Halloween merrymakers surely will enjoy or to some who already enjoyed it last night the holiday by lurking from streets to streets, surprising and freaking everyone down town with all their creepy costumes. Kids with their pails that won't go home without making it full with treats and goodies. But let's not forget that after having fun and ransacking all your neighbors houses for their sweets and delights to offer, we shouldn't forget to make our halloween celebration a green holiday. Commit ourselves to reduce the environmental impact of all our actions, and i hope everyone knows what I'm trying to say.

After all the celebrations, waste, garbage, junks, trash, scraps and filthy roads can be seen all around the town. It can't be avoided, besides we're all having fun, it's just possible to sometimes forget of all the worries we bear and have fun for ourselves. But to shake it off, the idea of reducing our environmental impact should never be taken for granted.

Traditional celebrations during each and every holiday will surely create mountains of waste and pollution, that's why there are organizations and educators that promote tips to reuse and recycles for all the holidays.

Be Unique - Create halloween decorations that are made from earth friendly materials, or you can upcycle and recycle a few materials from your storage rooms. You can also use natural decorations like carving pumpkins or dried stalks from tree branches. When printing halloween cards, use eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges to reduce your impact on the environment. You can also try making your own hand made/designed halloween post cards and tombstone cupcake toppers, but if you're too lazy or either running out of time then use remanufactured toner cartridges or ink cartridges when printing.

Be Creative - There are a lot of DIY-do it yourself stuffs suited for the halloween season. Like this Last Minute DIY Halloween Decors that will surely bring spooks to everyone. You can also make your own halloween costumes from your old pair of clothes and worn out stuffs. it could be also be a fun activity and a good family bonding.

Upcycle and Reuse - Going for a trick or treat down town? How about make it green and use reusable bags, or Upcycled Trick or Treat Pails that'll make you standout among the other kids. Plastic made jack o'lanterns should be long gone, always think eco-friendly ways and solutions.

Be Organize - After having fun don't you dare forget to think green. Try to influence the people that surrounds you. This holiday calls for a major clean up, it can also be a chance for everyone in the community to get along with other neighbors while cleaning the whole community. 

Time's running out, Halloween is almost here and still you haven't put any decors on your house to spook all those trick or treat hungry kids down town. I know you've been so busy at work that you can't make even one of my crafting activities for the Halloween including;

• Recycled Paint Jack O'Lanterns
• Recycled Milk Bottle Spooky String Lights
• Halloween Costumes Make It Green
• Cloche Halloween Decors Made From Recycled Soda Bottle
• Upcycled Trick or Treat Pails
  

It saddens me to know that some of you haven't tried making at least one from my recycling Halloween craft. But since I can't let you down for this holiday, all you busy folks can still make it up for me and for the hallows eve, with this easy last minute Do It Yourself Halloween Decorations. You have no chance of shopping, nor you don't have enough time to make spooky manikins to hang on your backyards, then i suggest you grab your printer and let's get started.

Let's start decorating the path way from your backyard, now what do we need to do? First, get a skull template and a bat template over the net and print them as many as you want. Well it's up to you if you want to print bats of different colors, or blood stained skulls but remember your green printing practices, and as much as possible do not waste inks and toners, unless you're using eco friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges, besides it's a holiday that you get to celebrate once a year. After you've printed enough, cut them all and be careful, then paste each cut outs to a barbeque stick and pin it on the ground of your backyard.

Next, let's go inside the house, check how many lamps and yellow lights you have, then get a template of an owl shadow template and a floating ghost template enough for all the lamps and lights that you want to decorate. After printing all the templates, cut them out but instead of pasting it on a stick, well be putting it inside each every lamp starting from the front door of your house, down to the porch and all light bulbs at the hallway. If you can't picture it out, then try lighting up one of the lamp where you have pasted an own shadow inside, and you'll cast a shadow of an owl that can really be freaky. For light bulbs that has no lamp shade, you can print a hanging bat template then glue it on the pipe or the neck of the bulb.

