Green Is Not Always What It Seems...

Lady Gaga Arrived in Japan today...headlines read, Lady Gaga goes Green! What???

ONLY Fair Trade Chocolate will do!

On June 8th, filling up both sides of Broadway in Times Square in 97 degree weather people showed up for "Raise the Bar, Hershey" ...activism at its best. Right in front of the Hershey headquarters!

These were students from all across New York and across the country saying "What do we want? Fair Trade! When do we want it? NOW!" Calls, responses, and posters up and down the streets letting everyone know what Hershey needs to do.

You know what a supporter of fair trade chocolate I am! I take my chocolate very seriously!

Get involved along with Green America and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

Help us keep the heat on Hershey by taking action this summer:

1. Take part in our We Want More from our S'mores action
2. Host a movie night and show the Dark Side of Chocolate
3. Collect petition signatures in your community

Now I think I will go eat some more fair trade chocolate.

e.

RECYCLED BOTTLES = GRADUATION GIFTS!

Celery Street has some brilliant and useful graduation gifts made of recycled bottles, recycled paper, gum wrappers, potato chip bags.....

Messenger Bags

Shoulder Travel Bags

Eco Friendly Wallets

Unique Journals

HAPPY GRADUATION TO ALL OF YOU!
-e

RECYCLED BOTTLES = GRADUATION GOWNS

CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATES OF 2011 GOWNS

Graduates of high schools and Universities are sharp, ready for their future, AND looking out for mother earth! According to the Huffington Post bamboo graduation gowns get wrinkled easily but the gowns made of 23 recycled soda bottles are the "green" gown that makes the statement and looks great!

For more on this you can go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/green-graduation-gowns-non560579.html

Also, Fox News spoke with a Sierra Club spokesperson, who loved the green gowns but also encouraged those entrepreneurs out there to launch a loan or rental business to reuse graduation gowns with an eco friendly dry cleaning process. Unlike wedding gowns that live in the attic, graduation gowns usually slum it in the landfills.

To read more of this article: http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/graduation-gowns-made-from-recycled-plastic-water-bottles-052410

Earth Day Savings

In Honor of Earth Day, Celery Street is celebrating the work done by the Jane Goodall Institute by donating 5% of all sales April 17-24, 2011.

Founded renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, The Jane Goodall institute is a global nonprofit that empowers people to make a difference for all living things. The Jane Goodall Institute's work extends to many areas including, the best known, Gombe Stream Research Center that is a hub of scientific inquiry for researcher from all over the world.

Jane also started the TACARE program in Kigoma which is helping communties create sustainable livelihoods while promoting conservation goals.

Jane's work especially apeals to young people. They respond not only to her passion for animals but to her courage and steadfast hope for a better world. with her Roots and Shoots Youth Global Program, Jane is helping to create the leaders of tomorrow. Every day Roots and Shoots groups are taking action to improve their local environments, and making the world a better place for people and animals.

So lets do our part this Earth Day and try and make our world a better place for everyone! So for all Celery Street shoppers with all orders of $100 or more, you will receive this FREE 16 0z eco-usable water bottle while supplies last. (through April 24th).

USE CODE: EARTH2011

Spring Break Adventures!

It's that time of year again where many sojourners head to grandma and grandpas, aunts and uncles, the beach, the mountains, the sea, the highway, the golf course, the airport, the outlet mall, local museums, another continent or just curl up on the couch with a good book.

Where are you going??? ~ What is Green about your spring break???

National Geographic has some entertaining and educational quizzes to find out how green you are when you travel.....

a road trip quiz...
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/green-guide/quizzes/road-trip/

and a green travel quiz....
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/green-guide/quizzes/travel/

I didn't score so well! i need to green up a little!!

the Go Green Travel Green website http://www.gogreentravelgreen.com/ also has clever ideas to be more earthwise while traveling. I love thoughts entitled: Everything I needed to know about wildlife I learned in Kindergarten...Keep your hands to yourself....don't feed the animals...be mindful of personal space.....

http://gogreentravelgreen.com/green-recreation/everything-i-need-to-know-about-watching-wildlife-i-learned-in-kindergarten-25-days-to-green-travel-day-21/

These little guys didn't catch the part about "personal space"!!!!!

