What: Wooden tea set

Features: Everything about this tea set from Plan Toys is adorable! It’s thirteen pieces include two cups and saucers, tea bags and stir sticks; there are even two lumps of sugar to play with!

Green Factor: Items from Plan Toys are made out of unfertilized rubberwood that’s kiln-dried rather than chemically treated. This tea set was made using water-based dyes, soy-based inks and non-toxic E-Zero glue

Bonus: Exceeds all international toy safety standards

Find It Here: Plan Toys

What: Kits to make natural lip balms, perfumes, bath fizzies and soaps

Features: Everything you need to make your own fun personal care goodies

Green Factor: Natural ingredients like shea butter, witch hazel, essential oils with no fillers, additives, dyes or synthetics

Bonus:  Fun to make at birthday parties and sleepovers!

Find It Here: Kiss Naturals

Win It: We’ve partnered with Kiss Naturals to give away a Bath Fizzie Kit and Lip Balm Kit to one randomly selected winner. Click here to fill out our simple entry form. Just enter KN12 as the giveaway name and tell us how long it takes to make lip balm and soap with a Kiss Naturals kit. Enter by 12/21/09. $35 value. Open to residents of US and Canada. Winner to be notified by email. Contest Closed.

Healthy Child Healthy World has put together an impressive list of 200 great green gifts for the kiddos. Be sure to check it out before you start your shopping and while you’re at it, make sure to also check out this list of Unsafe Toys of 2009

Find It Here: Amazon.com

What: Wine.com

Features: Green wines made with sustainable, organic and/or biodynamic practices and a fabulous, very reasonably priced organic wine and food gift set.

Bonus: 1¢ shipping on orders over $99 for a limited time. Use promo code “1cent” in the shopping cart. in the shopping cart1cent

Find It Here: Wine.com

Our friends at Funky Green Machine are having a fabulous sale on some great green goodies. Stock up on gifts or just stock up for yourself!

They’re offering 40% off the following brands:
Circles and Squares: Ultra-hip onesies and tees made with fair labor
Fierce Hugs: Whimsical organic onesies and tee
Klean Kanteen: Stainless steel bottle with no BPA or leaching
The Spoiled Mama: All natural, organic, cruelty-free skincare products
thinkbaby: Baby bottles and feeding sets that are BPA-free, phthalate-free and lead-free
Tilvee: Eco-ethical skincare
Tiny Revolutionary: Onesies and tees

Use discount code welovegreenfriday. Discount will be taken off during checkout. Offer ends on December 2, 2009. While supplies last.

Find It Here: Funky Green Machine

What: The Baby Bunch

Features: This exquisite bouquet of rosebuds is made out of itty bitty baby clothes–newborn onesies, t-shirts, bibs and socks

Green Factor: Clothing items are 100% organic cotton

Bonus: Makes a great baby shower gift. Right now, take $10 off the price plus shipping is free!

Find It Here: Boys to Men Gifts

On Our Blog: Disinfectant Overkill

Bedrock Industries. Sounds like something from the Flintstones, doesn’t it? Don’t let the name fool you—you’ll find no ugly gray rocks on their site. No. Bedrock Industries makes very cool things out of glass.

Implementing the three R’s in to their business is a way of life for Bedrock Industries. All of their glassware, from gift and garden items, tumbled glass and a wide variety of backsplash tiles, is made from 100% recycled glass and nuthin’ but–no pigments, oxides or colorants are added. I’ve spent quite a bit of time drooling over their wares–the brilliantly colored sun catchers and wind chimes, love stones, stir sticks and hanging robots (seriously, go check out the robots) and they’re all gorgeous. The fact that they’re creating fabulous, eco-friendly creations out of glass that would otherwise wind up in a landfill ain’t too shabby either, as if we needed any more proof that recycling is beautiful!

Find It Here: Bedrock Industries

It was the name – The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Company Limited – that first caught my attention, but the story behind it kept me lingering on their site. Boasting journals, note boxes and stationary, they make paper products using…wait for it…elephant dung.

