FEED Projects and Whole Foods Market are working together to sell the “Feed 100″ Bag. For each “Feed 100″ bag sold, 100 children in Rwanda will be fed a warm cooked meal at their local school. Each “Feed 100″ bag is sold for $29.99. Whole Foods Market claims that $10 of the sale goes towards the 100 meals through the UN World Food Program, and the remainder goes to the daily functions of FEED Projects and the production of the bags. Whole Foods Market does not make any money off of these sales.

What makes this bag great is two things. First, you get to help stop the hunger of children all over Rwanda, which was hit by genocide in the 1990s and is still recovering, and secondly you get to use a reusable bag made out of 100% organic cotton that folds up into a convenient pouch for easy transport. Make a statement with these bags: be environmentally friendly and help support the children of Rwanda so that they may receive a healthy meal, a greater education, and a more sustainable future.

For Whole Foods Market stores in your area, check out their store locations in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. You can also purchase the “Feed 100″ bags at the FEED Projects on-line store.

Buying local is ideally the way to go as you are able to avoid long travel distances and you get to support your local economy. However, sometimes we just can’t buy local and have to have a product shipped, or need to ship out a product of our own. Shipping, although not so bad if items are shipped in bulk on a truck carrying hundreds or thousands of shipments, always leaves some sort of carbon footprint.

One website allows you to offset the carbon due to each and every shipment you make, for just pennies a package: GreenShipping.com. This option is great for individuals and businesses. For individuals, for each purchase you make that requires shipping, or for any package you ship to others, you can enter the tracking number (UPS, FedEx, and USPS) to see the amount of CO2 is released during this shipment, and how much it will cost to offset. For instance, we ordered our eco-friendly wedding invitations from a company in Seattle, Washington, USA (Wedding Paper Divas). Once we received the shipment, we entered the tracking number and found that our shipment started in Seattle, made stops in Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, before making it to our home. With the destinations, mode of transport, and weight of the package, GreenShipping.com calculated that our package released 8.12 lbs of CO2. To offset this package, the cost is only 11 cents. Thus, our package will have a net-zero impact, and our offset will go to the development of renewable energy. 

For businesses, using GreenShipping.com will allow your company to help the environment, and you can develop a new edge to help improve your sales! Your customers can see that their shipments are being offset to help fund renewable energy, and they can even track them through GreenShipping.com. What a great way for customers to see what actions their favorite green companies are taking.

Sign-up is free and only requires your name and e-mail. To offset your shipments, you must select the My Account option on the top right corner of the screen and then click Add Funds. Once you use your credit card information to add funds, you will be well on your way to offsetting any and all shipments you make.

We give GreenShipping.com a green thumb up for developing an initiative for all businesses and people alike to make greener choices in their daily activities, for pennies at a time.

The time is coming for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs to be in season, so we thought we would give you a glimpse into what they are and how they work. We think CSAs are a wonderful concept, as they not only benefit local farmers, but can be quite rewarding to the consumers as well.

A Community Supported Agriculture program is one in which the consumer can purchase a certain number of shares or a membership  to access  local farmers’ crops for the season. For instance many CSA programs work so that you pay for a membership in the beginning of the season, and you will be delivered “a box” of fresh local vegetables every week. For the farmers this is great, because they get customers up front, an up front income to help support the rest of the season, and a better relationship with their surrounding community.

For the customers, this program is ideal because they will consistently receive local and super-fresh produce every week. You won’t be able to get everything this fresh at your supermarket. CSA’s allow for consumers to have a better knowledge of the food they are eating, and they even open up doors of opportunity to try new vegetables or fruits! For instance, many farmers come from all over the world and even plant their own native fruits and vegetables along with the typical local variety in your own community. Consumers can support their local communities by joining a CSA program.

To find a local CSA in your area visit LocalHarvest.org and enter your zip code or state. A very popular program in our area (Lowell, Massachusetts) is the World PEAS CSA which supports local farmers in the Lowell area. Tufts University’s New Entry program helped establish World PEAS CSA to help immigrant and refugee farmers to sell their products for a better income and to establish a solid foundation for their future. Education and training programs are offered by New Entry to help these farmers improve their companies and their skills.

Do you participate in a CSA program? Tell us what you think about it!

Watching a movie is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to entertain yourself and your friends. It is so popular of a form of entertainment that it generates billions of dollars each and every year. Since this activity is so popular, we at EcoYourself.com have been asking, how can we make this hobby greener?

Since movie theaters are still far behind the green movement, there’s not much you can do to green the experience except by using eco-friendly transportation to get to the movie theater. However, we can do something about movie rentals (movie rentals are already a fairly green option as they require less copies to be produced since each person will not need their own, but the copy can be shared). Services like NetFlix, which deliver movies directly to your house, allow you to order movies without having to drive to a movie rental store. Of course, if you are walking by one go for it! Both of those methods still require some sort of transportation, but numerous deliveries on one truck is much greener than one delivery in your own vehicle.  We like NetFlix, because they provide you with downloadable movie rentals on-line, and their physical deliveries even contain eco-concious packaging. For instance, their delivery envelope is easily turned into the return envelope by removing one sheet of paper, and their CD/DVD cases are thin paper cases instead of the large plastic you find at the video store. We hope that NetFlix considers using recycled paper for their cases someday, as this would be even more eco-friendly!

To greater reduce your carbon footprint, you can opt for an option that requires absolutely zero transportation by trying the pay per view system from your tv provider. We love Comcast’s OnDemand for it’s easy to use and we can watch what we order as many times as we want within 24 hours from the purchase.

Next time you and your friends want to green your fun, try these green movie watching tips, sit back, relax, and enjoy!

