Natural Environmentally Friendly Products

Green Products that are Safe, Recyclable, Reusable, Sustainable and a lot Healthier for you and the planet, the same planet that provides you with life. Living Green - Bioplastics

Sharing - Renting - Swapping



Things that are meant to be thrown away should never be made

Planned Obsolescence is abusive and wasteful, and it should be illegal because it is the same thing as stealing. Smart Development

Greenwashing is a form of spin in which green PR or green marketing is deceptively used to promote the perception that an organization's products, aims or policies are environmentally friendly. Money Influences Bad Behavior - Propaganda

Keep Companies who claim they're Green Honest (Green Washing Index)

Greenopia is an independent rating system for eco-friendly businesses and services making making it easy to eat, shop and live green.

Clothing

3 creative ways to fix fashion's waste problem: Amit Kalra (video and text)

Water use and pollution also take place during clothing production. About 20 percent of industrial water pollution is due to garment manufacturing, while the world uses 5 trillion liters (1.3 trillion gallons) of water each year for fabric dyeing alone, enough to fill 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Waste Couture: Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry. The fashion industry leaves a pollution footprint, with each step of the clothing life cycle generating potential environmental and occupational hazards. For example, polyester, the most widely used manufactured fiber, is made from petroleum. With the rise in production in the fashion industry, demand for man-made fibers, especially polyester, has nearly doubled in the last 15 years, according to figures from the Technical Textile Markets. The manufacture of polyester and other synthetic fabrics is an energy-intensive process requiring large amounts of crude oil and releasing emissions including volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride, all of which can cause or aggravate respiratory disease. Volatile monomers, solvents, and other by-products of polyester production are emitted in the wastewater from polyester manufacturing plants. The EPA, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, considers many Textile Manufacturing facilities to be Hazardous Waste generators. Issues of environmental health and safety do not apply only to the production of man-made fabrics. Cotton, one of the most popular and versatile fibers used in clothing manufacture, also has a significant environmental footprint. This crop accounts for a quarter of all the pesticides used in the United States, the largest exporter of cotton in the world, according to the USDA. The U.S. cotton crop benefits from subsidies that keep prices low and production high. The high production of cotton at subsidized low prices is one of the first spokes in the wheel that drives the globalization of fashion. Much of the cotton produced in the United States is exported to China and other countries with low labor costs, where the material is milled, woven into fabrics, cut, and assembled according to the fashion industry’s specifications. China has emerged as the largest exporter of fast fashion, accounting for 30% of world apparel exports, according to the UN Commodity Trade Statistics database. In her 2005 book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, Pietra Rivoli, a professor of international business at the McDonough School of Business of Georgetown University, writes that each year Americans purchase approximately 1 billion garments made in China, the equivalent of four pieces of clothing for every U.S. citizen. According to figures from the U.S. National Labor Committee, some Chinese workers make as little as 12–18 cents per hour working in poor conditions. And with the fierce global competition that demands ever lower production costs, many emerging economies are aiming to get their share of the world’s apparel markets, even if it means lower wages and poor conditions for workers. Increasingly, clothing being imported to the United States comes from countries as diverse as Honduras and Bangladesh. Once bought, an estimated 21% of annual clothing purchases stay in the home, increasing the stocks of clothing and other textiles held by consumers, according to Recycling of Low Grade Clothing Waste, a September 2006 report by consultant Oakdene Hollins. The report calls this stockpiling an increase in the “national wardrobe,” which is considered to represent a potentially large quantity of latent waste that will eventually enter the solid waste stream. According to the EPA Office of Solid Waste, Americans throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year, and clothing and other textiles represent about 4% of the municipal solid waste. But this figure is rapidly growing. Landfills

Sustainable Urban Apparel
Ethical Clothing
Ethical Clothing Australia
Eco Fashion World
Zero Impact Gear
Purity Style
Corbeaux Clothing
Lab Fresh 100% premium cotton shirts repeals stains and odor and is moisture wicking.
Venturi Adjustable Belt
E-Conscious
Eco Clothes Hangers 
Bamboo Hangers
How to Iron a Shirt (youtube)
Clothes Color Dying, Dyecoo