Third, you can make a tombstone cupcake toppers for the treats that you'll be giving for the kids. Of course you'll be needing a lot of cupcakes for this one, but I'm sure you won't get a problem finding a store where you can a buy a pack of 3 or more. Again get a tombstone cupcake topper template and print it out as many as you need, this can eat a lot of black inks or toners, but if you're using remanufactured toner cartridges and ink cartridges then you don't have to fret.

Last, finally for the candies you'll be giving away, print a lot of spooky candy wrappers, that you can wrap to all those treats and goodies for kids and young at heart who will be knocking on your door asking for trick or treats.

I hope you guys can still make it before the hallows eve covers the night and bring thrills and spooks to everyone of us. You guys enjoy the Halloween cause it'll be a year long before it happen again. I do hope you have fun with all the Halloween crafting, recycling and upcycling activities PrintGreen have posted for you. Happy Halloween!

If you can't get enough of my recent Halloween crafting posts, as preparation for the hallows eve, here's another fun upcycling activity for you and your kids. This post will help you create a unique and artful trick or treat pail, that you'll be needing for the hallows eve to keep all your sweets and goodies. You can also check my previous post for other recycling and crafting activity for the Halloween ;
Recycled Paint Can Jack O'Lanterns
Recycled Milk Bottle Spooky String-Lights

To make one of these playful halloween upcycled trick or treat pails, we will be needing the following ; a few paint buckets (should be empty and used) of various sizes, colorful paints, or you can use art papers, of course glue, scissors and hand gloves.

Let's start by checking any residual paint from the buckets, you don't want your kids to get candies that smells like paint right. Make sure it's all clear from paint scents and all other toxins, then prepare the art papers and scissors to cut out ghost like faces, for example you can draw faces of Frank n'Stein, common Jack O'Lantern expressions, and all other spooky faces that you want, it's better to have a template or something to trace. If you don't want to use cut outs, and you want something more challenging then you can use the colorful paints to draw eerie faces of ghosts into the bucket.

Once you're done cutting out ghost faces, glue them around the bucket  how you want it, and you can add gloss effect to your project by combining water and glue that you will apply around the buckets surface, enough to make a protective coat similar to using Mod Podge / Deco Podge. If you use acrylic paints instead of cut outs, then there's no need for you to apply a coating on its surface. If your kids love decorating, they can add glitters, scrapbook accessories and ornaments on their trick or treat pail made from upcycled paint buckets.

Next time, we'll try to make more fun recycling activities using smaller containers like eco friendly toner cartridges or ink cartridges, and let's see what we can do with it to add on our list of recycled halloween goodies.

Do you have lot's of plastic bottles out there, well don't just throw them away cause we'll be using those liter size plastic drinking bottles on our next Halloween recycling craft. If you've been wondering what else can you do with all those bottles of soft drinks after it finally quench your thirst, then let me keep you busy with this fun soda bottle recycling project. Since Halloween is here to come, and I've been posting a few crafting activity for this holiday, here's another project for everyone of you that will bring more spooks to your hallows eve.

We'll be making a cloche decoration with a Halloween theme. First what is cloche, it's an alternate name for a bell jar, typically a rounded glass with no bottom that can be set over collectibles to display them. Now do you get the idea of what our project will looks like? If you have lots of collectibles that you want to show off with your friends, and you don't want to get them dusty or dirty as it aged, them putting them inside a cloche will do the trick, plus it can be a nice decor for your room.

But since Halloween will be our theme for this crafting activity, instead of using your precious collectibles, we'll be using weird, eerie, spooky, creepy objects that are associated and often seen during the hallows eve. For example, wide eyeballs, bloody faces, floating ghosts, creepy insects, zombie hands, skulls, and well they're too many to mention. It depends on your preferences what to use for our recycling project.

To start making the cloche, you need to ask for an adult to do the cutting part, kids are not allowed to use the knife nor participate on cutting the plastic bottles. You need to cut off the bottom of the soda bottle using a utility knife, it would be easier if you put a mark using a marker from which you will use as guide. Then remove the label and thoroughly clean the bottle to remove the scent of the soda or any stains around. Remove the lid of it, and replace it with something more nice and appropriate like a cork from your empty wine bottles, or you may use a small styrofoam ball and glue it as a cover.