So, wherever your spring break takes you, enjoy and remember to stay "Green"!

-e.

Spring Break Savings!

To all you looking forward to Spring Break and fun in the sun!!! we have a great 20% savings for some must have items to take along with you! see below for the code to get your savings and have a great spring break! -e

Cute Overnight Bags

Shoulder Travel Bags

Large Eco Tote Bag

Insulated Lunch Totes

Cute Rain Umbrella

The Promotion Code is: SPRINGB20
(customer is required to enter the code during checkout to receive the discount)
* Code is good until 3/21/11
* Code is only one use per person
* Code is only for the items listed above

The Perfect Gift for Your Eco Conscious Valentine!

This Valentines Day spread your love even farther. Give to the Jane Goodall Institute, women and children in Nepal, small farm fair trade cocoa producers, chimpanzees, organic farming communities…it is a complete rippling effect Valentine with a rattan bow! What wife, mother, grandmother, girlfriend, sister, or best friend wouldn’t be touched by this perfect gift that gives back so much!

Four different gift options are available with Organic, Free Trade Milk or Dark Chocolate that gives to the Jane Goodall Institute partnered with either a Nepalese girl felt cosmetic or coin purse made free trade in Nepal supporting communities in Central Asia. Each option is ribboned with a rattan bow and backed with stamped recycled cardboard for support.

"12 Days of Christmas"

Starting December 8th we will be celebrating the "12 Days of Christmas" with special offers every day through December 19th. Check our website or "like" us on facebook to get your daily does of partridges, turtle doves, and geese a laying!

We've got green stationary, recycled purses, recycled silver jewelry, and a lot more surprises.

So what did your true love give to you? Or better yet...what are you giving your true love on the first day of Christmas?

Green Pumpkins!

Did you know that green pumpkins are mirlitons? These green vegetables are also called vegetable pears, chayote squash, and in New Orleans they call it a mella-ton. The Bywater neighborhood association in New Orleans has an annual Mirliton Festival on November 7th, 2010. Lots of bands with quirky names and delicious original Cajun cooking. Consider it an eco friendly version of the orange celebration called Halloween.

The mirliton recipe below got the best reviews on the web. Unfortunately, the ingredients don’t include celery.

If you really need some orange check out our Eco Friendly Accessories at Celerystreet.com and get an orange/rust recycled billboard ad bag to show off your Halloween spirit OR fill with candy.

















Photo thanks to Eugenia Photography and is the cover of the Bywater Cookbook

Ma Ma's Mirliton, Shrimp and Crabmeat Casserole
Recipe courtesy Emeril Lagasse, 2003
Serves: 8 to 10 servings

Ingredients
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
7 pounds mirliton, peeled and cut into 1-inch thick slices or 1 (7 pound green pumpkin) *Cooks note:
1/4 cup vegetable oil
11/4 cups finely chopped yellow onions
1/3 cup finely chopped garlic
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 pound lump crabmeat, picked over for shells and cartilage
1/4 cup finely chopped green onions
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
1 pound Gruyere, or mozzarella, finely grated

*Cooks note: any type of bland squash can be substituted for the mirliton or green pumpkin in this recipe (merlitons, yellow squash, or zucchini) Long green Italian squashes would work great too. Regular pumpkins can also be used (not the kind for pie, but the big, bland ones more often used for Jack o'lanterns). Butternut or acorn squash does not work with this recipe. The original recipe uses 1 (7 pound) green pumpkin.

Directions
Place the mirlitons in a large pot and add enough water to come 1-inch up the sides of the pot. Cover and bring to a boil. Continue to cook over medium-high heat until the mirliton is very tender, about 40 to 45 minutes. Strain in a large colander. Using the back of the spoon, press on the pumpkin to release as much liquid as possible. Discard any liquid.

In a large pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion, and cook, stirring, until soft, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the mirliton, salt, and pepper, and stir to combine. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until the mirliton is very thick and most of the liquid has evaporated, about 30 to 40 minutes. (Be careful near the end of the cooking time that the mirliton does not burn on the bottom of the pot.)

Preheat the oven broiler.

Add the shrimp, crabmeat, green onions, and parsley to the pumpkin mixture and gently stir to combine. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary. Transfer hot pumpkin mixture to the prepared dish and spread the grated cheese evenly over the top. Broil until the cheese is bubbly and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Serve immediately.

