And here in a movie-is-worth-a-thousand-words, is Tapped the Movie, which will help the message sink in:

“From the plastic production to the ocean in which so many of these bottles end up, this inspiring documentary trails the path of the bottled water industry and the communities which were the unwitting chips on the table. A powerful portrait of the lives affected by the bottled water industry, this revelatory film features those caught at the intersection of big business and the public’s right to water.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you are a community organizer, you will like to know that you can host a screening (browse the site under Take Action). Also, some there is some great data and tips on how to take action throughout the site.

Thanks to Peaceful Daily for their wonderful and enlightening daily tips, which included this one.

And, here’s a fantastic resource for that: BuyGreen.com has become a trusted source for green products. Allison Huke and a partner started the company a couple years ago when she found it difficult to find all the green products that she needed and trusted for her family and her home. She certainly solved that problem! BuyGreen features over 1000 eco-friendly products to address almost any consumer’s needs.

What I particularly appreciate about this online store is their proprietary BuyGreen standard. This standard evaluates each product in the store to help customers understand how it performs with respect to its environmental impact. The standard analyzes four areas for every single product and rates it accordingly. It circles all considerations that would qualify the green-ness of any given product. The Source Material criterion examines the presence of toxins and the provenance of raw materials. The Manufacturing criterion looks at animal testing, resource & energy consumption, pollution and packaging. The Usage criteria evaluate how the product usage will affect the environment (e.g. reusable water bottles). The Disposal criterion examines whether the product is biodegradable, recyclable, etc… These four criteria provide a rating for each product, to let us know where it falls on the green scale. This rating appears as an icon by each product’s description. Very helpful.

BuyGreen sells normally hard-to-find products like biodegradable disposable cups, plates and utensils. There are biodegradable straws too. And then the biodegradable waste bags. Or the biodegradable and recycled packing supplies, perfect for small businesses. I love that I can find all that, and green cleaning supplies and personal care items in one place. Allison and team did a terrific job at judiciously selecting everything in their store and I think that they have definitely attained their mission which states “Our mission at BuyGreen is to become your most trusted source for green products, offering the widest variety of quality products, the best information for consumers, and the most enjoyable shopping experience”.  Yes indeed.

Earth Day, we are ready.

Some 18 million people are now practicing yoga in the U.S. (well, some more regularly than others) and that means that there are a whole bunch of used yoga mats out there. Just as runners need to replace their running shoes every now and then, so do yogis need to replace their mats. So, what happens to all these unwanted mats?

Until now, perhaps nothing except for seeing the bottom of a trash bin. That is, until Stephanie Stano launched “Recycle Your Mat”, a clearing house for used yoga mats which sorts and processes mats for manufacturer re-use.

The nascent Recycle Your Mat program keeps mats out of the landfill through recycling AND helps save virgin materials from harvest by providing manufacturers with recycled materials.

“I wanted to create a system that magnifies the sum of our efforts”, says Recycle Your Mat Founder, Stephanie Stano. “Together yogis can make great change in the consumer marketplace by recycling their mats en mass to be used in new product life cycles”.

Recycle Your Mat collects mats from individuals and yoga studios. Individuals can recycle their mats by dropping them off at a participating Recycle Your Mat location, or by mailing their mat directly to Recycle Your Mat. Studios can send mats directly to Recycle Your Mat.

The process of recycling is more about organization than procedure. The mats are received pre-washed by individuals, studios or fitness centers and once received by Recycle Your Mat, they are sorted by content, color and other discernable factors. At this time, Recycle Your Mat customers process the mats as needed. Most simply cut the mats to fit their end use.

“It seems that we’ve tapped into a need many people have with regard to environmentally friendly yoga mat disposal”, says Stano “We’re very happy to give something back to the practice of yoga that has given us so much.”

For more information about recycling your mat, participating locations and other information regarding yoga mat recycling please visit www.recycleyourmat.com.

For the gift:

• One gift per attendee
• The gift cannot be purchased
• It must be in serviceable condition, but it something that you either don’t want or don’t need any more
• Wrap the gift
• No labeling, the gifts are all anonymous
• You may assign a minimum or maximum “value” if you wish

For the exchange:

• All attendees names go in a hat to be drawn
• The first name to be drawn gets first pick
• This first person opens a gift selected from the pile and has to keep it
• The second name to be drawn (and everyone thereafter) can pick a gift from the still unopened gift pile OR can decide to steal the gift from anyone that went before them
• A gift can only be stolen a set number of times and that is dependent on the size and the dynamics of the group. Usually one to three times
• Once every guests has picked their gift, the first person that went can now have their pick of all opened presents, that is if the gift has not yet reached its allowable “steal-able” quota.

Of course, the more humorous the gift, the more “joke” and play mileage it will have. We’ve found that the bigger the wrapped gift, the more curiosity it will create and the more varied the guests, the more varied the gifts…

We have been playing this game for years. In fact, I remember my parents hosting parties with White Elephant Parties Exchanges as the main attraction. Wikipedia mentions that these date back to 1828. I guess that the fun factor of this custom is the reason that it’s still around nearly TWO centuries later?!?!?

This year, we are having another of these gift exchanges on Christmas Eve at the house, when we open our doors to our “orphan” friends and even friends of friends. This will certainly be a great ice breaker for the guests that don’t know each other. The formula also limits the financial burden on all of us. And, another advantage is that we can almost say that this is “green” gift giving, in the sense that “no new resources were used in the making of these gifts”! So there!

Merry, merry…!

