Thanks to another trusty tipster in beautiful Hawai’i for this.

Recycline, Inc. is a Waltham, MA-based product company that has designed the completely recycled and recyclable Preserve brand toothbrush. It is available through their online store or at select Targets, Wild Oats, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods Market.

Using mostly recycled Stoneyfield Farm yogurt cups, the Preserve Toothbrush is a reliable and pleasant looking toothbrush that can also be recycled as a #5 plastic. If your local recycler doesn’t accept this type of plastic (most cities do #1 and #2 plastic), no need to worry: included with your toothbrush is a postage paid envelope bound for Waltham where it will be turned into plastic lumber and park benches, completing the circle.

Another cool feature is the Recycline toothbrush subscription program. You can choose to have a new toothbrush mailed to you every 2, 3, 4 or 5 months so that you don’t ever have to keep track of your replacement schedule, making your dentist a very happy camper. You can buy a pack of four on the Recycline website for $13.00, or $3.25 a toothbrush. This makes the Recycline toothbrush comparable in price to all the name brand ones out there.

Recycline also makes razors and tongue cleaners, both of which can be bought on the subscription program. Flavored toothpicks made of farmed soft wood is also available. On the non-persoanl hygiene tip is a line of recycled plastic picnic plates.

So, the next time you need to clean your mouth or shave that 5 o’clock shadow and you’re feeling particularly ecological, check out the Preserve Toothbrush and give the Earth a second chance.

According to The Orange County Register, a homeless man found and returned a wad of cash ($900 in all) and credit cards he found in an office building trash can over the weekend.

The man, whose name is unknown to office workers familiar with him, found the wallet belonging to Kim Bogue of Garden Grove, CA while rummaging through trashcans of a Santa Ana office park looking for dinner.

Instead of basking in the glow of found treasure, he decided to return the wallet to Bogue intact.

Bogue was, of course, completely surprised and very grateful for the gesture. She gave the man a $100 reward, which he then split with a woman who helped him find the wallet’s rightful owner. Yup, you heard this right. Instead of taking the full $100 (which no one would blame him for), he continued his niceness by spreading his newfound wealth with someone who works in the office park and is assumingly not homeless and probably never goes hungry.

I’m not sure what possesses some people to be so thoughtful, honest and plain nice. It’s very much inspiring.

For the first time ever, a couple was wed at home plate in Yankees Stadium. And this momentous event was reserved for a very special man.

Ed Lucas, 67, is a baseball reporter for a New Jersey radio station who lost his eye sight as a young boy when a baseball line drive hit him square in the face. Ironically, the accident happened during a pick-up game after Lucas and some neighborhood kids watched Bobby Thomson of the then New York Giants hit “The Shot Heard Around the World” during the first ever televised baseball game in 1951.

Despite the horrible mishap, Lucas continued to pursue a career in the sport that he loves. With his syndicated Yankee radio program in its 51st season, he has become a much loved and respected man around the clubhouse and the front office. It was only fitting then that Steinbrenner & Co. made the wonderful gesture of inviting Lucas and his bride-to-be, Allison Pheifle, to be married on one of the holiest of baseball’s grounds.

Read more at CBS Sportsline.

Mio,

Thank you so much for taking time and taking me upstate on Saturday. Your friendship is very precious to me. I can’t think of many people that would have taken time to do that for me and I cannot express how deeply that has affected me. Thank you for always being there for me no matter what and please know I am always here for you. I love you so much!!! I still owe you big time…

NICE Girl (Nuriz) — New York, NY

Thanks again to our Hawai’i star for bringing this to us.

This amazing music video by perennial cool rocker, Sarah McLachlan, redefines what it means to be a responsible world citizen. The Lilith Fair founder and outside-the-box thinker came up with an outstanding idea that advances the conscience of music in coming up with the concept for this video.

For her 2004 hit song, World On Fire, McLachlan decided to go cheap on the budget and produced the music video for a meer $15. Yup, you heard me right. For $15, McLachlan sat in a wooden chair and strummed her acoustic while lip syncing. And that’s it. Some screen graphics came in and out explaining the concept behind it all, but the only shot was of the solo strummer.

You see, McLachlan decided to take all the money that she would have spent producing a standard, MTV-friendly video and give it away to worthy charities around the world. The screen graphics in the $15 resulting video highlighted these charities and furthermore described the impact of the donated money. From medicine for 5,000 people in Kenya to food for a year for 10 street children in Calcutta, the power of the video’s message is very apparent. In all, some $148,270 were given to groups like Heifer International, Comic Relief and Film Aid. In a non-in-your-face way, McLachlan managed to inspire philanthropy in all of us. It’s really a great idea for a video and makes me glad to wait for the next cool McLachlan project.

