04.30.07
Posted in recycling, pollution, shopping at 8:46 pm by greengirl
San Francisco recently became the first US city to ban the use of plastic bags by large supermarket and, eventually, chain pharmacies. These stores must now use bags that are compostable, containing no petroleum products, or recyclable. The San Francisco Department of the Environment estimates that 180 million plastic shopping bags are distributed yearly in SF, requiring a total of 774,000 gallons of oil. Per YEAR. Ireland is already doing this and has achieved a 90% reduction in plastic bags. The Boston city council is already talking about similar legislation.
Plastic bags, originally seen as a friendly alternative to paper, take up landfill space, get caught in tree branches and blow into waterways, harming marine life. Using cloth bags, of course, is the most environmentally friendly option. I use a Flintstones bag that I got as a promotion when I worked at a video store, but if you don’t have a bag around, there are numerous sources for sturdy cloth bags: myownbag.com, chicobag.com, ecobags.com and reusablebags.com.
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04.29.07
Posted in energy, home & garden, global warming at 12:11 pm by greengirl
Numerous cities and electric cooperatives across the country are participating in the Energy Star Change a Light, Change the World campaign. According to the magazine put out by my local energy cooperative, 100 pledges to replace one incandescent light bulb (a ‘regular’ bulb) with an Energy Star light bulb (the cool spiral bulb) could save 28,200 kwh of energy and prevent 44,600 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions. Check out the current progress and see how your state is doing.
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04.24.07
Posted in recycling, habitat at 9:07 pm by greengirl
I recently heard a story on Marketplace about rubber sidewalks. Everyone has seen concrete sidewalks buckled by tree roots and cracked from persistent weeds. Well, there’s a California company now making sidewalks out of rubber that prevent many of these problems. This saves the labor to replace the cracked concrete and the materials used to make the concrete, as well as preventing all the damage to tree roots because they give and stretch more than concrete. The rubber sidewalk sections are made from recycled tires, and they’re cooler (temperature-wise, that is) than concrete. You can get them in a variety of colors, and they’re apparently very difficult to tell apart from regular concrete. Over 60 cities are already installing them on a limited basis including Washington D.C., Seattle, Santa Monica and New Rochelle, NY.
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04.15.07
Posted in energy, global warming at 8:17 pm by greengirl
I recently went to Starbucks (yeah, I know, I know) while traveling because I was jonesing for chai tea. The receipt had a code printed on it to play a game (though the code ended up not being required to play). The game is Planet Green Game. Despite the fact that it was brought to you by a chain store, the game itself has a lot of good information. It centers mostly on what individual choices can do to make a difference in energy efficiency and, ultimately, global warming. Plus, I always like a good game of Memory. So, if you’re looking for a break at work, I recommend it.
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04.08.07
Posted in energy, home & garden, recycling, pollution, shopping at 8:03 pm by greengirl
After looking into the very full trash can at my favorite coffee shop and realizing what a waste all those paper cups are, I went in search of a travel mug that would hold the 20 oz of chai tea goodness that the shop serves up as their large. Every mug (in all the cool colors) that I found at all the stores in my local mall was 16 oz. When I’m in search of a chai buzz, 16 oz just won’t cut it. The 20 oz cup proved quite elusive. To save you a similarly endless internet search, I ended up with a Timolino desktop mug
in the usual boring silver (will someone please make a 20 oz mug in a cool color - like magenta or burnt orange?!?!?) The mug itself is a little larger than 20 oz, but this allows you to put the top on without hot liquid squirting all over you - one of my favorite baristas measured it for me. Timolino also makes a 20 oz travel mug, but it looked way too precarious to trust to my clumsy hands. The mug I bought got bad reviews on Amazon, but I drink my chai too fast to care how many hours it keeps tea warm, and I don’t have a briefcase. So, it works great for me.
And how much of a difference am I making? Well, according to Treehugger (who borrowed the info from Organic Style magazine), if everyone who read Organic Style magazine used a reusable mug for one week’s worth of daily morning joe, trees filling two football fields would be saved. Switching for just one day would save the energy equivalent to 1,000 gallons of gasoline. Sadly, Organic Style is no longer being published, so I have no idea what their readership was. I’ll have to do more checking for more meaningful numbers…
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04.07.07
Posted in health, recycling at 8:35 pm by greengirl
I happened to stumble across this fabulous idea for reusing all those CD spindles you have after using up the packs of burnable CDs. Use it to pack a bagel sandwich! Too cool!
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