Green Diva Meg showing off her English Retreads bag

I got this English Retreads bag from one of my favorite green cyber-shopping spots, BuyGreen.com. I love BuyGreen.com because they do a fairly thorough evaluation of their products, reviewing and rating all aspects of a product’s sustainability.  This bag got 49 on its sustainability score (see the details of how this bag was rated).

This bag is very simple, compact and works for basics – small wallet, some makeup, keys and cell phone. While it doesn’t have all those organizational bells, whistles and zippers on the inside, it pays off in ‘feel good’ points.

Who would’ve thought to make something so cool from stinky used tires?

Heather English, founder of English Retreads, came up with the idea while floating in an inner tube down a river in Colorado (all great ideas come from pure, relaxing moments like Heather’s!). Heather was and presumably still is a devoted vegan and wanted to find a great purse that didn’t involve leather. Taking the seemingly endless supply of tire inner tubes that plague our landfills and turning them into useful and stylish items is a brilliant stroke of recycling creativity.

In the 2 or 3 months I’ve been using this bag, I’ve had some pretty interesting conversations with strangers. WARNING: Don’t wear this bag if you don’t want to meet people! Actually, a few of my friends have already been inspired to purchase bags by English Retreads!

eat. blog. be merry!
GD Meg

Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle, Inc. a highly creative and successful super-sustainable company that was born of worm poo and plastic soda bottles.

This Hungarian-born, Princeton dropout has been wildly successful as his original organic fertilizer idea has blossomed into a new business category that he calls Sponsored Waste.

Tom has teamed up with various manufacturers, such as Stonyfield Farms, Clif Bar, Kraft Foods, and Frito Lay to collect packaging waste to create various products such as clever bags for fashion and practical use. He does a lot to help highlight causes in his highly PR savvy process and works often with school groups and other community organizations.

If you haven’t heard of Tom, you’ve probably heard about TerraCycle.

Tune in to hear this brilliant young entrepreneur who is creating a new standard for business and the manufacturing life cycle.

Thursday, April 16, 2009
7 – 8pm EST
HomeGrownRadioNJ.org

Send in questions via comment here or IM us during the show. I understand some of you were trying to IM us last week and didn’t get through. I’ll make sure to turn it on! IM instructions are on the upper left corner of the homegrownradionj.org website.

eat. blog. be merry!
GD Meg

Back to my office, where so much of my daily life seems to take place these days. This great bag is just one of the cool green products I’ve gotten to review that has been useful in making my work routine more interesting.

I’ve been using The Better Bag as my brief case since I got it a few weeks ago. It works great, but I feel better about the story behind the bag.

This bag is a triple-winner, it is made from recycled materials, is of course reusable and is fully recyclable. Apparently there are a lot of bags that are made with mixed fabric, which are called co-mingled or contaminated and are not easily recyclable if they are at all. While I haven’t started recycling any of my reusable bags yet, I feel good about the fact that not only was it manufactured using recycled materials, when it’s time comes to put it to rest, it won’t be clogging any landfills for my grand children’s lifetimes.

These are relatively inexpensive bags considering they are scheduled to last a long time (I’ll keep you posted on that). Order The Better Bag at Amazon.com, they offer great incremental discounts for even small orders of 2 or more.

eat. blog. be merry!
GD Meg