We are very excited to see that one of the EcoYourself.com’s blogger’s previous high schools was just recognized for their green initiative! Central Catholic High School of Lawrence, Massachusetts was recognized near the end of April, 2009 with the “Environmental Stewardship Award” from the Massachusetts Inter-Faith Power and Light Association.

Central Catholic was rewarded based on their teaching of the responsibility “to be stewards in preserving and sustainting the resources of the earth.” Activities include the efforts of the Project Recycle Club’s (which goes back many years) daily collection of plastic and glass at every lunch period and weekly collection of used recyclable paper. The school has also replaced nearly 100 old windows with insulated windows and added a high-efficiency HVAC and electrical system. As for the local river across from the school, a retention pond was built to catch run-off from the school’s parking lot to keep pollutants from enterting the water. This river, the Spicket River, is also cleaned annually by the students of Central Catholic.

Congratulations to Central Catholic High School! We hope to see even more efforts made and future recognition received!

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We have recently come across a new sustainable company that sells organic acai (açaí ) products called Sambazon. Sambazon’s mission is to help locals in the Amazon create a more sustainable environment for themselves and their land by harvesting acai instead of continuing to clear-cut their tropical forests. This mission helps save the rainforest and provides a stronger economic situation for the indigenous people of the Amazon.

To help promote their goals, Sambazon started the The Sustainable Amazon Partnership with private and public groups to help develop sustainable management throughout Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest. Beyond saving the rainforest, their efforts include educating the local farmers, giving the women more opportunities for work, and establish organic standards in farming. You can even donate to The Sustainable Amazon Partnership at NYCharities.org.

As for their products, they sell all things acai. Acai is a berry with great nutritional properties. This purple berry contains numerous antioxidants, omega fats, protein, and dietary fiber, and is known to provide a natural energy boost without caffeine. We have acai all the time in smoothies, and our favorite recipe: The Rio Bowl (a very popular acai dish from Brazil). Check out their products. Our favorite product to purchase is their Organic Acai Smoothie Packs which we use to make smoothies and The Rio Bowl with bananas, strawberries, and granola! You can buy organic acai at various retailers including Whole Foods and Publix or directly from Sambazon.

Support a great company and help promote sustainability in the Amazon Rainforests of Brazil and enjoy the nutricious organic acai berry!

Many of us cannot start out the morning without a cup (or several cups) of coffee. If you brew your coffee at home, you know that using a new paper coffee filter for every roast adds up quickly. In buying our first coffee maker, we made sure to buy a reusable coffee filter from Cuisinart. We paid $14.95 for it at Bed Bath & Beyond, but were able to find it for under $7 at Amazon.com (see link above). We have not noticed any change in flavor, can use it over and over again, and are happy to know we are not unnecessarily wasting materials.

If you find yourself still needing a disposable coffee filter, you can use an unbleached, recycled, or biodegradable coffee filter.

Formaldehyde is a product that is very popular these days, especially in affordable furniture, but we keep seeing warnings from news reports that formaldehyde is not safe. Let’s take a deeper look. Formaldehyde is a chemical that’s used in “glues, wood products, preservatives, permanent press fabrics, paper product coatings, and certain insulation materials” (NSC.org). It’s also found in cigarettes.  Most likely, you have this chemical in your own home. One store that tends to get a bad wrap for formaldehyde is IKEA. IKEA, a store that has many green practices, happens to also use formaldehyde as a wood binder, adhesive, and finish. The problem is that these products made out of formaldehyde actually release formaldehyde gas into the air. For most people, if the amount of formaldehyde is less than 0.1 ppm (parts per million) it is unnoticed. Exposure to high levels (above 0.1ppm), however, ”can cause watery eyes, burning sensations in the eyes and throat, nausea, and difficulty in breathing… It has also been shown to cause cancer in animals and may cause cancer in humans” (EPA).

There are some things you can do to reduce the level of fermaldehyde in your home: you can use exterior grade pressed-wood products, maintain moderate temperatures, reduce humidity levels, increase ventilation, and prevent the act of smoking indoors. We have had IKEA furniture and Target furniture handed down to us from over the years that contains fermaldehyde. Most noticibly in the beginning of the ownership, we could smell and notice the fermaldehyde, especially every time we dismantled or rebuilt the product. We hope that in taking the appropriate steps mentioned above, we can live safely with these products in our home without having to throw them out and purchase new materials.

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Fujitsu is taking a big step in helping our environment. They have released into the Japanese market a green laptop that could be considered powered by wind. What does could be considered mean? Well, for every laptop sold, Fujitsu is buying a certain amount of green-power energy credits.  The amount of energy credits purchased for laptop sold corresponds to each laptop being charged for 4 1/2 hours a day for four years. Basically, Fujitsu is trying to offset the carbon emissions their computers create, and by doing so making their product and company a greener one.

Although this is not a technological advance, it’s certainly one step closer to a greener lifestyle. The question now is: when will fujitsu release this business idea to the rest of the world, and will they ever develop a laptop that is literally powered by wind?

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With Cinco de Mayo approaching, along with many summer BBQs, it is time to look at making beer green.  If you’re going to drink on any of these occasions, you should opt for a green beer, but what does it mean for a beer to be green? One of the main factors is where that beer was made. The more that beer traveled to get to you, the less green it is. Besides, local beer has a very unique non-commercial taste that most beer enthusiastics wouldn’t change for the world! Look for the local breweries in your area at BeerTown.org.

Another option for greening your drinking routine is to purchase organic beer. You can try Anheuser-Busch’s Stone Mill Organic Pale Ale, any beer from the Peak Organic Brewing Company, or ales from Butte Creek Brewing Company, just to name a few!

Drink responsibly. Drink green.