News from EcoPlum - "March Madness!" Edition

What's New at www.ecoplum.com
March 2011 Newsletter

Greetings!

Where the heck did March come from? Wasn't it just New Years? Maybe we call it "March" because time Marches on! My baby girl Talia is turning eight this month! A very dear friend of mine who is living with cancer recently blogged about the passing of time. She said that often cancer survivors want time to pass quickly, so they know that they will get to see their children turn into young adults, so that they can fast forward to a time where they are no longer worrying about what will be. In a way, I feel that way too. I'd like to jump into the future and see the world that my kids are going to be living in. Is it more polluted, or did we clean up our act? Did we finally get past the climate change deniers and work together globally to save our planet? Are the winters still cold? Is Manhattan under water? Of course I can't time travel, but I can only hope that we will make things better.

On this note, we are thrilled to have a guest writer from the Earth Institute's Masters in Sustainability Management program this month. Check out JD's article about Climate Change. Often people tell me they feel small and insignificant when they think about these larger environmental issues. But I have always maintained that together, we can all make a difference. One way is to change the way we live in and clean our homes. Planet Home is a wonderful step by step guide to greening your home - Dede's got a great review. My blog is also about the little things you can do to go green, and as always we have expert tips on green design from Robin Baron and local food from The Accidental Locavore.

We have some really exciting news on the EcoShop side of things: we have partnered with Atayne to bring you eco-friendly clothing for your athletic and active endeavors! We are offering double EcoChipz on all Atayne products throughout March for Gia's Plum Picks! Read more about these great items made of recycled plastic bottles as well as our new line of 100% PVC free recycled bottle backpacks in Silvia and Mike's informative piece on upcycling and recycling!

Wishing you a wonderful March - hope the spring brings all beautiful things.

Best regards,

Gia Machlin

President and CEO

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and family!

In this issue

Dede's Green Scene: "Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning and Greening the World You Care About Most"

Featured EcoInfo: Upcycling, Climate Change and Freakin' Frackin' Video

Designing Green with Robin Baron: If Walls Could Talk

Accidental Locavore: I Love Cheese

The EcoPlum Blog: Sy, Can I Steal Your Tag Line?

Upcoming Events

Double EcoChipz on all Atayne Active Wear!	Gia's Plum Picks: Double EcoChipz on all Atayne Active Wear through March 31st! This is in addition to the 10% off you get for being an EcoPlum Pie Subscriber! Use Code PIENEWS at Checkout!
Offer Expires: March 31, 2011

Dede's Green Scene: "Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning and Greening the World You Care About Most"

Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning and Greening the World You Care About Most, a book written by Jeffrey Hollender and Alexandra Zissu, might as well be called 'gamma radiation' because the book will transform you into a green monster! Through this book, Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder and creator of Seventh Generation products, has chosen to share his knowledge and passion for the environment with the rest of the world. What Hollender and Zissu created is the ultimate guide to being green (and I am not talking about the Incredible Hulk). Whether you have just been bitten by the green bug and are looking for a starting point, or you're a greenie who's looking to take it to the next level, Planet Home is a book filled with such wonderful ideas and suggestions, that it's unlikely to leave your side.

Hollender and Zissu go through a house, room by room, and recommend ways to be green, eco-friendly and healthy. What's great about the book is that it doesn't make the reader feel guilty about not being green. It introduces simple eco-friendly choices that anyone can make to live a greener lifestyle, and shows how even starting off small makes an impact. I personally love the natural cleaners guide. I've recently become a cheerleader for white vinegar as a cleaner, but I love that there are many other natural options (even mixtures I can prepare myself) that are not only excellent cleaners, but non-toxic and better for my home and my health. Read More!

Featured EcoInfo

A Treasure Trove: Upcycling and Recycling Trash

Plastic bottles turn into fashionable clothes, magazines into chic bags and tires into durable wallets. Magic, you say? Well, technically no. But it is upcycling.

If you're unfamiliar with upcycling, the process takes used materials and creates items of equal or greater value. The opposite of downcycling, which produces lesser quality items, creating higher quality items through upcycling can be as simple as finding a better use for a recycled item. With all of those plastic bottles laying around, new art is waiting to be created. With a little ingenuity, the possibilities are endless.

A pioneer in upcycling has been TerraCycle. Called the Google of garbage by The Telegraph, the company started producing organic fertilizer by packaging liquid worm poop in used soda bottles. Since then, the idea has grown to include products ranging from kites to boomboxes. TerraCycle takes simple household items, which most might consider garbage, and turns them into useful and simultaneously cool products. The company collects things like candy wrappers and toothbrushes, and pretty much everything in between. Want a fence built from recycled juice pouches?? Done! Since Terracycle identifies waste material and finds an alternative use for it by mimicking the shape and composition of the original material, new products can be in full production in a matter of weeks.

Read More!

Still Doubting Climate Change?

