What things could there be more for us to know the possible changes and improvements in order to have a better and greener world to live. According to Eric Corey Freed, the Author of 'Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies', he said "the change is overdue." So true, yet still this words doesn't come to the senses of many people who are actually aware of what's happening to our world.

There are three things Eric Corey Freed mentioned from an article posted in Inhabitat. First is Transparency, second is Resiliency, and last is Carbon. These three things are what we should be focusing more this year  in order to improve our world's status in terms of environmental aspects. Below is an excerpt of his own statement from the article posted in Inhabitat.

TRANSPARENCY: Manufacturers will be forced, either by consumer demand or regulation, to disclose the environmental impact of their products. New approaches, such as the Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) from UL Environment or SCS Certified, and new open standards, such as the Healthy Product Declaration (HPD) from the Healthy Building Network, have paved the way for a transparent future.

RESILIENCY: Hurricane Sandy, the storm that crippled New York and Philadelphia, (and leveled Atlantic City), highlighted the extreme vulnerability of our transportation and electricity infrastructure. To millions this past November, climate change suddenly just became very real and very expensive. When the Governor of New York suggested we build walls around Lower Manhattan, you know resilient design is an important topic for the year. In fact, BuildingGreen’s Top 10 Products for the year focused on resiliency.

CARBON: The profession of design is about to change drastically. If you’re an architect, engineer, planner or builder, the way you build is about to undergo some radical new transformations. 2012 is on track to be the warmest year on record, with some 40,000 temperature records broken in the US alone. We can no longer ignore or procrastinate about how carbon is treated.

Based from what these statements convey, environmental concern will be given more importance and that's what it should be. Vulnerability was also highlighted, the weakness of a few infrastructures, their flexibility and sturdiness had been tested through several natural disasters which only brought casualties due to insufficient resiliency. Carbon reduction, particularly our carbon footprint emissions as well as the greenhouse gases that affect our ozone layer. We've been setting records from the recent years, but the more we reach a new record doesn't mean we should rejoice, it's actually the other way around. If 2012 was recorded as the warmest year, are we expecting to set a new record this year?

Always bear in mind these things to live a greener life, reduce your carbon footprints, prefer house materials that are energy-efficient, promote environmental awareness, support environment-friendly products and consumables like eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges or practice paperless printing, recycle and upcycle materials, reuse consumables that can still be utilize.

Before we've featured the Eco Printer, an environmental friendly printer wherein you can erase the ink from the printer material by exposing it on a special UV light, then afterwards you can use the paper sheet again for more printing. Through this technology users can be able to save on their paper usage whenever printing. The only drawback is that it uses a special type of ink that is somehow different from conventional inks that are used in inkjet printers.

Now as I've been browsing the net for some cool green stuffs to offer for my readers, I've stumbled from this picture with a description that says "Eco Printer". Since it's eco-friendly and techie which I'm sure green-geeks would love to hear more about it, here's another printer that seems to be based on previous post about the Eco Printer, though this one is named as the "Re-Printer".

Disappearing ink is something not too common either not too surprising, since I've already read a few articles regarding the science behind this amazing machines. Toshiba even made a multifunction printer named "Loops" which will be available next year 2013 in Japan by mid month of February while for the other countries it will be out in the market with a different name in the month of May.

The Re-Printer as the name itself explains its purpose, can produce printouts of different files and documents whether coloured or black, then once you're done with the hard copy and you need to use the paper once more, just use a UV light to erase the text or images that is printed on the paper material. It's more of like you're printing a temporary file on the paper material wherein you can erase it afterwards once you're not satisfied with the output or you don't need the printout anymore. Sounds like having a rewritable CD isn't it? The only difference is that you're utilizing a paper material instead of a compact disk.

Paper recycling could never been this easy and fun, re-using the paper sheet for more printing can really save you a lot from your paper usage and printing expense. Though I'm not sure how much would it cost you to buy the special ink once your printer runs out of it. Unlike when you're using conventional printers either laser of inkjet type, you have the option to choose from OEM, compatible or my most favorable printer consumables the eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges which are really cost efficient.

Maximizing the use of paper materials over the additional expense from purchasing a special type of ink is fairly a good trade-off. Though are many ways from which you can recycled paper materials aside from using a printer that comes with an erasable ink. But if you're really keeping up on your New Year's resolution to paperless printing, then I suggest you keep your iPad or laptop always at your side to access all those important files you need.

