If you were to organize conferences or seminars at your workplace, you would usually give away some stationery — disposable plastic pens, note pads, and what-have-yous. Or if you were organizing an event and you needed to prepare some Press Kits for the pressmen, what would you include in the Press Kits?

During my tenure as a part-time reporter for a local English daily, I’ve received some really absurd Press Kits, containing some really useless stuff. The last one I received was a plague that had the name of the event printed on it. When I got home and took it out of the paper bag, I was like, “OK, what am I supposed to do with this plague?!” But when I got up the next morning, I had an idea. I could paste my picture over it, and it would make a sturdy photo frame :)

And during our recent Terrapin Independence Day, we prepared Press Kits that contained the norms, such as speeches and program leaflets, a terrapin postcard, a terrapin waterproof sticker and a T-shirt. We did not include anything plastic or hazardous to the environment.

So, if you need to give away some environmentally-friendly gifts, please consider some of these:

• Reusable shopping bag/tote bag (think IKEA)
• Locally produced items — local nuts, salad dressing, restaurant meals, candles or art
• Garden seeds that carry a message about uniqueness and growth
• Recycled paper pads

Do you have other suggestions? What green items would you give away at conferences??

This guest-post is brought to you by Miranda.

When it comes to investing, many people just accept that they will be contributing to environmental desecration, just by supporting the companies that have practices that are less than eco-friendly. But this is not always the case. Environmentally friendly ways to invest are becoming more popular, whether you are looking at solar stocks or considering investing in biofuels.

Additionally, there are great resources out there, including mutual funds (like the Sierra Club Fund) that are comprised of eco-friendly companies, and ETFs that are also composed of investments friendly to the environment. If you keep your head about you, and look for good opportunities, you will find that in many cases there are environmentally friendly ways to invest all around.

You support companies that care about the planet, and you make some money as well.

Miranda is a professional writer and blogger. She writes mainly about personal finance issues for online and print publications. She contributes to the ethical investing Web site, The Panelist, as well as to the All Business Personal Finance Corner, and LoanShak. She authors the blog Yielding Wealth, and also the WorkShak blog on home business. Miranda and her husband, who is studying environmental psychology, are very interested in environmental issues, and work together to reduce their household’s carbon footprint.

Hi, this is Steve from Save the Nature for the Future reporting. Received an invitation from Pelf on my blog.

A lot of our daily actions contribute to degrading the environment without us realizing it. There are always alternative ways and and they do help.

Let me ask you a simple question. When you take a bath, do you use a soap (the box type) or bath cream (liquid type)? If you answer soap, congratulations. You have chosen to make a difference, and as for bath cream, you still can make the difference. The hydrocarbon (fatty) portion in soaps dissolves dirt and oils and the ionic end makes them soluble in water, thus allowing them to remove insoluble matter by emulsification. Soap is also made from materials found naturally, compared to bath cream (detergent) which is synthetic (chemicals). Detergents, if you don’t already know, are toxic to fish and wildlife. So, change now and you can make the difference to the environment around you.

Next, do you own a garden or love gardening? Do you realize that you can do a lot of things that can contribute to the better environment within your own garden? You can start with not using chemical pesticides and fertilizers and replace them with natural products, organic compost and mulch such as leaves, cow dung, straw, sawdust, etc. to improve the health of soil. You can also reduce water usage by collecting rain water to water your plants. Moreover, in gardening, everyone hates weeds, so instead of using herbicides, there are a few ways in which we can reduce their use. Use a hoe or grub the crops by continually cultivating fallow ground and the weed seeds will be reduced when the germinating seedlings are turned over. To overcome the stubborn weeds, you can use some vinegar directly on them.

Next is recycling. How many of you do that in your daily life? If you recycle, you’ve done the environment a BIG BIG difference. Recycling reduces the need to dig up or mine new raw materials, which often damages the surrounding environment and this includes the habitats of wildlife. Besides, you save energy too as recycled aluminum cans use 20 times less energy than making cans from raw materials. You will also save our natural resources as the rubbish that we throw away are made from products that are slowly running out or cannot be replaced quickly with the rate of our usage. When you recycle, you also help others who depend on them for a living by providing work opportunity to them. Charity groups such as Salvation Army also gains from this, as they use our recycled items and refurbish them to look like new items and are sold to the public. The money raised from selling recycled items goes towards the needy.

In reality, there are a lot more actions that we can take for a better environment. Your participation is vital to ensure that together, we can achieve the goal. Do it for the future generations, do it for a better quality of life for all, do it for a healthier Mother Nature, and do it for yourself. It will not harm any of us if we would just spend a little more time or think before taking every action. It does help. Don’t hesitate.

Do it today, start from right now.

Steve is a final year undergraduate majoring in IT and is also working freelance at the same time. He writes mainly about nature particularly about wildlife in Malaysia and Worldwide. He is the owner of Save the Nature for the Future, and he does this out of his love and genuine interest in nature. He intends to create and spread awareness on his favourite subjects and at the same time shares his knowledge with his readers.