I am a huge fan of upcycling anything that can have a second life as something useful! These fabulous upcycled bottle glasses from YAVA Glass definitely fit the bill.
Isn’t this a fantastic way to transform discarded bottles into something new and fabulous? Just think of the possibilities! There are so many different types of glass bottles and the colors, oh the colors! Ooh, I bet blue bottles would make fantastic glassware!
YAVA Glass takes 100% recycled bottles, flame cuts, and polishes them, transforming them into elegant and eco-friendly glasses for your home. This earth-friendly Etsy shop is taking something slated for the trash and making something fun and useful! I am quite smitten with the rootbeer bottle glasses! My hands-down favorite beverage!
I love that they each have their own character and no two glasses are the exact same. So simple, yet so useful! Something that would usually end up in the recycled bin. Or, GASP, worse in the garbage car and inevitably the landfill.
I think the mister would love the upcycled beer bottle glasses – quite the conversation starter. How would I use which ones to pick for him, there are so many great options! No?
These would also make a lovely housewarming or hostess gift. Purchase a six or twelve-pack of these and you are ready to surprise something at their housewarming party!
And if you’re looking for a fun way to upcycle your glass mason jars! I still love my Halloween lanterns! It is one of my favorite projects ever!
It’s a super simple DIY that you can do with the kiddos and the impact on your porch for those trick or treaters is huge! They look adorable lite up and are sure to wow a crowd!
So tell me, which upcycled bottle glasses would you choose?
Most likely you have heard the old adage: your trash is someone else’s treasure. If you think about it, almost everything has the potential for reuse.
Have you heard of upcycling – it is the process of taking something old, discarded, or disposable and repurposingit in a way that makes it valuable, useful, or simply atheistically pleasing.
We live in a culture where it is too easy to just throw something away and to buy something “new”. Taking a discarded item and giving it new life will not only make you feel good but will help our Earth too.
Some great ways to get started I love to upcycle my old linens and clothing into toys for my son, throw pillows, linen napkins, and pet toys.
Are you getting married? Lucky you! Have you considered ways to green your special day? Here are of my 6 favorite eco-friendly ways to say I do – read on to get started.
1. Make It Natural Choose a favorite spot in nature for your ceremony and reception. This way you can express your love of the outdoors and by having both the ceremony and reception at the same location, your guests will use fewer fossil fuels since they won’t have to travel to two locations.
2. Go Vintage Choose a beautiful vintage wedding gown, giving a timeless piece another chance to shine or choose an elegant dress that you can wear again and again.
3. Get Social Create a wedding website or blog to share all of the details of your upcoming special day. If you start this early enough, your guests can follow all of the updates that you can make, everything from what themes you are thinking of to what cake designs you like.
4. Linens and Things Rent all of your linens, silverware, and china, that way there will be nothing to throw away after your big day.
5. Flowers Check out your local farmers’ markets and eco-friendly garden stores for local flowers or plants for your wedding bouquets, boutonnieres, and centerpieces. Most wedding flowers that you see are imported and therefore have an extremely high carbon footprint – going local and organic can make a huge difference on your impact to the environment.
6. Favors Thank each of your guests by giving them a favor that gives back. Some of my favorite flavors include; seedlings, potted plants, and vintage books. At my wedding, I gave each guest a vintage book with a handmade label inside with our names and wedding date.
What other ways are you planning to green your wedding?
Looking for a great way to explain carbon footprints to your children? Eben and I have been really enjoying Zero Footprint Kids and he was surprised to see that there are areas that he needs to work on offsetting his own carbon footprint. We also learned that as a family, we need to do less laundry and turn our computers off when we aren’t using them. It also has a great section on school, he learned that he should talk to his school about recycling all of its paper in the classrooms.
The measurements are made in terms kids understand carbon, land, water, and trees. I encourage you to take the quiz with your child – we would love to hear how you did.
What can you do together to lessen your family’s impact on our planet?