Creating a New Year's resolution would be easy, it's just writing down what you want to do for the next year, what could be difficult is how you will live with it. We've been through a lot of stuffs, rides and journeys from the past years and even from this year, but at the end of the day we never learn from all those things that happened. Although some may have learn and move forward with some better adjustments in their life, there are still a few who still haven't realize the relationship between what you can say, to what you can actually do.

It's easy to list down all the changes you want in your life to happen, maybe from the first day you could practice all the things you listed but what happens at the third week or by next month, would you still cope up on your list? I'm not merely judging anyone, but believe me it's by nature that it happens. If I may suggest, you should make a list of something too easy for you that you can't even break it. Of course, this New Year's resolution will be nothing but a list of green and more environment friendly stuffs for each and everyone.

If you want to save money, you want to reduce your carbon footprint, cut down your waste and improve yourself as a better person for the environment, then here's a list that you might consider.

Reusable First - Always remember to purchase and use reusable materials and consumables. This will greatly reduce plastic usage since they're out of the list of reusable stuffs. It will also help you to be more responsible since you'll be carrying these reusable bags as often as you need it. Aside from bags, there are a lot of reusable materials from which you will enjoy using.

No To Plastic - As it is, if you can't totally banned yourself from using plastic materials then at least reduce the use of it. Drinks that comes in plastic bottles, synthetic toys and materials, packaging and other sorts of materials associated with plastic component. Our waste stream and landfills are already full of it, let's not contribute more.

Walk or Bike - For short trips or places you need to go instead of riding a cab why not consider using bike or walk all the way, besides walking is a form of exercise. It will greatly reduce your carbon footprint by simply walking or riding a bike when going to grocery stores. Aside from that purpose, you'll surely save some bucks since bike don't need fuel or gasoline, plus biking and walking will surely increase your fitness level.

Solar Power - There are several ways on which you can adjust your house to run equipments through solar energy. Nowadays, solar energy can produce higher forms of electricity that can be able to support machines and house equipments that require high voltages to work. It will greatly reduce your electricity bills to help you save money.

No To Meat - It can be hard to remove meat from your daily diet especially if you've been used to it. But if you really need it, like for example you're abruptly gaining some weight, you should really consider this. Red meat can be taken away from your diet, replace it with fruits and veggies but remember to start doing this by reducing the intake of meat day after day, cause you don't want to get upset stomach from instantly changing your diet. Fruits and pancakes for breakfast, fresh salads for lunch, soup and sandwiches for dinner, make your own meat-free diet.

Energy Efficient - Replace your home equipments and appliances with energy efficient ones. Lightbulbs can be replace with compact fluorescent bulb which last longer and consumes less energy. 

Cut Down Paper Usage - Though papers can be degraded easily, it's not easy to raise a tree that would stand tall in just a matter of weeks. Conserving paper materials is something important that we neglect thinking that there are more trees to cut in order to sustain our needs, but that's not the real case. What we can do is to reduce our paper material consumption or recycle what we had used.

Recycle and Upcycle - Use recycled materials, and if you can do recycling then do it yourself, who knows you might have invent something that everyone would consider amazing. Use recycled materials, they're way cheaper and more convenient, like eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges, recycled materials are cost-efficient yet sturdy.

Christmas isn't completely over, well it's more of like for me it's not, anyway we still have the countdown before New Year's eve. Unlike Christmas, the New Year's holiday has no particular type or kind of decors that you could use to embellish your houses, aside from the fact that fireworks represent the festivity of celebrating New Year. While on the other hand, a Christmas tree literally represents the Christmas holiday. And do you know for a fact that these trees particularly the spruces, pines and firs are unbelievably helping to reduce green house gases?

Lund University and Stockholm University researchers from Sweden discovered that these trees we often use as decorations in our houses, can be able to absorb methane gases. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more harmful compared to carbon dioxide. In addition to what they're typical capable of absorbing, the carbon dioxides, they can exceptionally absorb methane gases which contradicts the speculations from previous studies that these trees emit methane.

I know it can't be help to cut down trees every year for Christmas, by nature we find it more perfect to have a real tree instead of synthetic bristly plastic trees that can be bought from the mall. But knowing this fact, I guest it can help reduce deforestation and would encourage people to plant more trees of this type to help save the environment. 

