We’ve been running green-themed Easter tips all week on Inhabitots, and figured today was a great time to share the bounty with all of you. From a how-to guide to making your own home-made Easter egg dye, to a kit to dye your eggs with vintage neckties, to chalkboard Easter eggs, we’ve got a lot of great tips and tricks to green your Easter egg hunt. We published an awesome DIY guide on Inhabitots for moms on How-to Turn Those Old Baby Socks into Cute Easter Bunnies and Chicks. And, finally, we found a bunch of cute, chic, eco-friendly bunny products to help you celebrate the arrival of Spring.

HAPPY EASTER, EOSTRE & PASSOVER FROM INHABITAT!

HAPPY SPRING!

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags:

To many, the idea of making your own cleaning products out of household items may sound a little crunchy — but if you really stop and think about it, it makes good economic, environmental and health sense. Not only are homemade cleaning agents much safer and healthier for everyone in your family than harsh store bought cleaners, but they can save you a lot of money as well. In an economic climate like this one, that’s good news. It’s a lot easier than you might think to make your own eco-friendly homemade cleaning products. All you need are some lemons, baking soda, vinegar, and the desire to get clean and green…

READ MORE AT INHABITOTS >

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: Cleaning Green, eco cleaners, environmental cleaning products, Green Cleaners, green cleaning, Homemage green cleaning agents, make your own eco cleaning products

Homemade gifts are always cherished and add a personal touch to the season of giving. They’re also easy on the pocketbook, and we know that will appeal to lots of you out there in these tough economic times. Since we all have different levels of craftiness, we’ve listed our DIY gift ideas here in order of complexity: simpler DIY ideas for the novice are at the top and projects for seasoned crafters at the bottom. Many of these projects require buying fabric or other raw materials. Keep it green by choosing organic, local, pre-loved or sustainably sourced goods.

Read the rest of GREEN GIFT GUIDE: Make Your Own DIY Gifts

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: crafted gifts, gift DIY, green gift DIY, green gift how-tos, green homemade gifts, handmade gifts, holiday gift giving, homemade gifts, how to make your own gifts, Inhabitat green gift guide, presents, sustainable diy gifts

A former North Carolina mailman was recently fined $3,000 and ordered to do 500 hours of community service for cutting out the junk mail. For over seven years, no one on Steven Padgett’s route received a single pizza flyer, ‘Current Resident’ catalog or sweepstakes entry – now that’s something to be thankful for. Unfortunately, this mailman couldn’t put an end to the production of junk mail, leaving much of it in his backyard or garage, but you can. 100 million trees are chopped, processed, glossed and stuffed into US mailboxes every year. Fight back with one of the many opt out services below!

Read the rest of Mailman Cuts Out Junk Mail, You Can Too!

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: advertisement, catalog, junk mail, junk mail elimination service, mail carrier refuses junk mail, opt out service, Waste reduction

Our crafty eco mom writer Andrea over at Inhabitots put together this great HOW-TO step-by-step guide to creating a customized green silhouette T-shirt. For a fun and fashionable way to memorialize the favorite people in your life, this DIY fashion project can’t be beat. Check it out here >

Make a silhouette T-shirt >

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: Andrea DIY column, Andrea McMann, eco screen printing, eco tee shirt, Screen printing, Silhouette T-shirt, Silhouette Tee shirt

We talk a lot about sustainability and design here at Inhabitat, but something we’ve never talked about before is the sustainability of life as a design student. Design school is intense and competitive, not to mention full of noxious chemicals – and it can often be trying to lead a sustainable, balanced and healthy life while in design school.

Core77 recently put together a great “Hack2School Special” — full of tips and tricks for getting through design school. Because my focus is sustainable design, I decided to contribute my thoughts on how to make the design school lifestyle more sustainable. Here’s what I wrote…

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: Architecture School Torture, Architorture, design student, sustainable living, Urban design

As our country celebrates its 231st birthday today, many of us are planning a fun-filled day of barbecues, sun, and fireworks. Whatever your level of patriotism towards the good old U.S. of A., we can all do our best to protect our beautiful earth by keeping green in mind for the holiday. Here are a few ways we can all make our star-spangled banner a bit more green.


Read the rest of RED, WHITE, AND GREEN 4TH OF JULY!

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: biodegradable plates, branch home, compostable plates, eco-friendly barbecue, eco-friendly grill, eco-friendly tableware, fourth of july, green barbecue, green fireworks, green holiday, green tableware, green vegetables, organic produce, Recycle, recycling, sustainable charcoal

Green Graphic Design: Step 1, Your Printer and You

Printers and Graphic Designers have long lived in entwined chaos, each attempting to interpret the electronic wizards living within their individual computing systems. Logic suggests that adding environmental concerns to this equation will only serve to exasperate this already malfunctioning system. Fortunately for Green Graphic Designers (and printers), these days are long gone. Gone are the days we send our designs into the ether hoping to receive perfect pieces of printed matter on the other end (…right).

