‘Tis the season to give and receive. It is a time to express our love and appreciation for family, friends, and colleagues. But many are also looking for gifts that give a little bit back to the Earth and express a concern for a lighter footprint. So without further ado, here is Hippie Magazine’s recommended resource for green, organic, and fair trade gift selections for everyone on your list:

It can be tough to find holiday gifts that the special “hippie” in your life will appreciate, or maybe the hippie inside you would like to find gifts for your friends and families which give back to the world. In either case, a new North American marketplace called Ethical Ocean has put together a great ethical holiday gift guide which will help Santa be a little greener this year.

Covering fair trade, eco-friendly, organic and animal-friendly gift ideas for everyone from the newest addition in your family to the love of your life, this guide clearly spells out what is ethical about each product and why they’ll love it. From eco-friendly boomerangs for the kid (or kid at heart) in your life, to an organic home spa kit that comes in a bamboo steamer, holiday shopping for hippies has never been so simple.

EarthTalk® is a weekly environmental column made available to our readers from the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: I am very interested in purchasing household cleaners whose ingredients and final product are not tested on animals. Where do I look? – Debbie Reek, via e-mail

According to most animal advocates, the fact that manufacturers of household cleaners still use animals to test the toxicity of their products is not only inhumane—why should innocent animals have to suffer and die so we can get our floors a little cleaner?—but also illogical, as modern lab tests not involving living creatures can discern more practical information faster and for less money. Another problem with animal testing is that its findings don’t always successfully predict real-world human outcomes.

According to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), for instance, animal tests on rats and rabbits over several decades “failed to predict the birth defect-causing properties of PCBs, industrial solvents and many drugs, while cancer tests in rats and mice failed to detect the hazards of asbestos, benzene, cigarette smoke, and many other substances.” The group blames these shortcomings of animal testing for “delaying consumer and worker protection measures by decades in some cases.”

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If you’re anything like me, the sheer amount of packaging most products come excessively sealed away in is an endless source of frustration. Even if the packaging is in some way recyclable, not all facilities accept all forms of plastic and consumers often fail to meticulously separate out all of their trash. Thankfully, some companies are looking to make more creative loops and links in the supply chain to minimize waste. Preserve is one of these up and coming innovative industries.

Preserve makes personal hygiene products, such as toothbrushes and razors, and some table and kitchen ware, out of recycled yogurt cups and other grade 5 plastics. In addition to just designing with recycled material, they make it easier to recycle their products when you’re done using them. The Preserve toothbrush is packaged in a slim pouch with a business reply label and prepaid postage. You can mail in your old toothbrush when you’re done using it and the plastic handle will be recycled into other Preserve products (nylon bristles are always new). You can even sign up on their website for a toothbrush subscription and schedule for Preserve to send you a new brush on a regular schedule.

At $2.99 you can only feel good about turning a typically disposable personal product into a cycle of reuse. Not to mention a chance to reinstate the interesting producer-customer back and forth relationship that many companies have given up in favor of expansion and disposability.

Ever notice LED’s (Light Emitting Diodes) are always round?  They emit light in all directions which has been somewhat of a hindrance for some advanced applications.  As we’ve discussed before, LED’s are a major component of the energy conserving consumer plan.

Interestingly, most light sources we have create round light.  Go ahead, look around you and notice the shape.  This is handy for illuminating entire rooms or large spaces.  However as noted by the folks at Green Tech Media, many elements of life are, in fact, square or straight.  Read: desks, roads, paper, etc.

The value in a new product coming from a startup in Austin, TX is that their LED light source creates a square light which will work from a practical and design perspective in more applications.

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The gusher in the gulf continues to spew, the oily sheen and clumpy globules seeping into every nook and cranny of the marine environment along hundreds of miles of coastline. Not a bad time to consider the extent to which petroleum has seeped into nearly every aspect of daily life. Whether it is a product, food or service odds are it was created, packaged, stored, shipped or sold using numerous convenient innovations derived from petroleum or fueled by it.

Disposable plastic packaging, bags and food service containers are just some of petroleum’s many uses. Making the move away from fossil fuel dependency will require substituting renewable materials for oil-based sources we currently rely on in numerous industries. One company working to achieve this move is Michigan-based Fabri-Kal, which produces high quality food service containers called Greenware® and other consumer packaging made from a biopolymer derived entirely from plants.