It’s certainly no surprise that a lot of people are becoming increasingly concerned about their homes on an environmental level. It’s impossible to deny that climate change is having a very real impact on the world and the vast majority of people, very understandably, want to try and do everything that they can in order to make their homes more sustainable. However, for a lot of people, they assume that doing so is going to be incredibly difficult or expensive. While it’s true that some methods of making your home greener are more expensive than others, there are enough methods that almost anyone can try at least some of them in order to lessen their environmental impact. With that in mind, here are a few ways that both you and your home can go green.
Go natural
One of the very best ways that you can reduce the environmental impact of your household is to try and go natural as much as possible. The most obvious way of doing this is to grow your own food. Even if you only have a small garden, you almost certainly have the space to grow some fruit and vegetables. Perhaps consider using some of the space that you currently use for your lawn to grow things that are actually useful. Not only will you save money but growing your own food makes a big difference to your overall carbon footprint since you’ll be buying far less from supermarkets. You should also look into reducing the amount of water that you waste by using a water filtration system to make things like rainwater safe for drinking. It might seem like all of this is a lot of effort, but it’s far less than you might expect and not only that, but you’ll find that the results often make it all worthwhile. There are few moments in life where you feel more proud than when you first bite into a piece of food that you grew from a single seed.
Install solar panels
While this might be one of the more expensive options available, it is also one of the very best. Solar panels are becoming increasingly popular on many houses because they not only benefit the planet, but they also benefit homeowners. Not only do solar panels allow you to use far less electricity than you otherwise would, some local governments actually pay you for producing energy. Essentially, if you have solar panels on your home, you may be able to sell the energy you produce which means that not only are you reducing your energy bills, you’re essentially converting them into profit. Even with the, admittedly steep initial cost of having them installed in the first place, it’s undeniable that solar panels can be a fantastic deal, both for you and for the earth. Of course, it’s important to think carefully about whether or not you’re going to get that much out of solar panels in the first place before having them installed. As with any serious alteration to your home, it pays to do as much research as possible.
Change the products you use
We all have to buy various products and it can be difficult because, to put it mildly, some brands really aren’t as interested in taking care of the environment or being eco friendly as many of us would like. As nice as it would be to make everything from scratch yourself, that’s really not a realistic change that most people can actually make. However, one thing that you can do is to make sure that you’re only buying products from brands that you can trust. There are plenty of ways you can find out that kind of information online with just a little bit of googling. Simple things like switching from traditional soaps and body wash to something like colloidal oatmeal can be a great start. What is colloidal oatmeal? Well, simply put, it’s a way that you can use regular oats to create a natural skincare routine. It’s also available in many products from companies who are dedicated to being more eco friendly. This is a small and simple change that you can make but it’s a great starting point for you to make some genuine changes to your shopping habits.
Make simple changes to your behaviour
The best thing that you can do if you want to live a more eco friendly life is just to make simple changes in your day-to-day behaviours. These kinds of things aren’t particularly life-changing on their own and they’re not all that glamorous. However, they are often the things that can end up making the biggest change on your environmental impact. Incredibly simple things like trying to save power by reducing the number of appliances that you have running at once or simply turning off lights when you leave the room can make a huge difference and really don’t take that much effort to do once you’re in the habit. The same goes for how much water you’re using or how often you have your heating and air conditioning on as the weather changes. Sure, you doing these things alone isn’t going to change the world, but if we all did our part with these small and simple changes then it could well have a pretty significant impact on the world around us. Plus, these kinds of things could end up saving you a fair amount of money too.
The reality is that making your home, and your life, more eco friendly can often be something of a challenge. It’s something that requires commitment and often requires you to make sacrifices. However, it’s so important that you remember the importance of making adjustments to our impact on the world around us. Sure, living in a more sustainable, environmentally friendly way isn’t always easy and can sometimes come with its fair share of short-term inconveniences, but the trade-off for that is being able to do your bit to help the world around you, not just for yourself but for future generations as well.