The research which was led by Elin Sundqvist came up with an explanation, ”Our results offer a third explanation: that an increasing amount of CH4 has been taken up by vegetation during the last decades as a consequence of increased greenness." Which means that these trees particularly spruce, pines, firs and all other trees of this type work hard just to absorb methane gases from the atmosphere.

This lives as with the conclusion that by cutting even a single tree that absorbs green house gases, it doesn't only affects the environment but us as well, unless we can replace them or put ourselves on their shoes and do all the absorbing on a daily basis. Once the holidays are through, we shouldn't neglect our responsibility as a human to protect the only place where we can live. We may rejoice and have fun all the way as long as we want during Christmas and New Year, but after we're through let's not forget to clean up every little pieces of waste we made. As a matter of fact it isn't too late, you still have the New Year's holiday to make changes and consider it including on your New Year's resolution. Plant more trees, save the earth, use recycled materials, diminish waste contributing products, be more green by using reprocess products like eco-friendly toner cartridges and other office supplies, and live a greener new year.

Recycling has never been this good, even the holidays connive with it. More and more recycling enthusiast are being recognize through their works and crafts. Especially this Christmas season, several green works and ideas were featured from different sites that promote recycling and waste reduction all around the world. All those nifty artworks and creations were so brilliant that no one could ever resist staring at them, proving to themselves that these things in front of them are actually made from recycled materials.

Since PrintGreen has been featuring a lot of green topics for Christmas season, here's another great and eco-friendly post for each and everyone of you. I've read this article from Inhabitat that features 10 Crazy Manmade Holiday Trees, and from this rundown I chose two of the most eco-friendly Christmas Tree that really took my attention.

First would be the Upcycled Water Bottle "Ice Tree". I was wondering why it was called the "Ice Tree", then by merely looking at the picture or rather focusing on the aesthetic of the tree, anyone would surely recognize that it resembles an ice sculpture of a tree. This Upcycled Water Bottle is being featured in the storefront of Montreal's furniture store the Domison, this holiday tree or as it's called the Ice Tree is made from about 300 water bottles, arranged to form this sculpture. It was created by hanging the water bottles from the ceiling and being illuminated by rays of light to give them an ethereal presence. The Upcycled Water Bottle "Ice Tree" was installed by graphic design studio Paprika.

Next and lastly, the Recycled Cassette Tape and CD Tree. At first glance, I thought it was also made out of glass materials, it was really eye striking with all the glows and sparks that the tree illuminated. This amazing and extremely huge recycled holiday tree is entirely made from used CD's and cassette tapes, as the title of the tree explains for itself. The Recycled Cassette Tape and CD Tree was displayed at the Chelsea Market in NYC during this holiday. The top of the tree was made from CD's and the bed or the bottom if you'll notice was made from black tapes pulled from old cassettes. If you want to see the footage of this recycled tree, you'll find it here.

There are more crazy holiday trees that were made from different parts of the world, I'll try to provide more of this and feature it here in PrintGreen to share for everyone. Does anyone think of creating a holiday Christmas tree that is entirely made of eco-friendly toner cartridges or ink cartridges from your printer? If no one has ever tried it, then I guess I'll be the first one to try.

According to Earth911.com, “As much as half of the 85 million tons of paper products Americans consume every year goes toward packaging, wrapping and decorating goods. Wrapping paper and shopping bags alone account for about 4 million tons of trash annually in the U.S.” Unless we heard the facts we'll never make a move. Christmas is the only season where gift wrappers and paper bags are flooding the stores, as well as the busy shoppers rushing in and out of the mall. But after this season ends, we'll just add more millions of paper products particularly gift wrappers as trash on the landfills.

How about for this season let's try to reduce our need for gift wrappers, since we can't give it up, cause of course it's a bit informal to hand over a gift that is not wrapped. But there are a few ways from which we can at least reduce the need for paper wrappers this Christmas season. One good idea is by purchasing items in box or products that comes with a paper bag, first we save ourselves from buying a separate wrapper, and second we don't have to gift wrap the item, just place a card on it, plus a ribbon, and it's perfect, but remember to remove any price tag or mall stamps from the box.

