Healthy Cleaning

Naturalcare Cleaning Service

Naturalcare Cleaning Service offers a unique green home cleaning solution unlike any other service in the Houston Metro area. Naturalcare Cleaning Treatment provides clients with a healthy, non-toxic alternative to conventional cleaning that is not only better for you but is also better for the environment! By choosing Naturalcare Cleaning Service, you get quality, dependability and great service every time.

Farmers' Market to your Door

Henley's Fresh Foods

Henley’s Fresh Foods is a locally owned and family operated home delivery service offering top quality organic and local produce, artisan foods, groceries, household items, and prepared meals to Houstonians throughout the Houston Metro Area.

HFF's vision is to support local sustainable family farms and food businesses by creating a community that brings together food producers with our local customers.

Home deliveries are made on a weekly basis and orders are done via our website. You can browse through our selection of the finest seasonal produce, grocery items, free range eggs, milk, grass-fed meats, local artisan cheese and handmade breads.

Sustainable Travel

Responsible tourism with a smaller environmental footprint and a focus on sustainability.
Tourism is arguably the world's largest industry. It generates about 10% of total world GDP and employs over 10% of the global workforce, and it's on the verge of tremendous growth. In 2005, there were 808 million international tourism arrivals, a figure that the World Tourism Organization expects to reach one billion by 2010.

National Geographic Center for Sustainable Destinations

Sustainable Travel International

Wilderness Journeys

The International Ecotourism Society

Composting

Compost is organic material that can be used as a soil amendment or as a medium to grow plants. Mature compost is a stable material with a content called humus that is dark brown or black and has a soil-like, earthy smell. It is created by: combining organic wastes (e.g., yard trimmings, food wastes, manures) in proper ratios into piles, rows, or vessels; adding bulking agents (e.g., wood chips) as necessary to accelerate the breakdown of organic materials; and allowing the finished material to fully stabilize and mature through a curing process.

Natural composting, or biological decomposition, began with the first plants on earth and has been going on ever since. As vegetation falls to the ground, it slowly decays, providing minerals and nutrients needed for plants, animals, and microorganisms. Mature compost, however, includes the production of high temperatures to destroy pathogens and weed seeds that natural decomposition does not destroy.

Did You Know That Compost Can...
Suppress plant diseases and pests.
- Reduce or eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers.
- Promote higher yields of agricultural crops.
- Facilitate reforestation, wetlands restoration, and habitat revitalization efforts by amending contaminated, compacted, and marginal soils.
- Cost-effectively remediate soils contaminated by hazardous waste.
- Remove solids, oil, grease, and heavy metals from stormwater runoff.
- Capture and destroy 99.6 percent of industrial volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) in contaminated air.
- Provide cost savings of at least 50 percent over conventional soil, water, and air pollution remediation technologies, where applicable.

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Soil Powered Lamp

Soil naturally contains energy conducive metals like zinc, copper and iron, and microbial fuel cells (sometimes referred to as an earth batteries) are capable of converting electrolytes in soil into usable energy. Dutch designer Marieke Strap’s Soil Lamp uses conductive plates made from copper and zinc buried within the soil to provide constant and (nearly) eternal light for an LED bulb. Maintaining a Soil Lamp is as simple as watering a plant - just feed it a splash of water every now and then to keep the energy flowing. The Soil Lamp takes pride in its simplicity and innovation, baring all in a transparent bulbous base. The implications of creating energy from soil are promising - as a free and abundant resource, nearly everyone in the world has access to dirt, save those living in deserts or urban jungles. Because of its naturally occurring conductivity, soil is easily converted into energy that will last far beyond the lifetime of an incandescent bulb, so long and its properly watered.

Solar Batteries

Recharging Batteries with Solar Cells
Rechargeable batteries are a boon to eco-enthusiasts who use portable electronics, however all too often they require additional peripherals in order to keep them charged. These devices generally take the form of a black box loaded with non-biodegradable plastics and heavy metals - not very earth-friendly.
Karlsen’s SunCat batteries circumvent chargers completely by integrating solar cells within the batteries themselves. To make these prototypes he attached 1.8V flexible photovoltaic cells onto 1.5V NiMH rechargeable batteries and connected them with a conductive silver pen and a few flat wires. The effect is similar to a trickle charger, which slowly charges a battery and can be left attached indefinitely without overcharging.
Karlsen plans to continue to tweak the batteries, adding capacitors to charge the batteries more efficiently and electronics to check when the batteries are full. We’re excited to see the results of his testing - finally, a justification for all those see-through gadgets with clear cases.

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Houston's First Eco Friendly Hair Salon

Dot Dot Salon is focused on minimizing our environmental impact, by offering predominantely organic hair and skin care services that are up to date and adaptable.

Dot Dot Salon offers non-toxic, organic based, ammonia free hair coloring services. Great for people with allergies to chemicals, health conditions, and for use during pregnancy.

