Philly

Happy holidays, readers! Now that you're finished unwrapping those gifts, it's time to start thinking about what to do with your Christmas tree. Whatever you do, don't leave them on your curb - the city dumps them straight in the landfill, where the beautiful trees remain tree corpses forever. Or as the NLNA (Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association) brilliantly put it in their newsletter, "For the fifth year in a row, the City of Philadelphia will not be curbside collecting holiday trees for recycling. As a result, any trees left at the curb will go into landfills or incinerators, causing air and water pollution and contributing to global warming." Kudos for the clarification. :-) Regardless of the location, make sure to remove all decorations and lights before you recycle the trees. Here are the 2013-2014 Christmas Tree recycling options in Philadelphia:

As 2013 comes to a close, we all get to celebrate the holidays with time off from work, family, friends, whiskey and cats meowing as we're home. (...just us?) Maybe you were on vacation or Facebook forced you to miss a post or two from us. Speaking of which, scroll to the bottom of the post for a really easy way to see more of our updates... Regardless of the reason, make sure to check out our most popular posts of 2013... because if they're popular, people obviously like them. And you don't want to miss out on cool things. Here are our 10 most popular posts of 2013:

'Tis the season to be giving... Fa la la la la, la la la la. But what wrapping, bags and paper can you recycle? Fa la la la la la, la la la la. Good news for you - we sorted out Christmas recycling tips for you, for what you can put in the single-stream Philadelphia bins! Here's what you can recycle over the holidays for today's edition of Where Can I Wednesday.

Does the snow, ice and cold weather make you miss the PHS Pop-up Garden? Good news: there's a new winter wonderland where you can ice skate and warm up with food and local craft beer afterwards. Find out about the skating rink and how to win a FREE VIP pack, after the jump!

There's always a downside to a healthy, sustainable lifestyle. Like most of those fragrances you see plastered with the gorgeous faces of Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian and Queen Bey have a dark side. The US National Academy of Sciences targeted fragrances over 25 years ago as one of the 6 categories of neutroxins (ie toxic to your brain) as perfume; are made from synthetic, petroleum-based chemicals and may contain cancer-causing toxins. So what's a green guy or gal to do? Local Company Spotlight: The Perfume Fountain

After a surge of holiday 'theme' days... Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday.. the holidays are sneaking up on us faster than ever. Yet ever consider how much disposables of boxes, wrapping paper, ribbon and bags are involved? Although you can reuse wrapping paper or go without, there's still something about having a gorgeous gift wrapped up in a colorful design. VZWraps: Greener than disposable wrapping paper VZ Wraps are the classy, reusable solution for gifts. Find out more about VZ Wraps after the jump!

Small Business Saturday > Black Friday . No contest in my book. Black Friday typically means lines, traffic, lines, cranky, tired people weeding through sale racks and more lines!  Small Business Saturday, on the other hand, is all about supporting the little, local guys.  I usually peacefully meander to my local coffee shop, then head to some independent boutiques and hit up some fav local restaurants for fuel in between. Here's a few more reasons I think Small Business Saturday kicks Black Friday's a**. Boost your local economy by spending within the community. Money spent at a local business generates 3.5x more wealth for the local economy compared to money spent at a chain-owned business. You'll likely lower your carbon output. Walk, ride your bike or drive a short distance to local, small business instead of the big, scary mall and you'll save gasoline. Plus, if you go out on Black Friday you can almost guarantee sitting in major traffic.  An idle car burns a whole lotta gasoline.

Greenworks Philadelphia. Tree planting. Farmers Markets. Energy Works. Bike shares. We're all so used to the awesome things that the Mayor's Office of Sustainability does that we don't realize it's a temporary office. With a mayor election on the horizon, we don't want anything to disappear on us. Lucky for us, City Council introduced Charter Change legislation, Resolution No. 130884, to make the Office of Sustainability permanent in the Philadelphia government. As Katherine Gajewski said in an email announcement,

Let's step back for a moment: There's 30,000 brilliant individuals who are creating green buildings, nontoxic classrooms and sustainable architecture. And they're in Philly this week, taking in our city skyline, Federal Donuts & local fare. The keynote by Hillary Clinton peaked the week at Greenbuild 2013 last evening at the Liacouras Center in Temple University. Find out about the highlights, after the jump!