Any way you look at it, composting is a pretty ugly task. Yes, it’s great for the environment and a much better use for your leftover biodegradables than the landfill, but a mini mound of decomposing food stuffs does not a pretty sight make. Get the job done in a ceramic countertop compost container by artists Beth Mueller, however, and you can add at least a little aesthetic appeal to the whole process.

Mueller lives in Vermont and crafts all her ceramic artwork by hand, so each piece (including the compost containers) is totally original. For the counter-top composters you can choose between the sweet “grow” design that features sunny yellow flowers and a buzzing bumblebee or the subtle “simplify” design that showcases a lone colorful tree. The containers resemble cookie jars more than compost buckets, though, so you may want to warn guests not to seek out sweets from within. Click here to read more

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Furniture is an interesting area of the shopping world. We usually have pieces for years and years, yet we’ll purchase it with little thought about its environmental aspects and much more focus on the cost (slightly understandable considering that it’s usually pretty hefty). Much of the furniture we buy, however, contributes to environmental problems, both for our earth at large and in our actual homes. Whether it’s offgassing once it’s in place or the use of scarce resources during creation, the table you sit down to everyday could have a more profound effect on the planet than you would ever think.

That said, it can be hard to stomach the extra funds that usually come with greener furniture, but we think it’s truly worth it (unless you’re willing to opt for secondhand). While you may pay more up front, if you can squeeze as many years of use as possible out of an item, the benefits far outweigh the costs, and if you’re going to make an investment in eco-friendly furniture, we’re all for Brave Space Design’s Hollow Dining Table. Click here to read more

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Birthday parties, like getting older itself, are an inevitability and they’re also plenty of fun. However, there’s no reason to celebrate another year on this earth by expanding your carbon footprint for the day and increasing your impact. Which isn’t to say you can’t celebrate, either, but that finding a few little ways to get greener with your fete is a great idea, and one of the simplest ways you can get started is by picking up one or more of the items in this eco-friendly birthday party kit for your yearly soiree (and maybe for some other people’s big days, too).

Beeswax Birthday Candles, $3.95

Instead of sticking petroleum-based, heavily-dyed candles all over your cake and dripping who-knows-what onto the delicious icing, pick up a pack of these beeswax birthday candles and enjoy the light subtle scent and all-natural ingredients that won’t worry a soul if they melt down to your cake. The twelve candles also come with a pack of matches, so you can grab the set and have everything you need no matter your destination—and without the use of a petroleum-sucking lighter.

Family Game Night Recycled Game, $20.00

Afraid of bored guests at your affair? Get your game on and make it old school with this box set of 52 games (printed on recycled card stock) that won’t require dice, game boards, playing pieces or even playing cards. You’ll find all the birthday classics that you’ve forgotten how to play, like blind man’s bluff, simon says, and pass the slipper, and in no time you’ll have everyone—even those shy, quiet types—in on the fun. Click here to read more

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Method has already established themselves as one of the greenest cleaning brands on the market (along with Mrs. Meyer’s and Seventh Generation), but their newest creation could put them in a clean class all their own. It’s an ultra-concentrated laundry detergent—8x concentrated instead of the conventional 2x—and it seems poised to making doing laundry easier, cheaper and, most importantly, a lot greener.

Concentrated laundry detergent is far from a new idea, the green cleaning brands have been doing it for years to reduce waste and chemicals and recently even Wal-Mart has gotten on board, pushing detergent makers to offer concentrated formulas if they want to be in the big blue stores. What makes Method’s new detergent more interesting is technology that uses surfactants with H20 inside them, instead of the traditional surfactants that are suspended in H20.

One of the obvious perks about the new Method detergent is convenience, with consumers able to store far more detergent in a much smaller package (and haul it to the laundry mat with ease), but the green improvements are unquestionably the key issue here. The formula is still in keeping with Method’s missions—95% natural and made with renewable ingredients—but it requires 33 percent less energy and oil to produce and 36 percent less plastic for its packaging. The ultra-concentrated detergent even picked up silver level Cradle to Cradle certification for the feat. Click here to read more

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When it comes to furniture, most of have sadly accepted that we’ll have to choose between style/function and eco-friendliness. After all, most of the places we pick up our couches, tables and chairs from make little to no mention of the green features on the furniture (often the best you can hope for is recycled cardboard packaging). But if you’re willing to invest a little extra money, you won’t have to choose between going the green—but collegiate—bean bag route and picking up a piece that will stun visitors.

One of our favorite furniture items for function, aesthetic and environmental-friendliness is the Organic Club Chair from Bean Products (don’t worry, it’s not stuffed with bean bag material). The chair’s design is classic and timeless—it wouldn’t look out of place in the Mad Men offices—and it’s green right from its wooden feet to the top of its upholstered cushion.

The Organic Club Chair is entirely handmade, which might help you stomach the steep price ($2,500), and begins with a frame made with wood from FSC-certified American forests or Urban Forest woods from trees that were being cut down for city development and would otherwise be turned into mulch. Click here to read more

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