Called the

Numbers usually don't scare me. I've always been receptive to them. Even as a young boy I could memorize phone numbers in a flash. Yet two numbers scare me: 1 and 20 percent.

It's not the numbers by themselves, rather the divide between what they each represent that concerns me. The first represents a pattern of scientific fact, and the second a pattern of belief.

The number one represents a tie for first. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2010 equaled 2005 as the hottest year on record. By itself this isn't very disconcerting. But what alarms me is that 9 of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000.

Ironically, the ranks of American climate deniers swelled by 20 percent between 2007 and 2009. The Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press conducted a survey in 2007 and found 77 percent of Americans believed there is robust scientific evidence that our Earth's atmosphere is warming. The same survey was conducted two years later when only 57 percent of Americans believed the science that our climate is warming. I find this quick shift in public opinion staggering. Read More!

EcoClipz of the Month: Freakin' Frackin'

Designing Green with Robin Baron: If Walls Could Talk

Walls are a great opportunity to add drama, make a statement and bring a room together. I consider them a blank canvas; a great place to add personality. Of course we can do this by adding color with paint, but there are so many fun, cool and creative wallpapers and coverings out there today, that it opens up other exciting opportunities for us to express ourselves... it's not just your grandmother's wallpaper anymore!

When considering wall coverings, just like the paint we use in our homes, it's the VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) that pose the biggest danger (check out my Eco-Friendly Paint Guide

for more info). Traditional vinyl wallpapers emit toxic gases released from their adhesives. They also block air flow, which can often cause moisture to build behind the wallpaper, creating potential hidden mold problems. Fortunately, there are many burgeoning companies emerging in the marketplace with high style eco-friendly wall coverings.

When shopping for eco-friendly wall coverings, I look to see if it's GREENGUARD Certified, for low emissions and cleaner indoor air. Another key point is to use non-PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) paper, printed with water based ink and none of the toxic chemicals like formaldehyde that many generic wall covering companies use. The De Novo Alternative Substances line is a great source for strict low chemical standards. Read More!

The Accidental Locavore: I Love Cheese!

I love cheese. One of the great pleasures in going to France is the never-ending arrays of cheeses, made from all kinds of milk: cow, goat and sheep. And happily for the Accidental Locavore

, there are more and better local, artisanal cheeses. So reading that the FDA in its (warped) attempts to make us healthier and safe, while still kowtowing to big business, wants to ban raw milk cheeses, gets me really upset!

Currently raw milk cheeses have to be aged for 60 days; that being a ruling from 1940, to prevent typhoid...know anyone who's had typhoid recently? The ruling may extend that to 90 days, or ban raw milk cheeses all together; no one knows. I don't know about you, but in my 50 plus years on this planet, I have never been sick from eating cheese. Raw oysters, yes. Cheese? Never. And I've probably eaten a lot more cheese than oysters (hmmm...might need to make up for that).

Why can't we be trusted to act like adults in this matter? If you think eating raw milk cheese is going to do you harm, don't eat it. According to an article in the New York Times, "In one outbreak, 38 people in five states became sick from raw milk gouda made by Bravo Farms of Traver, Calif., and sold through Costco. In another outbreak, eight people in four states were sickened by bacteria traced to soft cheeses made by Sally Jackson, a pioneering cheesemaker in Oroville, Wash." Read More!

From the EcoPlum Blog : Sy, Can I Steal Your Tag Line?

Educated Consumer

In case you haven't noticed, we are an e-commerce site. We sell stuff. Our tag line is "Where it Pays to Buy Green." EcoPlum started out as a place to buy eco-friendly products and earn rewards in the process. But it quickly morphed into an educational/informational site. My passion has always been teaching and I come from an academic background, so as I learned more about environmental issues, I wanted to educate as many people as possible: through my blog: "Confessions of a Reformed Consumer"; by bringing on experts to write monthly columns on Green Design, Green Schools, Eco-Friendly Beauty Products, Local and Organic Food, and Green Entertainment and Media; by posting top green news stories every day on facebook, Twitter and Google; and through our monthly newsletter EcoPlum Pie. However, somewhere along the way the fact that we sell products got a little lost. Well I'm here to bring it back.

So, let's get the obvious part out of the way. Of course buying nothing is greener than buying something. So if you don't need it, don't get it. OK? I said it, don't buy if you can help it. The problem is, most of us need stuff, want stuff, and will continue to buy stuff. Take clothing, for starters. Don't know about you, but I'm not a nudist, and I need things to wear (plus I live in the North East and I don't want to freeze my tushy off). So when my workout clothing has seen one too many spin classes and it's time for a new cycling jersey, why not buy one made of recycled plastic? Or when my son's backpack falls apart from carrying 500 pounds of books to school every day, might as well replace it with one made 100% from recycled water bottles. Read More!

Bag the Bag! Our Latest Pictures With Chicobags.