Green and Global

What's hanging in your closet?

Seems like practically every little thing we use in our day-to-day lives is becoming a big problem when its final resting place ends up being the landfill. A new item I hadn't considered before is those metal hangers you get from the dry cleaners. Seems there are, oh, about 3.5 billion of them that end up rusting for years at the local dump.

Now there's something called EcoHangers, which feature ads and are made entirely of post-consumer recycled materials.  They're being used by more than 35,000 drycleaners nationwide.

Posted by Dawn

High-tech toilets

OK, you're trying your best to be green, but there are just certain final frontiers you won't cross into. Like toilet paper, for instance.

Yesterday, i talked about the greenest brands of toilet paper to buy. These are 100% recycled from post-consumer materials. If you want to take this a step further, the makers of the Swash bidet hope you'll give up T.P. entirely, making the planet a nicer place to live in the process.

The Swash high-tech toilet seats, which feature a heated seat with adjustable temperatures and optional warm air dryer, will reduce toilet paper consumption by 50% to 100%, says Brondell. The .05-.07 of electricty used to operate the bidet is preferable to cutting down 54 million trees each year to meet the current demand in this country for 3.2 million tons of TP annually. Something to ponder.

Posted by Dawn