Did you know that the United Nations has stated that the meat industry is one of the biggest contributors to carbon dioxide emissions?  Or that consuming just one pound of meat is equivalent to driving an SUV 40 miles?  Or that you’ll save more water by not eating that one pound of meat than you will by not showering for an entire year?

No matter how you look at it, skipping the meat in your meals is better for the environment — and your health!  Even if you aren’t ready or able to go completely veg, limiting meat consumption to just a few servings per week can make a huge impact.  Your Green Goal this week is to try replacing bacon at breakfast with veggie sausage, the turkey on your sandwich with hummus and avocado, and serving a bean or quinoa-based dish as the main course at dinner.

Of course, even with the plethora of fake-meat products on the market, it’s always better to substitute whole foods like grains, beans, or veggies for meat.  You can even make your own “burgers” from black beans!

Alex and I had a blast at the Seattle Green Festival this past weekend!  We were crazy busy, but it was so much fun to meet everyone — from women who’ve been using GladRags for years, to those who’d never even heard of us before.

One young woman spotted our booth and ran up to tell me that she had only heard of the Green Festival because her sister in Minneapolis had told her that GladRags would be there.  Another told us, “I hope this isn’t too much information, but I’m using a GladRag right now!”  Funnily enough, about five other women told us the same thing over the course of the weekend!

The other exhibitors were just as friendly as the festival attendees.  Our fellow Portlanders Honest Tea kept us supplied with delicious beverages (have you tried their kombucha??) and Sandrine swapped two bags from her June 15 collection in exchange for a set of GladRags.  Organic Essence let us try their brand-new lip balm (in awesome biodegradable packaging!) and we shared some pantyliners with our booth neighbor to take home to his teenage daughter.

Overall, Seattle was a great experience and one I hope we can repeat at the next Green Festival!  More importantly, it reminded me that living a sustainable life shouldn’t be a solitary pursuit.  On that note, your Green Goal this week is to get involved with your neighbors, friends, and community to talk about what you’re doing to save the planet.  Make connections, get inspired, and support each other in the pursuit of sustainable living!

Take a break from your (hopefully not too) manic Monday with this week’s Menstrual Monday: a line-up of interesting news articles, blogs, art, and more, straight from the GladRags Twitter feed.

• Pick up a copy of the latest Mothering Magazine for their awesome article on cloth diapers; a lot of the concepts in “The Diaper Dilemma” apply to cloth pads, too.

• Lunette Selenes are in!  You’ll have to excuse us shouting this from the rooftops, because these cups are just so darn pretty.  I think I actually clapped my hands with glee when the package arrived at the office.

• Read “Saving the World by Not Using Tampons” to learn more about the founder of Green Drinks Singapore and why her first experience recycling was not so fun.

• “Eight Myths about Washable Pads Dispelled” makes me love the folks at Scarleteen even more than I already did.  Such an amazing resource for young people!

• Kali from The MakeUp Drawer Blog recently heard about cloth pads for the first time and shares her thoughts.  She says she’s not a convert (yet) but wants to hear your experience in the comments — so make sure you let her know how much you love reusables!

• Go Green Street has five super easy tips to help ease menstrual cramps — naturally.

• What does it mean to stop menstruating?  The Great Whatsit reflects on the finale of her 29 years of menstruation.

• Here at GladRags HQ we’ve been preparing for this year’s Green Festival in Seattle.  We’re hoping lots of GladRags fans will stop by our booth to say hi! Volunteers for the festival get free passes, so there’s no excuse to miss this incredible event!

• Read the heartbreaking story of the 29 girls who were kicked out of their school for menstruating in Nepal School Expels Girls for ‘Being Accursed’
• RH Reality Check brings us another great article!  Read Tampon Safety and Our Monthly Affair with Toxins to learn more about the chemicals used in tampon production and their harmful effects.
• Have you seen the Huffington Post‘s article about alternative menstrual products?  You can read the interestingly titled Make Her Vagina Green here.  Being mentioned on such a big news outlet is awesome, but I wish should would have at least tried our products before writing about them.  What do you think about it?
• Amy Ziz in Austin writes about her experiences and first impressions of the Moon Cup in this article.
• Creative Madness Mama has a great article on using GladRags.  She provides lots of tips on using and buying GladRags in GladRags- Menstrual Monday.
• The title of this funny and informative article says it all: Menstrual Cups: Why They Are Awesome and You Should Get One.

We have a short and sweet Menstrual Monday today.  Enjoy!

• The SF Weekly Heartless Doll brings us a helpful public service announcement with Dudes of the World: Menstruation Does Not Make Women Insane.
• A Columbus radio station brings us 5 Fab Essential Earth Day Accessories including the menstrual cup!  See picture to the right for another fab accessory.

Also, we would like to thank everyone who has donated pads to Beth’s Girls so far.  We already have almost 100 pads to give to girls in need in Zambia!  But we always need more.  Read about why you should donate here.

We know the GladRags community does much more than use alternative menstrual products.  As a group we are doing so many things to keep our planet green, from carpooling and composting to gardening and going organic!  So thank you, for everything you do to keep our planet green and beautiful!

This Earth Day, we hope you’ll help us on a new mission: providing cloth pads to girls in Africa through the Elizabeth Bowers Zambian Education Fund (EBZEF), an organization which strives to help Zambian girls stay in school and achieve their dreams.  The recipients of EBZEF’s scholarship assistance call themselves “Beth’s Girls” and have many hopes for the future — and the confidence that they will make their visions come true!

Many of us know already that when girls lack adequate menstrual supplies, they are often unable to complete their educations.  But there’s more to the story: when disposable products are donated to these girls in need, their disposal can be problematic for the local waste system.  For example, in northern Zambia garbage is piled up and periodically burned.  If every woman in the area was contributing their used menstrual supplies, imagine the sudden swell in garbage!

