Gas boycotts, a sham.

This whole not buying gas on a national boycott date doesn't work. Eventually you buy the gas, whether its the day before or after, so you really aren't hurting anyone. What we need to do is truly reduce our dependence all togther.




Make a real difference!:

*car pool or use public transportation.

*ride your bike more often

*plan your route so you make more right turns (left turns waste gas. UPS did this and have proven to save mega amounts of gas)

*if you have a diesel, convert it to bio-diesel, it's simple, and affordable.

*buy an electric scooter and recharge it with solar power. Link 1

*when replacing lawn equipment, go gas free with electric or manpowered. yes, reel mowers really work and brooms can still sweep leaves. There are even solar powered lawn mowers and some mowers can be converted to biodiesel too.

*open your windows more often, turn off that a/c or heater. a fresh breeze through the living room is a wonderful thing.

*stop buying petrol based products (like non-organics.) did you know that fertilizers are made w/ petroleum based products...so switching over to organics will help reduce our dependence on oil.

* buy local produce. buying local obviously saves petrol because your kiwi isn't shipped from new zealand. Link 1

*buy alternative "plastics" made from vegetable cellulose. Link 1, Link 2

*take your own cotton bag(s) for all shopping. plastic bags are made from petroleum.

Double, No make that a Tripple GGRRRRRR

No photo to accompany this entry today. I don't feel I should assist in the circle.

I am fed up, sick up "to here", had it, angry and even bitter! Why must companies wreck and crash cars just for the sake of 30 second commercial? It seems that everyone is doing it these days to make one point or another. A car insurance company, or a car dealer, or a company that has nothing to do with cars but it is for comedic value. Well, waste is not funny. And that is waste to its most extreme.
I'm going to dig deep for this. I'm going to find out what happens to those wasted cars after they've been wrecked for our "amusement". I don't find any entertainment value in it what so ever.

Earth Day in May?

Keep the Earth Day vibe going in to May by making Mother's Day Earth Friendly (May 11th).

Gaia

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day

Green TV

All day Earth Day (Tuesday April 22nd) HGTV will be airing "Green Shows". Here's their program schedule.

Check out other green t.v. through out the year with these other links:

National Geographic's Human Footprint

Koreshan State Park, This Weekend

Those of you in S.W. Florida, stop by and see me this weekend. I would love to meet my readers.

I will be at Koreshan State Park for the Earth Day Festival.

SIERRA CLUB CALUSA GROUP’S
SEVENTH ANNUAL EARTH DAY FESTIVAL
SATURDAY, 19th of APRIL 2008Koreshan State Historic Site Estero, FL

Explore the beautiful Estero River! (FREE kayaking rides)
Enjoy art, food, music, and environmental presentations!

OPENING CEREMONY – 10:00 AM – A honoring of Mother Earth
Environmental Presentations and FREE Kayak Rides start at 10:30 AM
Kids’ Activities, start at 11:00 AM

LIVE MUSIC ALL DAY ON THE GREEN:
Darrell Bair 10:15-11:15 AM
Roy Schneider 11:30 AM-12:30 PM
Skunk Monkey 1:00-2:00 PM
Deep Roots 2:00-3:30 PM
PLEASE BRING CHAIRS OR BLANKETS TO ENJOY THE MUSIC ON THE GREEN!

FOOD AVAILABLE STARTING AT 11:00 AM
Lions Club of Estero, South Fort Myers: hot dogs, pork BBQ, chips, sodas
For Goodness Sake: organic veggie and turkey wraps
Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream

Local Artists will be displaying their work
Many items will be RAFFLED including a poster donated by Clyde Butcher, renowned
Southwest Florida photographer!
(Raffle Tickets available at the Sierra Club table on the porch)
DRUM CIRCLE open to the public 4:00 - 6:30 PM
Bring your drum!

What makes a Hybrid Eco-Friendly?

Hybrids come in many forms. There's the diesel engine retrofitted to use vegetable oil a.k.a biofuel or biodiesel. SVO meaning straight vegetable oil and WVO meaning waste vegetable oil. In my opinion WVO being the most eco-friendly because it's not virgin oil like SVO. I whole believe all things should be reused before beind discarded. With WVO the oil was formly used at say a fast food restaurant to fry your food. Hence the joke that biodiesel cars smell like french fries. WVO is easier for the general public to use at home, thus making the conversion to this cleaner fuel a no-brainer. (Yes, in a pinch you can still use regular old diesel fuel if you need to, but who'd want to with the prices the way they are these days?)

Another hybrid we are all familiar with is the electric/gasoline autos such as the Honda Civic or the Toyota Prius. These use an extra battery to help support the engine with electric power to save on gas, getting around 50mpg, on average for the smaller cars and 35mpg for larger hybrids. Another great eco-friendly feature for the gas/electric hybrid is that the engine shuts off when you are at a stop, thus reducing emissions. You do not need to plug in these cars, thus reducing our pull from the grid.

