Giveaway! Win Healthy Home Cleaning Products From Seventh Generation (10 winners)!
October 25, 2009 by Jyl Johnson Pattee · 211 Comments
This week, you can win several safe and environmentally responsible cleaning products from Seventh Generation!
Prize
Ten winners will each win a Health Home Kit, including:
Kitchen Cleaner—Wild Orange & Cedar Spice cleaner tackles even greasy cooking surfaces and smelly garbage cans with ease.- All-Purpose Cleaner—Cleans and degreases hard surfaces, indoors and out. Non toxic, it creates no harsh fumes. Safe for your family and the planet, great for wet mopping; not recommended on wood floors.
- Glass & Surface Cleaner—Effectively cleans glass, mirrors, chrome and other hard surfaces—without streaks, toxins, fumes or harsh chemicals.
- Shower Cleaner—Green Mandarin & Leaf daily-use shower spray prevents soap-scum buildup, mold and mildew without harsh fumes or toxic agents.
- Toilet Bowl Cleaner—Compare our Emerald Cypress & Fir Toilet Bowl Cleaner to your cleaner. You’ll love the change! Cleans and deodorizes without harsh fumes, harmful chemicals, aerosols or dyes.
- Tub & Tile Cleaner—You’ll love our Emerald Cypress & Fir Tub & Tile Cleaner. No harsh fumes. Refreshing spa scent makes bathroom cleaning a pleasure!
- Brown Paper Towels—These unbleached, 100%-recycled towels clean up spills fast! No dyes or fragrances; 120 two-ply sheets per roll.
- Eco Friendly Water Bottle—Courtesy of @thelittleseed.
- Eco Dough—A sample of eco dough from Eco Dough.
Entry Requirements
To enter for a chance to win, you are required to do the following:
- Visit the Million Baby Crawl website and tweet an interesting fact you learned there. Include your ‘virtual baby’s name’ and the #mbcrawl hashtag in your tweet. Then, leave a comment here, linking to your tweet.
- Retweet the following and leave a comment here, linking to that tweet as well:
GIVEAWAY! 10 winners will receive Healthy Home Kit w/@SeventhGen Cleaning Products http://bit.ly/4Bh9I #mbcrawl #gno PLS RT
Extra Entries
You can earn up to five extra entries for this week’s giveaway.
- Become a fan of the Seventh Generation Facebook Page.
- Post your “Soap Box Speech” from the Million Baby Crawl website on Seventh Generation’s Facebook page wall.
- Follow @SeventhGen on Twitter.
- Leave a comment on the Million Baby Crawl YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7b67Ul0YP0
- Retweet the following and leave a comment here, linking to that tweet as well:
Spread the http://millionbabycrawl.com word 2 encourage ppl 2 fight 4 stronger standards on toxic chemicals #mbcrawl PLS RT
The Fine Print
No purchase necessary to enter. Winners will be selected randomly through http://random.org. Seventh Generation and Mom It Forward employees are ineligible to participate. All entries received after Sunday, November 1 at midnight PT will not be considered. Entries that do not follow all of the entry requirements will not be considered. Winners will be notified and will have 24 hours to confirm receipt of the e-mail. If they do not reply within 24 hours, another winner will be selected. Open to participants in the US and Canada 18 years and older.
Full disclosure: Mom It Forward, Inc. offers brands sponsorship opportunities, which include giveaways.What Is Composting, And How Can I Start?
March 20, 2009 by jyl johnson pattee · 1 Comment
Hi, I’m Daisy, and I compost in my backyard.
You could call me an urban composter, although my home city is more suburban in size and style. I have a bin in the backyard, a bucket in the kitchen, and a small pitchfork and shovel in the garage. These are my tools, and this is my story.
I gather more kitchen garbage than I ever thought possible and dump it in the bin. Layered with grass clippings, weeds, and the occasional pile of leaves, the mixture, well, rots. Slowly but surely, it decomposes and becomes again one with the soil. I stir it once in a while with a pitchfork or turn the layers with a shovel, but that’s about all. Compost, as they say, happens. And it often happens not because of my efforts, but regardless of what I do.
My bin is simple. It looks like a large black garbage can, but it has no bottom. The lid is easy for me to take off, but somehow the raccoons haven’t gotten into it. Husband bought it for me several years ago, assuring me that it is made from recycled plastics.
Regular ingredients in my compost include coffee grounds, banana peels, apple cores, potato peelings, and melon rinds. Children prefer not to eat the heel of the bread? Compost. Bag of chips down to the crumbs? Compost. Shucking corn on the cob from the farmer’s market? Put the husks in the compost. Some of my more unusual ingredients have included wax paper covered with cookie crumbs, the paper wrapper from a fast food sandwich, and paper towels used to wipe up a spill. We’ll add small amounts of grass clippings because large layers tend to mildew and not mix well with the rest. The contents of our pet rabbits’ litter boxes can go in the compost on occasion, but again, not too much or it simply won’t decompose completely. In the autumn, the fallen leaves will provide the final top layer before winter sets in and it‘s too cold for the process to work.