After making the cloche, of course you need something like a base from which you will use as a surface to put your creepy objects. To make it, you need a foam disc, size will vary depending on the size of your soda bottle, but make sure you have some allowance around the side. Let's say a 13'' soda bottle has a circumference of about 4'', therefore you need to make 6-7'' disc foam. Place the bottle at the center of the disc and trace around it using a pointed pen, remove the bottle and repeat tracing the circle creating a deep cove/groove.

You can now place on top of the disc those things you chose to use for this craft. Glue it firmly and make sure you place it not beyond the circle. Finally you can now position the soda bottle in the cove circle, adjust it by twisting until it perfectly stand straight. For finishing touches, you can use a spray paint, to put some color on the disk, or you can add glitters on top or at the side of the disk.

I hope you enjoyed my simple crafting activities, I'll keep you posted for more Halloween themed projects to gear you up for this coming holiday. This project is really one essential activity that will teach your kids and all the other members of your family how fun and great to do plastic recycling. Don't forget to add text and images on your cloche project to add more creepiness on it, use eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges on your printer to have greener prints.

The Hallow's Eve will soon be upon us, so for everyone who's looking for a nice eco-friendly crafting project well you've stumbled on the right blog. I've got several hunted crafting ideas for you and your family that will surely make you ready before the Halloween arrives. Of course, these projects promotes a greener and more environment friendly trick or treat celebration. Previously we had Recycled Paint Can Jack O'Lanterns and Recycled Milk Bottle Spooky String Lights.

Recycling is a fun activity, plus you learn the essence and benefits of reusing materials that are often been considered waste by most us. Worn out clothes, garments, apparels and jeans, we have lots of it that were used and damage. Why not reuse or upcycle those old clothing that you have no intention of wearing anymore, and create creepy halloween costumes for this coming hallow's eve. You don't have to spend some money buying ridiculous costumes at the mall, when you can alter your old stuffs and create a creepy unique attire for your halloween party.

Aside from those old clothes that were stocked on your cabinets for several years, you can definitely add embellishments by using cut outs of paper materials, paints or colorful markers to draw creepy blood stains or bruises, and all other sort of things that you have in mind to make a more unique and spooky costume for the halloween season. Have you heard of the saying "the more the merrier", then call all your friends and neighbors to have a wonderful and enjoyable green halloween costume project making with them.

Rubbish stuffs will no longer be considered trash anymore so long as we have the sensible idea of spreading the importance of being green. Aside from going green with this project we also enhance our creativity and artistic talent by making our own creepy, dreadful, terrifying, weird costumes for the Halloween. With your printer you can also add text on your costumes, like Boo! or anything else you want, you can even print googly, disgusting eyes or mask, but remember to use eco-friendly toner cartridges or ink cartridges for green printing practices. Recycled or remanufactured toner cartridges are not only good for your printer but also for the environment, just like those creepy costumes that you are about to create for the Halloween.

On my previous post, it teaches how to create Recycled Paint Can Jack O'Lanterns that you can use as additional unique decorations for the coming Halloween season. Now, we'll still be making another recycling project for the Halloween season, and i should name it as Spooky Lights of the Night, or whatever you want to call it. This quite easy, fun recycling activity will bring spooks to all your neighbors and kids that will knock to ask for trick or treats.

For this craft, we'll be needing the following : milk plastic bottles (single serving), pen markers (black) or you may use acrylic paint for better effects, hole-punch, and of course string lights from where you will attach all those spooky bottles.

To start, first make sure that all the milk bottles are thoroughly clean, dry and has no strong scent of spoiled milk, although it could be a nice effect that your spooky bottles have some indecent smell to make it more eerie. If you want to make a lot of these, you can ask some of your friends or neighbors who have stocked the same milk bottles. Now get your acrylic paints and start painting spooky faces on those bottles, your will surely love to participate on this part, as they'll enjoy making eerie faces of ghost like creatures. Try making various ghost faces, if you have no idea on what to draw, I'm sure you've heard about Google search, you know what to do.

