Recently I noticed that they have a really nice blog with green news, tips, and store updates, and so, given my tea habit, this blog post about being less wasteful in the tea making process was pretty cool.   Here are some of their tips:

When it comes to tea, don’t let those cardboard boxes and and single-use disposable bags cramp your style – you don’t need ‘em! Here’s how to cut them out of the picture (and the trash can):

• Buy tea in bulk (in.gredients-style) and store it in a reusable container – a mason jar works great; so do tins and other jars.
• Use muslin tea bags – these are washable and reusable! Plus you have control over how much tea you want to steep, and can add other ingredients if you like.
• Go bag-free by using a tea pot with a built in tea infuser (like the one pictured above), or use a french press.

When finished, spent tea makes great compost!

You can also get a tea infuser/ball for a single cup, and that way you don’t have to wash out a tea pot as well once you’ve made tea for yourself.

Check out their website for other helpful tips!

The article also notes that you don’t even need to spend money to be greener while on the trail – there’s a new water fountain on the trail near the Mopac Bridge.   There article doesn’t go into the locations of other existing water fountains, but there are quite a few – I believe there’s one near the pedestrian bridge on the North side of the river, one near the pedestrian bridge on the South side of the river, one on the North side of the river just West of the I-35 bridge,  and one of the South side of the river just East of Riverside.

Another green option is to but a water bottle at a running store, which is more bulky, but allows you to run in areas that aren’t guaranteed to have water. Many of them come in a little carrier that can be strapped around your waste,  and some have a pouch so you can carry keys, money, etc.  Just one more idea!

Here’s an excerpt from the 360 article about Adreinne:

Adreinne Oujezdsky, 28, grew up running the downtown trail. The idea for reusable cups popped into her mind after she ran past the water coolers three years ago and wondered how many cups she’d use in her lifetime.

That led to some research on how many single-use cups are used at races around the country. She found out that the top 50 U.S. races alone generate more than 660,000 pounds of disposable cups, which mostly wind up in landfills.

“I’d love to see a day when the cups aren’t overflowing the trash bins — both on our trail and our streets after local races,” Oujezdsky says.

Oujezdsky, who has a background in advertising, dug into her bank account and begged friends and family for seed money, eventually collecting $46,000 to pursue her idea for an easy-to-carry cup that could be used over and over.

She purchased a molding machine from China and had it shipped to Boerne, where the cups are now made.

She calls her invention the SipECup. (E stands for environment.) The cone-shaped cups look similar to the paper ones available now on the trail, only they’re made of flexible material similar to what’s used in the yellow LiveStrong wristbands.

Eventually, she’d like to see race organizers use the cups at events. Sponsors could advertise on them, and runners would either keep or toss the cups, which would be gathered, then washed or recycled.

She hopes runners think about the environment the next time they stop for water.

“I wanted it to be easy. Being an athlete is hard enough. It should be easy to do good,” Oujezdsky says.

The blue SipECups sell for $5 for a pack of two and are available at RunTex, Rogue, Mellow Johnny’s and Bettysport. Expect to see a pink version at the Komen Race for the Cure next year.

Once it opens in April 2012, the new Palms Car Wash will have the ability to recycle 100 percent of the water it uses.

Austin’s second full-service Palms Car Wash is under construction at 13695 US 183, next door to the former Hooters of Austin, which is being transformed into Cover 2 restaurant and bar. The car wash will feature an exterior drive-thru express wash and interior and detail services. Customers may also use 12 vacuum stations free of charge.

“We want to be as eco-friendly we can,” said David Beseda, co-owner of Palms Car Wash with Russel Moore. “We use non-toxic, biodegradable cleaners. It is a complicated, expensive process [to recycle water].”Beseda and Moore own the Palms Car Wash at 6811 Brodie Lane. Alone, Moore owns several car wash locations in Austin, but this is the second location the pair will have opened.

The emphasis at TreeHouse, 4477 S. Lamar Blvd. , is on green products — everything from nontoxic paints to reclaimed wood floors to insulation made of recycled denim, newspapers and beer and wine bottles.

