It was at this point that I realized something was wrong. The life strategy I had grown up to believe in was no longer working and there didn’t seem to be any answers. Obviously, no one was going to get me out of this, so I decided I needed to take matters into my own hands and figure out a way to redefine my basic approach to living.

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This 10-minute video describes how Cuba survived its own peak oil and moved from petroleum-based agriculture to organic farming./

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Almost every bill you receive comes with a return envelope.  What if the original envelope could re re-used as the return envelope?

That’s just what EcoEnvelopes have done: Created a reusable 2-way envelop, .manufactured exclusively with FSC and SFI certified papers, contain up to 100% PCW content (post consumer waste), and use environmentally responsible inks and window films. ecoEnvelopes are US Postal Service approved, they work with existing high-speed insertion, remittance and postal processing equipment

Read more on EcoEnvelopes website

When he travels overseas, he is always sure to carry over a suitcase with a thousand or so British power cables (server manufacturers include both U.S. and U.K. cables with their products, so every data center regularly throws away the foreign leads). He sells them in London for a pound each, financing his round-trip airfare and hotel with his e-waste arbitrage.

Click Here to read the Forbes article.

My HOA prohibits clotheslines. Yours probably does too, yet electric clothes dryers account for 5.8% of all electricity used in the home.

There’s a movement afoot to bring back the clothesline and the LA TImes has an article about it:

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In places where the practice is banned as an unsightly nuisance to neighbors, right-to-dry activists and blogging eco-moms are forming an alliance. Their cause: to reduce energy consumption and to call upon sunlight rather than bleach to get those whites even whiter.

There’s even a blog: laundrylist.org.

Click Here to read it.

Belgiums’s Elizabeth research station hopes to be the first to rely solely on wind and solar power, England’s Rothera base is installing solar thermal panels for heating water and air, Japan’s Syowa base is already using solar power and Australia’s Mawson station has been using wind turbines since 2003.

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I found this great little tip on Lighter Footstep today:

 

ure, a lot of breakfast cereal comes out of bags these days. But don’t toss those cereal boxes when you have them — they make sturdy (and free!) mailing envelopes. Just cut them apart, turn them inside out, and use a little tape. You’re off to the Post Office. Thanks toTwitter user Lydia Krupinski of Pierogi Picnic for today’s tip.

In 2005 H. Scott Lee, Walmart’s CEO, challenged a roomful of Walmart executives. “Tell me why I should care about an endangered mouse in Arizona?”, he asked. He presented his colleagues with a radical option — the “choice” that gave the meeting its name — encouraging them to adopt a sustainability program to remake the entire company, from the materials used to build stores to the light bulbs stocked on its shelves. Although participants were conflicted, a vote on the initiative was unanimous: Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer and biggest buyer of manufactured goods, would go green.

Under Mr. Scott, who is retiring this month at the age of 59, the company that democratized consumption in the United States — enabling working-class families to buy former luxuries like inexpensive flat-screen televisions, down comforters and porterhouse steaks — has begun to democratize environmental sustainability.

Today, the roughly 200 million customers who pass through Wal-Mart’s doors each year buy fluorescent light bulbs that use up to 75 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs, concentrated laundry detergent that uses 50 percent less water and prescription drugs that contain 50 percent less packaging.

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21 Things You’re Not Recycling

Except that most of those things we are: Things like appliances, batteries, and cardboard boxes.

The article does provide a way to recycle Tyvek envelopes, which I was not aware of.

You can always go to Earth911.com to find the nearest recycling center for almost anything.

I hate big-box stores. Absolutely despise them. Wanna know what I dislike the most about big box stores? The ‘End-of-Life’ problem. When the bog box store closes – sometimes to move to a BIGGER box just a few miles away – they leave a hulking derelict behind. There are not many alternative used for a six million cubic foot concrete box. The impact is staggering. Once the big box store – typically the anchor for the surrounding smaller stores – leaves, most of the shoppers go with it. The next thing you know, you have an abandoned shopping center in your neighborhood.

Here is a great story on Sustainablog about people finding new uses for those abandoned big box stores.

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You can find out where to recycle that old analog TV here

VelaCreations.com