Quick Bites: Saturday 3/29/08

Here are a few things from around the web:

Today Google has taken the market from Blackle while debunking it at the same time. The search page is black today in notice of Earth Hour tonight from 8PM to 9PM. We are supposed to all turn off our lights during this period to bring awareness to climate change.

Design Sponge DIY Wednesdays features a fun way to reuse security envelopes.

Popular Mechanics has an article on the Best of Green Design. It showcases a couple of new things I haven't seen including a Biodiesel processor, and fiberous cement countertops made from crosscut shredded paper, fly ash, and concrete made by Squak Mountain Stone.

In the book The World Without Us there is a scary section about what will become of our funery remains after they are interred in the ground. But Tree Hugger now has a guide for your green funeral.

Malika said she is going to start volunteering for Urban Farming. On their site they mention that during WWII 40% of the nation's produce came from victory gardens. Anything that helps create urban green spaces and increases local food production is a good thing. Great job Malika.

Taking Time Off Part I- Volunteering

Image Source: Creative Commons image on Flickr by OldOnliner

$600 can go a good way to supplement the lost wages of an hourly employee who chooses to take some time off. In this post I'll write about the ways you can help the environment with your volunteer time. Sometimes just a couple of hours during the week isn't the type of volunteering help that organizations need. Volunteering on a larger project can also lead to a greater feeling of accomplishment as you reach bigger goals.

If you visit Idealist.org or VolunteerMatch.org you can use your location or a complex set of filters to find a volunteer job that is perfect for you and your vacation schedule.

Habitat for Humanity has different volunteering rules for different communities, and in the past I probably wouldn't recommend it as a place for environmentally focused volunteering, but recently it and many organizations focused on low income housing have started to address energy efficiency to bring down the total cost of ownership on newer homes as well as focusing on indoor air quality issues which are generally caused by toxins that not only cause asthma but leach into the water table eventually. While I was checking out its website for this post, I also found that they have a series of stores that retail used and surplus building materials. These ReStores are in the vain of many local reuse stores throughout the country, which are hip now that they are indoors. Scrap yards an junk yards never took care of the merchandise they had in them, but these new stores go a long way towards ensuring that you will get a quality used, surplus, or reclaimed product.

Old Clothes Are New Again

Source: Creative Commons image on Flickr by Andy Ihnatko

My brother is getting married in a week. And I thought about buying a new suit or having one made. For My wedding last year I had a suit made and I am very pleased with it. But I have some very nice vintage suits that don't fit me well any more. And they are very much my style too.

So I decided to have one of my favorites altered to fit me better. My boss recommended a tailor's called Luigi's Quality Tailoring. I stopped by last Friday, and they took in the sides, trimmed the shoulders, and removed the cuffs of the slacks by Wednesday. Now I have an excellent suit that I've always loved and fits me better than it ever has for the price of a cheap suit that doesn't really fit.

A coat used to be an heirloom, and it's value endured beyond the fickle sensibilities of fashion. If we want to waste less while ensuring a healthy economy, we need to help skilled laborers such as tailors to preserve our goods rather than disposing of them.

Source: Creative Commons photo by Pavlos Pavlidis on Flickr

In Japan there is a system in place where lost and found items are brought to the police and the owners can pick them up for six months after they are delivered. Thousands of umbrellas are lost every rainstorm, and a few generations ago most of them would have been retrieved by their owners, but now only three out of every thousand are reclaimed. See the article in the New York Times and consider maintaining your possession even when it would be so easy to just replace them with something new.

Totes umbrellas come with a lifetime warranty for replacement or repair, so buy one and you'll never need another one.