It’s weird that so many students pack their lunches almost every day, but when they grow up and enter the good ol’ workforce, they pretty much stop packing their lunch. Most people do this because they say it’s more convenient than packing their own lunch. But if they stop and think about it, there are several great reasons to bring your lunch to work with you.

Bag Lunches Are Healthier

Many restaurants offer lunches with tons of meat and grease. There is nothing wrong with this occasionally. But when fast food starts becoming your normal lunch, your health will take a hurting. When you pack your own lunch, you can put in tons of vegetables, fruits, and other such healthy mess. Remember: packing your own lunch = getting your own six-pack.

Save Money

Unless you want to “take all of your money [and] give it up to charity”, you probably want more money. Packing your lunch is a great way to save money. Instead of spending $6-$10 on lunch, you can spend way less than that by packing yourself a sandwich and some fruit and vegetables. Plus, you will be saving money on gas, which brings means that you can also

Help the Environment

That’s right folks, by bringing a bag lunch, you will not only be getting healthier and saving money, you will be helping out Mother Earth. Less driving = less gas = less pollution. Plus, if you pack your lunch in a reusable bag, you’ll be cutting down on your waste.

So there you have it. If you want to save money, help Captain Planet, AND stay healthy, just pack yourself a bag lunch and bah-bam, you are achieving all three of those goals. So go home tonight and try it, and you’ll thank yourself tomorrow at lunchtime (unless you made a really bad lunch).

Everyone should know how many miles per gallon their car gets, but many people do not. I didn’t even know my car’s MPG, until today when I calculated it out.

How to Find Your Official Gas Mileage

If you want the quickly know your approximate mpg, the good ol’ U.S. government has set up this website where you can look up your car’s gas mileage or compare miles per gallon for different cars. And just recently, the EPA has changed how it calculates MPG to more accurately depict real world driving conditions.

According to their site, my car gets 24 miles per gallon (highway and city gas mileage combined). Based on an average gas cost of $3.01 per gallon and average annual driving of 15,000 miles, that works out to a whopping $1883 each year just spent on gas! That’s not even counting car repair costs, rotating tires, or oil cost.

How to Find Out Your Own MPG

To find out your car’s actual gas mileage, you just need to do some simple mathematics.

1. Fill up your car with gas, and reset your odometer to zero.
2. Drive like normal.
3. Next time you need gas, pull up to the gas station and write down how many miles you’ve driven since you last filled up.
4. Fill up your car, and write down how many gallons o’ gasoline it took.
5. To find your car’s MPG, divide your miles driven by gallons of gas. Voila!

Using this method, I divided my miles driven by gallons of gas (426.8 / 14.454) to get my actual gas mileage ( 29.5 mpg! ). Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

Update: (June 2010) Sadly, I wrecked my old car about a month ago in a weak little accident. But, my new car (a Toyota Yaris), gets over 40 miles to the gallon! Hot diggity dog!

How many miles per gallon does YOUR car get?

Last year, when I was still in college, I used my bike pretty much every day. Why, you may ask? Welp, here are my top three reasons to bike instead of drive.

Save Money By Biking

The initial investment to get a bike can be as expensive as you want, but it’s pretty easy to get a cheap (or even free) bike. I got my bike as a birthday present back in 8th grade, but it’s still going strong. I had to get it fixed up at one point, though, so I took it to 1304 Bikes here in Raleigh. They fix up old bikes and give them away, and they were able to help tell me how to fix my bike. If you are buying a bike, look on OhSoHandy or other websites to find some great deals on used bikes.

The biggest way that biking saves you money, though, is because of all the money you’ll be saving by not driving your car. If you cut out all the gas that you normally buy, plus all the repair costs of your car, you’ll be surprised at how much money you’ll save. It’s a big reason why I was financially able to get through college without having loans out the ying yang.

Lower Your Pollution and Your Eco-Footprint

If you’re using your bicycle, you’ll be creating a lot less pollution (zero, believe it or not) than by driving your car to get to places. Cars use up a lot of resources (gasoline and oil especially) and also are a huge source of pollution in today’s modern dog-eat-dog world. In fact, driving a car is the most polluting thing that an average person does. So riding a bike (and not driving your car as much) is a great way to cut down on that hefty ol’ eco-footprint of yours.  Plus, by riding your bike, you can enjoy all the natural scenery that you’ll be biking past, instead of concentrating on the back of the car in front of you while you’re in a traffic jam.

Get Yo’self Some Exercise And Wake Up

In college, I had a job that required me to be on campus pretty early (2:00 AM on Wednesdays!). The only thing that woke me up for that shift (besides good ol’ coffee) was biking about 2 miles to get there. Biking helped wake me up and keep me all energized for the whole day, whether I was going to class or work. Plus, it kept me in pretty good shape, even though me and my friends would eat a bunch at the dining hall. Without biking, I probably would have been morbidly obese and sleeping through all of my classes.

Get To Class On Time

Now I know most of you have probably never been late for class ever, but back in the day, I was usually about 5 to 10 minutes late (especially for those huge auditorium classes).  The embarassment and shame this caused me was almost too much to handle, but then I got me a bike and have never looked back since.  It’s amazing how much faster you can get around on campus by using a bicycle.  You can fly by people, and make it across campus in about a quarter of the time that it takes to walk.  So do yourself a favor if you’re in college (or even if you’re not), and go get a bike.  After a week of using it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start biking sooner.

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I updated the link to the eco-footprint quiz, just in case anyone ever sees this page again
About a year ago, money I took a Ecological Footprint Quiz in World Population and Food class. I did better than the “average” American, although, if I remember correctly, it said that if everyone on Earth lived their life like me then we’d need 2.5 Earths. So I’m about to take wholesale nfl jerseys the test (I hope it’s the same one) again, and see how I’ve changed my New ecological footprint. I’m guessing it has got a little worse, since I now drive to work instead of bike (last year my work was only in 2 miles away).

Before you begin your wholesale nba jerseys quiz, you are greeted with a very important message: CAUTION: THIS QUIZ MAY SURPRISE YOU, SHOCK YOU, OR MAKE YOU THINK. PLEASE REMAIN CALM…BUT NOT TOO CALM!!

With that in mind, I began to take the test. As tempting as it is to stars lie, I shall try to answer all the questions truthfully.

Dang, I drive a lot each week. You wholesale nfl jerseys don’t realize until you think about it how far you drive. Luckily, I basically never drive alone, so that probably helps my score.

The results are in:

My ecological footprint is 19 acres! The average American’s footprint is 24 acres. So I am below average, but not by much. And even though I’m below average, if everyone lived like me, we’d need 4.3 planets. K-razy.

Surprisingly, one of the biggest improvements I could make would be to eat less animal products ??????????????????????????? (doubtful) or buy more locally grown foods. The transportation of food is a big contributor Desserts to pollution and carbon emission. Plus, by buying locally, I’m more likely to get fresh food, and I get to stimulate the local economy. Huzzah!

So basically, I plan on heading to the Raleigh Farmers’ Market next time it is open. I suggest you visit your local farmers’ market also; it’s fun, plus you get a large selection of fresh fruits and vegetables (and more).