From Green Right Now
Brooklyn-based Green Depot,  which supplies the New York area with eco-friendly building and living solutions,  announced it will open a retail space on the Bowery in Manhattan. The store will carry practical “green” do-it-yourself, lifestyle and design products in five categories to help customers choose products that address the aspects of green [...]

[Read more →]

By John DeFore

Public awareness of “phantom power” usage — the way electronic devices use energy even when they’re turned off — may be growing, but it’s likely that awareness isn’t having a huge effect on consumer behavior. After all, most people plug their computer and home entertainment equipment into power strips tucked under desks and behind cabinetry, where accessing it to unplug devices is inconvenient.

[Read more →]

By John DeFore

PVC isn’t looked upon kindly by many environmentalists, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t without its uses — like a beautifully simple watering device that could do a lot of good for struggling plants.

The natural tendency, when you’ve planted a tree and are concerned about helping it survive, is to set a sprinkler system on heavy rotation or go out every day to water it. But sprinklers spread water far beyond where it’s needed, and a heavy one-time watering can lose a lot to evaporation and runoff.

[Read more →]

By John DeFore

Eco-minded fishing enthusiasts may be aware, and appalled, that the traditional monofilament fishing line they probably use isn’t only made of petroleum but, should a stretch of it break off and get lost in the deep, it will hang around for centuries, quite likely obstructing fish habitat and definitely junking up our already too polluted waters.

One solution: Bioline biofilament, which when dropped into a lake, according to the manufacturer, “will be gone in five years versus six hundred.”

[Read more →]

By John DeFore

Barring a mass return to quill-and-ink pot technology, one way to green the world’s desk drawers is to pump up the percentage of recycled materials in office supplies. Pentel is working that angle aggressively with a Recycology line that touches on most of the popular ways to manually put words and pictures on paper: Its pencils, gel and fiber-tipped pens, and permanent markers are all made with a high percentage of recycled plastic.

None of the items contains less than 50% recycled material in its body (ink and lead, of course, don’t count in that percentage); some are well over that threshold, like a “Cool Lines” pencil that is 75% recycled and 67% post-consumer waste.

[Read more →]

By Barbara Kessler

eBay announced this week that it will pave the way for eco-conscious consumers with a new marketplace dubbed “WorldofGood.com by eBay”. Designed to help shoppers find green and socially responsible products, the new shopping site will feature items made from recycled materials, organic raw goods and artisan wares produced by people in developing nations.

The partnership between the world’s largest online marketplace and World of Good, Inc., a start-up that aims to bring ethically produced goods to retailers, makes a certain sense.

[Read more →]

By Barbara Kessler

Well, slap us with a ruler, it’s time once again to hunt down school supplies, to elbow into the desperate mob with our mandates to secure a thousand pens, pencils, highlighters, fine tip Sharpies, binders and the mysterious “folders with brads.”

With the eco news streaming like ticker tape from the big office stores this year, we thought it would be an easy assignment to find what we needed in recycled versions. We were surprised that this was not the case. The stores we sampled (Office Depot, Office Max and Target) offered only a handful of green notebooks and non-toxic pens. At Office Depot we nearly struck out, looking in vain for recycled filler paper, reasonably priced eco-responsible spiral notepads and pencils made from post-consumer waste. We did spot a reusable shopping bag at the checkout line. But we had only a lone green item, Ticonderoga EnviroStik pencils, to put in it!

Tired of combat crawling through towering stacks of un-green paper and binders, we turned the Internet. Aha! Here we found much greener pastures. Online, even the Big Box stores that had failed us in person had the environmentally good goods. Go figure. Serves us right for expending $4 gasoline to search out environmentally friendly products. Our findings, and a powerfully definitive list it is:

[Read more →]

By Catherine Girardeau

So you need to replace your mattress, and you want to do the green right thing, for your health and for the environment. You may be trying to reduce your overall carbon footprint, or perhaps to choose a product that’s better for your health. Ideally, you can do both.

Unfortunately, there is a plethora of “natural,” “green,” “eco-friendly” mattress solutions out there, some with a hefty price tag. How’s a consumer to know what’s worth springing for – and what’s not?

Conventional mattresses are very likely to contain chemicals, some potentially toxic to humans and/or harmful to the environment. One way to go green is to choose a mattress with fewer chemicals or no chemicals.

My husband and I went the less-toxic, rather than 100 percent chemical-free, route.

[Read more →]

By Barbara Kessler

Wal-Mart Stores is joining the Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN), World Wildlife Fund’s initiative to save the world’s most valuable and threatened forests. The giant retailer also announced this week that it is moving toward making some of the jewelry it sells meet standards for sustainability and social responsibility.

Both steps are aimed at aiding the environment, with dual goals of assisting wildlife in jeopardized forests, and in the case of the jewelry, mitigating human rights issues in mining operations.

[Read more →]

By Nima Kapadia

Wal-Mart, once criticized for pushing local merchants out of the picture as it installed itself in every burg and hamlet in America, has now launched an effort that could build up some local businesses, namely those run by local farmers. The world’s largest retailer has announced plans to purchase $400 million worth of local fruits and vegetables to sell in its “Supercenters” and neighborhood stores this year.

[Read more →]

By Barbara Kessler

Green pest control might sound like an oxymoron to some green devotees who believe in the “live and let live” mantra, or organic gardeners who appreciate that good pests and bad pests balance each other in nature.

Still, there’s the pest you can live with and the one you can’t. Some pests, like weeds, are simply organisms out of place. Like the nest of ants behind our cabinets. They don’t belong there and their incessant forays across the kitchen counter are not so appetizing. So what to do? Used to be, the answer was to grab a can of Triple Strength Ant Annihilation Spray at the grocery, return home and fire away.

That’s no longer the default solution. As green pest exterminator, Michael Bohdan, owner of The Pest Shop in Plano, Texas, tells us, consumers are getting pickier about how they pickle their pests, and pest companies are providing new, cleaner, less-toxic and more finely crafted products to get rid of invading invertebrates without despoiling our house or the environment. (Bohdan’s also the keeper of the infamous Cockroach Hall of Fame – but you’ll have to view the video to see that story.)

[Read more →]

By Barbara Kessler

Looking for a safer sunscreen? It’s not easy to find.The Environmental Working Group looked at almost 1,000 brand-name sunscreen products and found that the majority contain chemicals that either potentially pose health hazards or inadequately protect skin from damaging sun rays. Here’s their list of the top safe sunscreens:

[Read more →]