Most people now-a-days try to help out the environment, even if it’s by doing something small, like turning off a faucet while you brush your teeth, or not littering. But for some, that is not enough. By following the handy green tips below, you can turn yourself from a zero to an eco-hero.

1. Wear the Same Clothes for Days on End

I’m not saying that I’ve ever done this (of course not), but I’ve heard of people who’ll wear the same clothes without washing them, as long as they’re not too dirty. The average washing machine cycle uses about a kilowatt-hour of energy, not to mention all that water. And dryers are one of the top energy users in a house. The ultimate eco-hero will continue wearing his (or her) clothes until they are tattered rags, not even washing them once.

2. Don’t Use Napkins, Ever

Think about this one. If you use cloth napkins, you have to wash them. If you use paper napkins, you have to throw them away. But if you don’t use a napkin at all, you will cut your napkin-related environmental impact to zero! If you must wipe your hands on something, just use your shirt, which you should’ve already been wearing for days on end (see #1).

3. Hitch-hike Everywhere You Go

Driving alone is for suckers. And paying for gas? Not at today’s outrageous prices. All it takes to get from Point A to Point B is a thumb and a smile. You’ll meet tons of interesting people, plus who knows where you’ll wind up! Of course, if you’re fine with boring ol’ “do-it-yourself” driving, then this tip is not for you.

4. Shower in the Rain

Next time the skies darken and you hear some thunder, grab a bar of soap and run outside. It’s shower time. Environmental savings include lowered energy use, decreased water use, and increase of feeling one with nature.

5.Trash Buffet

This, perhaps, is what truly separates the eco-heroes from the eco-zeroes. Do you have any idea how much food restaurants send to landfills every day? I don’t, but however much it is, it’s too much. If you wander the back alleys behind a group of restaurants, you are treated to a veritable trash buffet of nutritional goodness, plus you help keep the landfills a little emptier.

If you can follow these five steps, then you will be an official eco-hero. Just send me an email and I will place you into the Eco Hall of Fame. Do you have what it takes to be an eco hero?

Sadly, this post isn’t about helping the environment and saving money. It’s about global warming. It’s not about how much of it is man-made and how much is happening naturally, it’s just to show how fast some big changes are happening.

This picture shows the North Pole in 1979 and then in 2007. The pink area is arctic ice; the darker the pink, the thicker the ice.

That’s a pretty big decrease in ice cover, but it is over 28 years, so maybe it’s not all that bad. But look at this video from NASA showing the north pole from September, 2005, to September, 2007 (only two years!).

In just the last two years, a huge amount of artic ice has melted. Whether it is because of man-made pollution, or natural warming, a change this big should not be ignored. To paraphrase Nelly, “It’s getting hot in hurr”.

Everyone likes to get mail. When you open your mailbox and see that someone else has taken the time to handwrite a letter to you, it’s enough to bring tears to your eyes. But all too often, the only thing in your mail box (besides bills) are catalogs of junk. You don’t want them. Why did that company send them to you? If only there was a way to stop them from doing this and wasting all that paper and time…

Welp, it turns out that there’s a website that stops junk catalogs before they start. It’s called Catalog Choice, and their mission is to stop these junk catalogs from ever being sent or even made. It turns out that over 8 million tons of trees are used each year for paper catalogs — most of these are unwanted catalogs that are thrown away as soon as they’re received. By using their website, you can help out the environment while at the same time helping out yourself. You and the trees win, and the only losers are the catalogs that you didn’t even order in the first place!

To stop getting unwanted catalogs in your mail box, just visit their site by click this:

LEDs are becoming more and more popular since they use a tiny fraction of the energy that other lighting uses. Here’s your chance to replace your old, energy-wasting desk lamp with a FREE energy-efficient LED desk light.

The desk light will have a small logo from an advertiser on it. That’s how they’re able to provide the light for free. I tried it out, and it seems legit. You don’t even have to put in your email address at all. So go get yourself an energy-efficient LED light.

Here be the link

P.S. Don’t throw away your old desk light. If you’re getting rid of it, find someone else who can use it, or donate it to Goodwill or Habitat or something.

