Live The Green Life!

Recycle Everything in your Life!
Start Recycling Everything If You Can't Reuse It!

1. Old bricks, worthless? No, those bricks can be recycled, and are very valuable to some people!

2. Use reclaimed wood for your next project at home. Use your own, or find some on freecycle, Craigslist, at your local transfer station, or recycle.net.

3. There are many places you can exchange or recylce your old electronics.

4. Sell off or post an ad for free metal scrap to be recycled.

5. If you have enough, your old VHS tapes can be recycled

6. Packing tape and stickers cannot be recycled, so use these sparingly in the first place.

7. Tools are very valuable items on eBay. Try selling them in lots to save time, shipping waste, and energy.

8. Empty propane tanks may be able to be taken as scrap metal, or properly disposed of at hazardous waste facilities. Reuse these whenever you can!

9. Even large items like BBQ grills can be recycled as scrap metal once the propane tank has been removed.

10. Kids toys have a new life when they're donated to thrift stores like Salvation Army or local churches.

11. Recycle your old prescription bottles, they have a million uses.

12. After they've been used up, recycle your old batteries.

13. How about other plastic numbers, what do those mean? You may be able to recycle some of them.

14. Flip flops can be recycled and repurposed a number of creative and unique ways.

15. Can't figure out what to do with your old lamps, wall decor, or knick knacks? If you can't eBay them, donate them to a thrift store for charity purposes. Craigslist and Kijiji are good alternatives, too.

16. Recycle your shipping styrofoam or reuse it.

17. Window treatments have the chance to live again as you recycle your curtains into pillows.

18. Carpet can be recycled if it is clean and usable.

19. Donate it, sell it, or recycle your television.

20. Stop by an Aveda location to recycle your bottle caps.

21. The rumor has been floating around that aluminum can't be recycled. While the rules may differ per town, you can still reuse it a few times by giving it a cleaning.

22. Reuse your old jeans in these 25 ingenious methods.

23. Why trash it? Your shower curtain is a great drop cloth or apron.

24. Your ink cartridges are accepted at many different locations online and in person, like Staples.

25. You might be able to trade in your old printer for a credit on a new one. They'll recycle it for you. There's always earth911, too.

26. Tires are a must to be recycled, and it's very easy.

27. Learn how you can recycle your roof shingles to become part of our roads.

28. Make sure when installing a new car battery that the mechanic will recycle it.batteries

29. Cardboard boxes can be taken at your local recycling station, or sent curbside if they're small enough in most instances.

30. Save your old packing peanuts and recycle them by giving them to your local shipping company. They will gladly take them off your hands.

31. Your gently used clothing can be resold on eBay, or donated.

32. Good news! #5 plastics can be recycled at many Whole Foods locations.

33. Potato chip bags and those other foil packaging that often are used to wrap up junk food can be recycled at Terracycle.net.

34. Used (many times) ziploc containers and similar disposable plasticware can be recycled usually as #1 plastics.

35. Shaving cream metal cans are accepted in most recycling facilities with other metal cans.

36. Can tabs can be recycled with your cans. Don't pull them off, that kidney dialysis machine time rumor is false.

37. You couldn't have enough options to recyle your cellphone

38. Blankets can be recycled by donating them to animal shelters (if clean).

39. Recycle your own scrap wood and furniture by reusing it, or donate it.

40. Save that box and make some Pizza box art, or maybe just recycle it if you follow these instructions.

41. Mattresses, aerosol cans, even washing machines can be recycled.

42. Bread twist ties will be your new best friend after you read these creative uses.

43. Reading glasses can be recycled and donated, and are always in demand.

44. Old books can be sold on Amazon, or donated to thrift stores. There's always the yard sale option, too.

45. Freecycle your old sports equipment.

46. Did you know your old aluminum siding could be worth a lot of money?

47. Your old greeting cards can even be recycled creatively.

48. Wrapping paper is just paper and has many ways to be reused or recycled.

49. Don't forget all types of glass bottles can be recycled -- wine bottles, jelly jars, colored glass... these are all accepted at most recycling facilities.