Not to mention the fact that the donation of disposables requires ongoing shipments of new products; with the donation of cloth pads instead, once a girl has enough cloth pads for her cycle, she won’t need to rely on outside donors every month.

GladRags is so excited to be working with EBZEF, and hope you will help a girl in Zambia follow her dreams by clicking here to learn more about how to donate cloth pads.  Forty GladRags Day Pads  have already been donated to Beth’s Girls by caring members of our community — we hope you will join them in their generosity!

When I think of house plants, I immediately think of Jon Arbuckle tirelessly watering and talking to his ferns, trying to get them to grow.  Of course, he was always thwarted in his attempts.  But maybe Jon had the right idea…

In a 1980s study conducted by NASA (yes, NASA! They were looking for ways to keep air inside orbiting space stations clean), researchers found that common house plants can help purify the air inside buildings by filtering chemicals like trichloroethylene, benzene, and formaldehyde from the air.

While there’s currently some disagreement over whether or not house plants can actually improve indoor air quality, I’m inclined to believe that having plants in your living space provides some kind of benefit — whether through improved air quality or just through improved mood.  And who can deny that a thriving plant makes a room look so much more inviting?

Your Green Goal this week?  Head to the nursery and pick out a plant!  Here are a few of our top picks for easy to care for house plants (unless you live with Garfield, that is):

• Heart Leaf Philodendron
• Chinese Evergreen
• Warnecki
• Dracaena
• Golden Pothos
• Mother-in-law’s Tongue / Snake Plant
• Spider Plant
• Aloe

Of course, if you have kids or pets, please take extra care in picking out plants as some can be toxic if eaten!

I’ll admit: if I’m rushing to grab a coffee, I almost never remember to bring a reusable cup with me.  I end up having to toss my paper cup in the trash, and my latte never tastes as good — what is it with disposable cups that just makes hot drinks taste funky?

Fortunately, with a few simple changes, you can practically eliminate the last-minute-coffee-dash from your life!  I now only toss a few paper cups per year — usually in the airport terminal waiting for an early morning flight — and all without any reduction in my coffee habit.*

If you can, have coffee at work instead of picking up it up on the way.  You’ll eliminate the need for a paper cup and have one less stop during your commute.  If your workplace won’t allow a coffeemaker, try having your morning cup at home or bringing it with you in a thermos or to-go coffee mug.

But think about this: what did people do before disposable coffee cups? They went to cafes with friends and sat down.  When did our lifestyles become to-go only?  The Slow Food Movement is one of many groups that encourages people to savor and “know” their food by combining pleasure and responsibility.  For this week’s Green Goal, try making a slow-coffee date with a friend, family member, or even just yourself and a good book!  Take time to sit in a coffee shop or at home, slowly enjoying your coffee — no rushing allowed.

Too busy?  Two of my friends frequently have early morning coffee dates, where they wake up early to meet at a nearby shop shortly after it opens.  They’re able to chat over their lattes for more than half and hour before each heading to work!  Get creative and you may find you have more time than you think!

*This probably warrants a Green Goal of its own, but I’m not sure I’m ready to go there yet.

Hello and welcome to the newest installment of Menstrual Mondays, wherein we review this week in menstrual news, blog entries, art, activism, and more!

•  The Chic Ecologist brings us an installment of the Environmental Impact of Everyday Things focused on the impact of menstrual products.  She goes into some interesting detail about what happens to the menstrual products that are thrown away and the history of green-washing such products. (image to the left is take from her article)
• Check out this week’s Do Good of the Week from GladRags Guerilla, Marta, who runs Be Good Do Good Yoga.  This week’s segment is all about natural birth control methods and why you should check them out.
• Girl w/ Pen has an impassioned editorial about the state of menstrual product advertising in Pop Goes Feminism: Does Your Period Make You Blue?
• Awesome blogger The Sexist has a hilarious article about the 5 Most Feminine Feminine Hygiene Products (note: they are not all menstrual products).
• Blog a la Cart shares a funny little story about her husband’s reaction to her excitement over first using the menstrual cup.

If we’ve learned anything from the amazing Bea of The Zero Waste Home, it’s that recycling should be a last resort; out of the 3 R’s — reducing, reusing, recycling — reducing the amount of waste you produce has the most positive eco-impact.

While cutting back on what we choose to consume is one step, what about things you didn’t even want in the first place, like junk mail?

This week’s Green Goal is to analyze the contents of your mailbox.  Take some time to really pay attention to the items that go straight from your mailbox to the recycle bin, then follow the steps below based on your findings!

Junk Mail

Register with DMAchoice to handpick which direct mail offers you’d like to receive — or remove your name from its direct mail lists entirely.

Credit Offers

Head over to OptOutPrescreen.com to stop receiving unsolicited offers of pre-approved credit or insurance.

Statements

Many utility companies, banks, and credit cards offer paperless billing.  Take advantage by signing up for e-statements whenever possible.

Catalogs

Removing your name from the Direct Mail list won’t stop you from receiving catalogs from companies you’ve purchased from in the past.  You can either contact the company directly or see if you can cancel the catalog through a site like Catalog Choice.

Yellow Pages

Enter your zip code into The Yellow Pages Association’s site to get information on how to opt-out of the yellow pages delivered in your area.

Everything Else

You can try writing “refused” and sending the junk mail back, or call the company responsible for the mailing and request to be taken off their list.

Keep in mind that most of these tactics to eliminate junk mail can take up to six weeks to go into effect, so you won’t necessarily see a decrease right away.  But with a little bit of monitoring, effort, and patience, soon the only things you’ll find in your mailbox will be birthday presents and postcards from friends!