The animal’s diet makes the poop ripe for becoming stationary. It’s chock full o’ short and medium grained fibrous materials, the right ingredients for making recycled paper. The company has partnered with conservation parks and mahouts to collect the dung for processing, which is detailed, step-by-step, on their site (quite an interesting read, that). Not surprisingly, a portion of their profits go toward benefiting elephant welfare and conservation programs.

I dare you to browse the Poo-Tique and find something you don’t like – everything is earth-aware and practical and seriously, how fun would it be to give your in-laws paper products made from poop?

Find It Here: The Great Elephant Poo Poo Company Ltd.

As the old saying goes, when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade (or, if you’re like me, you scrap the lemonade all together and mix up a lemon drop cocktail instead). With that thought in mind, if my husband handed me my favorite wool sweaters–sweaters he’d accidentally shrunken–I’d probably struggle to look at things from the lemonade-making point of view. When it happened to Sue Burns, however, she didn’t see a pile of ruined sweaters, but an opportunity instead.

Instead of freaking out on her husband like I would have, Sue put her old sweaters to good use by creating funky, original clothing for children. What started in Sue’s basement as a laundry mishap has since blossomed in to baabaaZuzu, where old wool is given a new lease on life in the form of unique  jackets, vests, purses and other nifty things (like posy pins and Christmas stockings) using 100% recycled wool (and cool vintage buttons, too).   BaabaaZuzu’s recycled wares are quite fetching, albeit a bit pricey, but if you’re in the market for something recycled, handmade and just really cool, it may be worth a few extra Benjamins!

Find It Here: Baabaazuzu

What: Pre-Seeded Gift Wrap

Features: Plant the paper after it’s been used and grow wildflowers

Green Factor: Made from 100% recycled paper, creates zero waste

Cool  Factor: Totally NOT generic (so your gift will stand out!)

Find It Here: Little Kay Gardens

The next time you’re in the market for a board game, check out this environmentally friendly, award-winning board game for kids ages 8 and up—it’s called Xeko Mission: Madagascar, and it’s a great way for children to learn about exotic animals (like fossas, tomato frogs and lemurs), their environment and how to protect them. Kids battle against their friends for eco-points and special powers and the player with the most points wins!

Xeko Mission: Madagascar was made with the earth in mind, literally. It’s chock-full of recycled materials, packaged in recycled stock and game cards are made with recycled materials and are printed with soy-based inks.

2006 was a good year for this game – not only did Creative Child Magazine name it the Top Toy of the Year, the National Parenting Centre gave it their Seal of Approval. Recognition like that, coupled with its eco-friendly spin, makes Xeko Mission: Madagascar a favorite with us. The Starter Set comes with an oversized play mat, 50 cards, two guidebooks and a rulebook. To make the package even sweeter, four per cent of the game’s net sales are donated to Conservation International. This definitely isn’t your mother’s board game!

Find It Here: Green Home Environmental Store

When I buy Basmati rice, I get it in the big, ten-pound bags that are outfitted with handles, a zippered top and a colourful, festive elephant on the front. When I get home, I dump the rice in a reusable container and save the bag – they’re sturdy and durable, and they’re great for lugging groceries around in.

With that in mind, I love the thinking behind these factory-reject rice bags that have been re-fashioned into fun and funky laptop bags! The Child Health Site has seen the potential these awesome bags have to offer and have come up with a great way to stop the duds from winding up in a landfill somewhere. Why carry your computer around in a dull black bag like everyone else when you can have a bag that’s not only unique and stylish but recycled, as well?

Each bag is hand-held and has two zippered compartments and compared to other options that I’ve seen elsewhere, are reasonably priced at $22.95. They’re made and fairly traded in Thailand, and not only that—with each purchase, The Child Health Site donates 20 cents to The Bamboo Watch Ring, an organization that benefits children who are infected or affected by the HIV virus.

Find It Here: The Child Health Site