Keep Norfolk Beautiful's Annual Recycling Drive

MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Keep Norfolk Beautiful's Annual Recycling Drive is coming up next month. Saturday, January 17 from 10 am to 4 pm at the WHRO/ODU parking lot you can bring your old electronics for recycling. Acceptable items include:

• Cables & wiring
• Computers & parts
• DVD players
• Electrical equipment
• Fax machines
• Hair dryers/curling irons
• Monitors
• Phones (and cell phones)
• PDAs
• Printers
• Radios
• Stereos
• Switches
• Tape/CD players
• Toasters
• TVs
• VCRs
• Video equipment
• Video game players

Unfortunatley, you won't be able to bring microwaves, refrigerators, air conditioners or other "white" appliances and remember this is for Norfolk residents.

Better World Shopper

Ever heard of Better World Shopper? No?

It's a site that rates companies on their social and environmental responsibility. The goal is to encourage shoppers to vote with their wallets by selecting companies that are taking strides to create a world that thrives on human rights, animal protection, community involvement, social justice, and protecting the environment. Check it out at www.betterworldshopper.com. Scope out your favorite shopping spots and see how they were graded.

By the way, you can download Better World Shopper as an app on your iPhone.

Go Green Outside of the Home Too!

I'm pretty sure that most of our waste comes from the office more so than the home. Think about it...all of that paper that you print and print and print for work that gets thrown in the trash. All of the water and soda bottles that are downed throughout the day. All of the electronics powered on all day long.

What can you do for your office?

Try out these EASY steps so get your office a few steps closer to being green:

• Collect bottles, cans, and other recyclables in a recycling bin. Every city in Hampton Roads recycles and you can find out what they take on the blog homepage.
• Check into your paper shreading services because many times they recycle your shreads so you can start to toss more paper into the shreading bin so that it gets recycled.
• Stop using disposable cups and start using reusable mugs. If you must use disposable, be sure to use corn or sugarcane cups like we have in the store.
• Switch the coffee to organic, fair trade coffee instead. It might be a little higher price, but order in bulk from Green Alternatives and get great pricing that might just be comparable to what you are already paying.

There are tons of little things that you can do to start greening your office and it's the little things that add up to big changes. Encourage all of your co-workers to make eco-friendly choices too. Spread the word about being kinder to our earth!

Make Holiday Ornaments

Make yourself some organic ornaments this year. It's fun activity with the kids and it's an eco-friendly way to make super cute ornaments. Check out the instructions below and have fun!

Ingredients
1/2 cup salt
3/4 cup boiling water
2 cups organic flour

Directions
Place salt in bowl; pour boiling water over salt and stir. Cool. Add flour all at once and mix well by forming a ball and kneading the dough until it is smooth, soft and workable.

Form your shapes let it air-dry, but give it at least two to three days before painting it and don't forget to create a hole in the top of the ornament before you leave them out to harden. Paint, hang, and enjoy!

This recipe is compliments of CDKitchen and makes 4 cups.

Yahoo! Green

Every day I look for new blogs and reference sites so that Green Alternatives can best answer all of your green questions. Today I started reading the Yahoo! Green page which offers carbon footprint calculating, blogs for a bunch of different eco-friendly topics, enviro news, and more. It's definitely worth checking out at .

Hard to Recycle Materials

It would be super awesome if this company was in Norfolk, but they are still an awesome resource for all those hard-to-recycle things. I just called CHARM this morning with a question and they found a local store to recycle some styrafoam for me. Check out the link CHARM.

Live or Fake...Hmmm

That's always the big question! What's more eco-friendly for the holiday season...a live tree or a fake tree? Well, many say that it's definitely more eco-friendly to get a live tree and I agree. There are farms that are created for the sole purpose of filling our living rooms with a beautiful holiday pine tree. But here's something to ponder... What if you bought a fake holiday tree from a thrift store?

Any thoughts?

For the store, I decided to create the utmost of eco-friendly trees. Check it out.

In-Season Fruits & Veggies

An easy way to go green is in your grocery decisions. When shopping throughout December look for the following produce...

• Apples
• Broccoli
• Cranberries
• Mushrooms
• Oranges
• Pears
• Persimmon
• Pomegranate
• Pumpkins
• Spinach
• Sweet Potatoes
• Tangerines
• Winter Squash

The produce above is in-season and there are lots of choices as you can see. Print this blog post out and keep it in your purse so you can shop green.

Fair Trade Festival This Weekend

The Five Points Market on Church Street in Norfolk is hosting this year's Fair Trade Festival. It's Saturday, December 6 from 10-10 and Sunday, December 7 from 12-5. No matter the weather it will be a good time because it's inside! If you haven't been to the market, this would be the time to check it out. There will be vendors selling all kinds of eco-friendly goodies (including Green Alternatives), tons of food, wine, beer, and local music. It will be a good time!