Let the paint on those bottles dry out. Once they're all dry, use the hole-punch to create holes on both sides of the mouth of the bottle, then use wires to attach your spooky bottles to the string light. Use one bottle for each light. Once you're done putting all those bottles over each light, you can put ribbons on the head of the bottle to add some nicer looks, then it's time for testing. Plug it, and turn the lights on.

I'm sure your kids will love to play at night with your spooky bottles on, it'll make your garden more eerie than ever for this coming Halloween, and have a more fun trick or treat with your family and friends. Let your kids learn crafting and recycling the fun way, and try to teach them how to practice reusing and upcycling materials. Healthy living is better, but green living is a lot better, using recycled materials such as eco-friendly toner cartridges and other consumables that are made from used materials, re-process components and daily consumables including remanufactured toner cartridges which greatly help the environment.

Since the Halloween is nearly coming, kids, teens and a few young at heart are surely planning for the decorations and treats that they will prepare for the season. Well then, allow me to provide you a few trick or treat recycling projects that you'll surely have fun doing in your preparation for the coming Halloween.

Everyone has been used to the pumpkin shape jack o lanterns, some are even buying in malls and everywhere for the decors that they'll use for this once a year trick or treat season. But do you know that we can create our own jack o lanterns using empty paint cans, milk cans, and whatever cans you have there, we can make a more exciting, more unique, more customizable jack o lantern decorations for the Halloween season.

To start on our fun recycling activity, you need to collect all these materials including: a few empty paint cans on various sizes, or you can also use other metal cans whichever you want, paints (color depends on you, it may either be black or orange), nails and hammers, pen markers, and utility snips for metal.

First you have to draw the face on your can, use the markers to do it, once your done designing the face, get the nail and hammer to make a starting hole in each section that you need to cut out. Once you have a starting hole (be careful hammering the can as it may may have the tendency to cave with too much pressure so be gentle)  use the utility snips, i suggest to use the smaller metal snips which works best on cutting the rest. Follow the line of your drawing, i suggest you start with simple shapes as they're easier to start with. Don't forget to wear safety hand gloves, cause metals edges are sharp and you might get hurt, you can ask some old guys to do the part of cutting. Once you're done with all the cutting, get your paint brush and start the painting, you create plain black, plain orange or a combination of both, then let them dry over the night.

This fun project will last for several years, just given proper caring, keep it on your storage rooms once the season has ended, so you can still use it for the next years. Cans may get rusty, but believe me it will add nicer effects to your recycled paint can jack o lanterns. Light them up on the Halloween with tea light inside the cans, or you can use small candles that'll flicker during the night and enjoy your trick or treat. Have fun creating lots of recycling activities with your kids, and teach them the benefits and advantages of what recycling can do. Just like using eco-friendly toner cartridges for your printers, that helps you make greener printing practices. These remanufactured toner cartridges does not only serve as cost effective alternatives, it also help save the environment.

"Printers may not be as big of a part of our lives as they once were, but that doesn't mean they don't have their uses." said Andrew Webster. Campbell Laird, the genius creator of this abstract art that is made through the use of inkjet printers. Laird's pieces consist of a simple vector shape that is printed on the same sheet of paper multiple times. For each pass the shape is changed in some way — it might be flipped or have the color swapped — and this process is repeated between 10-80 times.

Campbell Laird explained, "I have very little idea of how the art will turn out, It just grows organically with each new pass." It took him 5-7 hours of work for each piece of art, the artist also noted, that the process may cause great damage to your printer. But for the experience and fulfillment that the artist felt while he was working on it, as well as the satisfaction it brings once you're through, i guest the price you need to pay for this art is worth it.

Since the image or rather the vector shape was printed on the same sheet of paper for several cycles, it's probable that it has a texture defining every layer of print. Laird said, "This is the only way to make these prints, trying to layer all the passes on one image file can’t work as the file becomes overloaded with millions of lines and intersections and appears as just an unrecognizable blob on the screen."

