The environment is tops on everyone’s list. Browse the ‘new and notable’ tables at your favorite book store and GREEN jumps out at every turn.
You can help introduce your friends and family to environmentally friendly living, too.
Give them a GREEN GIFT of organic personal care, 
or bath salts, 
or perhaps some
mustard bath. 
or a detox seaweed bath 
Henna hair coloring 
is a great way to lessen a loved one’s exposure to possible carcinogens in chemical dyes.
You can promote sustainability, independence and encourage environmentally friendly business in impoverished nations by purchasing fair trade gifts. 
Artisans worldwide produce crafts and are paid a fair wage. This also helps preserve ancient crafts which are rapidly disappearing as populations move to urban areas.
Another great way to introduce environmentally friendly living is to get a GIFT CERTIFICATE to start a friend sampling some environmentally responsible products. Often people are a bit hesitant to give up what they know, but once they try things, they find they are doing TWO things at once: saving the environment and being more environmentally responsible themselves!
This could be toward the purchase of a Sun-Mar composter 
or perhaps a rain barrel…, 
or even for a composting toilet 
or maybe for a portable solar powered battery charger, 
which is great for travellers!
We also have unusual 
art and 
gifts like original art 
by local Virginia artists.
There are many ways that you can spread the word about sustainable, green and helping the environment!
There are people in desert regions of this Earth who would give anything to have the amount of good drinking water that the average American flushes down the toilet every day.
Consider the numbers:
A typical 4-person household,
using a 3.5 gallon low-flush toilet
flushes 70 GALLONS per DAY
-or-
25,000 GALLONS a YEAR of drinkable water down the drain
An older 7 gallon toilet uses double that: 140 GALLONS per DAY -or- about 50,000 GALLONS per YEAR
Toilet waste is over 90% water content. Pathogens like nitrogen and potassium, which upset the normal Ph of the soil, add tremendous pollution to groundwater.
To date, SUN-MAR composting toilets have saved about 3.2 BILLION GALLONS of water (to January 08) with an additional saving of 6,103 gallons a minute!
Sun-Mar toilets are adaptable for any situation. Residential use, cabins, workshops, guest houses; even for RV and marine use. They’re the premier manufacturer of composting toilets. They’ve been making them for about 40 years now, the same family-owned company started Hardy Sundberg in the 70’s.
I’d think they know what they’re doing by now, wouldn’t you?
As we saw at the Washington DC Green Fest, portable solar chargers are the coolest things because they go anywhere and charge lots of electronic devices. They’re not only practical just for around-town use, either.
A solar charger is perfect for someone who travels a lot or spends a lot of time outdoors, be it for their job or favorite hobby.
Golfers, bicyclists, motorcyclists, hikers or avid campers can use a portable solar charger. Anyone who travels to foreign countries, where reliable electricity is a problem, can benefit from owning a portable solar charger. There are no electric outlets or car chargers if you’re on a tractor, inspecting a trail, hunting, fishing, on a 100 mile bike ride, on the 12th hole of the course or 1,000 ft high in your Cessna.
Anyplace where there’s lots of direct sun is perfect for a portable solar charger. It even holds the charge for later use.
As a back up for emergency situations, such as power outages or as a saftey item in a car’s emergency kit, a solar powered portable charger could be life saving.
Environmentally speaking, Americans waste water - billions of gallons a year. The average family of 4 uses about 400 gallons a day; 70% of it being used inside the home.
Consider the following statistics on how much water is used by an American family:
Toilets: 27% Shower: 17% Faucets: 16% Washing Machine: 22% Leaks: 14% Other: 5%
27 percent of all household water is used in the bathroom. Installing a new toilet or a composting toilet can save a dramatic amount of water in one year. A leaky toilet can waste over 200 gallons every day.
Bathroom faucets run at about 2 gallons of water a minute. Shutting off the faucet while brushing your teeth saves about 200 gallons per month.
Not rinsing dishes before loading into a dishwashe saves over 10 gallons per load.
Washing machines can use up to 54 gallons of water per load, but recent energy efficient models use about 27 gallons.
Garbage disposals waste electricity and water. A typical disposal uses between 4 and 8 gallons of water a minute. Consider this the next time you go to use yours. A garden composter is the way to go and will provide you with free, nutrient rich soil for your garden and get rid of your food scraps at the same time.
You won’t be wasting water or electricity with a composting toilet or a composter.
What IS ENVIRONMENT?
Webster’s dictionary defines it as: “to surround, to encircle, to envelop, to encompass, external conditions which determine modifications in the development of organic life.”
I like the last one. When you think of it, what we all do, in one way or another “determines modifications in the development of organic life.” For much of the world, the environment beyond our noses has been given little thought. Not only the current chic usage of the word environment, meaning world or ecosystem health of the planet, but environment as in living conditions and lifestyles of millions on the planet. Environment as in human rights of; environment as in how one relates to the world in general.
How do you treat your environment? How do you treat, deal with, relate to the other beings on this planet, whether they be animal, plant or human? Where is your regard for their well-being is and what steps do you take to contribute to it?
Recently I started a web site. The original idea was to have environmentally responsible items. Now I find it has morphed into something else - to encourage and promote fair trade and human rights.
I have long been a champion of justice. Born in the middle of the sign of Libra, with many aspects IN Libra, justice, fairness and peace all relate to my core.
When faced with getting products to sell on the site, I could have taken the easy way out and used drop shippers who import from Asia. I scanned the offerings for weeks, never satisfied that any of them could provide me with organic, eco-friendly items. I became so frustrated and at times, tried to convince myself to break down and sell that crap. I couldn’t.
Why? Because I was raised to have respect for the Earth and, it seems for my entire life, I have loved the trees, the animals, the beauty and wonder of this world. I have lived with environmental mindfulness, far more than most people I know, far more than most Americans, too.
I could not bring myself to be a purveyor of what I call garbage; useless crap that the world already has too much of. Cheap knock-offs, or even the real things: i-Pods, sports team jackets, the latest phone or computer products, disposable this, wastefully packaged that, personal care products with no ‘natural’ IN the ‘natural’ they promise.
Stuff which is produced in sweatshops overseas for a pittance and where workers are mistreated, paid $1 a day, exposed to harmful, toxic, inhumane conditions and no thought to their welfare is given. It is slavery! Workers exploited all so that the United States can have cheap prices at their local Wal-Mart store. Americans want cheap, cheap, CHEAP. Who cares about quality when you can throw it away and get another one? Planned obsolescence has done much to fill up the landfills in the last 50 years, hasn’t it…. and we’ve all played right into it, haven’t we?
So my quest continued for organic, fair trade, sustainable and responsible environmental products.
I have been very lucky to find wonderful vendors for the site: A wonderful man named Syed, who offers completely natural henna products in a range of colors, to another man named Barry who has patented rain barrels, because he truly is concerned about our planet.
Then there’s the local artist, Adelbert, who, despite his battle with Parkinson’s disease, works in wood taken
from ’standing dead’ only, makes beautiful heartfelt items.
Cecilia, who lived in Botswana for many years, is a member of the Fair Trade Federation. Her daughter, Macallan designed a “Get Involved” t-shirt which from which proceeds go for AIDS orphans in Africa. 
These are truly inspiring and special people and I am so honored to be working with them.
Another aspect of the site is that it must give back and be useful to the world. By providing not only fair trade items, but also giving a portion of the profits to environmental, humanitarian and health organizations, it will enable me to give back to the people of the Earth. In this way I feel that I am contributing to the environment of the Earth instead of just taking away.