“We thought Austin deserved its own home improvement store,” co-founder Kevin Graham said. “This is very Austin — the Whole Foods version of a home improvement store.”

Products were selected after a careful, months-long vetting process that examines their performance, sustainability and impact on a user’s health and the manufacturer’s record of corporate responsibility.

“It’s a very intricate process that uses a database with a lot of questions,” co-founder Jason Ballard said. “Behind every product on the shelves, there’s some good-hearted person trying to save the earth.”

“We’re truth tellers and green promoters,” co-founder Evan Loomis said.

Check out their website here and learn more about their products and services.  I’m definitely curious to check it out!

Generally I wear black pumps to work every single day, although sometimes I’ll change into black flats if I’m going to walk to lunch or even just walk to my car.  Still, even with mostly just indoor wear, the heels of my pumps generally don’t last too long and before I know it, the rubber tip on my heels start to wear away and the metal post that makes up the heel of a pair of high heels eventually starts to show through.  At that point the metal post can get caught on carpets, dent hardwood floors, and just looks pretty bad in general.

This happened somewhat recently to a  pair of black, chunky, Steve Madden pumps.  Since I had worn these shoes comfortably for almost a year and a half (!) before they started to look really bad, I thought it would be worth trying to save them.  I also had a pair of sandals whose soles were separating, so one day at lunch I stopped by the Austin Shoe Hospital on Congress to see what they could do with these two pairs.

I was told that it would cost $20 to fix my sandals, and advised it probably wasn’t worth it. Even repaired, the sandals would have still been very flimsy and impractical for long walks, so I decided to take their advice and not fix them.  I appreciated that, rather than try to make $20, they were upfront about the value of fixing them.  Instead, I agreed to just have my pumps fixed, which they said they could fix for $10 – since those shoes had always been so comfortable (or as comfortable as high heels can be), it seemed worth it to have them fixed.

My shoes were ready in 3 days, and they look good!  You can still tell by looking at the inside of the shoe that they’re old, but from the outside they almost look like brand new shoes.  Not only did they fix the heels, the people at Austin Shoe Hospital shined my shoes as well.  Good as new, and if they last for another 1.5 years it will certainly be money well spent!

Composting isn’t a new idea, of course, but few people may know that for more than 20 years, Organics by Gosh has been the leader in commercial composting in Central Texas—offering service to a variety of businesses and industries from hotels, schools and cafeterias to manufacturers and grocery stores. The company hauls just about anything that was once alive, including plants, trees, grass, shrubs and food. They collect it and place it in mound upon mound of composting earth. The finished product results in an entire retail selection of potting soils, fertilizer and decorative “stone,” much of which is sold to landscaping companies as well as area nurseries and large home-improvement stores such as Home Depot and Lowe’s.

Owner Phil Gosh has been in the composting business most of his life—taking over his father’s Houston-area business in the 1970s and launching Organics by Gosh in Austin in 1995. For Gosh, the business is simply about managing our resources well. “We’ve created a program that allows us to take a product and create a higher value out of it,” says Gosh. “All of our composting material comes from within a 30-mile radius to keep our energy local. Instead of trash, it’s a resource…a treasure.”

Just this year, Gosh’s business became the first in Central Texas to receive the necessary permits to compost meats, fats and dairy products, and has since launched a food waste-diversion program to service restaurants and hotels. “This has put us into a much bigger arena,” says Gosh’s organic recycling coordinator Gina Spratt. “Food coming out of our waste stream is a big deal. It’s the next big step, besides single-stream recycling, and we’re excited to put that onto the plants of Austin instead of having these things going into our landfills.”

Making a difference in Austin is a primary goal for Gosh. The City of Austin has an official goal of diverting waste from landfills and incinerators by 75 percent by 2020, and 90 percent by 2040. Organics are believed to make up between 50 to 70 percent of our overall waste stream. Taking everything from backyard land debris to food waste out of the general waste-disposal stream would leave significantly less to pile up in landfills.

Read the whole article!

