There are no little things.

Inspired by a comment on my last post that "there are no little things," I found a site dedicated to that principle, and added it to my sidebar. Check it out and pledge to become a "carbon conscious consumer." The site poses a carbon-saving challenge each month, and provides support for meeting the challenge.


This month's challenge is to reduce your junk mail. Here's the short list of why you would want to do that (read more here):

Save trees: More than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail. 42% of timber harvested nationwide becomes pulpwood for paper.
Reduce global warming: The energy used to produce and dispose of junk mail exceeds 2.8 million cars.
Save water: About 28 billion gallons of water are wasted to produce and recycle junk each year.
Save time. You waste about 70 hours a year dealing with junk mail.

Last April, I signed up with a service that makes it easy to get off of mailing lists. I used Green Dimes. Another service is 41pounds. Both services make it easy to get your names off the lists. Green Dimes cancels catalogs too. It was my impression that these services also monitor the mailing lists and keep your name off of them, but ... I'm checking into that...stay tuned.

Who uses styrofoam anymore?

In the midst of the rebirth of environmental consciousness, in the progressive San Francisco Bay Area, MY KIDS' SCHOOLS use styrofoam plates at their family picnics.

That's about 1000 styrofoam plates that will never ever become fertilizer. Actually, make that 996 -- because I convinced 3 out of 4 kids (and myself) to take reusable plates from home. As Blue Gal says, "Be the change, baby."