Eco-friendly Pen

Over on my 365Letters blog, I've been writing about Earth Day topics. Today, I was digging around looking for some information on eco-friendly ink and pens. I came across a TreeHugger Forum discussion about the DBA 98 pen. It's 98 percent biodegradable and contains eco-friendly ink made from water, non-toxic pigments, glycerin (a food-grade sugar alcohol), and sodium benzoate (a food-grade preservative).  Check it out!

Reusing stuff in the garden

In many parts of the world, it's the time of year to start planning your garden.

The garden is a great place to reuse and recycle many items. The Frugal Gardening site has a great list of things that can be reused in the garden. Check it out!

Jewelry from "trash"

Last week, my daughter's Scholastic Book order came in, so she had a lot of reading to keep her entertained over the weekend. One of the books she had requested and that turned out to be one of the favorites was titled "Make Your Own Recycled Jewelry." I can't seem to find it out there on the Internet, except for in Scholastic flyers, but it has lots of fun directions for making paper beads, jewelry from bottlecaps, etc. Anna had fun turning all sorts of "trash" into cute jewelry. Look around and see if there's anything that you don't have to throw away today.

Recycled Frogs

Since April is National Frog Month, this is a great time to create some froggy art from recycled materials.

Here is a Frog Garden Sign made from old soda cans, bottle caps, some paint, scraps of wood, etc. I'll warn you, the first photo of the sign was deleted, but if you'll scroll down on that GardenWeb page, the photo was reposted. And, there are directions there, too.

And there's a Frog Treasure Keeper featured on the cover of the latest issue of Family Fun Magazine.

There's a great Frog Hat and a papier mache frog here.

Frogland has some great frog information and links, and Dorota, who created Frogland, drew the artwork at the top of this page.

Recycling old cards

I know it's almost February, but do you have a stack of Christmas cards still sitting around because you can't bear to throw them away, yet you're not quite sure what to do with them? And, now Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Do you have a box in the closet stuffed full of old Valentines? Why not adopt some of the Christmas card re-use ideas and make some fun Valentines decorations.

Here are some Web sites with some ideas for reusing greeting cards (they may have some ideas that are similar to the others, but I think each link has at least one unique idea):

Make Stuff

Family Crafts

Activity Village

Living a Better Life

Making Friends

St. Jude's Ranch for Children (St. Jude's is a nonprofit corporation serving abused, abandoned and neglected children and families. They also sell recycled greeting cards online.)

Shopping for Recycled/Reused items

Do you like to buy things made from recycled things?

Etsy is full of artisans selling wonderful items made from recycled items. Not everything on Etsy is recycled, but a lot of it is. From necklaces and notebooks to teddy bears and tote bags, so much on Etsy has been repurposed, recycled, upcycled and remade into delightful new stuff.

Where do you shop for recycled goodies?

Recycle This - Great Web Site!

I recently came across the Recycle This Web site. Have you ever wondered what you should do with old VHS tapes, egg shells, floppy disks, cell phones, tires, keys, flip-flops, sunglasses? Recycle This can tell you exactly what can be done with all those things and much, much more.

The couple who produce the site live in England, so some of the posts might pertain to directly to the UK, such as the post "How can we make doorstep recycling better in the UK?" But, most of the Web site is applicable no matter where you live. You don't have to be British to turn an old suitcase into a pet bed or to use it for storing out-of-season clothing.

With hundreds of posts on dozens of topics, it's easy to spend a lot of time reading all of the great recycling and reusing ideas on Recycle This!