Green Your Drink -- Coasters
Give a toast to the environment with this week's tips for finding, making, and serving light-on-the-planet beverages.
Tip #4: Find your DIY style
Yesterday we rounded up ways to serve up drinks in glasses made from recycled windshields, bottles, or plain old second-hand cups. Today we're rolling up our sleeves and scrounging for materials that can be transformed into cool, green coasters--instead of being sent to the landfill. (If a DIY project requires too many never-used materials, it probably isn't green.) How about that stack of old magazines? Or the incomplete Scrabble set that since the death of Scrabulous has only made you misty-eyed? Paired with denim or curtain ties and some glue, they can become sturdy examples of reuse--and your creativity. For a list of non-toxic sealant and glaze makers, visit the not-for-profit Co-op America. For the less crafty among us, small picture frames (with the back stand removed) do the job just as well as more labor-intensive projects.
Share your tips and ideas: Have you made coasters from materials found at home? Tell us how!
CD disks make creat coasters...
Posted by: Keith Britton | August 28, 2008 at 12:07 PM
Yikes, I suggest combining some of these tips on such a subject as Green Drinks. It's taken all week.
Yeah, I have a couple sets of coasters that have served me for 10 to 20 or more years. This seems like such an insignificant topic. Are there not more important ones?
Posted by: Margie C | August 28, 2008 at 12:54 PM
Mine were purchased at an Estate Sale. And I kind of agree with Margie C about the relevance of the topic. I would like to see posts about how to get my employer (large hospital) to be more green! All those plastic bedpans getting tossed at the end of each patient's stay!
Posted by: Juliet Jones | August 28, 2008 at 01:01 PM
Hi Juliet. One source of ideas for greening your workplace is the post "10 Ways to Go Green at Work," which includes suggestions for individual habits and company-wide policies. (Here's the link: http://sierraclub.typepad.com/greenlife/2007/03/10_ways_to_go_g.html). For information about environmentally responsible hospital/healthcare practices, you might try the Education & Resources section of http://www.practicegreenhealth.org. We'll post some more work-related tips here soon. In the meantime, let us know how it goes and please keep those comments coming!
Posted by: Josie Garthwaite | August 28, 2008 at 01:46 PM
My husband and I are thinking of building an earth-sheltered home and I don't want to use drywall, so I was delighted to find Terramed wall treatments made with natural clays. I don't think this would make good coasters as it breaks down in water, but their website had LOTS of good info and there are no toxic fumes or problems with the surface. You just dig out a bad spot and put in some more Terramed. Wow!
Posted by: Wendy | August 28, 2008 at 03:20 PM
No making coasters for me. Instead I continue using the aluminum coaster set of 12 that my mother-in-law recieved as a wedding gift in 1929. These things will probably be around for their centennial. njs
Posted by: Nancy J. Silberstein | September 07, 2008 at 05:55 PM
In the case of medical devices they have to weigh considerations of patient and public safety (infection/contamination) and landfill use
Posted by: Mike Newberry | September 22, 2008 at 08:42 AM