Halloween Candy Overload

Two of my three kids went trick-or-treating for Halloween this year (the little one was sick). Now we are facing a mountain of candy, despite my best efforts.

I took the leftover candy that we had been passing out and put it out on the step after our neighborhood had settled down for the night. What do you know? Magically, some little gremlins spirited away our candy!

As for the kids' stash, my husband and I graciously ate every little bar that may have ever come into contact with a peanut. With a child with a severe peanut allergy, it's the least that we could do. (Actual peanut-containing foods are banned from our house. Our neighbor happily traded our kids' peanut-laden treats for fruity candy.)

Yet, despite this, and even after a family-wide pig-out, we still have a mound of candy left. What should we do with the leftovers? If you're facing a similar dilemma, here are some suggestions:

• Donate your candy to the troops.

MoverMoms is organizing a candy collection in the greater Washington D.C. area. You can also mail your candy directly to Treats for Troops, based in Florida. The Treats for Troops website states that they collect left-over individually wrapped Halloween candy to use as filler in care packages for our military men and women overseas. On their website, they write, "Candy tastes better than packing 'peanuts' and is environmentally friendlier." I couldn't agree more!

• Use candy on cookies and gingerbread houses.

The holidays are just around the corner and you know what that means - holiday baking! This year, try baking some Halloween candy cookies. Small candies work great for decorations on a gingerbread house; blocks of chocolate make good beams, logs and posts. You can even use gingerbread houses to teach kids about science!

• Reuse your wrappers.

Terracycle® collects and reuses individual candy wrappers, large candy bags, and multi-pack candy bags from Mars®, Wrigley®, and Cadbury® through their Candy Wrapper Brigade® program. Look for this program at schools and businesses in your area or start a group of your own!

• Conduct Candy Experiments™.

I first encountered this fun group at last year's USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo. Did you know that you can create a density rainbow using Skittles? Float the letter "m" off of your M&Ms? Make Life Savers flash in the dark? Neither did I! (And be sure to mark your calendar - the 2nd USA Science & Engineering Festival is planned for April 28-29, 2012.)

• Spread the joy - share your candy!
  

My friends at Celebrate Green!® have even more ideas for re-purposing your candy, including taking your candy to work, nursing homes, and fire stations.


Do you have a creative use for leftover Halloween candy? Share your idea in the comments!

Photo credit: normanack, via flickr (cropped from the original) // CC BY 2.0

Black Friday or Buy Nothing Day?

Traditionally, here in the U.S., the day after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday, the official start of the winter holiday buying frenzy. But some people are bucking the trend on November 26 by celebrating Buy Nothing Day instead.

The first Buy Nothing Day was celebrated in Canada in 1992 to promote awareness of wasteful spending and overconsumption. Today, Buy Nothing Day is celebrated - on Nov. 26 in North America and Nov. 27 elsewhere - in over 65 countries around the world.

How does Buy Nothing Day stack up against Black Friday? Let's do a quick comparison:

Black Friday: whip out your credit card
Buy Nothing Day: cut up your credit card

Black Friday: wait in the streets
Buy Nothing Day: free street parties

Black Friday: Wal-Mart (fill your cart to the brim)
Buy Nothing Day: Whirl-Mart (twirl your cart around without purchasing anything)

Black Friday: shop until you walk like a zombie
Buy Nothing Day: Zombie walk to draw awareness to Buy Nothing Day

However you choose to celebrate on November 26, enjoy yourself. And have a wonderful Thanksgiving. :)

Photo credit: Brave New Films, via flickr // CC BY 2.0

It's America Recycles Day!

November 15 is America Recycles Day. How are you planning to celebrate?

For certain locations in the United States, 1-800-Recycling.com can help locate businesses near you that recycle everything from paper and glass to automotive wastes and hazardous materials. For example, Best Buy will recycle most electronic items at its US and Puerto Rico stores, "including TVs, DVD players, computer monitors, audio and video cables, cell phones, and more."

From now until December 13, Recycling Zychal is offering to "upcycle" your broken umbrella for free (you pay for shipping the umbrella to them). Send them your broken umbrella and they will make something nifty out of it. The Recycling Zychal Etsy shop sells items repurposed from the fabric portion of umbrellas, like rain hoods, pet toys, and dog raincoats, so I can't wait to see what they are planning! This video shows you how to strip your umbrella and ship the material cheaply to them:



Treehugger writer Lloyd Alter says we should take America Recycles Day a step further and strive for a Zero Waste Day instead. Today is good time to consider the environmental impact of what you purchase. Can you live without the latest electronic gadget? Find companies that use less packaging? Invent new ways to use old objects?

