Category Archives: Eco-Friends

Minimizing Your Plastic Footprint: Glass Dharma Giveaway

Keeping the Earth Week fun moving right along, today as promised we have more great green products for you to win, more Earth Day tips, and bonus links to keep you clicking green all week long.

David Leonhardt, a glassblower and the founder of Glass Dharma, the original hand-made glass drinking straw, created his own line of drinking straws to “contribute one solution to the misuse of plastics in our society.”

By now I think most of us understand the over-use of the very non eco-friendly plastic material is a huge environmental problem, one with no clear solution in sight.

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Let’s Get It Started In Here: The Naked Binder Giveaway

History of Earth Day

Most of you have probably heard by now that Earth Day is just around the proverbial corner, slated for this upcoming Wednesday, April 22nd.

I’m sure you’ve seen television spots, heard radio announcements, and read other green sites preparing to embrace the day, and the entire week, with wide open hearts and minds, in the hopes that together we can make a difference for our one and only planet.

Here at 5MinutesForGoingGreen we’re preparing for our own Earth Day shindig of sorts, gearing up to offer a slew of green products for you to read about and win ALL WEEK LONG, in addition to links galore, and helpful tips for how you can maximize your contribution to making our planet a greener place to be, five minutes at a time.

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Recycled Note Of The Week: Purple For Maddie

Today is little Maddie’s funeral, and in remembrance her parents have asked everyone to sport a bit of purple for the day, in memory of a beautiful little girl who left this world too soon, but left it brighter, warmer.

For this week’s Recycled Note Of The Week I wanted to sport a bit of purple, too, and so here are some lovely cards of the purple persuasion that happen to be made from recycled materials, too.

White Spring Flowers

Sweet, unique, blooming flowers wrap-around both sides of this set of 4 note-cards. Solid purple inside.
Card Size: 4.25 X 5.5
Printed on 100% recycled paper.

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Recycled Scarf Giveaway Winner!

The winner of the recycled scarf giveaway is commenter #2, The Green Yak!

Congratulations, and happy! Monday.

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Recycled Note Of The Week: The Craft Pantry

Every week or so we use this space to feature a recycled note or three from some of our favorite online sources. This week’s recycled note of the week comes from The Craft Pantry, a Pacific Northwest etsy shop featuring a variety of recycled goods perfect for your home or office.

Here are a few of my favorites from the shop:

Folklore Garden Cards (set of four)

Folklore Garden is designed using my own original digital drawing. A set of 4 Cards, top fold, blank inside, logo on back of card. Cards measure 4.25″ x 5.5″ & include envelopes.

I use the finest materials when making my cards.

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Circle The Wagons In Memory Of Madeline

Yesterday April 7th Heather and Mike of The Spohrs are Multiplying* lost their two-year-old little girl.

As Susan and Janice announced this morning, today the online community is mourning a loss so genuinely and heartbreakingly felt, but what is more, we are spreading the word about donating in Maddie’s name, so that more children can benefit, survive, and thrive with the help provided every day by the March of Dimes.

You can read more about Maddie here, and donate in her name to the March of Dimes using the widget to the left, or by visiting her page, here.

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Recycling Yarn For Green Knitting (And A Giveaway!)

As MacKenzie touched on in her February 5th article, knitting is a great and relatively green hobby. My mom has found a way to make it even more eco-friendly –- by using recycled yarn.

Recycled yarn can be purchased, but she takes more of a do-it-yourself approach, buying sweaters at thrift stores to unravel and reconfigure. Watching my mom and sister shop for sweaters to recycle is pretty funny. They barely look at the clothes, instead walking down the row and touching a sleeve of each sweater. If a garment feels soft enough to meet their standards, they’ll stop and examine it, looking at the color, the label (if it has one), and the seams.

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Around The Greenosphere: Weekly Link Roundup

Here are some of our favorite posts from around the greenosphere this week, to help start your weekend a bit greener.

Monday Inhabitat announced that MIO will be releasing a new green outdoor line for Target, set to be available in stores April 12th. The product assortment includes eight outdoor items made from recycled and renewable materials including a watering can, trowel, cultivator, weeder, mini herb garden, solar lights, hammock and composter ranging in price from $7.99 – $99.99.

Tuesday Dot Earth ran an informative article on climate change and its immediate and long term effects on polar bears.

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Skeeda Giveaway Winners!

With 297! comments our skeeda review and giveaway was our biggest yet. A big thanks! to everyone who visited both here and the skeeda site to support such a great green mom-owned business.

Now, onto our two! lucky winners (chosen at random) who will each be receiving a reusable skeeda bag of their choosing.

The first winner is: Commenter #286, Carra!

The second winner is: Commenter #34, Victoria!

Congratulations! ladies.

If you didn’t win today, be sure to visit www.skeeda.com to buy a few for your collection. At just $15.00 a bag, reusable bags never looked so good.

An original 5 Minutes for Going Green post.

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Great Green Giveaway: Skeeda

By now most of us know that plastic shopping bags comprise a significant amount of the world’s plastic waste, with The Wall Street Journal estimating that the United States alone consumes 100 billion shopping bags a year. 100 billion is 99.9 billion too many.

The great thing about that outrageous number is that it can be easily and dramatically downsized, one household, and one trendy reusable canvas bag at a time.

Enter three sisters with a mission and www.skeeda.com

About Skeeda

When three sisters from a small town in upstate NY combined their passion, creativity, and concern for the environment, skeeda© was born.

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