Valentine’s Day is a week away! Here are some more eco-friendly Valentine ideas!
A bouquet of a dozen roses is a traditional gift on Valentine’s Day. But many floral industries grow their flowers unsustainably and dump buckets of pesticides into the environment.
http://www.localharvest.org/ is a very useful website where you can find local farms that grown organic flowers. Or, if you still want to purchase a bouquet of flowers, look for the Veriflora tag. Flowers with this label must follow strict standards for environmental sustainability.
Another unique idea is to give a plant or flower you planted and raised yourself, like these baby pine trees my sisters planted last year.
When it comes time to actually give the gift, why spend $4 on a gift bag when you can make one yourself from a cereal box?
Remember Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle? Recently, it’s the last “R” that has gotten the most attention. Of course this is a good thing. But just recycling isn’t enough. Recycling requires a substantial amount of energy. Some materials, including plastic and glass, take more energy to recycle than to manufacture.
Therefore, it is important to reduce our use of a material (decreasing the initial amount of material that needs to be manufactured) and also to reuse materials (unlike recycling, this does not require energy, except maybe human energy and creativity)
These gift bags are very easy to make and perfect way to reuse a lot of materials lying around the house.
First, cut the flaps off the cereal box. Then paint the box a desired color or cover it with recycled paper. I used paper from printing mess-ups. Decorate the box with old colored paper and magazines. Punch a hole at the top of each side of the cereal box. Finally, attach a ribbon to the holes to make a handle.
Green Living 4 All 