EPA has a great section on their website entitled Wastes: What You Can Do. It's broken down by location of waste generation and season, with tips to reduce your environmental impact. Check it out!

National Costume Swap Day

My friends over at Green Halloween®, together with KIWI magazine, have come up with a new idea for greening the holidays: National Costume Swap Day! On October 9, grab a group of friends and trade Halloween costumes. It's that simple. Don't have friends with kids your age? Can't find folks who want to swap? Head over to Green Halloween and search for a swap in your area. Or, if no swap is listed, you can start one! Just register your event as a public swap.

But maybe swapping isn't for you or you don't have a costume to share. Never fear! Astrid Van Den Broek of Green Living Online suggests visiting free online classified sites such as craigslist, eBay Classifieds, or The Freecycle Network to search for your next costume.

Reusing costumes can also be fun. One year, I combined a Captain America costume with a Superman costume for Kerm. We re-worked the cape and attached some sticky letters to the back that read: Super Big Brother! I also put "SBB" over his Superman belt buckle. The costume was a hit! Since Princess was born, Little Brother has also been known to borrow the Super Big Brother cape.

Enjoy a Green Halloween this year!


Photo credit: epSos.de via flickr // CC BY 2.0

Reuse those old crayons!

Inspired by LuAnn Foty and her Crazy Crayons (more about her in a future blog post), the boys and I decided to melt down some old crayons and make our own version of reused/recycled crayons. I found a recipe for melting down crayons in the oven and we set to work.

I have a box of 64 crayons with no tips, courtesy of last year's Sunday school class. I had planned to take them home and sharpen them (ugh!), but decided to melt them down instead.

Here's what you'll need to make "new" crayons: unwanted crayons and aluminum muffin cup liners. (Don't use paper liners, we discovered that they leave a waxy residue behind in your muffin tin!)


First, we broke the crayons into small pieces and took off the wrappers. Finally, I got wise about the paper labels and scored them with a knife to make them easier to remove. (Kids, be sure to get adult help for this!)

We came up with all sort of crazy color combinations for our new crayons, like grey-black-yellow and orange-purple. Be sure to put the same number of broken crayon pieces into each muffin cup. We didn't do this and the contents of one melted after 10 minutes, while the others took considerably longer.

I suggest using a 250 degree F oven, like the online recipe suggested. Initially, I thought that sounded a tad high, but after 20 minutes at 200 degrees F, most of our crayons still hadn't melted. This is what they looked like:



After 25 minutes, though, our crayons had liquified! It was fun to see how they looked in the tray.



I stirred a few of them and then took the muffin tin outside in the snow to quickly cool them. At 32 degrees F, they cooled solid within a half-hour.

When I took them out of their wrappers, I found that they had edges, kind of like Reese's peanut butter cups, so I broke the edges off.


Little Brother agreed to test the new crayons for us. They were a lot of fun to use!




Photo credits: Mama Joules

Waste Reduction Week 2009

Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street has been spotted roaming the Great White North again, and you know what that means. It's time for Waste Reduction Week in Canada!

The beloved spokes-muppet was reported missing at the end of September, and video has cropped up on the Waste Reduction Week website indicating that Oscar is secretly learning about trash in Canada. So far, he has been spotted in Toronto and Vancouver.

You, too, can learn about the 3 R's -- reduce, reuse, and recycle. Visit Waste Reduction Week to download a resource kit for your school (this is a .pdf file) with forms to complete a waste assessment and ideas for a waste reduction action plan. You can also learn how to make recycled paper, build a composter, enjoy fun and games, and more.



(My thanks to The Muppet Newsflash for reminding me about this important annual event.)

If you liked this post, you might also like:

Waste Reduction Week 2008

Save Your Trash

Reduce comes first for a reason

Got waste? Check out TerraCycle!

Got waste? Check out TerraCycle!

My friends at Celebrate Green! pointed me toward TerraCycle, a unique company that pays non-profits and schools to collect trash. In partnership with corporate sponsors, TerraCycle then develops and market items made from those waste streams. What a great idea!

For example, my older son's school started collecting drink pouches this year. I saw the notice from the school and frankly, I was skeptical. Sure, it was possible that someone might pay us to collect drink pouches as a charitable contribution. But what where they going to do with them?