Watch this wonderful video here: World On Fire.

Uncool disclaimer:
I know, I know, this is old news, but I have to admit that I simply had not seen or heard of this video before now. I’ll work on getting cable or picking up copies of Spin and Rolling Stone more often, but for now I’m just glad that I have hip friends out there to keep me in touch. So help keep NICE hip by sending in your tips.

News of this cool project comes to us from a contributor out in sunny Hawai’i.

As most effective projects tend to be, BeadforLife has a very smart and elegant model. This Boulder, CO-based group exports and sells beads made by local Ugandan women. Mostly sold in the United States, the proceeds from the beads go toward community projects and toward helping those Ugandan women to improve their living status. A full 15% of all sales goes directly to women who produce the beads.

The vast majority of the beads are sold at Bead Parties, much like the Tupperware model. In 2005, over 500 such parties took place. A smaller percentage of sales happens directly through their online store, retail outlets and craft fairs.

Check out BeadforLife the next time you need to put a little present together. It’s a great story and the products are great looking as well.

We found this cool site via a trusty and entirely friendly source down in Charlotte, NC.

HappyNews.com is a news aggregator and feed that is focused on, you guessed it, positive news. The site also enlists an army of Citizen Reporters around the country who submit good stories about good things going on in their hometowns. This is a great and professionally run site that deserves a look see.

According to their website, HappyNews was the brainchild of publisher Byron Reese, an online content pro who began to question the lack of positive stories in the media. Reese thought that a site focused on the good stuff in life would be just as successful as a traditional news site. So far so good. After only a few months online, HappyNews has gained enough of an audience to begin running their own advertisements.

Indeed, we are thrilled that HappyNews is out there also working on the mission to put some good, positive and nice content online. We are also encouraged by their growth. The more sites out there like ours the better. And the more successful we all are the more we can say with confidence that good news is here to stay.

The Danville, CA police force recently received an unusual furry gift from an anonymous donor.

Footing the initial $8,000 and the four year maintenance cost of $63,000, this nice citizen has ensured that the Danville police will benefit from the services of Donna, a three-year old Belgian Malinois “puppy”.

At more than $70,000, this is quite the anonymous gift. K9 units are invaluable in the crime fighting repertoire, so this gift will go a long way in keeping the peace in Danville.

Read the story in the San Jose Mercury News.

This from The Seattle Times tells of yet another instance of a stranger randomly paying for someone else’s meal at a restaurant. We’ve seen it where someone gets to the drive through window of a McDonald’s to pay only to be told that the car in front has already paid the ticket. And then there is the sit down restaurant version like this Seattle occurrence where a random person just decides to take care of the whole tab. Enjoy:

A couple of weeks ago, four of us “little old ladies” were having lunch celebrating a birthday at Anthony’s in Edmonds. The lunch was delicious and we were having fun but it was getting time to leave. As we prepared to pay, the waitress came over and told us that all four of our lunches had been paid for, including tip.

Evelyn M. Pooley

The story of illegal immigrants turned proud parents, Yolanda and Rogelio Garcia Sr., is simply amazing and will have you rethinking the meaning of hardship and triumph.

Featured recently on the ABC news magazine, 20/20, and subject of the documentary, Parents of the Year, the Garcia’s demonstrate how hard work, perseverance and sunny disposition can still go a long way toward attaining the American Dream. Well, at least for your kids anyway.

After losing their jobs in the early 1990s, and with three young children to care for, the Garcia’s took to the streets to keep their home in order. But not the street lifestyle that you’re probably imagining. They canvassed the Los Angeles streets at night gathering and harvesting the fruits of modern day commerce: recyclable cans and bottles. For over a decade now, for hours on end, 365 a year, the Garcias have been collecting recyclables in order to pay the bills and even put their kids through college. In fact, their eldest child, Rogelio Jr., went all they through MIT and currently works as an engineer at a military contractor. His accomplishments and lot in life were handed to him by the tedious and persistent work of his parents. Literally, the good fortune of Rogelio Jr. was built one can, one bottle at a time.

If you watched the 20/20 story or take a peak at clips from Parents of the Year, you’d also see the alluring nature of this wonderful couple. Sunny is the only way to describe them. Despite their place in society and the hard work they’ve had to endure, Yolanda can do nothing but spout positive thoughts and Rogelio Sr. beam a shining smile. It’s contagious. Definitely check it out.