thus consumed less resources.

Director of Education, Sam, returning to the ILACSD office with her reusable bag! — Here’s Sam, our Director of Education, coming back from the store with one of our reusable bags.

3. Getting into the habit can be hard. Give it a few weeks, before you know it, you’ll never forget your bag. Here’s what helped me get into the habit:

Keep your bags somewhere handy & always in the same spot to save time.
Keep a couple in your car. Lots of us make impromptu stops to the store.
At ILACSD, we keep our shared reusable bags in the same spot. When one of us takes a trip to the nearby Vons or Trader Joe’s, we know exactly where to grab one.

4. Oh no, it happened, again! You’re about to pay for your groceries and realize you forgot your bags!

If I’m only buying a few things I’ll refuse the bag. “No thank you, I don’t need a bag”. I say that all the time, I don’t mind carrying a couple of items in my arms, or maybe I can fit them into my purse.
Take a tip from Costco, ask for a box! If they don’t have boxes, I’ll put bulky items in my cart, without a bag, transfer them to my trunk, and the whole shopping experience is bag-less. I lived in Suwon, South Korea for a year, where they banned plastic bags, and this is what a lot of people did. Try to maximize and get only the bags you need for smaller items.

Help prevent plastic pollution - choose reusables! — On a 30 minute walk with my dog at Discovery Park in Chula Vista (an adoptable canyon), I picked up 6 plastic bags!

5. Keep in mind WHY you’re doing this. For some of us, the motivation may be to save the 10 cents per paper bag, but every time we choose reusables, that means there are fewer plastic bags to pollute our watersheds and occupy the limited space in our landfills.

I know the few extra efforts I put into using my reusable bags and refusing disposable bags are worth it because I’m not contributing to pollution. When it rains, littered plastic bags flow into storm drains and eventually to the ocean. Many marine animals, like sea turtles, get entangled in the bags or eat them because they mistake them for food. Keeping this is mind motivates me to continue refusing single-use bags!

6. Have fun with it! Reusable bags give you a chance to show your personality, and can be just another accessory that allows you to make a statement. Just try not to make this statement:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX5Nf-BiOQ4]

Although for some it will take time to adopt the reusable bag habit, our small efforts are bound to make a significant, positive impact on our environment.

California bag ban eco-friendly reusable