*Cooks note: any type of bland squash can be substituted for the mirliton or green pumpkin in this recipe (merlitons, yellow squash, or zucchini) Long green Italian squashes would work great too. Regular pumpkins can also be used (not the kind for pie, but the big, bland ones more often used for Jack o'lanterns). Butternut or acorn squash does not work with this recipe. The original recipe uses 1 (7 pound) green pumpkin.

© 2010 Television Food Network, G.P

Romanticly Green!

The September Issue of Romantic Homes featured our adorable little nostalgic zippered coin purse! They say “We love, love this” Boss Lady, Mood Swings, and Coffee design have a retro feel. With a price of $3.99 a piece customers are buying them by the dozen and stuff them with gift cards or bobbles to give as gifts.

Perfect for your spare change, receipts, credit cards, or beauty accessories. Romantic Homes says “This is not your granny’s change purse!”

- e.

Netbook on the Range!

Our Women’s Purses/Shoulder Bags by Blue Q, made of recycled plastic, have been selling like ice cream on a hot summer day…sorry, hot cakes weren’t appropriate this time!

Seems the Boss Lady Eco Shoulder Bag that looks like a saddle bag is the perfect size for your Netbook or iPad! The bag measures 13 x 14 and is also available in our stylish shoulder bag for women Flowers and our eco friendly shoulder bag Bird Nest design. Light weight, adjustable wide strap, and an interior cell phone pocket too. Our Eco Totes from Blue Q are made from 95% recycled material that is tough and ready to handle your technology!

- e.

Just Married with Extra Aluminum Cans Behind the Car!

June is the beginning of the big wedding season! Pete and Andrea in Spokane, Washington, know the value of aluminum recycling. It’s not just about being green. It’s about making your dreams come true in a very green way…

To pay for their wedding they needed to recycle 400,000 aluminum cans. It’s not a big fancy wedding. It’s a celebration of family, friends, home-brewed beer and cake. They started on December 7th, 2009 and are getting married on July 31st this year. (Check out their web site at www.weddingcans.com) If you wanted to donate your cans and you lived in the Spokane area, they would even come pick them up for you. Others who wanted to give to their cause and lived farther away were encouraged to bring cans to a local recycling center and send the cash, or donate via the pay pal link on their website.

Being environmentally responsible is a big part of Pete and Andrea’s lives. They planned this crazy scheme to make their dream wedding come true and educate people about aluminum recycling. And boy did they do that! Aluminum recycling is one of the most sustainable and useful forms of recycling.

So, with their cash donations and donated cans, they've met their goals and are getting married! To date, they've collected 280,806 cans, with cash donations equivalent to 119,194 cans...and they are still getting donations.

Congrats and best wishes to you both!

- e.

Bake It Forward with Fair Trade Chocolate!

I’m sure many of you have heard about the child slave labor at the cocoa farms in West Africa. The corporate chocolate giants are not doing much about it as they continue to fill our insatiable need for chocolate and make billions of dollars doing it. I won’t give up chocolate, but I can start buying fair trade and ethical chocolate. What else can you do about it? Emily at Bake it Forward has a yummy educational idea that I am going to try tonight.

How to Bake it Forward

1. Buy some fair trade chocolate in a store near you, or purchase it directly from a company online. If you’re not sure where to shop, check out the links to the left.
2. Bake something to share with 5-10 friends, family, and co-workers. Click here for recipe ideas.
3. Download the 8-per-sheet bake it forward tags or the 4×6 photo-sized postcards to print out and attach to your baked goods.
4. Give them away!

Share the story of slave labor and BUY fair trade chocolate. Divine Chocolate is not only fair trade, the West African farmers own 45% of the business! In addition, Endangered Species Chocolate (left), a local Indianapolis chocolate company, makes ethical chocolate that is non-GMO verified. Plus, 10% of their proceeds go to save endangered species! Endangered Species Chocolate partners with the Rainforest Alliance, the African Wildlife Foundation, and the Ocean Conservancy, to name a few.

- e

A Nostalgic Earth Day!

Earth Day Indiana presented itself as a cloudy, rainy day and we came prepared with our eco friendly umbrellas to help keep our green friends covered, but the rain held off and we saw a different trend. Nostalgia!

