Living Green is Cool: Be my [green] Valentine

Be my [green] Valentine

Posted on February 1st, 2011 by Daniel

What do vegetable and soy inks, recycled and bamboo papers, fair trade chocolate, and an organic wine have in common? A great Valentine’s Day gift of course! For the eco-conscious couple that thinks about today’s actions for a better tomorrow [for your kids, and kids' kids..] or for the rest that wants a well-thought-out gift idea, here’s a short list.

Moral sugar tooth

Dagoba‘s blend of rich dark chocolate from organic cacao beans, with raw sugar and other natural ingredients [healthy! ..in moderation] will address that craving for your sweet tooth, and it will make you feel great, considering the fact that these great chocolatiers have Fair Trade business practices. Local farmers in cacao-rich Central/South America and Madagascar grow and prepare these goodies with beneficial returns for their land and their communities. In addition, they use recycled paper wrappers and print them with vegetable based inks! Here’s a link to other organic chocolatiers.

Flowers and emotions spilled on paper

Whether you craft your emotions on paper or you need someone to say the things for you, we don’t care. But we do think it would be pretty cool to get some eco-friendly Valentine’s Day cards. By far our favorite, the plantable [yes, as in seeds!] cards from Botanical Paperworks let you give the gift of freshly grown flowers from a card! So if you forget to get the flowers, you actually have a pretty sound excuse:

He: “I got the freshest flowers for you babe!”
She: “Yay! you’re the best! where are they?”
He: “They’re in the card, how cool is that?! …you still have to grow them.”
She: “…”
He: “fresh flowers babe, it can’t get any fresher than that.. you’ll have them for months!”

So yea, …maybe you still need a bouquet of flowers.. anyway here’s a list of other eco-friendly cards for your Valentine.

For the wine snob [wannabe]

The USDA Organic seal has some very strict guidelines to follow. And when a great-tasting meal pairing is obtained with wine from organically grown grapes, then we toast to the wine maker! Grapes are frequently grown with the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, so when wine makers drop today’s commonly used fast-paced growing methods and deliver a good glass of wine, we all benefit. Our favorite here is Bonterra Vineyards, a farm that has been growing food organically since 1987. Their 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon holds strong accolades with a 92 point rating by Wine Enthusiast. A toast to Bonterra… and your Valentine.

The grub and the venue

We leave that up to you, but we do have one recommendation… how about you stay in and cook something?

Tags: bamboo paper, green gift guide, organic chocolate, organic wine, recycled paper, soy ink, valentine, valentine's day, vegetable ink

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 9:46 pm and is filed under Featured Content, green products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.