What did Uplifting Green Learn Since Earth Day Last Year?
My journey this past year into becoming a more responsible, sustainable and environmentally good steward of the earth and the resources has proven to me that I can change. Through my diligent writing, research and undying curiosity of needing to know the truth, I’ve made friends and have started developing a like-minded audience.
Let me preface my accomplishments this year by stating that when I made the proactive and conscience decision to live a “greener” life I was definitely “talking the talk” but did not know how to begin to “walk the walk.” Now I have the drive and ambition to peel another layer off the onion this next year and I hope to achieve more and pass my knowledge and experience along to whomever wants to listen.
So how did I start becoming an actively conscience steward of my environment?
First, I needed a broad view of what comprises of my worldy sustainable issues. For me, I realized I consume too much of everything. I use too many resources, I aimlessly throw away anything and everything not fully realizing the impact of my actions.
What did I do with this information?
Second, I asked lots of questions. I follow treehugger.com, planetgreen, mygreenpurse, I watch “Living with Ed” I read books two especially good ones were, No Impact Man by Colin Bevin
What did I learn?
Well, everyone has there own opinions, some more drastic then others but the end result is there are many people who want to change their ways and many people are changing their lifestyles, careers and attitudes based on wanting to live a more sustainable, responsible and eco friendly lifestyle.
What did I specifically do to change this past year?
1) I made friends and I started this blog, I’ve joined many green forums and green groups. I want to know as much as I can and I want to tell everyone about what businesses and services are doing it right.
2) I made a few personal changes. I try to carry a commuter cup into Starbucks and my friends always commetn on it but I do make a statement and an impression.
3) I started really recycling. I compost my food scraps and some of my lawn trimmings. My daughter is earning money from our recycling efforts too. My trash can is usually only half full by the end of the week.
4) I joined freecycle.org and instead of buying new things I try to reuse and repurpose. It’s really kinda fun.
5) I became a Contra Costa County Bay Area Green Certified Business. That was pretty exciting and it really got me motivated to make changes around the house. We know have all CFL lighting and I’m much more aware of my energy consumption. This is an area I want to work on for the next twelve months.
What do I want to accomplish for the next twelve months?
I want to write about all the businesses in my area that are doing it right. I want to share their ideas and visions so we can start making better purchasing decisions and spend our dollars more wisely. I realize there are many greener options than I’m aware of and if I was unaware of them how could you know about them? How are we going to start supporting the right people producing the best products and services that are sustainable, responsible and eco friendly?
Two Free Ways to Go Green - Reuse and trade
I’m pretty excited about two websites that I’ve been using lately FreeCycle.org and Swaptree.com. It’s like a huge never ending online garage sale. What a great bunch of like minded people exchanging, and trading items that they don’t use anymore for something they do need. Virtually no money is exchanged and useable items are not being thrown needlessly into our landfills do to plain laziness or lack of options of what to do with the item you no longer need.
FreeCycle.org is free to join and it comprises of a continually growing population of 4,775 groups and approximately 7 million members worldwide. FreeCycle.org is a non-profit organization and it’s all about generous people giving and receiving all kinds of free items in the own home town.
Their primary goals are to:
• Keep useable items out of our landfills
• Reuse someone’s junk is sometimes someone’s treasure
The Freecycle Organization is a volunteer army. All towns participating in the program are moderated by a local volunteer. Here’s the link to sign-up.
Swaptree.com is a cool website that lets you trade books music and video games. There is no charge for listing ads and most items can be mailed for $2.50 via US Media Mail. It’s easy to list items you just type in the ISBN number located on the back of the item you are trading into their search engine. Trade requests are emailed to you. You don’t even need to go to the post office you can print postage directly from Swaptree. Currently, if you refer friends to the website you can earn free shipping.
You can even provide trader feedback similar to Ebay.
I encourage my fans to check out these two great resources and let me know what you think. I love books and I enjoy the thrill of the finding something free hunt. Happy hunting!
Go Green in Silicon Valley, California - Invest in a “Bloom Box”
What do five major companies in Silicon Valley have in common when it comes to investing in green energy and technology?
Fed Ex, Walmart, Staples, Google, and Ebay are among the first large corporations that recently invested in their neighbor “Bloom Energy” located in Sunnyvale, California. These green minded corporations purchased Bloom Energy Servers. This technology in a nutshell is comprised of thin fuel cells that are manufactured from beach sand and are painted with a patented green and black ink on both sides of the cell. They are then stacked together and are sandwiched with metal alloy. These skinny fuel cells utilize oxygen and various fuel sources to create electricity with no emissions. The end result of this cutting edge technology is changing the way people generate & consume energy. The number one benefit of the Bloom Box is unlike solar and wind power, it’s produces continuous and reliable energy 24/7 365 days a year. Therefore it has the capacity to provide everyone with clean, reliable and affordable power.