Allmade Eco-Friendly T-Shirts, made for a living wage, benefiting orphan care and prevention in Haiti. 2 billion t-shirts are produced every year, using fibers like industrial cotton, which is often grown in regions with minimal regulations—directly exposing workers and the environment to deadly pesticides and herbicides that are outlawed in the U.S. These materials are then transported across the globe using bunker fuel, a heavy oil residue so toxic most countries won’t let ships use it within 200 miles of shore. They are then spun into yarn, knitted into fabric, and sewn into garments by workers, some of whom are children, in sweatshop conditions, for a wage that does not allow them to meet even their most basic needs. In countries like Haiti, this translates to an increase in orphans, many of whom’s parents were forced to give them up because they couldn’t afford to care for them. All of which allows a handful of large manufacturers to sell the blank garments at a low, wholesale rate to screen printers, who then sell t-shirts with printed designs to consumers. The increased cost of sustainable materials often prevents screen printers from offering better choices to their customers, many of whom are unknowledgeable about the conditions under which their shirts are made—resulting in a pattern of exploitative production.

Stony Creek Colors is American grown natural colorants that are a cleaner and safer replacement for synthetic dyes used in the textile and fashion industry.

High-Quality Silk Biopolymers
BioSteel high-strength based fiber material made of the recombinant spider silk-like protein extracted from the milk of transgenic goats, made by Nexia Biotechnologies.
Future Craft Bio-Fabric

Recombinant DNA molecules are DNA molecules formed by laboratory methods of genetic recombination (such as molecular cloning) to bring together genetic material from multiple sources, creating sequences that would not otherwise be found in the genome. Recombinant DNA is possible because DNA molecules from all organisms share the same chemical structure. They differ only in the nucleotide sequence within that identical overall structure.

Transgene is a gene or genetic material that has been transferred naturally, or by any of a number of genetic engineering techniques from one organism to another. The introduction of a transgene has the potential to change the phenotype of an organism.

Pact Organic Cotton. No toxic chemicals are used in the growing of organic cotton. It doesn’t damage the soil, has less impact
on the air, and uses 71% less water and 62% less energy than conventional cotton. Organic certification in manufacturing requires dyes to meet biodegradability/eliminability standards, the proper treatment of water, and prohibits the use of toxic heavy metals. Growing organic cotton keeps farmers and their families safe. They are not exposed to toxic chemicals in the field or through their food and water supply. It also means farmers grow more than one crop which supplements their food and income. In India, farmers have the added benefit of earning the Fair Trade premium. Our organic cotton is certified by The Global Organic Textile Standard. One of the key pillars of GOTS is the protection of workers’ rights. Employment is freely chosen, working conditions are safe and hygienic, living wages are paid, no discrimination is practiced, and no child labor is used.

Conventional cotton uses about 16% of the world’s insecticides and 7% of pesticides. In addition, the World Bank estimates that around 20% of industrial water pollution in the world comes from the treatment and dyeing of textiles. Not to mention the issues around forced labor, child labor, and factory collapses.

Biomass Plants

Cotton of the Carolinas offers a level of transparency you won’t find anywhere else. Every shirt can be tracked from the farm to the finished product using a combination of unique color threads found on the inside of each t-shirt. If you’re tired of buying clothing with nothing but a meaningless country of origin on the tag, then this is the shirt for you! Know what you’re buying and who it impacts! Grown in the USA. Certified organic cotton. Made in the Carolinas. Transparent supply chain. Water-based inks.
No-feel print with REHANCE. Medium weight: 5.4oz. Shirt Attributes: 100% Carolina-grown cotton, 5.4 oz ring-spun jersey. Double needle stitching on critical seams. Shoulder-to-shoulder interior neck taping for added durability. Small, inconspicuous size tab in the neck.

A Scientific Advance for Cool Clothing. Stanford Engineers Use SDSC’s ‘Comet’ to develop a Plastic Fabric that Cools the Skin.
Researchers design moisture-responsive workout suit. Ventilating flaps lined with live cells open and close in response to an athlete’s sweat.

Shoes made from Ocean Plastic
Parley
The Shoe that Grows

Custom Fit Sandals for Personalized Comfort. The world's first custom-fit sandals, digitally mapped from your smartphone. 3D printed in USA.

Coalatree Trailhead Pants, Packable, Durable, & Stain Proof Waterproof, durable, packable, & versatile, making them the ultimate everyday mountain to city pant.

Cooking Food using the Sun

Solar Cooker is a device which uses the energy of direct sunlight to heat, cook or pasteurize drink. Many solar cookers currently in use are relatively inexpensive, low-tech devices, although some are as powerful or as expensive as traditional stoves, and advanced, large-scale solar cookers can cook for hundreds of people.

