Going Green in 5 Days or Less with Modern Girl Style

Image: Shop Beau Soleil Spring 2008

Welcome to Green Week at Modern Girl Style! In the following 5 days, get ready to reduce, recycle, & renew your lifestyle in one week or less. This week will be packed with tons of info & links on eco shopping, green makeup, smart health tips, and more!  On Tuesday April 22, Earth Day, Modern Girl Style is celebrating with a special interview with Gorgeously Green author, Sophie Uliano, who happens to be her first appearance on Oprah's Earth Day Show with Julia Roberts! Hola!

To kick off the week, why not start with the basics.

What does it mean to be Green?

Modern Girl Style defines the Green living as an individual's attempt to reduce, recycle, and renew common materials in order to help our environment.

image: "Pick Your Cotton Carefully" in association with Environmental Justice Foundation

Last November, Dell held an eco-innovation booth at the Oracle OpenWorld 2007 to ask people that very question.  Here is a quick video with some interesting thoughts on what being Green means to people on the streets.

Going Green Tip # 1

Stop using paper or plastic at the grocery store!
Yes, that sounds like tons of hard work to remember to bring your own bags to the store, but the benefit to the environment is tremendous!  WikiAnswers has this to say:

"Basically plastic bags are not biodegradable. Plastic bags thrown out as waste on lands do not decompose and remain as such for a long time. This blocks the rain water getting percolated into land and instead makes to run on the surface of land causing erosion of soil, carrying various pollutants to nearby water bodies resulting in pollution of water. Erosion of soil in hilly areas makes the roots of trees exposed thereby trees loose their strength to survive. Further erosion of soil causes washing off vegetation nutrients available in the soil. As percolation of rain water into land is prevented by plastic bags, recharge of ground water is also affected. If plastic bags are burnt, they emit hazardous gases causing air pollution. At times, cattles happen to swallow thrown out plastic bags while they are grazing making them affected by digestion problems causing death. Besides these ill effects of plastic bags, lot of energy is being used in manufacturing plastic bags and chemical effluents are coming out and mixed with domestic sewage which is quite not feasible for treating or recycling with an affordable cost. Thus plastic bags are largely affecting environment in many ways."

Hello, this is just another reason to own more bags!

Modern Girl Style suggest buying something that reflects your style so that you'll love toting bags to the store. The Anya Hindmarch "I'm Not A Plastic Bag", pictured below, was all the rage last year with women lined up for hours in London to try & snatch one of these Green bags!

In fact, Macy's has just announced that their shopping bags are going green by being made of recycled bags! That's the sort of effort that this world needs to make a difference.

As though the thought of shopping for new bags wasn't already super-fab, you can score a totally free tote!

Get a FREE green shopping bag with purchase of Gorgeously Green!

Now, how are you going to make your mark?

Comments

[Ramona Russell]

I created a company in memory of my 28 year old sister that died from breast cancer last year that supports giving back through shopping. Uptown Liz (www.uptownliz.com) promotes products from companies whose proceeds directly give back to charitable organizations. We have green products that support the evironment as well!