50. Your old screened doors have many ways that they can be recycled.

The next 10 years will be very unlike the last 10 years - A true FACT

True Facts, Not Fiction. Its going to happen! Are you ready?

Contains Content from : http://www.postcarbon.org/  

The Girl who silenced the world for 5 Minutes.

One Goal, Different Ways. 

"Support the Green Movement" 

Interior Design - The Green Way.

Ethics not Aesthetics

We all have some idea about what interior design is. It is about creating a look for the interior of your house. It’s about being (what you consider at the time) stylish. Either in a contemporary, traditional, ethnic or minimal way, with interior design people try to create a theme for their house or room by their choice of furniture, fabrics, accessories, wall coverings and flooring. Interior design is a field of design that deals primarily with the aesthetic. Namely, in making choices about what is beautiful and what is ugly, about what ‘works’ visually and what doesn’t.

Green interior design (sometimes called sustainable design) on the other hand is primarily ethical. Green interior design is about what is good and what is bad for people’s health, for the environment and for saving energy. Of course fashion is a big part of green interior design BUT it is not the most important thing. The watch words of green interior design are not ‘cool’ ‘contemporary’ ‘stylish’ and ‘now’; but instead ‘sustainable’ ‘recycled’ ‘non-toxic’ ‘locally sourced’ ‘renewable’ and ‘organic’. This is a point that cannot be stressed too much – Italian leather couches might be the final word in style but a green interior designer is more concerned with whether the leather is from an organic source, whether the wood is from a sustainably managed forest, whether there was any toxin containing glues like formaldehyde used in making the furniture and what was the carbon output involved in shipping the Italian sofa from Europe.

• LEED and the Green Building Council

Tenets of Green Interior Design

Since its inception in 1998 the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) accreditation program by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) has been the basis for green interior design. LEED is continually involving to come up with better ways of meeting its criteria. These criteria identify 5 keys areas:

    Energy saving
    Water efficiency
    CO2 emissions reduction
    Improved indoor air quality
    Stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts

As you can see from this list there is nothing here about fabrics to soften a room or daring uses of colour. Green interior design is about analyzing all aspects of a building’s interior – it’s parts and processes – to find ways to save energy and water, to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to make the interior free of toxic chemicals and to use materials that are the most environmentally friendly.

I will break this introduction of green interior design into various sections for the sake of clarity.

Energy Saving Products

	Honeywell RTH8500D 7-Day Touchscreen Programmable Thermostat Amazon Price: $119.99 List Price: $129.99
	Earthmate EP1552AK 15-Watt Super Mini-Spiral CFL 2700K Bulb, 6 Pack Amazon Price: $32.94

Saving Energy

Reducing energy bills is a central tenet of green interior design. For most homes, the main source of energy is electricity from the central power grid. The vast majority of electricity in the world is made by burning non-renewable fossil fuels. The problems with this set up are manifold. Modern industrial economies depend on oil supplies and are prepared to extract oil from anywhere including from 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) below the ocean’s surface as is the case in the recent disastrous Deepwater Horizon Spill. Now companies are looking to exploit Antarctica for its supposed oil resources. American foreign policy for decades has been focused on securing oil supplies in the Middle East. The other problem is that burning fossil fuels produces greenhouse gases that are causing climate change which is playing havoc with man’s attempts to grow food, destroying animal habitats and endangering a wide range of eco-systems. Opting to go ‘off the grid’ by installing solar panels and wind turbines is one solution. Another is to only buy green energy made from alternative energy sources. For most homes neither of these options is viable. Instead the best we can do is to reduce our energy consumption. This can be done by using a programmable thermostat, by not leaving your electrical products on stand-by, by properly insulating your house, by replacing your incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs, by turning up your cooler in the summer and turning down your heater in the winter, by washing your clothes in cold water, by buying appliances with the Energy Star mark, and by doing a hundred other small things to save electricity. 

