Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Carbon TradeEx America 2009

The 2009 edition of the Carbon TradeEx America will be held on April 7-8 at the E.Walter Washington Convention Center in Washington DC.

Hosted by Koelnmesse Inc./Carbon Markets and Investor Association/Climate Change the Carbon TradeEx America is part of a series of international Carbon Emission related trade shows and conferences organized by the Koelnmesse group taking place in North America, Europe and Asia.

Carbon TradeEx America is designed to connect topics of climate policy, energy security and the green economic recovery as well as the role of the carbon market in each of these areas.

This trade show and conference has been carefully timed and positioned to provide access to decision makers in the Obama administration and the new players in Congress dealing with legislative policy. It is designed to serve national education, networking and business needs of all current and future carbon market players.

Delegates will be professionals form finance, technology, venture capital, government communities in abatement, trading, monitoring, crediting and compliance of carbon emissions. The event follows the successful launch of the March 2008 event in San Francisco which generated 1,400 conference delegates and 80 exhibitors.

For more info visit www.carbontradeex.com

Contact:
Darrin Stern
Event Manager
d.stern@koelnmessenafta.com
773-326-9925

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Recycled cigarette butts clothing. Seriously?!

Recycled cigarette butts clothing. Seriously?!








Chilean designer Alexandra Guerrero has been experimenting with what just may be the last thing anyone would think of as clothing material: cigarette butts. The most surprising thing about the initiative is that the resulting pieces made from butts blended with wool look promising--cool even.

But just how do you transform this gross trash into wearable textiles? See photos of the process and examples of the clothes in the extended.

Turning Dirty Cigarette Butts into Wool

The Mantis project began when designer Alexandra Guerrero was preparing a graduation thesis. Ever aware of the vast amount of cigarette butts everywhere in the city of Santiago de Chile, she started thinking about what could be done with them, and came up with a way to mix the tissue of the filter with natural wool to create a rustic-looking thread that could be knitted into all kinds of garments.

Of course, putting used cigarette butts in contact with your skin could not only be disgusting, but potentially dangerous. So before continuing on with her project, Guerrero asked environmental engineer Carolina Leiva to conduct a study to determine just how pure the material would be after cleaning the butts. The study concluded that the filters could achieve 95% purification, which, according to the designer, means that the clean butts are safe to use.

The purification process begins with the cigarette butts going through autoclaves. They are then washed in a polar solvent, go through autoclave again, rinsed and dried, and, finally, shredded to create a wool-like material. The resulting liquid is also being donated to be tested as a biological insecticide.











Clothing and Objects Made from Recycled Cigarette Butts

So far the designer has produced a vest, a poncho, a dress, and a hat, and even has mixed the material from the cigarette filters with soap to make an exfoliating product. The end-result textile contains 20% recycled-cigarette filter material, and Guerrero has recover 5,000 cigarette butts from the streets so far.

More info:Mantis-Mantis.blogspot and Veo Verde .

Sustainability, Attainability …

By Jackson Kern

Something about the sustainability enterprise has recently begun to trouble me in no small way. Try as I might I cannot dispatch with the threat of a great contradiction of sustainable development. It is a potential contradiction which, as best I have seen, remains something short of being adequately vocalized.

The pursuit of sustainable development is best characterized as a two-front war. Economic sustainability and environmental sustainability are best understood one in the light of the other; the defining challenge of sustainable development is to innovate and promote economic practices which function within the constraints of our natural environment, and which leave future generations the liberty to enjoy the treasure and bounty of our earth. The final pillar is that of socio-political sustainability, which essentially means the promotion of strong civic institutions and good democratic governance which is reflective of the popular will.

In the context of a globalizing economy confronted by uniquely global challenges, all legitimate designs for sustainability must address the greatest challenge of all: they must include a blueprint for the development of the world’s lower income nations. This pursuit no doubt involves a strong element of socio-political development. But it is economic development which, rightly or wrongly, invariably reaches the forefront in the dialogue. Economic development translates as the pursuit of wealth accumulation and ever-rising standards of living and physical comfort. All in the image, of course, of the affluent West and North.

This is where the trouble begins. A study reported in the Times of London in December 2006 revealed that ten percent of the world’s population controls eighty-five percent of its assets. Most residents of the first world are unaware of the sheer scale of this grinding inequality of wealth concentration. The lessons of human tendency teach us that there is no hope of achieving a more equitable balance by virtue of redistribution alone.

