Elisa's Green Scene

Presents for Pets

I know I am not the only person who gives her pets Christmas presents, so if you're looking for a few good items for your pets, or to give a pet owner friend, Treehugger.com features a couple today.

First we have organic and recycled toys for cats, from a company called WorldWise. And we also have a hemp dogleash from a company called Hemp Sisters. Looks ike some good pet present purveyors!

(And yes, that's my 18-year-old diva cat in the picture...I was going for that fish-eye look that's so poopular now, and she obliged.)

Third Age Carnival #4 over at Orbit Now!

Check out the ThirdAge Carnival over at Troy Worman's Orbit Now blog, including our hip & zen piece on green tea.

I also submitted a piece from one of my other blogs, HealthyConcerns, about online "support groups" that end up helping people commit suicide or teach anorexia tactics. Is this taking freedom of speech too far? Troy kinly included that post too.

Another recommended post:

Marilyn of California Fever having a quiet  epiphany: "<em>OH!  You mean, this is IT?  THIS is life.  Not:  this is me trying to figure out my life...but this is me LIVING MY LIFE.  Oh.  Okay.  I get it.  No, really, this time I think I finally get it.</em>"

Have you been there, done that?

So, check out the ThirdAge Carnival for some interesting reading about life once you've lived it long enough to know a thing or two.

UPDATED: Cool new hip & zen promotion

I know a certain someone who has been coveting a certain handbag at hip & zen.com. I've got a new way she might be able to get herself the little indulgence.

Just in time for the holidays we have a refer-a-friend contest you might want to participate in.

It's pretty simple: refer 3 friends to hip&zen and get entered in a drawing for a $200 hip&zen gift certificate. The referral form is here.

Some deets you should know:

-The deadline is 12/15.
-The random drawing will be 12/16, and the winner will be notified by email.
-You can enter as many groups of 3 friends as you want.
-The emails must be valid (duh.)

Lastly, if you'd like to let your blog readers know about this promotion, we've created this little button for you to put in your side bar. Any blogger that has this button up on their blog through 12/15 also gets an entry in the drawing, just send me the link or post it in the comments here. Share the hip&zen holiday cheer!

Here's the code to put in your side bar:

<a href="http://hipandzen.com/"><img src="http://workerbees.typepad.com/ReferPromoButton.gif"></a>

UPDATED: We messed with the image a little to make it clearer when small enough to fit in your side bar. In addition, we changed the underlying link to take people to hip&zen.com, rather than directly to the refer-a-friend form...in case people want to check out more of the site before referring peole.

Lastly: in case you were wondering the email sent to your 3 friends indicates which page of the site you were on and that you referred them to it. We then provide them an OPT-IN to the hip&zen mailing list. They are NOT automatically added to the hip&zen mailing list once you refer them.

Sonic Yoga

Check out this brief (8 minute) podcast on a new form of the yoga discipline being introduced in the U.S., sonic yoga. Source: The Health Show

The idea is to focus on the chanting aspect that already is part of yoga practice to promote well-being and relaxation. Doesn't sound like it will help make you more flexible or improve core strength though! Guess it depends on why you practice yoga. Seemes to me that some of the hard-core gym-yoga folks are much more into the fitness aspect than the spiritual/mental aspect.

Either way, sounds interesting...no pun intended.

Carnival of the Green #4 is up at GreatGreenGoods

GreatGreenGoods hosts this week's Carnival of the Green, a recap of the best writing on eco-conscious writing this week. The Carnival has picked up steam pretty quickly, and is so popular in fact, that when I volunteered to host it they didn't have an open slot until February!

Thanks for including our review of the new green media company, Lime, in this week's Carnival! Now...go check out everybody else's contributions too.

reThink/reDesign/reCycle

The City of Chicago's Green Initiatives Committee recently held a juried competition with the Chicago AIA Young Architects Forum to come up with a design for a new receptacle to be used throughout the city for recycling.  The designs were to take into account all aspects of recycling, including behavioral patterns, collection costs etc.  The 25 finalists have their designs displayed at the Chicago's Live Green Exhibition, which started October 14,2005.  There were some very cool designs submitted - my favorite shown below:

 

Not to be outdone by Chicago, the City of New York is also looking into holding a similar competition.

Which is the lesser of two evils?

Now here's a post that really got to me: ScienceBlog discussing the use of bird feathers as a possible substitute for plastics in some manufacturing.

Those feathers, by the way, are "a byproduct of poultry production." Let me just clarify that "production" means "slaughter." This would complicate things tremendously for people who are vegans, even people like me who aren't literally vegans, but do avoid purchasing down and feathers.

Doesn't this seem like a bit of a devil's dilemma? Which would you consider the lesser of two evils to be?

Personally, a long as they can recycle plastic to make cute things like handbags, I say keep the plastic, leave the poultry alone!

A Thanksgiving Carnival of Healing at Crossroads Dispatches

A lovely rendition of the Carnival of Healing is up at blog buddy Evelyn Rodriguez' Crossroads Dispatches.

Evelyn always writes so beautifully about the fusing of the spiritual and the earthy. And about how we can do business and do good. I knew Evelyn would relate to our post here about The Zen of PowerPoint, and I knew she would particularly relate to the part of the post that she did in fact end up quoting:

"Showing how zen principles can be applied to even the most business-focused parts of our lives is a reminder that we don't have to be two separate people...our personal selves and our business selves...we can try to integrate our principles into our one self."

Evelyn introduces us to many other wonderful posts, though, including this one from The Corner that features quotes about how loss and grief can make us thankful too, so be sure to check out this week's Carnival of Healing.

Environment-friendly medical supplies

You may not think much about the kind of waste generated by a hospital (and I don't just mean toxic waste, people.)

But HospitalImpact.org brings us a story of one way hospitals can cut down on their environmental impact: PVC/DEHP-free IV-bags and tubing.

Hospitals aren't the only ones, though, who use such supplies. I use them every day. I have a cat with mild Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) and I giver her 100 ccs of sub-cutaneous fluids every day using exactly the same supplies I see on TV during every medical show. Been doing it for over 2 years. The bags I use are recyclable, or so the symbols on the bag tell me. But maybe these new bags are even better? Don't know.

Just thought it was interesting.

Green designers, here's your chance

From Treehugger.com:

"It’s time to show off your “green” skills again, but this one’s for the interior designers! Interior Design Magazine announces the “Breakthrough International Design Awards” where you get to showcase your completed project (or even one that’s never happened) that represents an important breakthrough in the industry."

I think anything that can be done to build greener, but more beautiful, homes would be a breakthrough, don't you?