Another good idea is by recycling or upcycling gift wrappers that you already have, it may either be from your Christmas last year, from the Thanksgiving celebration, from just any occasion, or even those brown grocery bags, you can still reuse them all for this season. I'm sure you've made a lot of grocery shopping in preparation for the Noche Buena and gatherings, so let's say you've got a pile of brown grocery paper bags and you have no idea what to do with those. Well then, grab your eco-tool-kit and we'll be upcycling those brown bags as our Eco-friendly Christmas gift wrappers.

Prepare some scissors, scotch tapes, markers, scrapbook embellishments (optional), and some twine. Now get all those gifts and goodies you've prepared for wrapping and start making eco-styled gifts. It's very simple, wrap the gift in recycled brown paper or a brown paper bag, tie in twine and adorn it with stickers, glitters, small cards and notes, or use some marker and draw a personalize image that portrays the one who will receive the gift. Very easy right, yet totally unique and appealing, plus the touch of effort and being Eco-friendly.

If your friends are part of those who promote green concepts as well, they will surely love this idea. To double the fun, consider giving them recycled and upcycled materials like bags, accessories, artworks, depending on their personality, and if they're the type of office geek who spend most of their time at work, how about sending them recycled office supplies or eco-friendly toner cartridges which are really cost-efficient and somehow unique as a gift for this Christmas season.

To make it a whole week of fun and nifty crafting week PrintGreen will give you another doze of Christmas recycling and upcycling activity that you can make with the whole family for this weekend. If you haven't tried some of my previous crafting activities then you may browse this blog to check them all and have lots of dandy green projects for Christmas.

We've made cards, nativity sets, Christmas trees, though we're not done with the tree decorations I'm still figuring out what recycling idea should I share with you guys on embellishing your Christmas tree the green way. But for now, we'll be making tabletop Christmas trees that you'll surely love. First you need to prepare the following materials:

• Papier-mache cones (either you make your own, or buy it from craft stores)
• Electric drill (with drill bits in assorted sizes)
• Fine-grit sandpaper
• White spray paint (Outdoor or Indoor paint, your choice)

If all the materials we need are ready, get your hands tired and dirty by loading your drill with ammunition or rather drill bits, start with the smallest size. There's no pattern when doing this thing, just use your wise estimation on where to drill the right hole on your cone, since you started with the smallest drill bit, you need to make sure you don't get the cone all around without leaving any space for the bigger holes. If you're not good with doing random holes, then you may use a marker and put dots around the cone to indicate where you should drill the small and big holes. 

Continue drilling until you're fine with the result, or at least happy with it, then get your fine-grit sandpaper to smoothen the surface of our cone. Once you're done with the sandpaper, give it a blow or use a paint brush to wipe out any remaining dust to make a perfect flat coating when we start to paint the cone. Now to make it look like a porcelain, get your spray paint and start spraying all around the surface of the cone. Give it a nice coating and let it dry for a while from a well-ventilated area, then apply a second coating to make it more smooth and glossy. Allow it to dry for about half a day or until the paint totally dries out.

If you're familiar of small LED tea lights, you can put them inside each Christmas tabletop cone trees to create a whimsical spark on your project. Create as many as you want to make a forest display of these cool Christmas tabletop trees. Next time we'll be making projects out of plastic materials to get rid of your waste problem. There are a lot of shapes and containers from which bottles are made so we can a lot of ideas to think of on how we can recycle them. Even printer consumables such as ink and toner cartridges can be recycled producing eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges.

Previously we had a lot of crafting ideas on how to create your own Christmas trees the green way, and last time we had a post about Paper Made Christmas Trees For Centerpiece. Now on this post, we'll be taking a bit of a rest on making environment-friendly Christmas trees, instead we'll be creating Christmas cards made out of magazines and colorful pages of newspapers.

Conserving is one of our goals in here, just knowing that in order to produce paper materials, timbers, logs or woods are cut down to sustain our paper needs. To give justice for those trees, we must recycle paper materials as much as we could. So to give you another idea on how you can recycle those old magazines and newspapers for this coming holiday, here's a fun crafting activity that you can even share with your families and friends for Christmas.

