I just had to share this video. Please take the 7 minutes and 17 seconds to watch - it is an inspiration to see what someone can do from waste. A HUGE THANK YOU! to Brittney for sharing her link on videos about recycled bags.
I bought a new cell phone today, and it made me think about what I’ll do with my old phone. Luckily, my phone provider sends a mail-in recycling envelope with any new phone, so I’m all set there. But, what do we do with all our junk electronic equipment?
The first thing you should do is figure out if it’s worth giving it away or selling at a discount to someone else on Freecycle, Ebay, or Craigslist. The National Cristina Foundation accepts computer equipment as donations for local non-profit organizations and schools. If you’re giving away a computer, don’t forget to reformat your hard drive or destroy it before giving it to someone you don’t know. If you’ve got an old cell phone, try Cell for Cash and see if you can get some money for it. If they won’t buy it, you can at least get a free shipping label to mail it in for recycling.
If your junk equipment is not worth donating or selling and you just need to get rid of it, I found some great tips to help you out. We have to avoid throwing electronics in the trash because they can contain toxic materials such as lead, cadmium, beryllium, and flame retardants which, if crushed or burned, can become toxic to our environment. In many states it is actually against the law to throw electronic equipment in the trash. So take care and look into these options:
These are only a few ideas, and I’m sure there are tons out there. Hit us up with a comment if you have an electronic recycling idea or experience to share.
Photo credit: Erkin Sahin
The topic of reusable bags was briefly touched upon in a previous entry. I had made a careless depiction that plastic grocery bags could be used for picking up your dogs’ poop, as many communities require you clean up after your dog, as a secondary usage from toting your groceries.
As an amateur earth-good-doer, I failed to think fully through about what would happen to that bag of poo after you tossed it in the trash. A reader was kind enough to share that if we don’t pay attention to where we toss the poo, Fido’s deed could be preserved for eternities to come.
Leashwecando.com is a website and online catalog dedicated to your pet’s health and our environment. Their current feature is on biodegradable doggie doodoo bags. Biobags are the first dog waste bag that are 100% biodegradable and compostable. The bags, made from agricultural products, will decompose in any environment in no more than 8 months! In a compost environment that bag-o-dirty will decompose in as little as 10-45 days! Whoop Whoop!
Check out Leashwecando.com for more pet-friendly and environmentally conscious products.
Time Magazine announced their 15 favorite green websites. It was a fun read for me because I hadn’t heard of a number of their choices but was really impressed by all of them. Check out the list and enjoy some fresh green reading!
Thanks to Time Magazine for this web exclusive. It was fun to read about all the best in green writing online.
Going green also means thinking about what goes into your body and how it will affect the world we live in. Buying from local farmers who practice organically (agricultural products free of hormones, pesticides, and fertilizers) is a great way to ensure we are keeping our soil healthy, our bods healthy, and bringing in the “do-re-me” to our communities.
Lucky for Laurel & I, we live in a community that has a great farmers’ market every weekend, and they are close enough to walk to. We also have a co-op that features only organically grown products from local farmers on a daily basis. If you aren’t sure where to find your local farmers’ market or co-op, Local Harvest is a great resource to finding those places and others, like organic restaurants.
Often times, a co-op has a membership base. There is a yearly fee to be a part of the co-op, but members receive discounted rates on produce, first pick of the varieties, and get to be a part of their community by holding shifts at the co-op building selling the locally grown fare. If you would like to learn more about a local co-op, definitely check into your own, but in the meantime, see what Orlando’s local co-op is doing.
Before making your grocery list for the farmers’ market and co-op, be sure to check out Laurel on Health Food to see what tasty treats you get this week can do for your body.
A study conducted by the League of Conservation voters looked at all of the major debates and interviews in 2007 that involved the presidential candidates. They logged the number of times “global warming” was mentioned by some of the top political reporters. Their findings are truly scary. Only a couple out of thousands of questions even mention global warming. Check out this “Get the Facts” page to view the data.
Want to take action? You can sign one of these petitions to urge the media outlets to start asking the right questions about global warming and make it a priority for interviews in the 2008 election season.
http://wecansolveit.org/page/s/presspetition
http://www.whataretheywaitingfor.com/sign.php
You might also want to check out this video filmed in March 2008 for TED: Ideas Worth Spreading.
About this talk from TED.com:
“In Al Gore’s brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of “generational mission” — the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement — to set it right. Gore’s stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates’ climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.”
Green Thinking Blog was featured on TreeHugger’s Carnival of the Green hosted by The Conservation Report. Our post, Reduce Your Carbon Footprint, made it on the blog carnival.
Check out the carnival at the following link. There are a ton of interesting blog posts that cover a range of green thinking topics such as urban tree planting, eco-cities and eco-villages, homemade rain barrels, recycled tote bags, and a green DVD club.
http://www.conservationreport.com/2008/04/carnival-of-green-125.html
Note: Click here if you’re wondering what a blog carnival is.
With Earth Day this past week, I wanted to do a little something to get back in touch with nature. So, this weekend I decided to plant a few summer flowers on the porch of my apartment. I thought I’d share what I bought and how easy it was. It was a fun little project for a Saturday morning. For those of us who don’t own a house, planting a few flowers or plants on a back porch is the closest we can get to tending a real garden.
I bought:
First I brought everything outside on my back porch. I opened up one bag of soil and dumped it all into the pot. Then I took the first flower pot and ran a dull knife around the edge to loosen the roots. I turned it upside down and slid the flowers out. Then I took the knife and cut the roots to help loosen the soil and placed the flowers in the pot before packing the dirt around it. I repeated this step with the other three flowers. To finish, I poured a few cups of water down in the pot to help the flowers settle into their new suroundings. The entire process only took me ten minutes!
Note: I’m in a hot, Florida climate here and my porch gets full sun all day. So, I chose “sun annual” flowers that can withstand full sun and heat. Choose whichever flowers will work best on your porch.
Also, I got a new Flip Video camera and was trying it out for the first time. I just took a couple shots of the flowers, soil, and pot so you could see what it looked like. I plan to bring more video blogs to you soon!
Happy planting!
MSNBC is featuring an eco-savvy quiz created by Green is Universal and IdealBite.com. There are 10 true/false questions. Take the quiz and tell us how you did! When you submit your answers, they are nice enough to give you a little explanation for why each answer is true or false.
Click here for the quiz.