"At Dot Dot we continually strive to offer the best in sustainable non-toxic hair care in a healthy chemical free environment."

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Solar Powered Eco Cell Phone

Samsung Electronics just unveiled the innovative solar powered full-touch screen phone “Blue Earth”, alongside Samsung’s vision for environmental sustainability. Under the slogan: “The Blue Earth Dream: Eco-living with SAMSUNG mobile”, Samsung reinforced its commitment to protect the environment through the design of eco-friendly products and a programme of activities for its customers. It will be showcased at Mobile World Congress 2009 for the first time.

Designed to symbolize a flat and well rounded shiny pebble, Blue Earth is the first solar powered full-touch screen phone. By charging with the solar panel located on the back of the phone, users can generate enough electronic power to call anytime anywhere.

Blue Earth is made from recycled plastic called PCM, which is extracted from water bottles, helping to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions in the manufacturing process. The device, including charger, is free from harmful substances such as Brominated Flame Retardants, Beryllium and Phthalate.

The latest in a series of eco-friendly products, Blue Earth comes with a unique user interface which is designed to draw attention to preserving our fragile environment. Simple to set screen brightness, backlight duration and Bluetooth to an energy-efficient mode, this new user interface allows the user to be energy-efficient with just one click of ’Eco mode’. Through the ‘eco walk’ function the user can count their steps with an in-built pedometer, calculating how much CO2 emissions have been reduced by walking as opposed to motor transport. This unique function allows user to calculate the value of this footprint through the number of trees that have been saved.

The packaging for Blue Earth is designed to be both small and light, made from recycled paper, and comes with a 5 star energy efficient charger which uses standby power lower than 0.03W. As part of the Voluntary Agreement of European Commission IPP (Integrated Product Policy) pilot program, Samsung has agreed to start using rating on energy consumption on the no-load mode of the mobile device charger.

In addition ZTE announced a solar powered cell phone for the masses. More Info

Eco Labels

What makes a good eco-label?

Below are the criteria we use at Consumers Union to evaluate eco-labels. Generally, the best eco-labels are seals or logos indicating that an independent organization has verified that a product meets a set of meaningful and consistent standards for environmental protection and/or social justice.

Meaningful and verifiable: Eco-labels should have a set of environmentally meaningful standards. These standards should be verifiable by the certifier or another independent inspection organization.

Consistent and clear: An eco-label used on one product should have the same meaning if used on other products. Standards should be written in a way that can be verified in a consistent manner so that the label is consistent in meaning among different products.

Transparency: The organization behind an eco-label should make information about organizational structure, funding, board of directors, and certification standards available to the public. If such information is withheld, it is difficult to determine the meaning and clarity of the standards or the independence of the certifying organization.

Independent and protected from conflict of interest: Organizations establishing standards and deciding who can use a logo should not have any ties to, and should not receive any funding from the sale of certified products or contributions from logo users beyond fees for certification. Employees of companies whose products are certified, or applying for certification should not be on the board of directors of the certifier (and no one affiliated with the certifier should be on the board of directors of the organization being certified). Some certifying organizations have explicit conflict of interest policies prohibiting such affiliations.

Opportunities for public comment: All certification standards should be developed with input from multiple stakeholders including consumers, industry, environmentalists and social representatives in a way that doesn't compromise the independence of the certifier. For example, industry representatives can play an important advisory role without having direct financial, decision making or management ties to the certifier.

more - Greener Choices

Green Jobs

E: The Environmental Magazine's list of booming eco-friendly job sectors is good place to start for inspiration.

Grist, TreeHugger, EnvironmentalCareer.com, HotJobs, and Sustainable Business Green Dream Jobs' listings are drawn from throughout the country.

Idealist.org Job Search specializes in nonprofits; search on "environmental & ecology" or "energy conservation & green living."

Green Jobs is all about the burgeoning area of renewable energy.

The National Park Service has 16,000 permanent employees and another 10,000 seasonal jobs to fill each year, from Hawaii to Yellowstone.

Business for Social Responsibility Jobs Board lists openings at such big names such as the Walt Disney Company.

World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms connects volunteers with organic farms around the planet - not paid work per se, but a great way to see the world.

Save Power

Electricity bills are rising. Now you can cut down on costs and find out what appliances are actually worth keeping plugged in. Simply connect these appliances to the Kill A Watt™, and it will assess how efficient they really are. Large LCD display will count consumption by the Killowatt-hour, same as your local utility. You can calculate your electrical expenses by the day, week, month, even an entire year. Also check the quality of your power by monitoring Voltage, Line Frequency, and Power Factor. Now you´ll know if it is time for a new refrigerator or if that old air conditioner is still saving you money. With the amazing Kill A Watt™ you´ll know “Watts” killing you. Click here for more info.