The Green Is Sexy Product of the Month is the BioBag, which is the world’s first 100% bio-degradeable and compostable bag. Consider it the perfect alternative for all your plastic bags that you use around your house, including menial tasks like picking up after your dog at the park or those late night poop walks

From Green Is Sexy:

We’ll try not to be too, eh-em, corny when we talk about how obsessed we are with BioBags, but it’s hard not to be. BioBags look like a plastic sack, feel like a plastic sack (actually a bit softer), and hold up like a plastic sack, but they aren’t plastic - they are made of corn!

The material is actually called Mater-Bi, the first completely biodegradable and compostable bio-polymer ever invented. Adhering to strict guidelines and testing, Mater-Bi has been certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute to meet the ASTM D6400 specification.

BioBags are catching on quickly, too. We’ve seen them offered at parks as a green way to pick up after your dog, at grocery stores as an alternative to the paper-or-plastic phenomena. Recently, to promote their residential food waste collection, the city of San Francisco sent 100,000 rolls of BioBags to residents to help educate them on the importance of diverting food and other biodegradable waste from entering landfills.

For more info on BioBags, including how to buy them, of course, go to: http://www.biobagusa.com/.
(And just because we loved this product doesn’t mean you will. Click here for more information.)

I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more press coverage on this type of product. There aren’t any drawbacks (except for a marginal increase in cost) with huge upsides for the world we live in.

I stopped by my local Safeway and couldn’t find them for sale yesterday, but wasn’t surprised to see them readily available on Amazon such as the regular waste bags and dog bags (affiliate links).

Since the launch of Green is sexy last wednesday, the incoming traffic to the site has been amazing given it was a soft-launch with no formal marketing or advertising. Being mentioned in their contributors section in Things we heart has been a boon for both my blog and my photo portfolio as well in terms of traffic.

My blog and portfolio are getting ~25% increase in traffic with 40% of it either coming from greenissexy.org or from celebrity fan sites. At one point, 56% of my blog traffic was coming only from rachelmcadams.org:

Now if only all those new visitors would adopt at least one of the green tips!It’s definitely cool being tangentially associated with a project that’s gaining momentum in the news, especially in celebrity gossip sites which I’ve always been a big fan of :). It’s also rewarding to be part of a project that I believe in, one that’s about saving this world we live on. I’ve been frankly shocked at the sheer simplicity of the “tips of the day” and how easy it is for each one of us to make an impact on the world. One example was the tip from the other day:

Use a mug instead of a paper cup. Obvious? Not really. Ceramic mugs require a lot more energy to produce and distribute than their disposable cousins. So why are we recommending you ditch the paper? Mugs may lose the battle, but they win the war: They are designed to be used more than 3,000 times, as opposed to the single-use design of paper cups. In the long run, the smarties at the Dutch Ministry of Environment assure us it’s better to reuse your coffee cup than to get a new paper one each time. Feeling ambitious? Use non-toxic dish soap to wash your ceramic mugs, and when you do use a paper cup, just say NO to the plastic lid and the disposable sleeve.

First, I didn’t even think about the energy it required to create a ceramic mug. Second, I drink at least 2 cups of coffee a day at work and use disposable polystyrene cups in our kitchens. I should just start using my own mug and washing it to make my little impact on this world. Any tips you’ve adopted or want to share?

As a side note, here’s a sampling of other coverage I’ve seen around the web:

Rachel McAdams and friends start a new green living website

“Taking a cue from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest speech on the environment, actress Rachel McAdams and some of her best friends have started a website called Green Is Sexy.

It’s not uncommon these days for celebrities to start…”

Rachel McAdams wikipedia entry

“In May 2007, McAdams was involved in the launch of greenissexy.org, a website dedicated to providing environmental tips and information.”

Green Is Sexy and other things

“GreenIsSexy.org is a site started by Rachel and her friends Megan (she was in The Hot Chick with Rachel as the girl who ended up dating the black guy) and Didi, aimed at improving the earth environmentally. Take a look, there are two postcards…”

Rachel McAdams says ‘Green’ is the new black

“green is sexy came about when three friends realized that exchanging quips & tips on ways to make an impact…”

For the last month I’ve been working on a side project with Didi, Megan and Rachel (Yes, it’s really Rachel McAdams )to help get an environmental blog off the ground. The project, Green Is Sexy, has peeked its head out for the first time today.

The goal of the project is to give you tips and information on how to little changes in your life can have a big impact on the world around us. You’ll be able to find things like tips of the day, links to local environmental resources and even suggested books that make for good green reading.

The innaugural tip of the day is:

Recycle your junk mail

Junk mail usually lives only a couple minutes outside the mailbox before it hits the trash. Recycle glossy magazines, mixed-paper junk mail and newspaper instead of throwing it away. Check to see what you can recycle in your area on our resource page (insert link). To maximize your efforts and minimize your impact, remove yourself from bulk-mailings by following the directions here to ensure even less junk arrives in your mailbox and your recycling bin.

Green Is Sexy is built on top of Wordpress from with a bunch of customizations in PHP. All the credit goes to my “green girls”, Didi, Rachel and Megan, for the idea and even visuals; they definitely have a great idea here and also an eye for design. I’m just the donkey who helps tinker and power things under the hood

The site will continue to grow as we figure out more things to add to the site. If you have suggestions, fire away!

Let’s get your green on!

PS — My green girls were kind enough to give me kudos in the Things we heart section. Check me out under Contributors