So then, how ingenious of the SPRANQ designers to have created this “holey” ecological font that saves 20% of the ink simply by omitting to print certain filled parts of the letters. The Ecofont is free to download HERE. It is based on the aesthetically pleasing on the Vera Sans, an Open Source letter.

“With the Ecofont SPRANQ hopes to increase environmental awareness too. Increasing customer awareness about printing behavior: is printing really necessary or (partly) a waste of ink and paper? We also hope to inspire software giants and printer manufacturers to innovate in an environmentally conscious manner.”

Well said. I’m so thankful that some people think of these things!

Mostly, we are all well aware of our over-consumption and the consequential impact on the environment, but this video does an outstanding job at distilling the alarming information into digestible nuggets… even provides us with usable soundbites to easily relay the information to others.

You may watch a teaser below (only a minute long) and you will want to click on this link to get access to the full 20 minute feature. You’ll be shocked and astounded and hopefully motivated too.

My biggest takeaway from this? We all need to learn how to live with less stuff and be happy doing so. In fashion? Forget about trends. Buy quality classic styles (whatever is YOUR classic) that will last you for a long time. Just like the French women have always done, buying very few but glorious additions to their wardrobes as the seasons change. In our homes? Let’s start buying things that last. Enough with the disposable furniture and appliances. Cars? I don’t think that we need to change cars every two years. Let’s tell that to our egos how foolish that is.

Some good news? In a way, I’m thinking that our mortgage and financial crisis is happening at a very convenient time where, because we won’t have a choice but to cut back on consumption, we will likely wholly embrace new thrifty and frugal values and live with them with honor. Just like our great grandparents and grandparents did. Yes, honor, not foolishness nor submission to the influence and pressure of Big Public Corp that needs to bring its numbers up every quarter.

YellowPagesGoesGreen.org is only a movement right now, which hopes to push legislation to stop telephone book deliveries in the same way the the No-Call Registry aimed to curtail unsolicited calls.

The cost to consumers as the telcos produce 500 million books A YEAR:

• 19 million trees need to be harvested
• 1.6 billion pounds of paper are wasted
• 7.2 million barrels of oil are misspent in their processing (not including the wasted gas used for their delivery to your doorstep)
• 268,000 cubic yards of landfill are taken up
• 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity are squandered

Find some more stats will make you wince on this page.

It then seems that there is NO logic in not signing up. Please go ahead and join the movement. You can do so right here: YellowPagesGoesGreen.org.

I feel better now.

My daughter school held a screening of “Garbage! The Revolution” on Earth Day this last week.  This fantastic and highly digestible documentary has made us all much more aware of our over-the-top consumption habits. I thought that my family was well versed on the topic of trash and recycling. Not even close. If you think you know everything about our trash problem, think again… or watch the documentary. As a society, we are largely ignoring the problem because of the typical “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome. When our trash is hauled away, we don’t really need to think about it any more. But we are running out of place to put it and then, there is the toxic seepage, among some of the obvious garbage issues.

Buy, rent, borrow this movie and share it with as many people as you can and discuss it with friends and their children. Spread the word. And yes, you should feel ambivalent (better yet, guilty) when you eat out of that Styrofoam cup or plate or grab that pile of napkins that you won’t even use when you go out to eat. That would be the desired outcome after you’ve seen this documentary and raised your awareness of the issue. Here’s the trailer. Order the documentary here at www.GarbageRevolution.com

Wow, look at what I just found: www.CatalogChoice.org. Now you can get your name and address off catalog lists thanks to this new service. I have a noticeable feeling of guilt every time I open my mailbox and shift through all the unwanted and unsolicited catalogs. Some I got because I ordered something, once,  years ago and they continue sending. Others because my name was sold to a mailing company. Regardless, I don’t need catalogs. I can find anything I want by going online.

So, I was quite thrilled to find out about this new, a sponsored project of the Ecology Center. It is endorsed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and funded by the Overbrook Foundation, the Merck Family Fund, and the Kendeda Fund. This page will tell you all about that.

Our mission:The mission of Catalog Choice is to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. We aim to accomplish this by freely providing the Catalog Choice services to both consumers and businesses. Consumers can indicate which catalogs they no longer
wish to receive, and businesses can receive a list of consumers no longer wanting to receive their catalogs.

They ask to HELP SPREAD THE WORD, hence this post. You can do it too by displaying a badge like the one to your left.

Over eight million tons of trees are consumed each year in the production of paper catalogs (read about other environmental impacts here. It took me just 15 minutes to go through the entire list of catalogs and unsubscribe from 36. Boy, that felt good!!!

MAILBOX OR MAUSOLEUM?

Unwanted mail crowds out invites and tax refunds, and uses up valuable natural resources like trees, water, and energy. Point, click, and put to rest credit-card offers and catalog clutter once and for all.

The Benefits
Keeps you out of the sanitarium. Each American receives almost 560 pieces of junk mail per year – more than enough to drive you crazy.

Saves energy. Junk mail consumes more energy than 2.8 million cars every year.

More trees. Annually, 100 million trees are used to make junk mail.

More free time. Americans waste about 8 hours per year dealing with junk mail.

Native Forest Network’s Guide – five easy steps to stop junk mail.

Wanna Try
DirectMail.com - free, quick way to get your name off commercial mailing lists.

OptOutPrescreen.com – opt out of pre-approved credit card and insurance offers online or by phone: 1-888-5-OPTOUT.

EcoLogical Mail Coalition - helps businesses stop mail addressed to former employees.

I am soooooo opting out, right after I press Save for this article.