THIS OFFER HAS EXPIRED… 🙁 DANG

I don’t know how long this will last, but EnergyStar is giving away one free CFL bulb per household. Why are they doing this?

In addition to helping you save money and the environment, we also understand the concerns associated with switching to Energy Saving bulbs. Will the color be the same as a standard bulb? Will it REALLY save me money? We want you to try ours free to see for yourself. Along with your bulb you will receive additional exclusive savings throughout the store that will help jump start your switch to ENERGY STAR. We want to thank you for participating in our Free Eco-Bulb program.

3-4 weeks from now, I shall have a free CFL bulb. Hot diggity dang.

Let’s say you’re about to clean your dishes, and you want to do it in the best way environmentally possible. So do you use your energy-efficient dishwasher, or do wash your dishes by hand? It might seem like a simple question, but man oh man there are a lot of answers (and a lot of other websites which have covered this question, with one result or the other). I’ll try to look at both sides of this surprisingly heated debate.

Water Use

A modern dishwasher will use less water than you would if you hand-washed your dishes. But this is assuming that you hand wash your dishes several times a day instead of leaving them in the sink for a “big wash”, which I always end up doing. This also assumes that you don’t use too much water pre-rinsing the dishes. So basically, it all boils down to efficiency of scale (doing a large load is more efficient than doing many smaller loads of dishes). If you only do large loads and moderate your water use, hand-washing is more efficient. But the smaller your loads are and the more water you use, the bigger the advantage of using a dishwasher.

Energy Use

Most of the energy for washing dishes (whether by hand or by dishwasher) comes from heating up the water (unless you like to wash your dishes with ice-cold water). Obviously, the dishwasher uses some electricity on top of that, so hand-washing wins this battle.

Time

Dishwashers will save you time. Just put in some dishes, turn it on, and walk away. But sometimes you open the dishwasher when it’s done, and some of the pans and dishes are still dirty. The more that happens, the smaller the time advantage that dishwashers have.

Overall Environmental Impact

Hand-washing wins this one. There are phosphate-free soaps available for dishwashing or handwashing, but the energy and materials used to make a dishwasher is considerable. Plus, dishwashers take more energy, sometimes use more water, and sometimes even take more time. So unless you are doing a huge load of dishes (or unless you work in a restaurant), then hand-washing is the way to go. So put on them yellow gloves, fill up a pot with hot, soapy water, and get ready for some good ol’ hand-washing.

If you’re like me, you are always looking for ways that you can make money and help the environment. Welp, here is one such way that I will try soon, since I have two old cell phones sitting at home unused.

Why Cell Phones Hurt The Environment

Old cell phones should not just be thrown away in normal household garbage, yet Americans are getting rid of more than 100 million cell phones a year this way! Cell phones contain a lot of toxic materials, such as lead, zinc, and arsenic. When cell phones are thrown away in an ordinary dump, their toxic chemicals can leech out into water sources. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like too much arsenic in my water.

What Can You Do With Old Cell Phones

Instead of throwing away old cell phones, you can use them as a crude yet effective hammer. Either that, or you can donate your cell phone or sell them. Look for donation areas at your local schools, grocery stores, or even your church. They will go to needy people, or maybe even an old person who’d like to be able to chat with their friends.

Donating cell phones is a great way to reduce their harmful impact on the environment. But even better than donating them is selling them! But who would buy an old cell phone? Cell For Cash or SellYourCell, that’s who. They offer between $2 and $200 depending on the model of the phone and how old it is. Even if you get the bare minimum, $2 is a heck of a lot better than just throwing away your cell phone and hurting the Earth.

Where do the Old Cell Phones Go?

It turns out that a lot of the old cell phones go to Latin America or the Caribbean. A lot of these countries are developing, and it’s cheaper for people to get cell phones as opposed to telephone companies running cable every which way through the country. They already have good wireless networks, so there is a demand for cheap cell phones down there. You can be happy that your old cell phone will be used by someone who really needs it.

I’m about to go out of town, but once I come back, I’ll actually try out one of those cellphone-selling sites and see if I can get rid of my old cell phones in an eco-friendly (and profitable) way. If anyone else tries it out, let me know how it worked out.