Water saving products

	Oxygenics 80227 TriSpa Handheld Shower, Chrome Amazon Price: $26.99 List Price: $64.95
	0.5 GPM Low Flow Dual-Thread Faucet Aerator - Kitchen & Bathroom Amazon Price: $1.35 List Price: $3.99

Conserving Water

The daily requirement of water needed for drinking, cooking, bathing, sanitation and cleaning is 13.2 gallons of water per person. Yet the average American household consumes 260 gallons of water. Now factor in that 1 in 8 people in the world (884 million) lack access to safe water supplies and that every 20 seconds a child dies from a water related disease. Conserving water is the second tenet of green interior design. This can be done simply by taking shorter showers, turning the faucet off while you brush your teeth, by washing the dishes by hand, by only doing full loads of laundry. Other key strategies are to check that your faucets are not leaking – if they are replace the washers, to use a low-flow faucet aerator and a shower head with air holes to reduce the gallons per minute flow. 

As the world’s population continues to grow, so will the need for more water for irrigating agricultural land continue to grow. Already 66% of all fresh water goes on irrigation. If the world’s population doubles by 2050 then it is not hard to see that water will become more precious than oil. 

More About VOCs

• VOCs in the Home
  List of VOCs found in home products
• Eimann Fabrik VOC Free Engine Degreaser
  'Low VOC', 'zero VOC' and 'VOC free' are new buzz phrases in the green blogosphere that have yet to be come fully mainstream. Most commonly the appellations are given to paints, adhesives, varnishes and paint...

Clean Indoor Air

For over 50 years industry has been polluting nature and slowly killing people. It is only recently that governments have started to put in place laws to protect people and the environment from dangerous chemicals. From a green interior design point of view the main concern is to source indoor flooring, furniture, paint and furnishings that are free of chemicals that pollute and make people sick. The main culprits are VOCs such as benzene, formaldehyde, methylene-chloride, styrene, chlorofluorocarbons and acetone. These volatile organic compounds off-gas easily and are found in a wide range of household and office products such as paint, paint thinners, glue, copier ink, marker pens, wall coverings, furniture glue, flooring glue, carpet backings, cleaning products, and nail polish remover. Green interior design is about hunting out products in a building containing these toxic chemicals and replacing them with safe alternatives. VOCs cause respiratory problems, pregnancy complications, cancer, reproductive problems and allergies as well as ground water pollution and smog. Finding furniture and flooring free of VOCs, and using VOC free paint is a key part of green interior design.

Resources

• Bamboo is one of the Answers
• Coconut Flooring
• Forest Stewardship Council
• Cork Flooring
• Before You Buy a Hardwood Floor Consider This
• Reclaimed Hardwood Flooring
• Strand woven bamboo flooring

Materials

The necessity to carefully husband the world’s remaining resources means looking to use quickly renewable materials and recycled materials in indoor design. Great examples of natural materials that grow quickly without negatively impacting the environment are bamboo, rattan, water hyacinth, cork and coconut. These natural materials are easy to harvest and only take a few years to reach maturity. Hardwood trees take between 50 to 130 years to mature. They are the back bone of forest eco-systems. One of the cardinal points of green interior design is not contributing to the destruction of forests in the world. If a customer wants hardwood furniture then a green interior designer will recommend using antique furniture. If a customer wants hardwood flooring then a green interior designer will strongly suggest using wood taken from a forest managed sustainably as set out by the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) or using reclaimed hardwood flooring. With these basics in mind the designer can then create a living space that accords with the customers notions of style and beauty.

