Tips, Coupons, Books and of course, green…

It’s fun to surf the Web and other blogs looking for green tips and information – I’m finding more and more great stuff everyday. I love the momentum that this gaining. Here are some things I’d like to share with everyone:

Silk Soymilk is running a –> Green Caps Promotion for which they donate to clean energy production for every entry. Also, you’re entered to win earth-friendly appliances. Check out the site for great clean energy information, including a –> Carbon Calculator you can use to calculate your carbon footprint and how you stack up against the national average. A quick run through for me showed my family’s footprint was below the national average – YAY! For more information and tips on how to reduce your footprint, visit –> Safe Climate, a project of the –> World Resources Institute.

And here is quick “Did you know?” from the Silk Green Caps site: If every American home changed out just five high-use light fixtures with energy-efficient ones, together we’d prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from more than 8 million cars.

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Here’s a couple of green tips that we’ve taken up over the past week:

• Reuse small water bottles for all types of drinks around the house. We wash out our bottles after each use and use for everything from more water to juice for the kids and as travel mugs for the car. Keeps our cups in the cupboard and our dishwasher off since cups seems to be what we go through most with two active kids.
• In the office, I’ve been looking for ways to be more green. One area that I’ve particularly focused on is paper waste. As I audited my daily routine, I noticed that I tended to print out a lot information from emails, websites, etc. that I needed to distribute to colleagues. I’ve started utilizing the simple screen shot capabilities of Windows (Mac has it too) to send out the info via email rather than print. It’s easy; Alt+Print Screen will copy your screen to the clipboard and you can paste into any email message. If you’re using Outlook, you can use Word’s editing tools to crop the image as needed or even make notes on it. Most of the time, the receiver of the printed piece will throw it out anyways, only to print it again later. So this method allows them to forward the message and save paper as well. Try it and save some trees!

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I love shopping at my local health and organic food markets. There is always something to learn there on top of shopping for great tasting food! Some are even starting to really provide a lot of that information on their websites. One of my favorite local stores is Henry’s Farmers Market. Here’s a list from their site that is worth reading –> Five Easy Ways to Change the World.

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For you readers out there, here’s a link to a –> coupon for the new James Patterson book, The 6th Target, that you can use at Border’s or Waldenbooks for 40% off the list price. Good 5/8 – 5/14 and I believe you must join Borders Rewards Club which is free.

For Tolkien fans (I’ve been a fan for 25 years!), the new book –>The Children of Hurin is a must! It’s always to see new Tolkien material and this one does not disappoint, I highly recommend it!

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