lowimpacthome.org

I was reading through a maganize the other day while I was sitting in the waiting room of my Doctor’s office and I noticed something interesting.  As I flipped through I stopped to look at an Ad Council’s ad about Global Warming, it was simple and to the point, but on the adjacent page there was an ad for the new Lincoln MKS a car that gets 17mps in town.  Now I am not sure who approved that layout but it seems pretty ironic to me that one page says “What are you doing about Global Warming?” and the very next page has a car that has a much larger carbon footprint because of it’s lack of fuel efficiency.

I don’t use ads on my site, some of my blogging friends do and that’s ok, but it’s hard to keep ads that you don’t approve of off the site when you use some of the ad generators.  Hey it would be great if I could make a little money selling ad space, it would help pay for the upkeep of the site and the other fees associated with running a website but I don’t want any “ironic” ads appearing on my site and causing controversy.

I mean if I was the Ad Council I would be furious.  They are trying to get the good green word out and the magazine is pushing a car that goes against most everything environmentalists believe in.

For one thing I don’t think an environmentalist would buy a brand new car that costs over 35k.  Secondly if they were going to spend that kind of money they would at least buy a car that has better fuel efficiency like the Prius or another hybrid car.  Yeah it’s true that the MKS is a V-6 and it has a lot of getupandgo but I hope most environmentalists are hyper-milers and so speed doesn’t matter.

I’m glad that the Ad Council is trying to get the word out and I know that the other advertisers have so many ads that it’s hard to keep irresponsible ads away from the more environmentally savy ones but let’s push magazines to trade their usual “black” ads for the “green” ones and maybe we can get the word out to more people in less time.

With gas prices on the rise, I have been doing everything I can to keep my tank above empty for as long as possible.  But I don’t know that I can go as far as some of the “Hyper-Milers” are going.  Keep you windows rolled up and no AC when its 98 degrees outside.  Umm no, I don’t have a death wish.

I do have it quite easy when it comes to how far things are away from my home.  Like my commute is 8 minutes long.  For all of you that spend hours in rush hour traffic, my heart goes out to you.  I did that for 3 weeks, it took me 45 minutes to get from home to work and longer on the way home, and boy did that suck!  The best part about living so close to work is the additional time to sleep and that on most days I can go home for lunch and not spend $10 to eat out.

Not only do I work with in 5 miles but the grocery store, elementary and junior high are all within a mile of my home.  Who said urban sprawl was all that terrible?  The burb that I live in has everything that I could ever need, a Starbucks included, withing a couple miles of my front door.

But back to the 32 mpg’s…since I only spend 8 minutes in the car, I don’t believe it necessary to turn the car’s a/c on but I do roll down the windows (all the way).  The hype-milers suggest that you only crack your windows because anymore and the amount of drag increases, to hell with that!  What I know is when I run my a/c, I get the listed mpg’s about 25 to 27 miles to the gallon, but when I turn off the a/c and roll down the windows I get 30 to 32 miles a gallon.  I’ve done the math and that’s an additional 12 or so percent more miles every time I fill up.  All I can say is that I am amazed!

So my suggestion…roll down the windows, turn up your Public Radio station (I’m convinced that NPR helps save on gas too) and take off to work.  I’m not going to try to do the math on what kinds of cost savings that would be for the country if everyone got 12% more miles to the gallon, but think of what it could do for your bottom line as well as our dependency on foreign oil.  So grab your stainless steel bottle of tap water and head out into the wide open spaces!

I have an issue with Walmart.  I have always had an issue with Walmart.  Even after they announced plans to only stock CFL lightbulbs, I still had an issue with Walmart.  It’s not just that they help to rid the world of small businesses or that customer service is not something that they encourage.  No it’s mostly because I think that the Walmarts of the world encourage over consumption and wastefullness.  Now I say that and more then likely this weekend I will saunter into a Super Target to buy shoes for my son.  But that doesn’t mean I will like it, it just means that there is no other option. 

But now I have another issue with Walmart, they are puting ethanol in their gasoline. 

I happen to be traveling down one of the busiest streets here in my home town and since my husband forgot to tell me that he needed gas, I had to stop at the local Walmart to fill up.  Getting gas at Walmart is not a normal thing for me, so while all this talk about ethanol in gas maybe old news to some, it’s new to me and I don’t like it.  ***UPDATE*** BP is also selling gasoline with ethanol added.  I don’t know about you but I plan not to purchase gas from either Manufacturer.

I personally think that ethanol from corn is a very bad thing.  According to this article, we would never be able to plant enough corn to keep up with the demands for ethanol and other corn products.  Plus folks in the Amazon are cutting down precious rain forests to plant corn to be used in ethanol production.  That’s really bad!