If incomes are to rise across the more wretched stretches of the earth, they must do so by internal wealth creation, by economic growth and all that it entails. This means “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage”. In the present discourse, at least, this means the emergence of heavy industry, the rise of modern infrastructure, intensified electricity production, new-generation agricultural practices, deforestation, acid rain, and carbon emissions. But as the specter of human-induced climate change gains credibility, as our fisheries approach a danger of exhaustion and as “peak oil” arrives, is all of this unattainable? Is it possible that we are approaching or have already arrived at the maximum carrying capacity for human wealth that is offered by our finite planet earth? Further than this, is it possible that the present economic arrangement specifically precludes the possibility of high incomes for all by its very structure and design?

Two phenomena would need to be proven to expose such a contradiction. The first is that the wealth currently enjoyed in the world’s higher income countries is perpetually dependent upon a distant and mammoth underclass which offers cheap labor while enduring great hardship and austerity. The second is that we are in fact, as many believe, reaching an “ecological tipping point”. Elementary economics suggests that the first case is true. In the second case, there is sadly no such thing as elementary ecology and thermodynamics. (Many of course would credibly allege the same about economics.) The planet earth is an infinitely complex system of interacting variables and it is my judgment that most assessments of the direction in which we are heading exaggerate the degree of certainty with which any assertion can be made.

I cannot and do not claim to have my fingers on the relevant data which can prove or disprove this contradiction. Rather, I simply posit that it is time that we ask ourselves some of these questions. One can alternatively and eternally invoke Karl Marx or Adam Smith and David Ricardo in seeking to explain the current global divisions of wealth and labor. Leaving that debate aside, what I do know is that the resource demands of enriching such a mammoth proportion of the earth’s population will be positively titanic. If the ecology alarmists of the present are correct to any small degree, the outlook may be very bleak indeed.

Planting vegetables in cemeteries or at bus stops…a new trend?

Planting vegetables in a cemetery or at the bus stop sounds amusing?

Well, this is what happens when two women in a small town realize that vegetables could be planted in the flowerbeds of the local parks and along the edges of the town's cemetery. A revolution, of a planting kind, is born.

That's what happened in Todmorden, in Yorkshire. The women started planting rhubarb and chard and other vegetables in municipal tubs by the bus stop, on the railway platform, at the school, in the cemetery, outside the doctors' office. Their goal was to inspire others to start growing vegetables wherever they could: in their own back gardens, on balconies, outside their offices...

This revolutionary project is called: Incredible Edible Todmorden and it aims to increase the amount of local food grown and eaten in the town. Businesses, schools, farmers and the community are all involved. Vegetables and fruit are springing up everywhere. Public flower beds being transformed into community herb gardens and vegetable patches.

«Our aim is for the town to be self sufficient in vegetables by 2018.»

Local farm produce can now be found in shops cafes and market stalls, and the IET loyalty card is helping us fund our community orchards. Todmorden is preparing for climate change and marshalling our many human resources to fit us for a future where we need to be more self sufficient in food.

If every small town or villages would do the same, we would see a huge change in our food supply chain. Locally grown food is the best, and the idea to plant flowers and vegetables on concrete sites is a good initiative to reduce global warming!

Read more : Incredible Edible Todmorden.

Source: Treehugger.com.

Sea lamprey boom in Lake Michigan

By WorkCabin.ca Staff

They will likely never be eradicated, but until now, control efforts were largely successful in keeping populations of sea lamprey manageable in the Great Lakes. However, recent reports from Lake Michigan show the fight can never take a rest. U.S. Fish & Wildlife biologists estimate 160,000 lampreys were in Lake Michigan this past summer -- that's double the population in the 1980s and far exceeds the 60,000 target level for lamprey control.

It's also worrisome because a population boom in Lake Michigan poses direct consequences for the rest of the Great Lakes if lamprey larvae are successful in reaching other lakes.

Another indication of the lamprey's impact on the fishery is the telltale scars left behind on fish. In recent years between 13 and 16 per cent of lake trout showed signs of lamprey scars. The normal scar rate has been about five per cent. The U.S. and Canada have spent more than $300 million attempting to control sea lamprey since 1960. A sea lamprey can kill 40 or more pounds of fish. Only one in seven fish attacked by a sea lamprey will survive. Sea lampreys prey on all species of large Great Lakes fish such as lake trout, salmon, rainbow trout, whitefish, chubs, burbot, walleye, catfish, and sturgeon. The lampreys attach themselves to fish with a sucking disk and sharp teeth. Then, feed on the fish's body fluids.