So far the business primarily focuses on making rain barrels out of food-grade barrels (see above) and garden planters out of old fencing. But they’ve also started designing some furniture, like this sturdy bench, also made out of old fencing, which would be perfect in a backyard garden. (Check them out on facebook and “like” their page and you’ll also be able to see an Adirondack chair Rick recently built out of old fencing, which I’m really coveting.)

The fencing they use would otherwise be burned or hauled to a dump (like now when we’re in a severe drought), so  it’s great they’ve found a new use for it.  Visiting their stand made me really want to get gutters on our house so we can have a rain barrel! The rain barrels Rick and Katie make sell for $45 each, which compared to what you see at garden stores and Whole Foods, is a much better price.  Check them out at the Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market, or contact them if there’s a special project you have in mind!

[P]olystyrene is petroleum-based, contains potentially carcinogenic components and takes eons to biodegrade. Currently, recycling markets for polystyrene are extremely limited, so using less—or none at all!—is the best policy. For instance, take home your restaurant leftovers in a reusable tupperware container. Use your own to-go coffee mug for that mocha latte.

But there are some recycling options. If you get a package with polystyrene peanuts, take them to a packing store such as FedEx orUPS. These folks love free product…and you’ll love keeping those plastic non-legumes out of the landfill.

The website also had this link to Austin-based Cycled Plastics, which will accept some types of foam for recycling at their public drop off site at 10200 McKalla Pl, Austin, 78758 (if you have  take out Styrofoam boxes you’d like to try and recycle, check the bottom of the box first before you make the drive  to make sure its one of the types of foam they accept).  Here is some more info from their website:

Cycled Plastics maintains a public drop point at it’s facility in Austin.  The following items are accepted Monday through Friday, 7am – 5pm. (click here for a map)

• Packaging Foams free of dirt or food contamination (EPS #6, PP #5, LDPE #4)
• #2 HDPE curbside bottles that have been rinsed with caps removed
• #1 PET curbside bottles that have been rinsed with the caps removed
• #2 HDPE flower pots that have been lightly washed to remove most of the dirt
• #4 LDPE bags that have had no food contact and have no paper contamination (labels, stickers)

Meanwhile, the Statesman article explains the dubious health benefits:

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality says that rainwater is better for plants than chemically treated water. But Doug Pushard, a founder of HarvestH20.com, a website that encourages rainwater collection, warns, “Rainwater is generally free of harmful minerals, and in most cases chemicals, but can be adversely affected by air pollutants.”

As it falls, rainwater can pick up soot and other airborne microscopic contaminants. On the roof, rainwater can be exposed to herbicide or pesticide sprays that have adhered to leaves, or it can be tainted by animal droppings.

And is Texas air really that great? Don’t we have a lot of coal plants emitting pollutants? Meh? (check out “Texas one of the top four states for mercury emissions”)

I’m also disappointed  that Whole Foods sells bottled rainwater from a Austin company that collects the water in Oregon and then ships it down here. This conflicts with WF’s value of “caring about our communities and our environment.” Contact them here if you would like to encourage them to not support bottled water.

The novel idea is in.gredients’ “package-free” aspect, which Joseph Lane said sprouted after the brothers, who run two other businesses, became distressed at the level of waste from product packaging. According to the in.gredients page on indiegogo.com, a site that helps projects like the brothers’ launch financing campaigns, 40 percent of the 1.4 billion pounds of trash heading to landfills each day comes from packaging.

“If you go into a regular store, it’s very hard to find a product without packaging,” Lane said. “Like your cereal — why does your cereal have to have a box around it? And that’s why bulk is growing.”

So far, there are no signs of an all-out green grocery war in Austin. But Dan Gillotte, general manager of Wheatsville Co-op, cautioned that opening a new grocery store is challenging, especially in a market like Austin. Still, “they might be able to find a niche and make a go of it,” Gillotte said.

So far the brothers, along with Chris Pepe, their business partner, say they have raised more than 60 percent of their goal, but that even without investors, they have the money to finance their dream. If it takes off, and their store draws local vendors to fill the bins with goods, and regular customers to empty them out, Lane said, expansions could be in order.

Check out the whole story for more info and the in.gredient’s webpage.