Now, I know. TerraCycle is using used drink pouches to create and market their drink pouch backpacks, messenger bags, and pencil cases.

Capri Sun is currently the leading sponsor of the "Drink Pouch Brigade." You can see their logo featured prominently in these items. TerraCycle has dubbed this idea -- sponsoring the cleanup and reuse of your own wastestream -- the "Sponsored Waste Movement".

According to their website, over 2 billion (!) people have helped to collect trash and the company has donated over $100,000 to charity. TerraCycle now sells 83 products made from various waste streams, including desk clocks made from vinyl records, pencils made from old newspapers, and silver bows made from used cookie bag wrappers. According to an article in GreenBiz.com, TerraCycle has just started collecting tape dispensers. (Alas, they will be turned back into tape dispensers. I was hoping for another innovative product!)

So, the next time that you eat from a bag of cookies, drink from a juice bag, or eat a power bar, check with your neighborhood school to see if they are collecting these items. And, if they aren't, point them toward TerraCycle!


This dragon sculpture, seen in the Paris Jardin des Plantes near the Menagerie, is made of recycled cans & bags.
My thanks to austinevan for sharing this great photo through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license via Flickr.

Reduce comes first for a reason

reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce

Earlier this week, I was telling Itinerant Cryptographer how impressed I was with his most recent purchase.

"You bought reusable water bottles for the boys. That's great!" I enthused. "You don't normally buy stuff like that."

"It wasn't my idea," he responded. "The boys made me do it. They wanted their own water bottles. And they wanted to write their names on them."

I've been recycling water bottles for years -- lots and lots of water bottles -- generating lots and lots of material to be recycled. During those same years, I've recited "reduce, reuse, recycle" without giving much thought to the order of the words.

"Reduce" is first for a reason. Reduction of waste -- reducing our footprint upon the earth -- should be the first step. Once we reduce what we use, we don't need to reuse or recycle nearly as much. And I have an 8-year-old and a 4-year-old to thank for that realization.

reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce



reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce*reuse*recycle*reduce

Interestingly enough, as I was posting this, I found this in my in-box from my friends at Celebrate Green:

... We've been asked "What is the biggest money saving green tip you can give us when celebrating during the summer?" The answer is, tah dah ... do not buy beverages bottled in plastic. Filtered tap water anyone? Fresh, homemade lemonade?

What do you suppose people did before we had plastic? They used jugs, often of glass or glass bottles. Before you purchase anything in plastic for your picnic or barbecue, think about this: Every year Americans buy 50 billion single-serving plastic beverage containers. Most plastic bottles (approximately 77%), end up in landfills. Add to this the expense as opposed to making your beverage or filling jugs with filtered tap water and this is an eco-idea that's a no brainer ...

For more eco-friendly tips, head on over to Celebrate Green. You can enter your own "wee green tip" in their Wee Glee gum contest. You could win eight boxes of "all-natural, gluten-free chewing gum."


Image adapted from a photo taken by Kristen Holden, through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License

In praise of green toys™

Little Brother got a set of "American-made, eco-friendly" green toys™ for his birthday. I was thrilled with the packaging. I don't usually think about how many cellophane windows, plastic twist ties, screws, strips of tape, and more are used in the standard packaging of children's toys. Little Brother's set of kiddie kitchenware was not only made from recycled plastic, the green toys™ packaging consisted entirely of cardboard and one, lone rubber band. It was wonderfully refreshing unwrapping the toys (no frustration! no hassle! everything but the rubber band goes in the recycle bin!) and led me to wonder why standard packaging is so wasteful.

Have a green prom

Photo credit: Sherry's Rose Cottage via a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.

Whole Foods Market is sponsoring Project Green Prom, a challenge issued to all high school students by teens turning green to hold more eco-friendly proms. From wearing environmentally-friendly make-up to using fewer paper products on the night of the dance, Project Green Prom has fashion, beauty, and decorating tips for you. Print your invitations on recycled paper or post the prom announcement online. Consider buying a vintage prom dress or swapping last year's dress with a friend. Share a limo instead of driving separately. And save your decorations for years to come!

Thoughts on Pollution

My guest blogger today is Kerm, a 7-year-old who likes "bubble gum" and "organizing things." Kerm wants to share his thoughts on pollution with you. Kerm says:

"... Pollution is cool to try to help but sad. [It is sad because] you don't want the whole world getting polluted."

