Ecobags: Buy produce without plastic (and guilt)

Here's a great way reduce plastic in your life: produce bags from Ecobags. They're lightweight but durable, fairly inexpensive, and save you the guilt of yanking out yet another disposable plastic bag in the produce section.

These Ecobags are 100% cotton, which means one less petroleum by-product. I've seen some great reusable produce bags from other companies, yet they're made out of plastic. Kind of defeats the purpose. I've been using and washing them for quite some time with no signs of wear and tear.

They also come with their tare weight written on a tag, but they're so light it almost doesn't matter if you or your cashier forgets to take it off. This also makes them great for buying in bulk, and it's one more reason to keep them in your car for any trip to the grocery store.

If all that doesn't convince you to make these a household staple, consider this: In 2011, according to the EPA, the United States generated 32 million tons of plastic waste, with only 8 percent of the total amount of plastic being recovered for recycling. With cheap options like this, there's no good reason to stupidly generate this much waste, or we'll be paying for it later on.

You can pick up a set of 3 medium bags for about 7 bucks, or a set of three large bags for just over 13 dollars. And remember, you can find tons of uses for these bags other than just produce. For everything else, Ecobags has a huge variety of other reusable products to help reduce waste (and guilt) in your life.

>>>Click here for a set of 3 medium bags
>>>Click here for a set of 3 large bags
>>>Check out Ecobags.com

How To: Turn a beer can into the only camping stove you'll ever need

Out in the wilderness, settling into camp, you unpack your gear ready to make a hot meal..... Only to discover that you forgot the damn stove! Fear not, I KNOW you didn't forget the beer, and as long as you've got your pocketknife (which should be in your pocket at all times) you've got everything you need to make the only stove you'll need.

Now the only thing you'll have to remember is fuel, which is cheap as it comes: rubbing alcohol. You should already have some in your first aid kit, which means you've got a nice emergency/backup supply.

After watching the video and learning an invaluable survival skill, be sure to check out Tom's Bike Trip for other cool stuff like this.



How To Turn A Beer Can Into The Only Camping Stove You'll Ever Need from Tom Allen on Vimeo.

Wastecog.com : Turning trash into treasure

Wastecog is neat little blog created by Tyler Howorth. It's a showcase for a variety of crafty modern living solutions, like furniture and clothing, with an environmental focus in mind. While you won't find plans for every DIY project here, his works are incredibly inspiring for turning trash and junk into something useful and creative. I highly recommend you check it out!


>>>Wastecog.com

Smartphone charger powered by fire

Smartphone Charger Powered by Fire

Here's a cool instructable from Joohansson on how to build a smartphone charger that's powered by fire. That's right. Embrace your inner caveman and combine it with your love of technology. And your addiction to your cellphone.

 Now when you're lost in the wilderness and stranded from civilization, the fire you build will keep away predators, cook your food, and keep you updated on Facebook......

Hopefully you're using your smartphone for more than just endlessly checking updates on social networks, and figuring out how the f*** you're gonna get out of the forest. But either way, this instructable is guaranteed to keep your phone powered, with fire, for whatever you need it for.


>>Smartphone charger powered by fire

Eco-Tec: Building homes from plastic bottles

Of all the materials that you could possibly use to build a house, plastic bottles are the last thing you would expect to actually work. They do, and surprisingly well. A group called Eco-Tec, based in Honduras, has proven that with some sand, a lot of ingenuity, and a desire to give people affordable housing it's very possible.

You can go to their website here and learn all about their projects and priorities. Their biggest mission: training people how to use waste materials (like bottles) with whatever else is available (like sand or soil) to build effective, practical structures. This goes hand-in-hand with their community recycling/reusing pickups, where they get everyone to contribute even if it's as simple as finding plastic bottles.  Over the past 7 years they've done a number of incredible projects, from aqueducts and water tanks to full fledged houses. You can check out a ton of really cool pictures from their projects, and other incredible plastic bottle works from around the world at Inspiration Green.

According to their website Eco-Tec also specializes in composting and vermiculture. Their main english website is here, upon entering you can watch a video that gives a great overview of what they're about. These things go hand-in-hand with educating people in impoverished areas of the world to build effective structures from materials that would otherwise be inefficiently recycled, sitting in a landfill, or simply littered across the land. Altogether this makes Eco-Tec an incredibly important organization that deserves to thrive.

The Humanure Handbook

The Humanure Handbook:
A Guide to Composting Human Manure,
Third Edition

The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure
by Joseph C. Jenkins is an amazing book for anyone interested in composting their own human waste (which you all should be!) As gross is it may sound, it isn't, if you do it correctly. This book gives tons and tons of background info for composting all around, and will easily show you how to build a cheap but effective sawdust toilet. Almost all reviewers have stated that it has practically no smell, at least no more than any other bathroom.

You may be asking yourself why in the hell should you compost your human waste? If you enjoy flushing about 6 gallons of clean drinking water down the drain every time you use your porcelain piece-of-shit, please, stick your head in it next time. Maybe it will swirl some sense into you. I'm sure at one point the modern toilet was an amazing technological advancement, but continuing to use it on a wide-scale basis is absurd. And if you think 6 gallons is a lot, read my post on 30 minute showers.

If that's not enough convincing, did I mention you're getting FREE amazing compost out of the deal? You might think it's gross to picture a cycle of eating, excreting, and growing, but it makes perfect sense. And when done correctly, you won't be able to tell your finished humanure from overpriced bags of compost at a garden center.

Even if you don't think you're ready to undertake that task quite yet, I strongly recommend you read this book just because of it's wealth of information and ecological viewpoint of the author. If you're at all interested in improving the quality of life on this planet, I guarantee you will find something useful and motivating in this book. Click here to get the Humanure Handbook

I promise it won't smell.

Weekly Waste War: Newspaper

Come on, you DO know that your never going to read that 1983 issue of the Wall Street Journal, the one that has a guy on the front that looks like you? I mean, yes, it's memorable, perhaps not as memorable as that potato chip that looked like Jesus (or was it a cheeto?), but still something you feel you should hang on to. And then the week after that was printed on the same day as your mother's birthday, and she demanded you keep that one. And then you kept the next one, and the next one, and the next one.....

If you haven't been swallowed up the cascading waves of newspapers, it's time to swallow your hoarder's pride and do something useful with all that paper.