Christmas greenings
ENVIRONMENT | Holiday gift-giving that can help save the planet
This holiday gift season: think green. And not just Christmas trees.
Go easy on the planet and give a "green" gift.
Here are some ideas:
• Save trees. Computer printouts typically include wasted pages. GreenPrint software can help eliminate those pages.
GreenPrint analyzes the pages to flag the waste.
Downloaded software for home users costs $35. For an extra $5, you can get EverGreen font, designed to be readable while fitting more words on a page.
GreenPrint estimates a family typically can save $90 or more a year in paper and ink with GreenPrint. Corporations can save millions of dollars.
For more information, go to printgreener.com.
• The eternal grocery store question "Paper? Or plastic?" has a new answer: cloth.
Olive Smart at www.olive smart.com is selling the Olive Smart Sack, six nylon bags in a small sack that fits into your car cup holder. Olive Smart said the $39 bag of bags is enough to load up a cart of groceries.
Some cities are starting to ban plastic bags. And for good reason. Olive Smart reports that 1 trillion plastic bags are produced a year worldwide, with 380 million being consumed in the United States. We each use 332 of the bags per year. The bags are a petrol product that gobbles up 12 million gallons of oil per year that otherwise could heat homes and fuel cars.
New York City has estimated that elimination of one fewer plastic grocery bag per year per person would reduce waste by 5 million pounds and save $250,000 in disposal costs.
• Pump it up and save gas. Tire Rack, at www.tirerack.com, cites research showing that about a third of the cars on the road have at least one underinflated tire. More than 4 million gallons of gas a day are wasted because of underinflated tires. Tire Rack is selling the Accutire Digital Air Pressure Gauge for $18 to help motorists check their tires and ensure they are inflated and saving fuel.
• Go staple free. You don't need those metal staples or paperclips to fasten paper together. You can do it with paper. ThinkGreek is offering Staple-less Staplers, which cut a tiny flap in the corner of the paper and folds it in on itself. The gizmo goes for $6 at www.thinkgeek.com/ gadgets/tools/8b70/.
• Want to choose between 20,000 eco-friendly products? Check out ShopGreen, a green product guide from PriceGrab ber.com, the comparison shopping engine.
• How about finding energy-efficient PCs? Check out the Climate Savers Computing catalog with more than 300 energy-efficient products at www.climatesaverscomputing.org.
Chicago's going to be a tough town for bottled water drinkers.
Starting in January, the city is imposing a 5-cent-per-container tax on bottled water, raising revenue while discouraging the purchase of the eco-unfriendly plastic bottles. Mayor Daley is pushing for people to use tap water from Lake Michigan in reusable stainless steel bottles.
Look at it this way: Giving up bottled water will be good for the environment and could save you loads of dough.
Bottled water users spend close to $2,000 a year to wet their whistles. That comes out to about $10 a gallon -- and $3 a gallon for gasoline still makes you hot under the collar.
Water is good for your health, but those plastic bottles are bad for your planet.
Americans used about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, according to the FilterForGood.com Web site, a project to bring safe drinking water to thirstier parts of the planet by the Brita water filter people and the Nalgene reusable bottle people. Less than a quarter of the bottles were recycled.
You can use award-winning Lake Michigan tap and bottle your own Eau de Michigan, savings thousands of dollars a year.
At FilterForGood.com, consumers sign a pledge to give up bottled water. They also can buy a Nalgene bottle for $10, $4 of which goes to the Blue Planet Run Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to provide safe drinking water.
REI offers the snazzy Sigg water bottle, made from a single piece of aluminum in a leakproof, crackproof durable container. The Swiss import comes in a variety of sizes and colors, with a 20-ouncer going for $19. Check them out at www.rei.com/product/750060. The bottles can be recycled after many years of use.
If you're worried about contaminants in water, you can use a pitcher filter system from companies, such as Brita at brita.com and Clear2o at www.clear2o.com. The pitchers and filters vary in price, so shop around. The basic pitcher systems cost $30, and the filters have to be replaced every two months.