How devastating has the lamprey been on the Great Lakes?

The Great Lakes Fishery Commission says that before sea lampreys entered the Great Lakes, Canada and the U.S. harvested about 15 million pounds of lake trout in lakes Huron and Superior annually. By the early 1960s, the catch was only about 300,000 pounds.

Read more on WorkCabin.ca WorkCabin.ca .

Can a snowboard be green?

Can a snowboard be green?

Seems like it, says New York Times writer Jesse Huffman. Its Burton's new Eco Nico that is embracing the green path.



«Fashioned from a startlingly simple palette of materials — a Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood core, a lacquer-free top sheet, 90-percent recycled steel edges, 100-percent recycled sidewalls and a 50-percent recycled base — the Eco Nico, said Todd King, Burton’s snowboard business unit director, “is the greenest of the green, the most sustainable board that we’ve ever made.”

Alex Warburton of Salomon explains the attraction:

“Snowboarders are attached to the natural world,” he said. “They are going to be more apt to buy something that he or she feels is ecologically better for the planet. And if more sales are determined by how green you are, then you’re going to have everybody doing it.”

Right. One could say that nothing is going to make the sport sustainable, it just generates too much carbon, but Bob Carlson of Arbor makes a good point: “To snowboard, we need snow. That simple premise should be driving everybody toward not just flagship boards, but greening everything they do.” New York Times»

Read the whole New York Times article.

Accounting for nature’s goods and services

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

Blueberries have become B.C.’s biggest fruit crop, bringing in close to $100 million in annual sales. That’s a lot of money for farmers, pickers, packagers, distributors, and grocery stores. But the essential service provided by one of the hardest workers in the blueberry industry rarely makes it into the account ledgers.

If it weren’t for the wild bees that pollinate the blueberry fields in the Fraser Valley near Vancouver and elsewhere, berry yields would collapse. In fact, declines in honey bees and other agricultural pollinators as a result of habitat loss, pesticide use, and other human activities mean that farmers are now paying to replace this critical natural service. In many areas of Canada, farmers are trucking beehives onto their farms to ensure that the once-free pollination services their crops depend on continue.

This is just one illustration of the value of the services provided by nature, and of the costs of poor ecological management. Other examples of the benefits nature provides are numerous. Our forests, for example, ensure that steep slopes remain stable, that flood risks are lower, and that drinking water in places like Vancouver comes out of our taps filtered and clean.

As Ottawa prepares to spend billions to stimulate the economy in its upcoming budget, we’d do well to take a closer look at the real value of the benefits nature provides. Protecting nature can actually result in cost savings for the government since it can act as an important buffer against the full impacts of the current economic downturn. That’s partly because the costs to replace natural services that have been degraded or lost due to mismanagement are prohibitively high.

Recognition of the irreplaceable value of ecosystem services and the impact of human development on them is emerging nationally and globally. For instance, the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment concluded that about 60 per cent of the world’s ecosystem services are being used at an unsustainable rate.

Here in Canada, the establishment of “greenbelts” of protected farmland, forests, watersheds, wetlands, and other green spaces around a number of cities has helped to protect essential ecosystem services. The benefits provided by southern Ontario’s greenbelt alone have been conservatively estimated at $2.6 billion annually.

But conventional economic thinking ignores the value of nature’s services. Thus, the ecological cost of an apple shipped from New Zealand to Canada is not properly included in the pricing when we buy that apple for a loonie. In the same way, when we throw away a cellphone or laptop, the cost of that waste is not accounted for. We need a new accounting system that includes the value of nature’s services and the costs of our waste and pollution.

As for the current economic crisis, shoveling more money at failing economic institutions will, at best, only buy us time until the real meltdown hits. A new global economy is emerging from this crisis, and it’s a green economy.

Investing in programs to maintain, enhance, and restore ecosystem services that natural areas provide is an effective cost-savings measure and an important element of any green economy. For a fraction of the cost of the massive economic bail-outs, we could protect the natural areas that provide these services, and see greater economic benefits – not to mention improved health and community wellbeing. For example, New York City chose to invest in a program of watershed protection through land purchase, pollution control, and conservation easements, and in doing so saved billions of dollars that would have been otherwise needed for new infrastructure to ensure clean drinking water.