This post from Eco Geek give you the long story in short:

Long story short? Corn ethanol isn’t working. It’s inefficient, reduces supplies of actual food which actual people need to actually eat, and increased demand is only leading to the destruction of the last untouched American prairie lands. But solutions might be on the way in the form of cellulosic ethanol, which is much more energy efficient (though more expensive) to produce, as well as alternate forms of biofuels that are more energy dense and gasoline-like than ethanol…

Why don’t we spend our money on electric cars or other types of fuel cells, wouldn’t that make more sense?

Wednesday is our youngest’s birthday, she is turning 6 so a big deal will be made.  So how do we work no plastic and being green into her birthday? 

I ordered the cake this morning from a local bakery, since the cakes that come from my local grocery store are in cased in plastic.  I feel like I am being robbed since the cake is $10 more then the grocery store cake, but I really don’t mind paying it to avoid a huge amount of non-recyclable plastic.  And since the cake is from a local bakery the carbon emissions will be lower compared to the big box store cake that has to be shipped from St. Louis before it is decorated. 

Her presents will be a bike, helmet and Webkins cards.  The bike comes in a box, so I don’t know what kind of plastic will be lurking inside, but I figure that what is in there is the dreaded styrafoam, so that’s worse then regular plastic.  The helmet is of course made of plastic, I don’t think there is a way to get around that.  The Webkins cards are wrapped in foil, though I do believe there is a thin layer of plastic on the foil itself.  So the plastic count could be high but she’s the only one left that doesn’t have a bike so it’s almost necessary.  Right now we have to drive to the park when we take her, and since it’s less then a half mile it seems like a waste of gas.  Now we will all be able to ride there and get more exersize at the same time. 

I won’t be buying any new wrapping paper, so that will save some trees, but once I run out I will be buying cloth bags to wrap things in.  That will be interesting come Christmas!

We will be eating a completely plastic free meal, using our cloth napkins and stainless steel utensils.  And now that we finally have a Freecycled bread machine, I can bake some plastic free bread to go along with dinner. 

So there will be some impact but not as much as it could be.  What about your birthday celebrations, how woould they be ranked on the greeness scale?

For those of you looking to stay green on Valentine’s Day, here are a couple of ideas for you:

The Arbor Day Foundation will plant 10 trees in your loves honor in a national forest for only $10. Plus you can either print the certificate yourself, or have it mailed to you someone special.

The World Wildlife Fund will “adopt” an animal of you choosing for $50-$100. They will ship your sweety a plush animal wrapped in a red bag along with a color photo and adoption certificate.

What about sending your love one a organically grown bouquet of flowers. There is not a local grower that I can find, but you might try the Farmers Market. If you don’t have any luck there, try out OrganicBouquet.com.

Don’t forget about the Fair Trade Chocolates. Wild Oats sells them, so stop by and treat your special someone the gift of yummy chocolate.

One other things, make sure that your cards are printed on 100% recycled paper.

Just a few ways to keep your green attitude going on the most loving of all days!

As I look around me I must count 30 or more pieces of plastic just sitting on my desk. This keyboard that I am typing on, the monitor that I am looking at, the phone that I answer…Plastic Is EVERYWHERE! Even as I sip my morning coffee I am using plastic. How will I ever get rid of plastic in my life. Like the other plastice-free bloggers (whose blogs are here: http://www.fakeplasticfish.com/ and here: http://plasticfree.blogspot.com/) I don’t plan on getting rid of the plastic that I already have, I will just try to keep plastic from entering my life. I do have 1 exception to my plastic free rule…the medicines that I take everyday ONLY come in little plastic containers, without them my life is not as fabulous as it could be so I must continue to bring those into my life. However, I will add them to my plastic pile and use them in the weight talley at the end of the year. Plus my job is not as eco-friendly as I am so I am not sure how I will get around the plastic there but I will continue to collect the plastic that I use and add it to my pile at home. Looks like I am going to find another way to get my creamer into my coffee.

The first thing that I need to figure out is…Is it better to use a recycled plastic trash bag or kill some trees and use brown paper sacks as my trash can liner.

I am lucky in that I have spent some time working for the worlds largest paper manufacturer, so I know about their feelings on sustainability. If you go to their website http://www.internationalpaper.com/Our%20Company/Environment/index.html they have listed all of the facts on what they are doing to keep the paper industry and our forests in top condition. I could go into all the specific things that I know that they are doing that are not specifically listed but I am not sure that it is not proprierty, and I don’t want to get in trouble, so I won’t. What I do know is my local store uses IP paperbags, and since they are looking out for the environment as much as I am, I will go with the paperbags for trash and keep out yet another piece of plastic from the landfill.

As a note, I have reduced a family of 6’s trash down to 1 1/2 13 gallon trash bags per week, just by starting to recycle. I think that is pretty impressive, and once I start composting I believe that I will be able to get rid of that 1/2 trashbag.

By the way…my husband thinks that I am crazy for doing this, but says that he will go along with it as long as our grocery bill doesn’t increase much. I can live with that, I am not starting this to run my family in to the ground, but to make less of an impact on the earth.