About 6 months ago, I purchased some reusable cloth shopping bags – with good intentions! But I would always forget to bring the bags with me when I went shopping. DUH! Sort of defeats the purpose, right?
Well, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to be “more green” so I’ve been better about carrying these around with me when I go grocery shopping. And I love it!
I purchased the ACME Bag Earth Tote from www.resusablebags.com. It comes in two colors – tan (with black trim) or black. I opted for the black because it hides the dirt better. In addition to storing A LOT (what used to fit in 2 or 3 plastic bags fits in one of these bags), it is also super durable – so much so, that it comes with a 100% lifetime guarantee. I’ll let you read about all the other specifications here. Check out the product video if you’re still not convinced!
Dear readers, do you use cloth bags too? If so, let’s hear your recommendations!
If you’re anything like me, you H-A-T-E junk mail. Almost every time I check the mail, there’s inevitably a catalog to some store that I’ve never even shopped at (or heard of, for that matter), or tons of credit card offers from various banks. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get rid of all this annoying junk mail and help the environment at the same time? Of course!
I read the following statistics on www.41pounds.org - for example, did you know…
The production and disposal of junk mail consumes more energy than 2.8M cars?
100M trees are ground up each year for unsolicited mail?
It wastes 28B gallons of water for paper processing each year?
If you cut your bulk mail for 5 years, you’ll conserve 1.7 trees, 700 gallons of water and prevent 460 pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the air?
Scary, huh? I bet for most of you, your junk mail goes immediately into the trash. So do your part today and get rid of the junk! (Your mail carrier will thank you for it.) How do you do that, you ask? Well, here are a few sites with some tips. If you have any other tips of your own, or know of any other great sites, please leave a comment!
http://www.41pounds.org
http://www.globalstewards.org/junkmail.htm
http://stopjunkmail.org/index.htm
http://www.stopthejunkmail.com
http://www.newdream.org/junkmail/index.php
https://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailing
Welcome to Things That Make You Go Green, a blog dedicated to chronicling the progress of a few ordinary schmoes as we try to go green. Who are we? Well, we certainly have no special qualifications in this area - we live in the SF Bay Area, working in the tech industry during the day. We’re worried about our environment, and are looking for ways to pitch in.
We’ll talk about things we’re doing to reduce our own impact on the the planet, but also talk about cool ideas to make a bigger impact in areas like housing, investing, volunteerism and more. After all, we’re probably not going to make a huge impact by recycling a few soda cans.
In case you’re wondering, the name of the blog is a play on everyone’s favorite song from the 90’s, C&C Music Factory’s excellent “Things that Make you Go Hmmm”. For short, we’ll be referring to ourselves as TTMYGG (pronounced “tee-tee-my-gee-gee”).