(Mama Joules adds: Pollution occurs when air, water, or soil gets contaminated [or dirty]. Too much man-made noise and light are kinds of pollution, too. Pollution makes it hard to enjoy the earth. If you've seen trash floating down a river or had trouble breathing when the sky is covered in brown smog, you've experienced the negative effects of pollution.)

Kerm has several tips to help stop pollution that you can try.

"Stop using so much electricity ... When you leave your house, turn off the lights."

"Never litter. Littering is bad for the environment. If everyone littered, the whole world would be piled in trash. Who wants to have garbage in their face?"

"Stop buying stuff. If you read this blog post now, then in one year, check your closets. If there's anything that still has tags on it or that you don't remember buying, get rid of it. Give it to someone who actually needs it."

"Remember to recycle old paper and boxes. Throwing out stuff that you can recycle like glass ... is just a waste. Remember to reduce, reuse, and recycle!"

"If everybody tried a little harder, the world would be a lot better."

Poo poo paper

Looking for a creative, eco-friendly gift for the holidays? Head on over to The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Company Limited™ and check out their online (oh, I can hardly type this!) Poo-tique™. They carry a range of items -- from journals to stationery -- made from this uniquely recycled product.

How is poo poo paper made? According to the company, elephant dung is collected from conservation parks and washed to remove the excrement. The remaining fibers (things like left-over grasses and bamboo) are boiled to sanitize them. This material is then mixed with other fibrous materials; the resulting mixture is placed onto trays and dries into paper. You can read the full story at Turning Poo to Paper, along with Elephant Facts and a Brief Elephant History.

The company claims that the product has no smell, which is the first thing my family wanted to verify as soon as I opened my package of paper. Interestingly enough, poo poo paper really doesn't smell. However, since the paper is quite lumpy and fibrous, the knowledge of where it comes from does creep into your mind as you look at it. I found myself examining some of the more unique fibers -- could that be a worm? a bug? So poo poo paper may not be for everyone. In fact, Itinerant cryptographer wouldn't come near it!

(Many thanks to LD for such a unique birthday present!)

Tomorrow is America Recycles Day!

The National Recycling Coalition hosts America Recycles Day, which is held each year on November 15th. You can learn about the basics in Recycling 101, read about the DOs and DON'Ts of Recycling, take the Recycling Pledge and find Events Near You.

For example, you can attend the Recycle and Shred-A-Thon and meet Can Guy if you live in Raleigh, NC. Are you closer to Waukesha, WI? Attend the Family Open House at the Materials Recycling Facility. The Colorado Association for Recycling is even selling a 2009 America Recycles Day Calendar.

Want to learn how recycling makes a difference? Try out NRC's interactive Conversionator and learn interesting tidbits about recycling like this one: "The average person has the opportunity to recycle more than 25,000 cans in a lifetime." (I wonder if that's an average person in the U.S., or an average person across the globe? I suspect this refers to those of us in can-happy America.)

However you choose to honor the day, take heart. If you recycle, you're not alone. According to the NRC, "the U.S. recycles 33% of its waste, a rate that has almost doubled during the past 15 years."

greenfestival™

Global Exchange and Green America partnered to create greenfestival™, the "world's largest sustainable living event." Upcoming Green Fests include the DC and San Francisco events listed below, along with 2009 festivals in Seattle (March 28-29), Denver (May 2-3), and Chicago (May 16-17). Attend one of these events to meet over 300 eco-friendly businesses, listen to environmental speakers, hear great music, watch green films, and enjoy kids' activities (like making a Green Kids Earth Badge or a sock puppet).

greenfestival™ is committed to having a small environmental footprint. They claim to recover 97% of all show waste, using techniques such as providing biodegradable plates & utensils, composting food waste, providing recycling containers, off-setting electricity emissions, and banning plastic water bottles in favor of jugs of water.

Want to volunteer? Work at least 4.5 hours and you'll receive free admission each day, a free T-shirt ("limited edition, organic and sweatshop-free"), and more!

Waste Reduction Week: October 19-25, 2008

I was tickled to learn that Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street has been tapped as the official "spokesperson" for Canada's 2008 Waste Reduction Week. According to their website, Waste Reduction Week focuses on "education, engagement and empowerment" by pointing out the "environmental and social ramifications of wasteful practices." (Or, in other words, think before you pollute.) My favorite was their Activities page, which gives directions for building a composter, making recycled paper, and helping you conduct a home energy audit.

Not in Canada? Check out Oscar's public service announcements on the September 18, 2008 entry of The Muppet Newsflash.

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[Updated 10/16/09: Fixed two broken links.]