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What can a gecko’s foot teach us about adhesives? After noticing the gecko’s unique ability to run up vertical surfaces and hold onto glass with just one toe, scientists at UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Milisystems Lab are questioning the ways we think about superglue and duct tape.

Animals have developed a plethora of ways to adhere to surfaces in their environment. Scientists once believed that this “stickiness” was accomplished by natural glues composed of sugars and oils in combination with hooked claws and light body weights. However, a closer look with a high-powered imaging and microscopic force sensors revealed that the gecko foot is covered with tiny hair-like structures called setae. These hairs split even further into tips with surfaces as small as 200 nanometers in diameter. The hairs adhere independently of surface polarity using van der Waals forces. They work on hard or soft textures and on dry or wet surfaces, can hold on under water, in a vacuum,  and can  support the entire weight of the gecko with just one toe pad. The gecko manually un-sticks itself with a toe curling motion, which can happen quite quickly as it runs up walls or tree trunks.

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All a mom wants for Mother’s day is some peace, love and time with her kids.  The typical gifts of flowers, dinner out, chocolates, bath products, cleaning coupons or a day at the spa sure are nice though!  There are some extremely easy ways to “green up” these easy gift ideas to make every hippie mama feel like a spoiled queen on her big day.

Instead of a bouquet of flowers from a florist, why not a handpicked arrangement of wildflowers?  Even small kids can get in on the action and feel included in mommy’s special gift from the heart.  If you’re still stuck in a blanket of snow like me, try planted herbs that can grow on her windowsill.  She’ll surely remember your thoughtfulness everytime she uses the herbs in her cooking!  Potted flowers, bedding plants, potted tomato plants and even trees also make great alternatives to a store bought bouquet.  Another great idea for kids is to make paper flowers out of scrap paper around the house.  Have them write a mushy thought about their mom on each flower.

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Sometimes all it takes is for a business to possess the constitution and integrity to change a consumer behavior.  Sometimes this is risky, sometimes it doesn’t pay off, and sometimes it pays off handsomely.  I’m talking, in this instance, about Unpackaged, a store that sells foods without any wasteful packaging.

Think of those thin plastic bags in American grocery stores.  People shove virtually everything into a bag, bring them to the checkout, then put them in more bags.  Long since a target for environmentalists, the incidental packaging of consumables is a large source of landfill waste.

You have no-doubt seen the reusable grocery bags first utilized by healthfood stores decades ago.  Unpackaged took the next step, and required you to bring your own containers.  Whether a reusable bag, jar, tupperware, whatever.  You must come prepared.

Of course, Unpackaged takes their efforts all the way to the finish line by sourcing organic and local foods.

This is the exact choice many global businesses need to make.  I challenge businesses to make the scary decision and move into the future.  A future where there is no more waste than can be sustained by our world.  The impetus for change is in the hands of the consumer.  Challenge the next business leader you see to take a bold, risky and forward-thinking step into the future.

Image credit: Web Ecoist

Electric cars are coming into their own with the announcement of the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf, the first two all-electric consumer market vehicles available.

Although electric cars are not new (read: Who Killed the Electric Car) they are growing exponentially as the only legitimate solution for removing the top cause of greenhouse gas emmissions.

FedEx announced recently that they will be converting a (very) small part of their fleet to all-electric vehicles. Specifically, four vehicles will be added to their Los Angeles fleet.

In line with my previous post on not buying a hybrid, FedEx is doing a good job of utilizing their existing fleet by converting them to hybrids.

FedEx is also selling the concept with an informative website, allowing users to track the FedEx truck as it makes it’s way across Route 66 on a promotional tour.  FedEx is also taking the initiative up a notch by advocating for a complete electric vehicle infrastructure and “homegrown energy production.”

Read more at the official FedEx site.

(source: EcoGeek)

It wasn’t that long ago that consumers interested in owning a hybrid car didn’t have a lot of options – the Toyota Prius was about it. Those days are over. Hybrid models are available from SUV’s to compacts, made almost all major car makers.

But are all hybrids made equal? Can a hybrid SUV really be an environmentally friendly choice? Perhaps not when compared to the latest Prius, but some SUV models have made large strides forward when compared to their non-hybrid counterparts. So how do you make sense of the growing choices of hybrid models and environmental claims of “greener” (or at least more efficient) driving?

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