World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5th, was started by the United Nations to stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and enhance political attention and action.
Check out the World Environment Day Alphabet - 80 Ways to Celebrate and this Treehugger interview with Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of the United Nation's Environmental Program (UNEP).
Nice weather brings the outdoor festival season into full swing (what could be better?!) and from the look of things you could keep mighty busy from all of the activity. We picked a handful of eco-related festivals taking place throughout the country during the month of June. This is just a smattering of what's going on. All of them look pretty fun and some rather quarky. Drop us a line if we missed any great eco events taking place in your area.
If you go to any of these festivals let us know what you thought about them!
The Sierra Club posted a fun little quiz called, "How Green Is My Laundry?" We took the quiz here and some of us scored much better than others. Well, there's always room for improvement! We did feel they could have included a question or two about laundry detergent. It is an important factor in the greening of your laundry. Take the quiz and see how you pile up:
Project Laundry List is one of our favorites and for good reason. It is a non-profit organization whose goal is to demonstrate through art, education and advocacy how personal choices can make a difference on the environment and on its people. Their main tool - clothes lines. Hanging out clothes on a drying rack or clothes line is one easy way to reduce energy consumption at home. It cuts down on energy use and saves money. What better combo? The average household will save $100 per year by hanging clothes out to dry. Plus, hanging out your clothes leaves them feeling soft and smelling fresh.
Think about the energy and financial savings if you hung your clothes out to dry and washed your clothes in cold water. Cold water washings use 75% less energy than hot water washings and save the average household $65 in energy bills. Now, all these savings are starting to stack up! The weather is nice everywhere at this time of year, so give it a shot.
Here are two places that offer a wide variety of drying racks and clothes lines for any household type:
To learn more about Project Laundry List, visit www.laundrylist.org
Unscrew America ranks up their with gcycle.org as a totally quarky, but totally helpful site. It is all about getting America to change its light bulbs to CFLs. It offers tips on which light bulbs to buy, what you save when you make the switch and other fabulous random facts. Check it out at www.unscrewamerica.org. Here is a glimpse:
Happy Earth Day everyone! We are excited to announce our three Earth Day Resolution winners. Overall the posts were incredibly thoughtful and doable. It really shows how little changes in our daily lives can add up to make a big impact. To us, everyday is Earth Day. It's all about smart and easy low impact choices.
Congratulations to the winners! Here are their posts:
Winner #1
Already using reusable grocery bags, washing laundry with cold water, using less light and changed all our light bulbs, and some other things. I resolve to use less plastic (water bottles especially) and grow more of my own food.
I'm going to try to compost more of my household waste, and buy a clothesline for drying clothes, since there is no such thing as an Energy Star rated clothes dryer. I'm also going to make more beverages at home (iced tea, Crystal lite, etc) instead of buying pre-made drinks which use more plastic in order to reduce my waste.
Most clothes dryers use about the same amount of energy as each other, and they're one of the most energy consuming appliances in one's house, after the furnace and water heater.
Earth Hour 2008 takes place at 8 pm on Saturday, March 29th. dropps signed up - you should too! www.earthhourus.org
"World Wildlife Fund's Earth Hour is catching on across America following the tremendous success of last year's event in Sydney, Australia. This global phenomenon will spread across six continents in 2008, including hundreds of communities like yours in the United States.
Chicago will serve as the U.S. flagship city for Earth Hour in 2008, with Atlanta, Phoenix and San Francisco joining as leading partner cities. But everyone throughout the US and around the world is invited and encouraged to turn off their lights for an hour on March 29 at 8 p.m. local time--whether at home or at work, with friends and family or solo, in a big city or a small town."
We are on a cleaning kick now that it is officially Spring. www.gcycle.org is a great site we recently stumbled upon. It lets you enter in your zip code, select a gadget (cell phones, batteries, computers, TV's, ect) and find nearby locations that will accept and recycle the gadgets for you. An incredibly convenient and quarky site that gives a second life to your gadgets instead of sending them straight to a landfill.
Earth Day is coming up on April 22nd. We were thinking it would be fun to come up with Earth Day Resolutions, just like New Years Resolutions, but focused on the planet.
Small changes can make a big impact. Since we are all about smart and easy ways to go green, we wanted to hear what small, but important lifestyle changes you are willing to make this Earth Day.
Will you make a promise to change all of your light bulbs, eat locally grown produce, use more public transportation, or vow to stop buying bottled water? What is your Earth Day Resolution? Your ideas can be practical or zany. We want to know what you are thinking. Post your resolutions!
Three Earth Day Resolution winners will receive a free 3-month supply of dropps in either fresh scent or scent + dye free. Winners will be chosen at random, but must include a thoughtful resolution. Posts will be accepted until April 7th. Be sure to include an email address in your comment or have it accessible in your profile. All prizes must be claimed within three days of the first email notifying the winner. After three days, the prize will be forfeited and an alternate winner will be selected.
The three winning resolution ideas will be posted on Earth Day.
I am going to get cloth napkins to reduce my paper towel usage, and actually remember to bring my reusable grocery bags to the store!