The big hits for the day were our Dick and Jane drinking water bottles from Blue Q and our Dick and Jane recycled plastic zipper pouches. Not everyone knows who Dick and Jane are anymore…it shows our age!

The other adorable blast from the past were our Fun Eco Diaper Bags with pastel Winnie the Pooh made from actual recycled old Winnie the Pooh books. I still like the softer side of Winnie, with the original sketches mixed with watercolor. Somehow those drawings fit the quirky characters that live in the 100-acre woods.

All three of these vintage gifts would make perfect gifts for your eco mom, grandma or even great-grandma. The stories they can tell! You could always slip a gift certificate for a spa treatment inside the Dick and Jane Zippered Pouch to let mom know you understand her modern needs!

- e.

Fox 59 Morning Green...

Last week it was WTHR Channel 13 with Tim "Tree Boy" Bush and then this morning JD was checking out our new eco friendly products with Ray Cortopassi on Fox Morning News (video below). Celery Street eco friendly finds are popular these days! Ray really liked our men’s super thin wallet made of vintage ties. Did you see our new fashionable lunch bags for adults? And of course, our Maggie Bag Seatbelt purses are always a hit.

Of course these days everything leads into the many wonderful Earth Day activities around the country. Don’t forget to visit us at Earth Day Indiana at the White River State Park on Saturday the 24th from 11:00am to 4:00pm AND 5% of sales go to the Jane Goodall Institute. Our booth will be under a tent in case it rains and we sell those classic eco friendly umbrellas to keep you dry all day!

If you can’t make it out to Earth Day, you can order on line to give Jane Goodall her 5%, plus you can use the code EARTH15 at check out in the promotion code field and get your 15% off your order (valid until April 25th)!

- e.

A GREEN Musical Cincy Day!

We had great weather and a wonderful crowd at the Cincinnati Earth Day celebration on Saturday. Celery Street had a booth filled with a lot of our regular products and some of our great new finds.

We also loved the live music! Who was that singing group? Wild Carrot? We have just become fans! This is not just a “local” band. Kentucky Music Weekend says it's "one of the top folk groups around today."

We also enjoyed the young composers who wrote and performed their music about Mother Earth. It’s nice to know the next generations are concerned about taking good care of the Earth.

The Cincinnati crowd really liked our women’s purses….and we have lots of new ones to choose from! They also snapped up our zippered coin purse selection made of eco friendly materials. The kids gravitated toward our Shaineswear, eco friendly kids wristbands. People like to make a statement and wear it!

Cincinnati hosted a great event and we thank you!

- e.

Spring/Summer Eco Purses & Totes: Celery Street on WTHR!

When the Lights Go Out Everything Will Be Green!

Earth Hour is March 27th, 2010 from 8:30 to 9:30 pm. This internationally observed event aims to reduce energy consumption (CO2 emissions) simply by switching off lights for ONE hour. Sounds very basic and effortless…but it’s very powerful!

Last year one billion people turned off their lights for one hour. City governments, the Empire State Building, Golden Gate Bridge, Las Vegas Strip, and Eiffel Tower all went dark.

Watch the video and see everything go dark! Sign up and make your pledge on the official Earth Hour web site.

- e

Dresses That Transform People and Fashion

This eco friendly world I am part of never ceases to amaze me! In searching for the perfect dress for the Indiana Green Business Awards dinner, I checked out my favorite haunt, Leslie Jane’s, and found not only the perfect dress but discovered another green spirited designer with so much talent.

Liz Alig creates fashion forward dresses that are eco-friendly and give back to the community…in the case of Liz, a much larger community.

She studied clothing and textiles at Lipscomb University in Nashville Tennessee, but her wandering nature brought her to thrift stores, Africa, Asia and Honduras. This combination of travels and Liz’s need to give back has inspired her 2010 Spring Vintage Collection. For this collection she partnered with Mi Esperanza, a nonprofit who provide skills training and assistance to the women of Honduras. The Village Collection was sewn by women who have graduated from this program and 10% of the sales from my dress will go back to Mi Esperanza which furthers opportunities for these women.

The dress I purchased is one-of-a-kind made from thrift store dresses repurposed by women in Honduras. I love my dress for more reasons than it just looks good….it does good.

- e.