A few small efforts by our federal government could go a long way to ensuring that we continue to receive these benefits from nature and that we don’t incur the enormous costs of replacing them if nature is degraded – if they can even be replaced. In its budget, the government should fund stewardship and other incentive programs that reward farmers for conservation efforts. It should also put more money into Canada’s network of National Wildlife Areas and Migratory Bird Sanctuaries, and it should amend the Income Tax Act to ensure that tax incentives provided under the Ecological Gifts Program apply to donations of all ecologically significant lands.

If we were to include natural services and the environmental costs of our waste and pollution in our economic accounting, we’d have a more realistic economic system. And we’d see that the environment and economy are intertwined. Caring for one is the solution to problems facing the other.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at Davidsuzuki.org.

United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ontario’s Wealth, Canada’s Future (Greenbelt report)

Friday, January 16, 2009

Ontario and Better Place drive toward the car 2.0 model in Canada

Cars have been important in the Province of Ontario for a long time. Auto manufacturing here began in 1903, when Henry Ford established a presence in Windsor, just across the Canadian border from Detroit.

One hundred years later, having grown to become one of North America’s largest car-making regions, Ontario is aiming to transition its auto sector for future growth from electric vehicle production, while reducing harmful tailpipe emissions to protect the environment.

Working with Better Place, the Province of Ontario has become the first in Canada to take a step toward sustainable transportation with electric cars powered by renewable energy, or Car 2.0. It’s a forward-looking move that reflects the provincial government’s commitment to create jobs, strengthen an economy where the car industry represents a quarter of all manufacturing output, and end the use of coal-fired electricity by 2014.

The partnership with Better Place looks beyond the past 100 years of the Car 1.0 model, based on the internal combustion engine, toward a new era in personal transportation. The collaboration will not only fuel economic growth in Ontario, which is home to about one in three Canadians, but it also will serve as a model for the rest of Canada.

Momentum behind electric vehicles continues to accelerate worldwide, as Ontario conducts a comprehensive study of financial incentives for consumers who buy electric cars and other ways to speed their introduction and adoption in Canada.

Though it’s part of a major oil-producing nation, Ontario joins Israel, Denmark, Australia, and California and Hawaii in the United States, as examples of the kind of bold leadership needed to help create the next 100 years of success in the auto industry.

Watch the Press Conference that took place January 15th in Toronto, Ontario.

Read the Press Release.

Source Betterplace.com/canada .

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Eat more Camel and Kangaroo to stop climate change!

Source AAP

A three-year study released today has found Australia's one million-plus camel population is out of control.

Report co-author Murray McGregor, an agribusiness lecturer, said a good way to bring down the number of camels was to eat them.

“Eat a camel today, I've done it,” Professor McGregor told AAP.

“It's beautiful meat.

“It's a bit like beef. It's as lean as lean, it's an excellent health food.”

The Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre, which wrote the report, found Australia had the world's largest herd of wild camels.

They are inflicting major damage on fragile desert ecosystems, water sources, rare plants and animals, and indigenous sites, the report found.

Camels also made climate change worse by burping up greenhouse gases and turning various landscapes into deserts.

Australians have already been urged to eat more kangaroo for environmental reasons.

National climate adviser Ross Garnaut recently said beef and lamb had a high carbon hoof-print, and told people to eat kangaroo instead because it would cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Monday, January 05, 2009

How to save the world with the click of your mouse

Give your index a little exercise and go to one of the web's many no-cost donation sites, where just by clicking, you raise money for good causes.

What are the benefits?

• These websites are supported by ads; when you click, sponsor dollars go to rain forest conservation, AIDS research, animal welfare, and books for kids, among other things.

• It takes a few seconds !

• It's free!

Add these sites to your web browser's bookmarks, and try making a habit of clicking once a day.

Click below to Donate

CharityUSA- family of donation sites including the Rainforest Site and the Breast Cancer Site.

Care2 Click2Donate- click to conserve land, help kids, and stop violence against women. Log in to track your clicks over time.

TheNonProfits- links to over 50 different click-to-donate sites.

Pepto Bismol time for hybrids?

Low gas prices a pain for pushing merits of hybrid-electric cars

By WorkCabin.ca Staff

Unfortunately, there's nothing like low gasoline prices and an economic recession to illustrate the plight of hybrid electric vehicles. When oil is soaring well above $100US a barrel and gas prices are high, hybrid-electrics are top of mind for many Toyota Prius people and it's full speed ahead for companies ramping up production. When prices are low, suddenly polluting gas-powered cars aren't so unaffordable -- or bad? -- afterall for many consumers who no longer see the sense in paying more for a hybrid vehicle.

