Are You a Green Valentine?

That's right, 65 percent of us like to give our lovers a card to celebrate the holiday. With numbers like that, paper consumption is certainly an issue on this infamously over commercialized holiday. Why not consider making your own greeting card from leftover paper that you have sitting around the house? Or send an e-greeting. But if you insist on buying a greeting card, choose the recycled variety.

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Quick Green Fixes for your Valentine's Day Look

DIY: Give Paperless Valentine's

Seventy-nine percent of cut flowers come from Ecuador or Columbia and are grown with 12 different pesticides. These pesticides are getting workers sick and polluting our ground water. Instead, consider buying your sweetheart air purifying potted plants. You can choose low maintenance plants that don't require a lot of light and remove toxins from indoor air all the while.

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Skip the Cut Flowers; Choose Eco-Friendly Succulent Plants

Green Your Brain: Why are Cut Flowers Such an Eco-Demon?

Fifty percent of Americans wait six days before the holiday to purchase Valentine's Day cards, making Valentine's Day a procrastinator's holiday. And this is a real shame considering that the best way to minimize your waste on V-day is to plan ahead. Last minute purchases usually involve the least thought. Most junk like wasteful greeting cards, plastic candy boxes, and cheap flowers are purchased last minute.

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Ask Summer Rayne: Valentine's Day Gifts

Craft Your Valentine's Day Around Compassion

A fair trade certified label means that the cacao beans were purchased directly from the growers or a co-op of growers at a price that never falls below 10 cents more than the current market price. The certification also imposes environmental protection standards on growers, including a ban on hazardous pesticides.

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The Green Guide

Buy Green: Dark Chocolate

Looking to get the fire going this Valentine's Day? Consider including any of these aphrodisiacs in your holiday menu. Buttermilk is known to bring vitality and increase sexual energy. Eating tomatoes is known to aid in sexual performance. And the high-quality vitamin E content in avocados, can boost your state of arousal.

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Skip Valentine's Day, and Still Please Your Lover: 4 Ways

Celebrate Valentine's Day on the Cheap

The floral foam used to hold flowers in place, is a petroleum bi-product that off gases formaldehyde when soaked in water. This foam is not biodegradable and has been linked to lung cancer in rare cases of extended exposure. Leaf shine, commonly used to shine greenery and plants, is an aerosol product that is also bad for the lungs. Not to mention the chemical pesticides used to keep non-organic flowers looking lively. So skip the arrangements and choose potted plants or organic cut flowers.

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Green Your Brain: Why are Cut Flowers Such an Eco-Demon?

Found Flowers: The Perfect Eco-Alternative to Cut-Flowers

All three bottles are considered eco-friendly choices. Brut Rosé Cuvée de la Pompadour became the first sparkling winery to be certified by California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) in the United States. Altana Frizzante Rosato has been certified by Italy's organic standards since 1992. And Jean-Pierre Fleury was the first winemaker in the Champagne region to adopt biodynamic processes.

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How to Go Green: Wine

Dine and Entertain

According to an article in Natural Awakenings, a study by the World Watch Institute found that gold mining can be an ecologically disastrous industry. The gold from a single 18-karat ring generates as much as 18 tons of arsenic, cyanide, and mercury-laced mining waste. Consider, instead, finding greener gold by checking out No Dirty Gold.

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Buy Man Made Diamonds This Christmas

No Dirty Gold

Remember the movie Blood Diamond? While the movie was partially fictional, the background was not. In Sierra Leone the recent civil war that cost the lives of nearly 200,000 people was mostly a result of the diamond trade. DeBeers, the world's largest diamond company has admitted to controlling prices in order to make a ridiculous profit. Make sure all your diamonds carry a Kimberley Process Certificate, which means that they are conflict-free diamonds.

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Make Awesome Wine Cork Jewelry

Green Wedding Engagements: Engagement Rings

Divine Chocolate, a Fair Trade chocolate producer, is working to improve the lives of West African cocoa farmers through the Fair Trade program. According to Divine Chocolate CEO, Erin Gormand, farmers are paid a fair and set price so that they have the security to support their families. They also get a "social premium," which goes into a farmers' trust. This money goes back into their communities to pay for projects like paying for the farmers' kids to go to school or paying for clean drinking water in the community.

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What Makes Chocolate Fair Trade Certified? Emeril Answers

How to Go Green: Coffee and Tea