Solar Ovens - Solar Oven (amazon)
Solar Cooking

Parabolic Reflector is a reflective surface used to collect or project energy such as light, sound, or radio waves. Its shape is part of a circular paraboloid, that is, the surface generated by a parabola revolving around its axis. The parabolic reflector transforms an incoming plane wave traveling along the axis into a spherical wave converging toward the focus. Conversely, a spherical wave generated by a point source placed in the focus is reflected into a plane wave propagating as a collimated beam along the axis.

Parabolic Mirror Solar Cooker (concave mirror, solar funnel cooker)
SolSource Classic Solar Cooker. Powerful 1,000 watt cooking zone so you can grill, sauté and boil.

Concentrated Sunlight - Solar Heat
Compare Solar Cookers
Solar Cookers Basics

Solar Grill Collects thermal energy from the sun and store it to allow cooking times for up to twenty five hours at temperatures above 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Solar Grill
SMILE (youtube)
Solavore Solar Oven
Gosun Stove
Infinity Bakery
Bio Cutleries
Edible Cutlery

Portable Stoves - Induction Cooking

Z Grills Elite 900: Affordable Wood Pellet Grill Grills, Smokes, Bakes, Roasts, Braises and BBQs. Digital Heat Control & Perfect Temperature Smoking.

Biocopac Plus product aims to replace BPA or Bisphenol A. Sustainable bio-based coating from tomato processing by-products for food metal packaging.

Toilets

Water Efficient Toilets
Niagara Conservation
Iota - Folding Toilet (youtube)
Francis de los Reyes (video)
Living Machines
Michael Hoffman's Toilet is
Solar Powered and Generates
Hydrogen Gas and Electricity
Waste Energy
Sanitation Technologies
Janicki Bioenergy
Omni Processor
Bowl Movement Knowledge
Waterless Toilet
Bidet or Toilet Paper
Best Bidet Toilet Seat Washlet
Composting Toilet (wiki)
Compost Toilets
Composting Toilet
Compost Era
Compostera
Bio-Energy
Janicki
Pay Toilet (wiki)
Toilet Loo (wiki)
Public Flush Toilet Kiosks
Outhouse (wiki)
Pyrolysis (wiki)
Anaerobic Digestion (wiki)
Anaerobic Organism (wiki)
Toilet Info Graph - Info-Graphic
You Don't Know Sh*t: VICE (youtube)

More than 53 percent of Indian homes, about 70 percent in the villages, lack toilets. According to the UN, around 595 million people, or nearly half of India's population, defecates in the open.

2.5 billion people lack access to hygienic sanitation. Inadequate and unhygienic sanitation is the second largest cause of disease in the world. It leads to contaminated waterways and food supply, as well as infections like diarrhea, caused by direct contact with human waste.

Diarrheal disease kills nearly 1.6 million children each year. Children under age 5 suffer more from diarrheal diseases than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. This affects not only individual families, but entire economies. Developing countries lose ~2% of GDP each year due to lost worker productivity from sanitation-related diseases.

Public Toilet
Portable Toilet
Eliminate Open Defecation
Sulabh International
Boeing Self-Cleaning Toilet uses
Ultraviolet Light to kill 99.99 % of germs.
Hygiene
World Toilet Day
Toilet Day
Water, Sanitation for the Urban Poor
Community Led Total Sanitation
My Toilet
Smart Pipe
High-Quality Sanitation Facilities
Tierrapath.com-Water Recycling System for the toilet (youtube)
Sanitation Infrastructure

Aerosolization is the process or act of converting some physical substance into the form of particles small and light enough to be carried on the air, an aerosol can arise from flushing a toilet.

Pee Power Light
Urine-tricity

Poo-Gloos - Bio-Bomes

Water Saving Tools


Bidet or Toilet Paper

Americans use 36.5 billion rolls of toilet paper every year, representing the pulping of some 15 million trees. This involves 473,587,500,000 gallons of water to produce the paper and 253,000 tons of chlorine for bleaching, toilet paper manufacturing also requires about 17.3 terawatts of electricity annually, and then on top of that, significant amounts of energy and materials are used in packaging and in transportation of toilet paper to retail outlets. A single roll of toilet paper requires 37 gallons of water, 1.3 kilowatt/hours (KWh) of electricity and some 1.5 pounds of wood.

