This is something you bring with you almost everywhere and is a great representation of yourself. Avoiding leather and cruelty towards animals, there are a lot of different fun ways you can store your money.

Option 1:

Make your own wallet, there are many steps online to re purpose some old duct tape and make yourself something useful.
Old keyboard? take the screws off and the circuit sheet inside is perfect and durable enough to hold your monetary items.

a step by step video to help you make your own one of these

If you’re not the creative type, I would highly recommend a mighty wallet. Made of Tyvek material, it is durable and waterproof. It comes in various designs, most of which don’t look like wallets at all. From maps to comic strips, there are plenty to choose from.

Check out http://www.mightywallets.com/ and find your own recycled wallet.

Girl Scouts Forever Green

I took the Girl Scouts Forever Green pledge. The girls have pledged reduce waste, save energy, and build rain gardens. Additionally, the Girl Scouts official website encourages people to “Take Action”, just like the SouthCoast Energy Challenge does!

The Girl Scout “pledges” in Eastern Massachusetts have eliminated 2,536,973 pounds of CO2, which they calculate is equivalent to emissions from 226 cars per year. I love the way these statistics are converted in an easy to understand way.

Join the girls and pledge HERE

Believe it or not, there are many things you can do with your tap water besides washing your car and showering. Rumor has it that it is actually clean enough to consume.

To urge the use of drinking tap water, Concord, Massachusetts has recently placed a ban on single use plastic water bottles. With over 50 billion bottles of water being produced in America annually, this is a great start to decrease those numbers. More shockingly, the amount of oil used to produce these bottles of water is enough to power 1.3 million cars for one year.

There are plenty of opinions against this new law.  The first to point out is taste.
How many times have you heard “I don’t like the taste of tap water”?
People seem to have a preconceived notion that tap water is dirty or not good to drink, when in fact it is bottled water that has less regulation than the city or towns water department. On top of all this, blind taste tests prove that people actually prefer tap water to bottled water.

Want some Aquafina or Dasani? Turn on your faucet and there it is. These brands are purified tap water put in water bottles and sold to the public with the marketing idea that it is safer to drink. Not to mention drinking the recommended amount of water per day from the tap would cost about $0.49 per year versus $1,400 in store bought bottled water.

Stores will surely still sell bottled water, the fine is minimal at $25 for a first offense and only $50 for each offense afterwards.  But not to fret, gallons of water are still on shelves as well as cases of water bottles may be had in the event of an emergency.

Drinking bottled water is for the arrogant and uneducated.

To learn more visit

http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-bottled-water/

Soccket balls by Uncharted Play

Read the full story from Time here:

Visit Uncharted Play here:

I came across Ecofont the other day. Ecofont is a font type that, when printed, saves a significant amount of ink, especially when used in large scale printing. Their more sustainable version of the Arial font saves 28% more ink and toner. The font works by putting tiny holes in the lettering,something which is nearly unnoticeable while reading it.

www.Ecofont.com allows you to download a free sample of this font by clicking on “Download” and then “Free Ecofont Vera Sans.”

How Ecofont works

Public transportation is a necessity for creating sustainable communities–a good public transportation system means fewer cars on the road and fewer toxins in our air. I think transportation issues in Southeastern Massachusetts are often left out of environmentalist discussions, likely because public transportation in this area is used out of necessity, not choice.  Bus riders in Southeastern MA are, more often than not, low income minorities, immigrants, students, seniors, disabled members of the community and the working poor. The public transportation system in Southeastern Mass  is also horribly underfunded and lacks extended service into the evening and on Sundays. However, this might also be a result of the public transit system being under-utilized.  So, if you can choose to ride the bus, why wouldn’t you?

Here are some reasons to switch to using public transportation:

SAVING ENERGY! Want to decrease our dependency on foreign oil? If just 10% of Americans switched to using public transportation the U.S. reliance on foreign oil would decrease 40%.

IT’S SAFER! Riding a bus is about 80x safer than riding in a car, and riding a train or subway is even safer.

IT’S BETTER FOR YOUR HEALTH! Studies show that people who switch to using public transportation regularly tend to be healthier than people who don’t, because of the exercise they get walking to and from bus stops, subway stations and their homes and offices.

USING  PUBLIC TRANSIT CAN SAVE YOU MONEY!  According to an APTA study, families that use public transportation can reduce their household expenses by over $6,000 annually, more than the average U.S. household spends on food every year.

For more about this check out:

http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/reasons-public-transportation-environment.htm

For more on the local bus system check out: www.srtabus.com

Imagine if, instead of asphalt, our roads, parking lots, and driveways were made of solar panels.  Now imagine if these solar panels could also be heated to melt snow and ice.  This would prevent roads from becoming dangerously slippy without the use of salt and sand which can be hazardous to the surrounding environment (not to mention that stuff gets our cars dirty!).  Further imagine if these panels had LED lights set in to mark lanes, instead of painting and repainting lines on the road.  This would make them easier to see in the dark and during the rain.  Imagine if these solar roadways also doubled as a power grid–no more power outages due to storms, broken wires and telephone poles falling down.  Soon we won’t need to imagine all this!  This is where the Solar Roadways project, founded by Julie and Scott Brusaw, comes in.  Their goal is the turn the above dream into a reality.  To learn more and help out, visit the links below!

http://solarroadways.com/main.html

http://solarroadways.com/intro.shtml

Walk into any store, classroom, restaurant or home and look around at the people you see.  I guarantee that half of them (especially the younger generation) have their eyes glued to the screen of their smartphone.  Since the iPhone was released in 2007, it has gained tremendous popularity. In 2011 alone, Apple sold 72 million iPhones.  I, myself, have had an iPhone for a few years, and I find that having the Internet in my pocket is incredibly useful.