I wonder if i can also make a wonderful art piece of my own, using let's say to be different i'll use a laser type printer instead to print layers of images then splash  some bits of toner particles on top while letting it dry, how was that sound. I'm not kidding, we can even promote art and being green at the same time, by printing wonderful evocative pieces of art with the use of eco-friendly toner cartridges. There are so many ways that we can do, aside from using art in order to promote environment friendly living, you'll know the right medium to use base on your own personality.

Putting your old materials to good cause, either by protecting the environment or helping other people, is definitely a great initiative. Lexmark, as one of the well-known printer manufacturing companies in the printing industry, has made another recycling program from which the young ones of South Africa benefited.

Every printer manufacturer, and companies under the printing industry, has a responsibility to ensure that all their products specifically those printer consumables, must be properly discarded and wouldn't end up in landfills, to avoid negative impacts on the environment. They are perfectly aware that besides the fact that their products populate the landfills, the residual toner powders or inks inside every cartridges are potentially harmful that it can release hazardous elements, contaminating the soil of the landfills from where they're situated as well as the air and water that surrounds the area.

Being aware of all these facts, Lexmark has a zero landfill policy that reduces the environmental impacts of their products by reducing landfill waste, recycling the components of their printer consumables, and ensuring that every toxic or potentially hazardous substances from their products are managed safely.

Lexmark established Cartridge Recycling Initiative for Babies (CRIB), a recycling project that deals with the environmental concerns and changing the lives of young ones in South Africa. The company used discarded eco friendly toner cartridges to raise a fund for Cotlands in South Africa, a charitable institution for 76 years that provides an ample of caring for the children of Africa.

"Through CRIB, Lexmark recovers used inkjet cartridges and lexmark toner cartridges from its customers, recycles them, and in return makes a financial contribution to Cotlands in the form of a currency called baby days. One baby day equals the cost of housing, feeding, clothing and medical care for one child at Cotlands for the period of one day. Lexmark’s financial contribution equates to a certain number of cartridges returned. Over the past 11 years, Lexmark has raised R4.5-million (US$518 000) for Cotlands, and they have sponsored 87 000 baby days."

Saving the environment and changing lives of many children, this is what the Crib's main purpose, truly a great form of investment.

For most printer users, it's typical to agree that the cost accumulated from purchasing printer consumables has override the price of the printer itself. Though in a good sense, it's indeed that way it is, the expense doesn't end at the time we purchase a printer, but rather it is the time from where the real and continuous expense will start. For offices and businesses, it can be easy for them to consistently use genuine printer consumables which are commonly expensive, but how about those personal home users, most of them switch to more affordable cartridges to save money.

As a result, most of the consumers tend to opt for alternative printer consumables, while others limit their printing output. Though it's not ideal, consumers resorted themselves with the option to buy a new printer equipment that comes with an initial set of cartridges, instead of buying replacement consumables. These few concerns initiated Hewlett Packard to lead the way with a new range of HP's Ink Advantage printers and cartridges.

HP Imaging & Printing Group Business Unit Manager at DCC, Caron De Fortier explained, “Ink Advantage is a new concept in printing, designed to encourage more sustainable and environmentally friendly printing practices. With Ink Advantage, the cost of printing has been reduced by up to 50%, effectively allowing users to print twice as much for the same cost as before."

Fortier also said, “Consumers can therefore afford to keep their printers for longer, replacing the cartridges instead of the whole device. Ink Advantage also incorporates other eco friendly features, such as recycled plastic, reduced packaging, and recycling initiatives through HP’s Planet Partner program.”

If you chose to buy genuine printer consumables and would want to practice environment friendly printing at the same time, then HP's Ink Advantage is the right solution. Aside from this new concept that HP designed, you can also use remanufactured toner cartridges which are more eco-friendly as they're made from recycled components of genuine cartridges, ensuring better performance.

Aside from HP Co., there are also a lot of printer manufacturing company that initiated their own contribution on saving our planet, by accepting returned printer consumables such as Lexmark International, that accepts empty or used lexmark toner cartridges, ink cartridges and other printer supplies for their different recycling programs.