Environmental Veni

          So, anyone who really reads this blog (what, all two of you?) will probably know that I made a previous post about reusing plastic shopping bags. In that post I used pictures from other sites, Google Images, etc. I DID give credit to the owner of the images, by the way. I also promised that eventually I would add my own  images to the article. Well, rather than doing that I'm making a new post. The reasoning behind that is that I'm doing the bags in a slightly different way. Same way to make the sheets of stronger plastic, but I'm making them into larger totes by adding a bottom panel and side panels. So, stick around because that's what this article is about. (: For most of this, I'm going to be adding numbers at the beginning of each separate instruction to make things easier to read. 1 1)  First things first, you need to layer your bags. For this tote bag, I only layered two together. It's actually very sturdy and I don't think mor

Good morning, everyone! Right now it is 9:03 A.M. and I'm sitting at my husband's computer with a big cup of coffee. 2 raw sugars and some French Vanilla creamer from Kroger. Since I'm the only one who does dishes in our house, obviously I didn't stir my coffee with a spoon. No, I stirred it with a wooden dowel. No, no, no, there's not a giant wooden dowel in my cup. I'm talking about these. They're plain, tiny, wooden dowels from Walmart and they cost 94 cents for fifty of them. They DO come in a plastic bag, but it's much less plastic than you'll get when you purchase a box of plastic stirrers. You know the ones. They're black, they're almost split in the middle, they're plastic... Ring any bells? The ones we used to buy are a bit different, but they're the same thing. Tiny bits of plastic that you swirl in a hot beverage and then toss away after one use. If you're not a big coffee drinker, I'm sure it doesn'

I do believe that I got this idea from Pinterest? Or another similar website. Regardless, I always have a TON of extra shipping boxes for my Etsy account. And rather than have dozens of boxes in a closet, I figured I'd put them to good use. This image was my inspiration, but it was really just that. As you'll soon see, mine is much taller and a bit thinner. I really just used this for a general feel of the project and did my own thing from there. Mine is actually still not finished. Instead of four large drawers, I'll have the two big drawers on the right side, and then four smaller drawers going up the left side. Anyway, though, I'm going to sort of walk you through how I made my box and hopefully it gives you a bit of direction for making your own! Even though I used my own shipping boxes, you can take any kind of cardboard, really, and cut and tape it into the size that you need. THE SHELF            So, this is the first thing that I really did. I

          Cows release on average between 70 and 120 kg of methane per year. Methane is a greenhouse gas like Carbon Monoxide, but a much higher negative effect. The negative effect that methane has on the environment is roughly 23 times higher than the effect of CO2. The release of just 100kg by a cow per year is equivalent to 2300 kg of CO2 per year by a single cow. All ruminants (which are animals that regurgitate food and re-chew it (gross!)) on the world emit roughly two billion tons of CO2 per year. The clearing of forests for MORE grazing land and farming land is even responsible for 2.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year! The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations states that agriculture is responsible for 18% of the total release of greenhouse gases in the world. Cattle breeding is actually a major factor. "Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to