The Green Book

Some tips to share from The Green Book (www.readthegreenbook.com):

Pump up: Properly inflated tires improve gas mileage by up to 3%. (Avg of 16 gallons/year)

Forget the receipt: Don't take ATM receipts (or any other you don't really need). ATM receipts are one of the top sources of litter on the planet. If everyone did this, is would save a roll of paper more than 2 BILLION feet long - enough to cricle the equator 15 times!!!

Stop junk mail: Go to www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist. This will save 1.5 trees of junk mail annually.

Don't wash your own car: Commercial car washes use up to 100 gallons LESS to wash a car. They also often recycle and reuse rinse water. If everyone did it just once, up to 8.7 billlion gallons of water could be saved and some 12 billion gallons of soapy, polluted water could be diverted from rivers, lakes and streams. Driving through these has become a favorits pasttime of Avery's.

Loose the phone book: They are figuring on using on-line directories. I like thumbing through one, so this is hard for me to give up. I do recycle mine though. The reason this is on the list is that many people don't recycle them and therefore they create 10 percent of the waste at dump sites. Yikes.

Bar soap: You use less soap, therefore less into the water system, with a bar versus liquid pump. I like my liquid shower soaps, but this is another I can easily switch.

A Wonder Material You Cant Get Rid Of

Here are some excerpts from a news segment called "A Wonder Material You Can't Get Rid Of" from CBS Sunday Morning (aired 7-24-07).
You can view the program on their website.


"Each of us generates more than 1,600 pounds of garbage every year. That's more trash per person than any other nation on Earth. Much of it comes from plastic bags, plastic water bottles and plastic packaging. As some see it, our love affair with plastic has turned us into a throwaway society. The plastic heads straight to landfills, where it stays for years and years and years.

It wasn't always like this.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when it came to trash, practically nothing went to waste. Everything from rags to scrap metal to manure found a second use. Recycling was truly the American way, says Heather Rogers, author of "Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage."

"Disposability and the way that we dispose is learned — a learned behavior," she said. "We've had to be taught how to do that."

Rogers argues that today's attitudes towards trash took root in the postwar boom, when plastics were promoted as a new wonder-material: cheap, versatile and disposable.

"One of the first disposable plastic items was a rigid plastic cup that was dispensed in vending machines that sold coffee and hot chocolate," she said. "And after people consumed their drink, they had this cup left over that they clearly recognized could be re-used. And a discussion erupted in the plastics industry trade press about, 'How do we convince consumers that this product that clearly can be re-used is garbage?'"

Recently, the plastics industry has come under pressure to boost the relatively low percentage of plastic recycling. While close to three-quarters of cardboard boxes and nearly half of aluminum cans find new uses, only about a quarter of plastic bottles — and just 5 percent of plastic bags — get recycled...................................

"One out of every three servings of water now comes from a bottle in the United States. And this is apparently how we're increasingly hydrating ourselves — with these big packs of petroleum-wrapped water," author Dan Imhoff said.

Imhoff believes far too many things come wrapped in plastic. His book "Paper of Plastic" takes aim at what he considers over-packaging.

Gift bags/Tissue

I have alot of tissue paper, and gift bags.
Anyone is more than welcome to reuse these.
I have alot of baby themed gift bags, along with some wedding, flowers, and Christmas.
The tissue is mainly white. I also have pink, some blue, and some other odd neat designs.
Now, when I get someone a gift, I can save money and not buy the wrapping stuff.
But, Like I said, you are all more than welcome to it.

Green Pages and Green Cleaners

I keep meaning to post this. Don't know if you have seen it, but in the March 2007 AT&T phone book they have a Recycle and Reuse section. It's a really great resource for local recycle needs. They have some things in there I hadn't thought of recycling only because I didn't know where to go... now I do!

Also, I found an organic/green dry cleaner. They have two locations:

Peter Pan Cleaners
2231 Mendocino (Across from Safeway)
Santa Rosa
573-1645
www.peterpan-cleaners.com

Greenhouse Cleaners
925 Golf Course Drive (Pacific Market shopping center)
Rohnert Park
584-5275
www.greenhouse-cleaners.com

I dropped off a suit and shirt today. I'll do a comment later to this post to let you know how they come out. I pick them up Friday afternoon.

Recycling Info

Here is a blog I read this morning that gave me some info on recycling that I didn't know. Most of it I had heard of, but some of it was news to me, so hopefully you all learn a little too :)

http://closetenvironmentalist.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/recycling-guide-hardcore-treehugger-style/

CFL's

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp
Found this site on how to clean up a broken CFL.

Stepping Up Recycling Continued

Great, it sounds like there's a lot of interest on this- here's what I've learned in the last 30 minutes or so (gotta love nap time)...

*Unless you're in Petaluma plastic bags can not go in the single stream recycle bin (Sarah, if you don't already know, I'd check to see if they need to be bagged though) I got this info from the recorded info on plastics at the Eco Desk 707-565-DESK(3375).

*Check out these 2 web sites to educate yourself about the different types of plastic. If it says #2 or #4, for sure it can be taken to a grocery store. I have a call into the Eco Desk to find out about other plastics without a number on them. It looks like if you get to know the properties of different plastics that there are others not labeled that can still be included. (I'm thinking about all the packaging I saved when we were unwrapping presents).

www.plasticbagrecycling.org/moreInfoPub.php
www.recyclenow.org/r_plastics.html

So it looks like it's going to take a little work to get this all figured out... a fun little challenge! :)

Stepping Up the Recycling

We're pretty good about recycling and we're getting even better. I've decided the next step is to recycle even if I have to take some extra steps and it can't go in the single stream blue bin. The two items I have decided to start recycling/getting back into use is plastic bags/plastic film and Styrofoam. I need to do a bit more research on the plastic bags/film but I know they can't go in the single stream but they can be dropped off at grocery stores. A lot of the plastic wrap that packaging comes in can go in there too, I think. That's the part I still need to sort out. And Styrofoam is very hard to truly recycle but a lot of packing stores will take it to reuse.

The boys got so many toys for their birthday! I was really conscious about recycling all the packaging and wrapping (yes wrapping paper can go in the blue bin- I called at Christmas) I possibly could. That led me to the recycling guide in the phone book and my decision to start recycling above and beyond the big blue bin.