First we need to gather these materials before we could start our project:

• old magazines and newspapers
• scissors and glue
• ruler and Christmas inspired templates
• white cardboard

So to start, you must choose the colorful pages from your magazines and newspapers. Now get your templates, you can either use a tree shape template, a snow man template, a flower or star or angel, whatever you want. Trace the template design on the magazine page, and start making cut outs, the more the better. Next, prepare your white card boards, cut it into a rectangular shape (size may vary depending on your preferences) then fold it in center creating a bi-fold card. Then pick your choice for whatever design you would like to paste on your cards, you can add two to three designs of your choice on both sides of the card. Once you're done pasting and gluing the designs, let it rest for a while allowing to dry out the glue. If everything's clear and the glue dried out, you can now include sweet and warm messages for those people whom you'll giving these thoughtful Christmas cards.

To add a bit of surprise before they get to know what's inside it, you can also put them in box, jars or containers. You can also make gift cards from those cut outs, just paste a small white piece of paper to have some space from where you can write your short messages.

Keep posted for more crafting and fun projects here on PrintGreen, or you can check some of my previous post for other ideas that you can do to make your Christmas a greener holiday. Living a green life isn't that hard to do, just always use recycled or earth friendly products and consumables like those remanufactured toner cartridges that you can use on your offices and personal printing needs. 

Storage devices nowadays, mainly USB memory sticks are produced both for function and for fashion. Before when they were introduced in the market and was commercialize their designs totally resembles a stick, but if you'll compare it to the recent USB devices these days, the difference is really overwhelming.

From stick and straight designs down to classic and funky figures with such great aesthetics, these storage devices are really kicking some awesome changes. Since I can't feature all of them in PrintGreen, here's one of those great designs I've found out from Inhabitat that certainly hit my blog's field of interest. A handcrafted memory stick that is created from old film canisters. This 4GB and 8GB capacity USB memory stick are actually made from recycled film canisters transformed into memory storage devices.

Newfocus created these great USB flashdrives from 35mm film canisters, providing a unique and modern alternative to your common style flashdrive devices. Such a quirky idea to use those empty film canisters and make a storage device out of it, though they may seem to be a bit large for a USB, still it is unique and undoubtedly creative. These USB flashdrives are available to purchase, you may check out their shop on Etsy for the prices and shipping information.

If they made it possible to use film canisters to transform into flashdrives, then I guess it can also be possible to use printer cartridges to create flashdrives as well. Aside from recycling these printer consumables into eco-friendly toner cartridges, there are a lot of creative ways and forms to reuse them. You can also apply your own idea aside from transforming these materials into storage devices again, why not create a different thing aside from flashdrives, well it's up to you.

PrintGreen previously featured Orée Board : Wireless Keyboard Created From Wood, as the title says it all. Now I'll be featuring another modern tool that will surely astound you with its aesthetic design and earth-friendly uniqueness. Instead of having a literally lifeless keyboard, why not have a new one that is made out of organic materials.

It's quite common to see a desktop or tablet keyboard that is made of metal, glass or plastic, but to see a keyboard that is made out of wood is something new and unbelievable in a sense that you'll ask if this thing would really work. Now that question was already answered by my previous post, and now you don't have to ask it again to yourself, cause this new keyboard I'll be featuring is definitely working a hundred percent.

Are you tired of using the same old keyboard and you want to be unique, then why don't you use a keyboard made out of wood? Still can't get enough? Then get a wireless keyboard not only made out of wood, but also breaths life. “What if our technology lived and breathed?”, a question that keeps Robbie Tilton wondering.

“If it requires us to water it at night to allow it to bloom? If it were both visually and tactilely stimulating would user interactions change and would their relationship towards the object change?” With all these questions spinning around inside Robbie Tilton's mind, he started by creating a CAD model of a standard keyboard. From a piece of plywood about 1/32" (0.8-mm) thick, in order to achieve a nice wood effect he soaked it in hot water until it curves perfectly. The keycaps are elevated just like a typical keyboard, by using rubber springs instead of metal. With all his great engineering, Apple gets a touch of nature with Tilton's mossy wireless keyboard.

Tilton wanted to use real growing moss on his keyboard but since is hard to find one in New York City, he continued working with his project by substituting the real moss with fake turfs. Well indeed, it still turn out as lively and beautiful as it is. Unfortunately this wireless keyboard is currently not for sale, so I'm sorry if I snap you out of your dream but that's the real deal. You can still have an eco-friendly modern set up by using equipments and materials either made out of organic materials or are nature-friendly, just like using eco-friendly toner cartridges for your printer.