Bidets water use amount is trivial compared to how much water we use to produce toilet paper.

Almost 80 percent of all infectious diseases are passed on by human contact and that only about half of us actually wash our hands after using the facilities—making hands-free bidets a safer alternative all around.

Bidet with a composting sawdust toilet could make the ultimate green bathroom.

The ideal method for cleaning your butt after a bowel movement would probably be a water bath followed by careful, gentle, and immediate drying, whether that’s with toilet paper or a jet of warm air. 

Bidet Shower sometimes colloquially called a "Muslim shower" or "bum gun" is a hand-held triggered nozzle, similar to that on a kitchen sink sprayer, that delivers a spray of water to assist in anal cleansing and cleaning the genitals after defecation and urination.

Toilet Types

British supermarket Sainsbury's discovered that reducing the size of a toilet paper tube from 123mm to 112mm would allow more rolls in each truck, taking 500 trucks off the road and reducing carbon emissions by 140 tonnes.

What does my poop say?

Showers for the Homeless

Shoes made from Wool Polymer-Opals Natural Colors

American Manufacturers

Enrou Market Place socially responsible brands to curate rare and beautiful products.

Lighting

Incandescent Light Bulbs last about 1,000 hours or less than a year. ( Average $ .50 cents).

Compact Fluorescent Lamp or CFL bulbs last up to 6,000 hours or four years. (Average $2.00).
CFL can save over $40 in electricity costs over the lamp's lifetime when compared to Incandescent .

Philips’ Endura LED A21 17-watt LED bulb has a rated life of 25,000 hours or 17 years and is 80 percent more energy-efficient than the traditional Incandescent Bulb (Consumes 80% less energy) This replacement for a 75 watt Incandescent Light Bulb has a light output of 1,100 lumens, has a color temperature of 2700k and a Color rendering index (CRI) of 80. ($45.00)  Almost as good as the Centennial Light Bulb. 

LED Lights

The same CFL consumes 18–25 watts of energy but lasts only 4 years. So you have to ask how much time, people and resources it takes to build an LED and a CFL, and then also find out what's the environmental impact when building it and recycling it? When this is done you can then determine the actual cost of the product.

Fluorescent Lamps and Health
Hazard Waste
Cleaning a Broken CFL

Radio Waves

Toxic Stuff

Under the current law, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can only call for chemical safety testing if there is evidence demonstrating that a chemical is dangerous. The EPA has required testing of fewer than 200 of the 62,000 chemicals that were “grandfathered” in without testing for human safety when the TSCA was first enacted in 1976. As a result, many chemicals that scientists and environmental groups have raised concerns about continue to be used in common products like household cleaners and kitchenware, even though their safety has not been established.

Chemical Safety Improvement Act
Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976
Pollution
Consumer Protection
Toxins in Products

Home Made Product Ideas

Cleaning Tips Info-Graph
How to make your own environmentally friendly cleaning products (youtube)
Robb's Homemade Life (DIY Videos on youtube)
DIY Resources
Rubbing a walnut directly over a scratch or ding in the wood can help the damage become less noticeable.
15 Exceptionally Useful Ways To Declutter your Life with Binder Clips
How to easily clean a Microwave in minutes with no cleaning products (youtube)

Unshrinking a Shrunken Sweater
Fill two basins with warm water, and add a cup of baby shampoo to one of them. Fold the sweater and gently place it on top of the shampoo-mix water. Let it sink on its own, approx. 15 min.. Gently transfer the sweater to the clean water basin — don’t wring it out! — and help ease the sweater until it is submerged in the water. Gently transfer the sweater to a towel (again, no wringing), unfold it and roll it up in the towel to remove excess water. Unroll the towel, then stretch the sweater to the size you want it. Let it dry on its own.

Sharing

Sharing Economy is peer-to-peer based sharing of access to goods and services which enables the optimization of resources through the mutualization of excess capacity in goods and services.

Wealth Sharing

Share is to divide something fairly and evenly. To give a piece of something to someone else. Give out as one's portion. Use jointly or in common. Have, give, or receive a share of. Taking Turns means that each person should have an equal amount of time sharing something that there is only one of.