I’m not the crazy texter type, and I much prefer to read a book than to be on a computer or a cell phone, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need to charge my phone.  I may not charge it as often as some, but it still needs to be done.  Every time I need to charge my phone, it gets plugged into a wall outlet and uses the power that my lovely coal-burning electric company has so kindly provided for me. So, when I came across this product, I immediately thought, “Waaaay Cool!”

Misemet Company has some really awesome green products, one being the Soladec Hybrid Solar Power Charger.  This really neat charger works for most USB devices, such as the iPhone or Andriod phones.  Not only does this charge your smartphone, or iPod, or whatever other nifty USB device you have, but it also has and LED light in case you’re stuck in the dark somewhere.  In addition the Lithium battery can hold its charge for up to two years, which could really come in handy in case of a power outage (oh no!) when you feel disconnected from the world.

Just in case you aren’t basking in the sun, you can still plug this charger into the wall or a USB outlet to juice it up so you can charge your devices on the go. I was just talking to a 16-year-old girl who told me she charges her phone four times a day (….what!?).  I would love to buy her this, and I think anyone that is constantly searching for an outlet to charge their things should invest.

The Soladec charger has fantastic reviews across the board.  Although I don’t personally own one (yet), others really seem to be loving it. Of the reviews on Amazon, an overwhelming majority gave this product four or five stars.  The biggest critic, who still gave the product three stars, was an engineer, who, of course, had to point out design flaws.  However, he still mentioned great functionality. He just would have made it more watertight, you know, in case you think it’s a good idea to charge this device outside on a cloudy, rainy day. (And why would you ever do that, anyway?)

The Soladec Hybrid Solar Power Charger is not sold directly from the manufacturer online, rather from other companies. The cheapest that I found this product was around $78, new on Amazon.  I think it seems like a really cool product, and I definitely think I’ll look into it.  If anyone else has tried this, let me know what you think!

——

Today I took about an hour to read the chapter of the book Eaarth (that’s right, with two a’s).  The author, Bill McKibben, claims the earth we live on is no longer what it used to be; it’s a different place, therefore it should have a new name. Clever.

Anyhow, this book delves into how we have waited much to long to put a halt to global warming, and explains what is going on today (terrible things!!!), due to the heating of our planet.  The first chapter is really scary, packed full of statistics that I wish were not true and could be brushed off without worrying too much.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  I think this a great book for anyone who doesn’t understand or see that climate change is occurring.  It really lays it all out for you.

I just wanted to share some of the statistics that I thought people would find interesting.

-The average temperature, having raised a bit over 1.5 degrees F, has triggered a 45% increase in thunderheads (giant clouds five miles up filled with tons of rain and hail) above the ocean.

-Increase in storms = increase in lightning. In one day in June 2008, there were 1,700 different fires across the state of California. Also, lightning strikes in the Arctic have increased twenty-fold, igniting tundra fires (which have never previously been observed).

-The Arctic ice cap is now 1.1 million square miles smaller it had once been.

-The West Antarctic is losing ice 75% faster than last decade.

-Tropical climate has expanded 8.5 million miles…expansion of the tropics push dry subtropics ahead of them, causing rain to be dumped over the ocean, rather than land.

-Australia now experiences an arid climate, the “new normal.” It is no longer considered a drought because the inflows of the past will not return.

-There is a 50% chance that Lake Mead (which sits on Colorado River behind the Hoover Dam) will run dry by 2021!

-One hundred eleven hurricanes formed in the tropical Atlantic between 1995-2008, a 75% increase over the previous 13 years.  These hurricanes are stronger and also last longer, so their destruction often hits more places.

-Oceans’ acidity has increased 30% due to our emissions

-80% oyster larvae death rate due to the high acid content in the sea (2009).

-Coral reefs, colonies of living organisms, will cease to exist by 2100, or even as early as 2050.

-Some species are even shrinking in size as an adaptation to the heat change.

This only covers the first ten pages.  The rest of the chapter dives into the carbon parts per million in the air, and the uncertainty of what is too much.  We are also brought up to speed about our reliance on oil, coal and even finances.  The book cites the fact that all of our recessions happened when oil prices increased… Interesting.

Although we are moving towards trying (at least a little bit) to fix the problem we’ve created, as other countries begin to adapt a more Western lifestyle (China, for example), we will be faced with the problem of even more pollution and emissions. And, gee, how could we ever convince so many people that the new lifestyle they’re chasing isn’t really all that good?

I will admit, the first chapter in this book is scary and intimidating, but we can not hide from these truths any longer. This chapter really focused on the negative, and I’m quite curious if there is any hope found further in the book.  So far, though, it has been an interesting read.  I recommend anyone that lives on Earth should read it. Prices start at $0.01 (used) on Amazon. Check it out.