Monthly Archives: May 2007

Greening Up Children’s Parties

We just celebrated my daughter’s 5th birthday this past weekend. She had a crowd of classmates and cousins over; lots of fun, lots of little girls in Princess attire. But it did get me to thinking about how to keep a child’s party green yet kid fun and friendly.

We’re very much of the mind that a child’s party should be simple. We don’t plan a ton of activities, no inflatable jumper, etc. At this age children are very good at entertaining themselves. Just being together and playing with the toys we already have on hand satisfied them. As a matter of fact, the daughter of a mom who was surprised we hadn’t hired a “Princess” character for the party was apparently raving about all the fun she’d had.

We don’t theme things all that hard. This was a Princess party because we told the kids on the invitations that Princess attire was suggested. No Princess plates or decorations. Yes, we did get Princess tiaras and jewelry for the gift bags, but that’s as far as it went. Have to keep things fun for the kids, after all. Continue reading →

How Hot Could Summers Get?

Over on NASA’s Earth Observatory News site there’s an article about how much warmer summers could get. They’re talking about an increase in average summertime temperatures in the Eastern United States of 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2080.

That’s pretty miserable, especially if humidity stays about the same, which they didn’t specify.

I live on the West Coast, and they didn’t talk about what summers would be like here. Where I live it is not uncommon to have days over 100 degrees, and that’s pretty miserable. They’re talking about Chicago, Washington and Atlanta averaging between 100 and 110 degrees during July and August by 2080.
The article goes on about the prediction model they used and how it is improved over previously used models. I won’t get into that here – read it if that interests you.

Obviously, it’s just a prediction based on a model, and who knows if it will come true. Who knows if anything can be done about it. But this is the kind of thing we need to be preparing for. This model was based on the “business as usual” scenario of carbon dioxide production.

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Is the May 15 Gas Out Worth the Effort?

I read about the May 15 gas out over at Green Options, and while I’ve heard of many of these happening before, I still find the idea interesting.

The basic concept is that for one day you do not buy any gas. Ideally, you don’t use any gas either, but that won’t be practical for many people. This unfortunately limits how well this kind of thing works because many people will just buy the day before or the day after, and things will probably mostly balance out.

Which is really a pity.

This idea has been bouncing around for a while. I hear about a gas out every few months, especially when prices are climbing. Prices in my area are generally over $3.40/gallon, so buying a tank of gas is quite painful for many budgets.

But there are better ways to show gas companies that you don’t like where things have been going. You can use less gas on a regular basis. Get millions of people to commit to that, and you will have a far greater impact on gas companies than using no or less gas for a single day. Continue reading →

Green vs. Chemical, TerraCycle vs. Miracle-Gro

This is one of those challenges green companies (any company, actually) can face when trying to make progress as a business. Miracle-Gro is claiming that TerraCycle’s packaging is confusingly similar to their own, as they both use green and yellow. Funny thing, I thought those were very common packaging colors for gardening products.

TerraCycle is sharing their story at a site they’ve created for the purpose. They include their perspective as well as newspaper clippings.

Miracle-Gro is asking to see the study they did at Rutgers that shows that TerraCycle outperforms other products. No surprise that TerraCycle is not much interested in that idea, especially as Miracle-Gro won’t reciprocate. Then again, they aren’t the ones being sued.

Just look at the site, though. The packages shown are nothing alike. There is nothing confusing about them. The use of the two colors is not remotely similar, and having a circle and flowers on both packages doesn’t do anything to make them look alike, as once again the use is not at all similar. Even the shape of the packaging for each is different. Continue reading →