K.R. Sridhar, CEO of Bloom Energy originally invented the technology for NASA to produce oxygen on Mars. When the project was scrapped by NASA, Sridhar reversed his Mars machine and started pumping oxygen in instead of producing oxygen. After proving the effectiveness and versatility of his Bloom Box, Sridhar is setting very ambitious goals for setting up a Bloom Box server at the White House, as well as placing them in every American home within 10 years and creating opportunity for the product to be in homes worldwide.
Since July 2008 the Bloom Energy Servers have collectively produced over 11 million kilowatt hours of electricity - with C02 reductions estimated at 14 million pounds. The perspective of these statistics is comparable to powering 1000 American homes for a year and planting one million trees.
Bloom Energy was recently broadcast on 60 minutes. You can watch the episode here.
Two Cool Concepts I read in Go Green, Live Rich
In my opinion, I think I found my #1 green resource book for this year. David Bach & Hillary Rosner.
“>Go Green, Live Rich is about 50 simple ways to save the earth. Although I am already familiar with many of the subjects they discussed such as driving an energy efficient car, changing my light bulbs and recycling I did find several new concepts that I hadn’t thought of and am looking forward to exploring this year.
Concept #1 - Green Investing
Investing green as a way to build your portfolio. Developing more of a conscience regarding where you invest your money is something I never really thought about. As I invested in my 401K, I innocently let everyone else decide where it was going to be invested. Now that I am older and wiser (haha) I want to change the world and one way to do that is to invest more responsibly, I want to reward and endorse companies that are producing sustainable products and services that are socially and environmentally responsible. How else are we going to make a change? These days change certainly isn’t coming quickly enough through our voting power.
A couple of places to begin your research is Morningstar.com. David Bach also has his own investment alerts at www.greengreen.com
Concept #2 - Take a Volunteer Vacation
In this current economy everyone is talking about taking “staycations.” In my opinion this is not a real vacation. A volunteer vacation is 
where you save money and have a terrific adventure by providing valuable manpower on a project that is helping the plant and all its inhabitants. Depending upon the type of project you choose, you can be a place with spectacular scenery with time to spare to enjoy it. In most cases by volunteering your food and lodging are included.
A couple of places to check out are the Sierra Club www.sierraclub.org and Habitat for Humanity ” www.habitat.org
As I stated before Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying
“>Go Green, Live Rich discusses 50 simple ways to save the earth. I highly recommend this book if for no other reason than to tap into all the internet resources that are available.
7 things to renew, change and Green in the New Year!
It’s time to take all the green ideas I learned in 2009 and start applying it with zest and zeal in 2010! I love New Years Day. I hung my new calendar up on the wall it’s all blank and waiting with expectation for what I will fill it with this year. My head is full of ideas, hope and inspiration for the new year.
So what am I going to do this year that is different from last year? I’m going to take small baby steps like Bill Murray did in his endearing role in “ What About Bob?.” Although I am not fearful of what the new year holds for me I am conscience that I want to do my part to leave this earth in better shape than when I arrived. After all, through birth I was put upon this earth not through my conscience choice. But I do have a choice to become a servant leader and act like a guest that is temporarily visiting our planet.
With that in mind I want to continually grow in awareness of what I can do to change.
1) Read more books. Leaders are readers and I will read, absorb and summarize for my loyal fans interesting and thought provoking books pertaining to anything green. I’ve already selected my first two books. Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying
2) Work towards not generating as much trash. I’ve noticed over the past year my trash can isn’t overflowing like it used to but there has got to be a more efficient way to recycle that doesn’t require continually walking all the recyclable material to the garage, separating it and either giving it to our disposal company or taking it to the recycler ourselves to make a little money. I’m pondering ideas that don’t create the trash in the first place.
3) I’m definitely growing the garden again especially tomatoes I learned a few things that worked and I’m going to not use miracle grow or any pesticides this year. I’m going to figure it out naturally. I was not successful at composting last year I created some nasty smelling sludge. I think I’m interested enough that I will invest in a good composting bin. I’ll check in with Ed Begley and see what he’s up to.
5) I’m working on making better food choices. I don’t know how I can eat or get my family to eat more fruits and vegetables so I’m committing myself to learn a few in season recipes so I can save money on our grocery bill, provide better nutrition and I think seasonal eating will be interesting. We tried spaghetti squash last night and it was really good.
6) I will bike and walk more. We are blessed to live in a community where we are within walking distance to our school, church, pizza, sushi and friends. I’m going to be more conscience about not driving a few blocks when it is not necessary. I know I do not have the discipline to exercise as a pastime and so I need to incorporate exercise in part of my daily activities.
7) I’m looking for like minded local businesses whom I can support and endorse in my community. You don’t know what you don’t know. I’m going to take my purchasing power and spend it more wisely this year.
Okay, I’ve committed in writing for all the world to see that although I’m not an expert on anything green, I’m not an environmentalist or an activist (yet) I truly want to continually educate myself and others that we do have options, we can think outside the box, and yes we can change the world. Don’t let anyone tell you any differently.