On the horizon, cars you plug in and cars that use hydrogen fuel.

What makes a plug in car eco-friendly? In my opinion, not much if you are not using solar to recharge the battery. When you plug it in you are plugging into the grid, which is usually mostly powered by coal burning or petroleum using plants. Though the rise of solar and wind power generated plants is upon us, it's not quit the norm. So plugging into the grid isn't very eco-friendly, yet. If the market for plug in cars surges, we need to also promote the heck out of solar power for our home to recharge that car!

So are all these new hybrids and concept cars really eco-friendly?
The answer might surprise you!
NO. "NO?" you ask. That's right. Here's why most of these cars are not so eco-friendly. If you have a car that is in good condition, nothing wrong with it, and you are trading it in just for the sole purpose of up-grading to a hybrid or plug in, you are doing more damage than good. Buying an eco-friendly car w/out the true need of getting rid of your old car, is well, not so eco-friendly. This is greedy consumerism. It's only truly eco-friendly if say, you don't have a car and you get a hybrid, or your old car has finally bit the dust. I'm not encouraging driving your car off a cliff to save your conscience of buying a hybrid.

The true eco-friendly car from my list are the biodiesel cars, because you are not getting rid of your old car, you are converting you diesel engine to run more clean.

If we could get major car companies to convert the cars we have, rather than come out w/ new models all together, then we would have a real Eco-Friendly car.

Be Green in Death

So yes, there is a way to continue being a tree-hugging, dirt-worshiper even in death. Green Burials are catching on. There are many versions of a Green Burial. I first saw one concept portrayed on the popular show "Six Feet Under".
It basically goes like this, you get buried in eco-friendly material & biodegradable coffin or shroud. Yes, that's right, it will all decompose and you will be one with the worms. There is no formaldehyde used to preserve you, no lamination of the outer casket. Simply green.
Another upcoming approach to cemeteries is taking land that is over grown with exotics, and weeding those out, once your loved one is buried, the area is replanted with wild grass or other native trees and plants. Sometimes gravestones not being used and family members use GPS to find the location when they visit.

Eco-Fabulous Darling!

Who says being a fashionista couldn't be eco-fabulous?
Check out these hip, earth friendly must haves.

My new favorite is jewelry made from newspaper at newspaperjewelry.com. The men are not left out, check out the cufflinks! Snazzy.

According to GreenKarat gold "mining continues at a pace of 2,500 tons a year. In fact, there is enough gold above ground (already mined) to satisfy all demands of the jewelry industry for the next 50 years. Much of it sits in bank vaults and in the form of old and unused jewelry." The mining for gold and diamonds is horribly damaging to our environment. One must stop and think, if we already have enough already mined why do we persist in ruining our planet in the name of vanity? Crikey.

The Brilliant Earth website looks like your generic big name diamond shop, but upon closer inspection you will find they really care where they source their metals and diamonds.

I might be late in talking about this most popular jewelry, Leju, but to be honest...I don't wear jewelry often. Leju pieces are made from Vegetable Ivory, which is from the nut of a palm tree in the Amazon Rainforest. The harvesting of these seeds not only gives the locals an income but also protects the area from being clearcut. If you find a reason to save a plot of land in the rainforest, then do it. The more we buy from non-clearcut portions of rainforests, the more we show that the forest is of great value and we can help the indigenous people that live there not to mention we can help the planet from becoming a wasteland of treeless landscapes.

Over at One Earth Projects they are recycling silver as well as helping tribes in Kenya.

Now let's work our way down to the toes. I love funky, stylin' shoes. Yes, a girl who loves shoes, I know it's odd. The company is called Simple, but there is nothing simple about them. They are the kings of reusing trash to make new. Old tires are now the bottom tread for shoes, used plastic bottles are now the footbed. Swanky and hip, if you need the It shoe, go no further.

There is also the company Terrasoles who incorporate funky-chic with recycled fleece and bamboo, yes bamboo to make some of their styles.

The Rainforest's Rape in the Name of Ethanol.

When you think of Ethanol gas you probably think Eco-friendly. But hold on just a minute. It's not what it's cracked up to be. I've long said that using virgin sources for E85 is probably not a good idea and my suspicions have been confirmed by this weeks Time Magazine. In short we are aiding to the deforestation of the Brazilian Rainforests at an alarming rate, so that we can in turn make a cleaner gasoline. However, clean gas doesn't do a thing for our global warming efforts, if we are cutting down hundreds of acres of rainforests. The only true exhaust emissions lowering version of E85 is sugarcane based ethanol. That crops most commonly grown for ethanol are corn and soy. See the dilemma?

So what's this mean for all the E85 hype? It means we're being duped into something that isn't really eco-friendly. What a shock. (yes, that's sarcasm)

With yesterday's strike by independent truck drivers and the look into big oil's record breaking gains while our prices keep going up, one has to think did the government let us down in a big way? The answer is a resounding "Yes!". Too little too late.

For the full story from Time Magazine: Click here