Earth Rated Products

Went to play Bingo the other night with a few hundred people that actually knew what they were doing. Bingo sure has gotten complicated since the 80s. Honestly, I’m not sure if its because of improved technology, or if people just got bored with the 5-in-a-row garden variety game.

The new games like Kite, Picture Frame, X, L, etc. require a lot more attention than 5-in-a-row and I could barely keep up with looking for the current number being called, much less scan my cards for the winning patterns. Considering that a majority of the players were senior citizens with worse vision and slower hands than mine, it was quite a shock how much faster than me they were at playing each number. Plus, they played the bonus side games that compliment the actual bingo game being played. Don’t ask for more details, I have no idea how the bonus games work. Couldn’t keep up with them!

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Today was THE day. After weeks and weeks of feeding our worms all the banana peels, coffee grinds, egg shells, lettuce, bread, tortillas, avocado peels, artichoke stalks, edamame pods, artichoke petals, and other miscellaneous scraps from the kitchen, it was time to spread the love! We were looking forward to this day ALL WEEK!

The plan was to take out the lower of two trays in our worm composting bin and use the castings to feed our outdoor plants, as well as to enrich the soil for re-potting 10 indoor plans I bought recently. (Click here to read more about our bin set-up.) To prep for this momentous occassion, we had added the second tray to the bin around three weeks ago and began putting the food in this upper tray in order to encourage our worm friends to migrate up.

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I was watching Plant Green’s Wa$ted the other night and learned something shocking. Well, shocking to me. Maybe I’m naive? Seriously, I would have believed something like this 10 years ago. But not now. Not today. Not with all the news. Not with all the studies. Not after the publicity from the movie (you know which one) and ensuing Nobel Prize.

Anyway, as I was saying, I was watching Wa$ted the other night and was shocked to see that the show producers were able to find a family that didn’t follow the 3 Rs AT ALL. I mean, zero, nada, zip. They didn’t even OWN a recycling bin! (more…)

OK. So I didn’t include Mr Gore on my original ecocrite post… I pretty much assumed that everyone already knew of his very public and blatant hypocrisy, and I didn’t need to waste the time/space/electrons repeating it yet again. However, after today’s revelation from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, I feel compelled to ensure that everyone is aware of what the TCPR found.

There are two specific points that really say it all:

1. In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.
2. In the wake of becoming the most well-known global warming alarmist, Gore won an Oscar, a Grammy and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Gore saw his personal wealth increase by an estimated $100 million thanks largely to speaking fees and investments related to global warming hysteria. (more…)

While I applaud the plethora of high profile folks currently using their celebrity to bring attention to the importance of moving toward less carbon-heavy lifestyles, I still get a good laugh at what giant hypocrites the majority of them are…

• George Clooney - cuts back on CO2 emissions by driving a Prius. Seems that CO2 emissions only count on terra firma though. He still feels okay flying around on a Gulfstream. Somehow, releasing the pollution directly into the atmosphere makes it better. Even his lovely girlfriend, Sarah Larson, is confused by the contradiction.

UPDATE: About 2 days after Sarah’s interview was made public, news broke that George and Sarah had broken up… think he’s upset she outted his hypocrisy?

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Sure. Everyone’s heard the standard tips on how to be greener…

• Change your little energy-sucking incandescent light bulbs for more efficient, lower-consuming CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs)

• Recycle everything that your city allows: typically paper, cardboard, glass bottles, aluminum cans, plastic bottles with the chasing arrows around a 1 or 2
• Don’t buy bottled water, buy a re-usable bottle and BYOW from home
• Turn off the water when brushing your teeth
• Turn off lights in unoccupied rooms
• Look for Energy Star stickers when replacing appliances

While all of these tips are great because they are such very do-able “little things”, not much is mentioned about what the next step in conservation should be. You know, once doing everything on the list above becomes a part of your routine. Usually its these baby steps, then on to discussing the giant leap to solar panels. However, with a little thought and patience, there are many additional things we can do to be just a little greener.

Here are five of the little things we’ve started doing at our house: (more…)