Environmentalists have long touted high gas prices as a means to getting the public to adopt more earth-friendly transportation practices. But then along comes an economic recession and gas prices that have dipped to $2 a gallon in the U.S. and about 75 cents per litre in Canada. If you're saying "Oh oh" about hopes that hybrid will continue to gain steam as a preferred future choice for drivers, you're not alone.

The impact of the economic recession is already hitting major auto manufacturers' production plans. General Motors, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, is delaying construction of a plant in Michigan that was to build engines for the company's highly anticipated electric Volt vehicle, considered by some to be GM's saviour vehicle.

Meanwhile, Toyota now says it will delay production at its new plant in Blue Springs, Miss., where assembly was to begin on the hugely successful Prius hybrid. The plant is 90 per cent complete. Construction will be finished, but production will not start. The company has cited the "uncertain market" as the reason for the decision.

In the United States, sales of the world's best selling hybrid, Prius, fell 48 per cent in November -- that's a steeper drop than overall car sales which dropped 36 per cent during the same month. On the bright side, in Canada, Prius sales have gone in the opposite direction. Sales through the first 11 months of 2008 reached 4,344. That's double the 2,122 sold in 2007.

Despite the better outlook in Canada for the Prius, it's worth noting that the financial meltdown hit the U.S. first, and thus, the reason for sales decline there. It has been a more gradual economic downturn in Canada, the full effects of which may not hit us fully until the next two or three months. Will Prius sales tumble here? We'll have to keep our eyes on the economic road and prices at the pumps.... it's these two factors which seem to be taking a toll on a more environmentally-friendly way to drive that only six months ago was capturing all the headlines and drivers' interest.

WorkCabin.ca.is Canada's green outpost.

Icelandic singer Bjork started a fund to support seed companies in her homeland

“It’s Audur’s idea and it’s a great honor that [the fund] is named after me,” Björk told Morgunbladid when she and Audur’s chief executives, Halla Tómasdóttir and Kristín Pétursdóttir, presented their initiative yesterday.

It is hoped that the fund will have close to ISK 2 billion (USD 17 million, EUR 12 million) in capital and that companies will be able to apply for grants from the fund next year. Audur Capital has already contributed ISK 100 million (USD 867,000, EUR 614,000) to the fund.

Björk said she will assist Audur Capital with the venture fund in any way possible. The singer has publicly expressed her support for Icelandic seed companies, both domestically and abroad, in the past months, bringing attention to their operations.

“It was often necessary but now it’s of vital importance. I hope that both seed companies and people with money will take an interest in this initiative,” Björk encouraged, adding that she is pleased about the fund’s focus on environmentally-friendly operations.

Tómasdóttir, executive chairman of Audur Capital, said the idea for the fund was inspired by Björk’s work with the grass root. “It became clear after the banks collapsed and we were faced with these unbelievable times in Iceland that innovation and seed companies have had it very difficult.”

Tómasdóttir stated that a new Iceland has to be more diverse than it used to be. “We especially look towards deploying money to sustainable companies.”

The fund will only support companies that are financially profitable, socially responsible in terms of business methods and environmentally friendly. “We believe there are many investors out there who have limited stock investments to choose from in the current environment,” Tómasdóttir said.

Tómasdóttir added that the government should present a policy on innovation. “But I think we have reached a point where the grass root and the people in this country have become more powerful and they should present a vision for the future rather than the government.”

Investing in seed companies is risky, Tómasdóttir admitted, but still the right way to go.

Source: Icelandreview.com

The trouble with tar sands

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

If you want to be scared, you don’t need to watch a horror movie or read the latest Stephen King bestseller. Real terror can be found by simply firing up Google Earth, the computer program that allows users to look at satellite pictures of any place on the planet. By mousing over and zooming in, you can see what Alberta’s tar sands look like from space.

It is not a pretty sight. In fact, it’s scary – and for good reason.

A recent book by celebrated journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (published by Greystone Books and the David Suzuki Foundation), explores what these grey spots on Google Earth mean to Canada’s environment and economy. It’s an important book, one that every Canadian should read to find out how the world’s largest energy project will affect us. The scale of the Alberta tar sands project is unprecedented in Canadian history. Alberta’s “blue-eyed sheiks”, as the oil-industry elite are known, stand to make billions of dollars from carving up northern Alberta in order to meet U.S. demand for oil. But these dollars pale in comparison to the environmental value that is being squandered at the expense of petrodollars.

