paper Category
November 17th, 2009 by ecojoe in animals, cleaning, paper, reusing, save money
Cats. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. These fine feline friends are great pets, but when it comes to cleaning up their god dang litter, that is certainly not the cat’s meow.
Not only is cat litter not great fun to clean up (and buy), but most clay-based kitty litter is made from clay that is strip mined from the Earth, which is horrible for the environment. The U.S. Bureau of Mines estimates that in 1994 alone, approximately 1.5 million metric tons of clay was mined to make clay cat litter.
A good way to avoid clay litter, and to reuse, is to just use old newspapers as cat litter. Here’s how to make your cat(s) some homemade newspaper cat litter.
1) Sprinkle some baking soda on to the bottom of an empty litter box. This is optional, and helps absorb some of that atrocious cat pee smell.
2) Tear newspaper into narrow strips (less than an inch wide). Pro tip: It’s a lot easier to tear vertically than horizontally.
3) Use your hand muscles to tear those newspaper strips into pieces that are about half a foot long. Use a ruler if you want to, kitty will appreciate the extra precision.
4) Make it rain. Flutter, throw, or somehow get all that newspaper into the cat litter box. It should be over halfway full (it’ll flatten a lot when it gets wet).
Et voila, you are finished. It’s recommended to change the wet newspaper daily, or else it’ll stink up your house. Hopefully your cat will give the newspaper litter the ol’ thumbs up, and you’ll be on your way to a greener kitty litter box.
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August 6th, 2009 by ecojoe in books, green business, paper, recycle, reusing, save money
The green movement is making inroads even in the lil’ town of Garner. I was in the library last week, lamenting my near-illiteracy while I looked for the picture book section, when I saw Read the rest of this entry »
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May 6th, 2009 by ecojoe in books, paper
Phone books. You gotta love them. Tons o’ wood used to make tons of paper to be delivered to houses and immediately recycled (or thrown away). How to stop this growing menace?
I thought I’d opted out of phone book delivery last year, but just today I got “The Talking Phone Book” plopped on my front porch.
So, here’s a quick, easy way to stop getting “The Talking Phone Book” delivered to your casa. It takes about 3 minutes, so it’s a very easy way to save lots of paper, ink, and gas (for phone book delivery) from being wasted.
1. Click on the city nearest to you on this page.
2. Call the phone number.
3. Hit “0″ when the automated message starts.
4. Ax the operator to kindly stop delivering phone books to your house.
That’s it! Never again will you come home to find cruelly murdered trees in the form of a worthless book in front of your door again. Not on my watch.
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March 22nd, 2009 by ecojoe in energy conservation, paper
It’s always good to have a paper shredder, to get rid of all that “sensitive” information on bills and credit card offers. But how to do it without using precious electricity?
This hand-powered paper shredder takes care of that. I got it for free from BCBS, and it’s been useful for shredding paper, which can then be used to make some homemade paper. It works really easily too, and shreds CDs and credit cards.
So if you’re thinking about getting a paper shredder and don’t want to use electricity for it, go for the hand-powered kind. They work good, save money, and help conserve energy AND your identification. Truly a win-win situation.
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February 18th, 2009 by ecojoe in eco footprint, food, paper, water
You know those lil’ paper cups of latte that you get from coffee shops? Think about how many people get one of those lattes every day. How much water does that take?
Welp, it turns out that to make each cup o’ latte, it takes 200 liters of water. That’s over 50 gallons of water for each latte!! Hot dang!
Besides just the water you see, lots of water is also used for the coffee production, milk, disposable cup and sleeve, lid, and sugar. Check out this here video from WWF for more information…
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January 20th, 2009 by ecojoe in paper, projects, recycle
“Paper… pure paper!” I think that crazy guy in the epic film “Waterworld” said it best when he uttered those immortal lines about paper. But how can the people in “Waterworld” make paper when there ain’t no trees? Easy. They recycle paper, and now you can to. Here’s how to recycle paper into homemade paper.
First, you gots to make your paper frame. Use some leftover wood and make a rectangle; whatever size this frame is is the size your homemade paper shall be.
Staple some old window screen across the frame, stretching it tightly. There, your frame be done. Now you’re ready to make you some homemade paper, hot dang!
First, get a bunch of scrap paper (some call it scratch paper, whatever floats your boat). Also, feel free to add some of the following:
- newspaper
- lint
- toilet paper (gently used)….. just kidding on that one!!
- paper bags
Remember, whatever you put in will affect the color and texture of your finished paper, so for the love of Pete, be careful in selecting your ingredients for your homemade paper.
Tear up the paper into lil’ pieces.
Put the torn-up paper into a blender, filling it about halfway. Fill the rest of the blender with warm water.
Blend the mess out of that paper, starting with short burts, and finishing with a 20-second blend that purees the paper into a pulpy soup.
Do this about three times, each time pouring the blended paper soup into a basin or tote.
Afterward, put in some more warm water, filling the basin about halfway. Add about two tablespoons of corn starch, too.
Stir the pulp around, then dip your wood frame into the pulp all the way to the bottom. Slowly raise it up, keeping it level. Your screen should be covered with pulp now.
Let it dry somewhere. Once the frame stops dripping, sort of peel the paper around the edges.
Next, gently peel the very wet paper away from the frame. Slap that bad boy on some felt. Fun fact: I got my felt for 20 cents, and it’s made from recycled plastic. Ta-dow.
Use a sponge and try to squish excess water out. Once you’ve done that, let it dry on the felt.
Let all the paper completely dry on the felt or some newspaper.
Voila, recycling old useless paper into new homemade paper is just that easy. If you want to get fancy (and these days, who doesn’t?), try embedding some crazy mess in your paper (feathers, leaves, pictures cut out of a newspaper). Your friends will be TOO jealous of your customized paper, maybe even jealous enough… to kill?
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August 21st, 2008 by ecojoe in green business, paper
Way back in the day, I wrote something about how to stop getting phone books. Welp, it turns out that what I wrote only works for some people. But what to do about the hundreds of millions of unwanted phone books that are made, delivered, and immediately recycled (or thrown away) each year?
It turns out that a student in Missouri started a website with the aim of mimicking the Do Not Call list, only instead of Do Not Call, it’d be Do Not Deliver Phonebooks. So if you want to help save energy, time, trees, and cut down on unwanted phone books, just
SIGN UP ON THIS SITE.
If you don’t think that phone books are all that bad, then por favor consider these “fun facts,” brought to you by YellowPagesGoesGreen:
To produce 500 million books [annually]:
* 19 million trees need to be harvested
* 1.6 billion pounds of paper are wasted
* 7.2 million barrels of oil are misspent in their processing (not including the wasted gas used for their delivery to your doorstep)
* 268,000 cubic yards of landfill are taken up
* 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity are squandered
Gadzooks, that’s a lot o’ resources! Do your part to help out good ol’ Mother Earth (and yourself), and sign up to stop getting unwanted phone books today.
Gracias to Tony for telling me about this site.
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