A new covenant with the planet is needed

If we don't change we die

In Conclusion - Prevent our and the planet's conclusion

Green interior design is important for business because in the long run installing energy efficient devices saves money. This is the great incentive to ‘greening up’ buildings. For town planners and construction companies working under new guidelines to reduce CO2 emissions the ideas of LEED and green interior design are of vital importance. For anxious parents wishing to protect their children from harmful chemicals these ideas have a profound relevance. And for environmentalists seeking to protect nature from man’s reckless need for economic growth at all costs the concepts of green interior design are like seeds of hope for the future. If only people will see that superficial notions of fashion and convenience are of secondary importance to the need to protect the environment, safeguard people’s health and carefully husband what resources remain for us to use.

Re - Cycled art, Reaches a New Level.

 
 

In a nutshell, Sleek, Modern coffee table with Vintage flair. No finish applied completely natural.
Though this design looks like chaos at most angles, it is a circle inside a circle. Many meditative practices focus on the blue circle.Innovative design using the cycle. This lighting is also multi functional: Pendant light or use as a tealight holder. A Eco freindly initiative which exceeds in a elegant feel.

Order Now: ReMainDesigns 

Solar could provide a third of the world’s energy by 2060!

A new report released by the International Energy Agency says solar could provide a third of global energy by 2060. But there’s a giant ‘if’ attached to that rosy projection: The world’s lawmakers must adopt a broad range of policies that include incentives for early deployment, subsidizing research and development and removing non-economic barriers such as grid access and permitting.

Most importantly, countries should move away from subsidizing certain solar technologies and instead establish a carbon price, a strategy that will encourage a broader view of the energy transition, Paolo Frankl, the agency’s head of renewable energy told Bloomberg.

The IEA report builds off other analyses that have come before it and aims to provide an updated picture of solar technology trends and markets. According to the report, solar energy will be the available and make the most sense in warm and sunny countries — which is a rather obvious insight. But the population growth figures the IEA included drives home the point.

Sunnier countries, those zones around the equator, will house about 7 billion people or 80 percent of the world’s population by 2050 versus 2 billion folks who will live in cold and temperate countries that includes most of Europe, Russia and parts of China and the United States.

The report noted that in most markets solar electricity is not yet able to compete without specific incentives. However, costs have dropped enough that solar thermal electricity and solar photovoltaic electricity are competitive against oil-fueled electricity generation in sunny countries, usually to cover demand peaks, and in many islands, the report said, Not surprisingly, the report touted the good news story about photovoltaics and its deployment throughout the world. Curiously, the author sees solar thermal electricity as complementing PV, not competing with it.

When it comes to U.S.-based utility-scale projects, that has not been the case.  At least not in 2011. Several U.S. utility-scale projects have made the switch from solar thermal to PV including,Solar Millennium’s decision in October to sell its Blythe solar farm and three other projects in its pipeline to solarhybrid. The 2.25 gigawatts worth of projects will be built with solar panels and not concentrated solar power technology as originally envisioned.

Still, the IEA sees a future in solar thermal both in large utility-scale projects and even in smaller applications to support isolated or weak grids.

Build Your Own Solar Water Heater!

On a bright sunny day, the sun can turn the rooftop burning hot in just a few hours.
Here is how you make the most of it. 6 steps for the fraction of the cost of commercial equivalents. 
Your home made Solar Water Heater. 

Contains Content From : Popular Science

Water? An Essential Resource.

The Green Box

As promised, A small effort by the ID students of Raffles Hyderabad.
An Design school that uses a tons of paper, Its Essential to have a recycling unit.
This being our very first initiative and many more to come.

The Eco Circle : Introductory Video

Just the Beginning!  

The World Today - Awareness Video
The Video was played on the inauguration of 'The Eco Circle' at RMI Hyd today (02.12.2011)

A special thanks to a close friend Mr. Sowmitra Nalla of California who designed our very own logo and played a vital role in the technical aspects of this group. Thanks Mate :)

The Start

The First ever Initiative by Us,
Project Recycle at Raffles Millennium Hyderabad!
Stay Tuned For Details.

The Green Way!