There is very little that can’t go in the compost. Eggshells might work in warmer climates; here, they still look like eggshells months later. I use them to fertilize my tomato plants instead. Meat, dairy, and seafood are not good ingredients because they decompose slowly or because the smell will attract wildlife you might rather not host in your backyard.
There are specific “recipes” a home composter can use, but I’m pretty easy about it. If the compost is too dry, I add more wet ingredients (and I use the term ingredients loosely). If it’s too wet, I start adding dry ingredients like dried grass clippings. But sometimes the decomposition doesn’t go smoothly.
Imagine the following: Husband added a batch of wet grass clippings after he mowed the lawn last. Usually grass clippings in small amounts work great; the heat of the pile increases, speeding up the process, and the grass itself decomposes quickly. This time, though, the Week of Constant Rain hit the Midwest. The additional moisture made the grass clump together, develop mildew, and stink. The continuous rain made any other dry ingredients that were set aside, well, just as wet as the grass clippings. The result: a very malodorous compost soup.
When this happens, I add the usual kitchen waste and stir what I can to separate the clumps of green and, um, grey-green. If the sun stays out, sometimes there is hope for a few dry stacks from the beyond-bloom daylilies and other past-their-prime perennials. If all else fails, there’s always shredded newspaper.
I was chatting with a teaching colleague, discussing the fast pace of our jobs and how weeding and composting give me such pleasure. An environmental science teacher, she understood completely. She knew that sometimes, we just have to sit back and let nature’s cycles take life at their own speed. In this fast paced, oft-wasteful world, it feels good to take action on a small scale. Composting does that for me.
In our climate (northeastern Wisconsin), composting only works for about half the year. Every spring we spread the previous year’s compost on the garden, and then the whole cycle starts again. No matter how much or how little I work with the contents of my bin, each spring I have a pile of luscious, deep brown compost to mix with my garden soil. Compost, no matter what I do, will happen.
This post is a combination of two posts written previously. My yard and garden are still covered with snow, but I’m ready to spread the spring compost layer as soon as the white stuff melts.
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RSVP & Talk Gardening With GNO Tuesday!
March 15, 2009 by jyl johnson pattee · 8 Comments
What’s on the #GNO Lineup This Week?
- Topic: Gardening!
- What: Gir’s Night Out (What’s GNO? Click here to find out!)
- Where: Tweet Grid (use the #gno hashtag)
- When: 9 pm EST (8 CST, 7 CST, and 6 PST)
- Who: JeanAnn Krevelen: @JeanAnnVK and Shawna Coronado: @shawnacoronado.
- RSVP: Use Mr. Linky below (enter the twitter URL and your twitter ID (e.g., http://twitter.com/jyl_momIF). If you would like to include your blog, please enter it next to your name. Make sure to include your twitter URL in the URL line. Please do not enter your blog URL there.
Last 2 days left to enter to win our giveaway for a summer vacation at the Park City Mountain Resort. Entries due Tuesday, March 17. Winners will be announced March 24.
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RSVP to Talk Green Living With GNO
March 9, 2009 by jyl johnson pattee · 4 Comments
What’s on the #GNO Lineup This Week?
- Topic: Green Living!
- What: Gir’s Night Out (What’s GNO? Click here to find out!)
- Where: Tweet Grid (use the #gno hashtag)
- When: 9 pm EST (8 CST, 7 CST, and 6 PST)
- Who: Gabrielle Blaire: @DesignMom and Design Mom.
- RSVP: Use Mr. Linky in sidebar (enter the twitter URL and your twitter ID (e.g., http://twitter.com/jyl_momIF). Please do not enter your blog URL.
Enter to win our giveaway for a summer vacation to Park City Mountain Resort. Entries due Tuesday, March 17. Winners will be announced March 24.
GNO Talks Green Living
March 8, 2009 by jyl johnson pattee · 3 Comments
Gabrielle Blair (@designmom) guest tweets with GNO this Tuesday. She is a mother of five and a founder of the popular site Kirtsy (http://kirtsy.com). She also writes a blog called Design Mom (http://designmom.com) which was named a top parenting blog by the Wall Street Journal, Martha Stewart Living and Real Simple Magazine. She has a BFA in graphic design and loved working as an art director and designer up until the internet took over her life. Now she gets her creative fix by spending her time investigating, writing about, and giving away all things well-designed.
- Is “green” something you seek when it’s convenient?
- Is it your way of life?
- Do you feel the whole concept has jumped the shark?
- What makes a product “green” for you? Ingredients? Packaging? Reusability?
- What are examples of the best “green” design you’ve seen? (please share links) Anything from beauty products to household items to cars to homes.
- How much does “green” play a part in how you shop in 2009?
- Would you pay more for a “green” product? Or purposefully choose a “green” product over a “non-green” product?
- If someone is seeking a “greener” lifestyle, what are the most convenient/easy products or behaviors to adapt. Where’s a good place to start?
- Ever seen a silly or unbelievable “green” claim? A product that has no business claiming “green” but tries to do so anyway? Share, please. (I recently saw aprons touted as a “green” product because they keep your clothes cleaner which means less laundry. I’m skeptical.)
- How do you envision “green” living? Removing toxins from your home? Living close to the land by eating food you grow yourself? Trying for a carbon neutral footprint by planting trees after a plane ride?