The main tar sands deposits are at three sites in Alberta: Peace River, Cold Lake, and Athabasca. The Athabasca region contains the largest deposit of crude bitumen in the world.

All of this bitumen, a complex mixture of molecules from prehistoric life, is a geological miracle with which Canada has been blessed. This bitumen could turn out to be a substance that will help our children and grandchildren in ways that we can’t even imagine today, much the same way our ancestors couldn’t have imagined us using silicon in our computer chips. But instead of safeguarding this resource, we are using it up. And we are creating an environmental catastrophe that will take centuries to recover from…if we recover at all.

The tar sands consist of a mixture of silica sand, minerals, clay, water, and most importantly, crude bitumen. The process of converting bitumen so that we can use it to power our cars, heat our homes, and transport our food is not easy.

It’s estimated that two tonnes of earth must be excavated to produce one barrel of thick tar-like bitumen. And it requires as much as three barrels of fresh water from the Athabasca River to make one barrel of bitumen. It also takes a huge amount of energy to extract the oil from the sands.

Now think about this: each day Canada exports one million barrels of bitumen to the United States.

In the media, we hear that tar sands will provide oil companies with tremendous profits in the future, but there’s been very little discussion about what happens next. Even hardened energy experts agree that relying on oil-soaked sand to meet North America’s energy needs means that we’re nearing the end of the cheap-oil era.

We know that our lifestyles must change. We know that burning fossil fuels such as oil and gas creates smog that harms our health and creates global warming. We know that global warming poses an incredible threat to humanity.

We also know that there are solutions, such as creating a future based on renewable sources, increasing conservation efforts, and rethinking society so that we protect our quality of life without destroying the planet in the process.

With all the money being made from the tar sands, very little of it seems to be reinvested in renewable energy that comes from wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal sources. If anything, we could be investing this money in low-carbon projects so that we won’t have to pull every bit of bitumen from the ground.

When my children were younger, they’d often ask me about the bogeyman – a mythical evil spirit who’d lie in wait under their beds when the lights went out. But maybe the bogeyman isn’t some scary creature. Maybe the bogeyman is simply a man in a suit trying to satisfy his shareholders, make a profit, and cosy up to federal politicians so he can continue doing his work without having to answer to his environmental crimes.

Or maybe there’s something more frightening to consider. Perhaps the bogeyman is us – the public that places the short-term economic value of the tar sands above the priceless value of our environment and our health.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at Davidsuzuki.org.

It’s time to stick to your resolution for the new year

This year, switch out your disposable foodware habit for a reusable one to save resources and cash, and you'll be in vogue for 2009.

Start to pay attention to the disposables you use each day, and switch to reusable options (at bars, restaurants, home, wherever):

Food storage

Forget plastic and use health-friendly foodware. Some plastics, such as PVC (look for #3 inside the recycle symbol on the container) and polystyrene (#6), contain hormone disruptors and other chems that can leach into food.

Did you know that doctors recommend that you don't microwave plastic (!); ceramic and glass go from fridge to microwave and back again without leaching toxins.

Water bottles

We won’t stop saying it, plastic water bottles need to be replaced. Plastic water bottles require 1.5 million barrels of oil each year to make.

Polycarbonate plastic used in bottles by Nalgene and other companies leaches bisphenol-A, which is linked to birth defects, miscarriage, and prostate cancer.

Coffee mugs

Cut the junk by cutting your disposable cup habit. Instead of a foam or paper cup, sip your daily dose out of your own travel mug if you are on the go, or ask the café for a "to stay" mug if you have a few minutes to hang.Or Try this genius reusable porcelain coffee to-go cup from www.urbanoutfitters.com

Polystyrene (aka Styrofoam coffee cups) can actually disrupt your hormones, and the chlorine used to bleach paper cups creates carcinogenic dioxins during production.

If you purchase one cup of coffee every day in a disposable container, you create about 23 lb of waste each year. Try this genius reusable porcelain coffee to-go cup from Urbanoutfitters.com

Disposable foodware is sometimes unavoidable, but if 10,000 persons fill their own mugs at the café every day, in a year we'll avert the weight of 1,517 baristas in disposable-cup waste.

To read more tips on how to replace plates, utensils and chopsticks visit Idealbite.com