Sharing is the joint use of a resource or space. In its narrow sense, it refers to joint or alternating use of inherently finite goods, such as a common pasture or a shared residence. It is also the process of dividing and distributing. There are many examples of this also happening in nature. When an organism takes in nutrition or oxygen for instance, its internal organs are designed to divide and distribute the energy taken in, to supply parts of its body that need it. Flowers divide and distribute their seeds. In a broader sense, it can also include free granting of use rights to goods that can be treated as nonrival goods, such as information. Still more loosely, "sharing" can actually mean giving something as an outright gift: for example, to "share" one's food really means to give some of it as a gift. Sharing is a basic component of human interaction, and is responsible for strengthening social ties and ensuring a person’s well-being. Earth Sharing

Mutual is something in common to be shared by two or more people. "mutual respect".

Shared Services is the provision of a service by one part of an organization or group where that service had previously been found in more than one part of the organization or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and the providing department effectively becomes an internal service provider. The key here is the idea of 'sharing' within an organization or group. This sharing needs to fundamentally include shared accountability of results by the unit from where the work is migrated to the provider. The provider on the other hand needs to ensure that the agreed results are delivered based on defined measures (KPIs, cost, quality etc.).

Communicate - Equality - Wealth

Give is transfer something concrete or abstract to somebody. Convey or reveal information. Bring about. Transmit (knowledge or skills) Convey, as of a compliment, regards, attention, etc.; bestow. Convey or communicate; of a smile, a look, a physical gesture. Contribute to some cause. Be flexible under stress of physical force. Offer in good faith. Allow to have or take.

Present is to bring forward and present to the mind. Hand over formally. Give, especially as an honor or reward. Cause to come to know personally.

Gift is something acquired. Natural abilities or qualities. The act of giving. Give qualities or abilities to.

Gift Economy (money alternatives)

Care is to feel concern or interest. Provide care for. Prefer or wish to do something. Be concerned with. The work of providing treatment for or attending to someone or something. Judiciousness in avoiding harm or danger. A cause for feeling concern. Attention and management implying responsibility for safety. Activity involved in maintaining something in good working order.

Reciprocation - Working Together

Concern is to be relevant to. Be on the mind of. Something that interests you because it is important or affects you. A feeling of sympathy for someone or something.

Practical is concerned with actual use or practice. Guided by practical experience and observation rather than theory. Being actually such in almost every respect. Having or put to a practical purpose or use.

Renting

Renting is when something is needed only temporarily, as in the case of a special tool, a truck or a skip. When something is needed that may or may not be already owned but is not in proximity for use, such as renting an automobile or bicycle when away on a trip. Needing a cheaper alternative to buying, such as renting a movie: a person is unwilling to pay the full price for a movie, so they rent it for a lesser price, but give up the chance to view it again later. Renting is good for the environment if products are used more efficiently by maximizing utility rather than being disposed, overproduced and under utilized.

Peer-to-Peer Renting refers to the process of an individual renting an owned good, service, or property to another individual. It is also referred to as Person-to-Person rental, P2P renting, Collaborative Consumption, the sharing economy and Product Service System. The term is mainly used to describe online enabled rental transactions between individuals.

Borrow is to receive something temporarily with a promise to give back at a specified time. Library

Collaborative Consumption the set of resource circulation systems, which enable consumers to both "obtain" and "provide", temporarily or permanently, valuable resources or services through direct interaction with other consumers or through a mediator. Collaborative consumption is not new; it has always existed (e.g. in the form of flea markets, swap meets, garage sales, car boot sales, and second-hand shops).

Co-ops
Creative Commons
Open Source

Common Ownership refers to property owned jointly by agreement, such as a public park freely available to everyone.

Happy Sharing - All You Need Next Door (youtube)

The case for collaborative consumption: Rachel Botsman: (video and interactive text)

Zilok for when you can't afford the gear that you need, you can borrow or rent gear from someone nearby.

Peerby Locate things to borrow.

Eco Freek searches over 45+ websites and 10,000 libraries worldwide for free and swappable items being given away by people who no longer need them.

Borrow Baby Stuff

Street Bank community-driven trading goods and services.
The Story of Streetbank (vimeo)

Travel and Exchange Items (with People You Meet) (youtube)

Trade your Skills

Trading Skills
Shared Skills
Trade (fair-trade)

Money Alternatives
Social Learning
Social Networks
Open Governance
Food Waste
Water
Internet Collaborations
Thrifty Living Ideas
Find a Ride or Share a Car

People to People Banking (micro credit)


This Website is Hosted on Servers that are Powered by 100% Wind Energy