50 Of The Best Green Books For You Or As Gifts

I wish I could take credit for this one, reading 50 green books and giving you my recommendations, but I can’t. That credit has to go to Raz from Eco-Libris. We’ve written about Eco-Libris before and the good work it does and even interviewed the co-founder and CEO, Raz Godelnik.

In a five-part series of blog posts he give his thoughts on the top 50 green books in his opinion. Intended for the holidays/Christmas 2008, the guide is relevant at any time of the year and not only is it good as a guide for presents, but he gives so much detail about each book you may find yourself shopping for a copy for your own bookshelf.

The links to the five parts are below:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Free DIY Planet Repair Toolkit

Once again, unfortunately only available to Londoners, there is a great looking free “DIY Planet Repair Kit” for those who want it. The kit apparently contains:

- A booklet – a practical guide with simple and money saving ideas.
- A 4-minute shower timer – to help you take shorter showers, saving both water and energy.
- A DIY Planet Repairs Mug – a helpful reminder to only boil the amount you need when making a a cup of tea or coffee.
- Stickers – to help remind you to unplug, switch off and turn down.
- A window sticker and badge – to show your commitment.

I’ll update you when I receive my kit, until then please let us know if there is something similar available in your area.

Cool Recycled Gifts

For my recent birthday, one of the gifts I received was a cool coaster made from a recycled printed circuit board.

It came from Revolve, based in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. They believe that they can make an environmental difference to the way people buy giftware and what they buy. Besides the coasters, they also make notebooks, mousemats, christmas decorations and loads of other stuff from printed circuit boards, plastic bags, juice cartons, coffee cups, CDs, plastic bottles, paper and yoghurt pots.

I’ve just ordered a business card holder, as fellow author Tricia has already got one.

Brilliant Mask Mugs

Some brilliant mugs from MarMarCo that I thought you would enjoy. For only £10, they would make a funny gift, especially if you got them a pig one…

They also produce some other cool stuff, such as funky vinyl wall stickers.

[Via Modern Self]

An alternative Christmas shopping guide

As Christmas approaches, whatever religion you are, you may be buying gifts for family and friends. More and more people are using the internet to do all their Christmas shopping. I, for one, never expect to pass the threshold into an actual shop to buy my presents.

However are we limited to the likes of eBay and Play online? Well both yes and no. There are lots of sites out there willing to sell us stuff and those two are pretty good at it with cheap prices and reliability. But what I’m going to cover here is some alternatives to the main shops. Call it an early Christmas present if you like.

Give yourself something

Sites such as Quidco and ipoints give a percentage of your purchase back to you if you click through links on their site. Quidco does it on the form of cash – say 3% back on a transaction and then every so often it will give you a payment via Paypal. They charge £5 a year though. ipoints give you points instead of cash and you can earn points other ways than just buying stuff. Surveys, insurance quotes etc all give you points and then points of course mean prizes. There’s also Pigsback and Rpoints which are similar. Remember you can usually only use one of these at a time though so pick which is best for you.

Codes are the key

Hunt around not just for the cheapest price which I’m sure you do anyway, but for discount codes and vouchers. Some sites I use are Hot UK Deals, Free Stuff Junction and DVD Reviewer’s Bargain Buckets forum. All can have links to vouchers and give you a heads-up on deals. There’s also a dedicated site to voucher codes which is worth checking before you purchase anything.

Go green

I’ve written about Green Metropolis before and they are really good for books. Or try The Natural Collection. From vegan condoms (!) to hemp tights, it’s full of gift ideas. Likewise is SoOrganic which has a Christmas shop open now.

And the WWF is both green and for charity – how socially conscious can you get?

Charity shops

Speaking of charity, if you are going to go into a shop, a charity shop is a good place to start. Oxfam do a range of new things so you don’t have to get your sister a 1983 Top of the Pops yearbook. However, online a great place is Macmillan Cancer Support. Yes, there’s some random stuff – a golf glove or dog tea cosy anyone? – but there’s some nice gift ideas, Macmillan branded stuff and the chance to give a donation as a gift.

Barter

eBay may be the leader in auction sites but there are other similar places out there. Iswap, eBid, Myswap, Swapperscorner and Swapz are all vying for eBay’s crown and you could pick up some bargains. You can even try the police.

And finally

Yes, Play may not be always the cheapest anymore (try this to compare prices on DVDs and this for CDs) but like Amazon, Play now has a market place so there may be hope after all. Unlike Amazon all Playtrade sellers offer free delivery too.

And check out Money Saving Expert’s guide to Christmas too.

The world’s most important table?

It’s the Periodic table of course. Tsk, what were you thinking? Anyway, someone by the name of Theodore W. Gray has spent four years collecting photographs of the elements that make up the Periodic table. I’m not sure why though, but it does make a cracking poster that is available in different sizes for all your, er, poster and gift needs. For example it includes the “rotor from a jet engine, made of titanium. A silvery fish molded from cadmium. A Hubble Space Telescope image of the Eagle nebula, which is 90 percent hydrogen. Various noble gases, xenon for instance, trapped in neon signesque versions of their abbreviations. An antique tin soldier. A watch face with glowing radium numbers. Here and there a picture of a famous scientist for whom some unphotographable element has been named, like Einsteinium”.
Source: News Gazette

Gray has modestly stated, “This is art”. The posters are produced on a state of the art printer to give the best print quality commercially available. If you don’t want to buy one just yet, in the December 2006 issues of Popular Science magazine there is a three-page tear out special edition of the poster, and more details on the process involved in creating this work of art.

Send gift vouchers by text message

A very quick feature for you:Â

Dutch cadeaucode.nl, ….. lets late or lazy gift givers send presents by text message.

How it works: the giver goes to the company’s website, enters the recipient’s phone number and a message, pays by credit card, and a message containing a unique gift code is immediately sent to the recipient.

Source: http://www.springwise.com/

It seems a lot of service providers are moving towards online and SMS delivery, as it’s faster and saves money. Could be a good idea if you only remember a birthday on the day!

Next Page »