The green path of the future involves getting intimate with your favorite printer.


Read the rest of GREENING GRAPHIC DESIGN: A Step-by-Step guide

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: AIGA, Don Carli, Eugene Lee, green graphic design, Greening Graphic Design, Institute of Sustainable Communication, o2-NYC Event on Green Graphic Design, Rolling Press

Here at Inhabitat, we frequently focus on the latest green designs or sustainable products, but on occasion we come across wonderful publications that absolutely deserve to be brought to our readers’ attention. Building Green by Clarke Snell & Tim Callahan provides green-minded home builders with 615 full color pages of meticulous writing, sequential how-to photos, and basic building logic. This book chronicles the process of building a small picturesque getaway cabin constructed of cob, cordwood, strawbale, and alternative wood framing for the individual walls – and then they cap it with a green roof!!

Read the rest of BUILDING GREEN: A how-to for the Green Builder

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: Clarke Snell, Green Buiding how to, Green Building by Clarke Snell & Tim Callahan, Tim callahan

Nasa’s Aerogel material, which it uses to collect space dust – also makes a great insulating material for your house!

Since we’ve recently discussed energy consumption and indoor air quality on Inhabitat, we figured now would be a great time to talk about insulation. Don’t run away! We realize that insulation is not a sexy subject matter. Nevertheless, insulation is crucial to your energy consumption, comfort, health, and ultimate happiness – so don’t flee just yet…

Read the rest of NEW IDEAS FOR GREEN INSULATION

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: Aerogel, eco-friendly insulation, green insulation, healthy insulation, high-tech futuristic insulation, Nanogel

The very root of what makes a home green is how effectively it responds to its surrounding environment. You could say that this has defined the primary material pursuit of mankind for all time – building better shelters to keep us warmer, cooler, and drier. Many of the native building techniques employed centuries ago are still reliable in similar climates today, and used as optimal models for environmentally conscious architects. However, since global acceptance of the air conditioner in the 1950s, the benefits of responding to a unique climate have been left by the side of the road.

Read the rest of GREEN BUILDING 101: Energy & Atmosphere – Keeping cool and staying warm

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: "energy efficiency", "leed", green architecture, Green Building 101, green design, green insulation, sustainable design

Welcome back to Green Building 101.

Last week we covered how to select an environmentally responsible location for your new abode; this week we’ll begin discussing ways you can improve upon any home site. The SUSTAINABLE SITES section of USGBC’s LEED for Homes Program outlines various “green” opportunities for reducing the negative impact your home has on the environment. The great thing about these principles is that most can be implemented anytime, regardless of whether you’re still in the design process, or if you’ve been in your home for a lifetime.

So without further ado, here are five measures you can take to create a more sustainable site:

Read the rest of GREEN BUILDING 101: Sustainable Sites

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: "leed", "sustainable architecture", green architecture, Green Building 101, GreenBuilding 101, landscape design, LEED for Homes. USGBC, LEED-H, Sustainable Sites

There are houses built in trees and then there are treehouses. Last year, we had one of our first encounters with a home literally made from trees, using the art of weaving (and sometimes grafting) trees together to form structures — a practice ecological designer, Richard Reames, called “Arcorsculpture.” The Fab Tree Hab was one of the design entries for the Index: awards, emerging from the genius of a crew including MIT architect Mitchell Joachim and our friend, Javier Arbona of Archinect. The project description emphasized consideration of whole systems (and ecosystems) in creating a truly sustainable built environment, rather than a piecemeal approach that could yield uncertain longterm outcomes.


Read the rest of GROW YOUR OWN TREEHOUSE

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: grow your own treehouse, natural house, tree house, treehouse

If you are looking to see a good thriller this summer, forget about The Omen remake, and go see An Inconvenient Truth.

Read the rest of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: Al Gore, Al Gore's Movie, an inconvenient truth

Last September, we published a “How To” for making your own biodiesel. We had huge response (mostly positive, some critical). Since then, gas prices have continued to rise, and things are not getting better where oil resources are concerned. Because of this, we’ve decided today to repost our recipe for biodiesel. Since the initial posting it’s been tweaked slightly in response to some reader feedback. Read on to learn how you can have a healthier, cheaper, more environmentally-friendly ride.

Read the rest of HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN BIODIESEL

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: biodiesel, biodiesel DIY, homemade biodiesel, Making your Biodiesel