One Plastic Bag at a Time

First, I started with all the adapters plugged into my power strip. Then it was the replacement of the light bulb with a CFC bulb in the most used lighting fixture in my apartment.

Then I cleaned all the filters and air intake vents on my appliances.

Finally, we began to make a concerted effort to turn off lights when we left the room, turn off the tv when no one was watching, turn off the laptop when I wasn't using it, etc.

It didn't seem like a lot - none of these things in particular were major energy saving moves. But that 5% here and 5% there adds up alright ... our electric bill dropped another 20% last month to under $50.

Yep, under $50.

Not that I'm bragging ... except that I totally am.

Did you ever drink grappa and find yourself gasping "This isn't liquor - it's gasoline!"

You weren't far off.

The same pile of pressed grape skins and other flotsam and jetsam left over from the wine making process can be used to make ethyl alcohol. Last year, not only did Italy export tons of ethanol to other EU countries, but millions of liters of table wine from Italy, France, Spain and Greece were converted into bioethanol.

If one man's trash is another's treasure then why can't one man's plonk be another's petrol?

Canei ... fill it up? Yes, you can!

Read more about it here at Wired Magazine. And here too at Edie News Centre.

As part of my new greener lifestyle there are times I do things that are inconvenient in order to do something good for the environment.

In the case of recycling ink toner cartridges, this involves a mile walk to the closest Staples (store #0147), where my greeniness (not to be confused with truthiness) used to be rewarded with a $3 coupon for each cartridge I returned.

Imagine my surprise then when I went to Staples yesterday and was told by the girl at the service counter that they are no longer recycling Staples ink cartridges. Yes, that's right, they are accepting the name brand ones, Canon, HP, etc., but not their own.

"What am I supposed to do with these?" I asked. "Throw them out, I guess," was the reply. The girl then proved to be oh-so-helpful and took my cartridges and threw them in a bin under the counter, where I had seen her toss several other laser toner cartridges at the behest of another employee.

Funny, because the Staples for Eductation website says that they will recycle all cartridges, regardless of whether or not you get the $3.

So unless Staples has come up with some miracle process where used cartridges magically migrate from the trash to a recycling bin, I think we've got a little disconnect here.

Practice what you preach. That's what I call easy. Until then, it's only Canon cartridges for me.

This is a place where noise pollution reigns supreme, where the stench can be overpowering and where the word "eyesore" is the nicest way to describe the landscape.

Is it an EPA Superfund site? An active landfill? An open-pit mining operation?

No, it's my gym.

I know that there's nothing "common" about common courtesy or common sense for that matter, but I am truly vexed by what goes on at my gym.

To me, a gym is a place where you go to exercise. The definition of working out involves concentration, physical exertion, and in my case, a complexion of the loveliest shade of magenta and buckets and buckets of sweat.

Now that's me, and I freely acknowledge that everyone has their own definition of working out. Probably with a lot less sweat. And probably not as purple.

What I'm pretty sure that definition should not include is a cell-phone, make-up, cologne or bling.

So I've made up a little list just in case there is anyone out there who thinks that what they are doing doesn't qualify as working out.

• If you've got enough breath to shriek into your phone at your wayward offspring while on the treadmill, you're not working out. When you turn to the person to share your tale of woe and she doesn't tell you to fuck right off, it is because she is working out and doesn't have the breath for it.


• If you spend more time getting ready to go to the gym than at the gym, are wearing lip gloss, or are worried how cute you look, you're not working out.


• If you're looking in the mirror not to check your form but to check out how your outfit looks or the over-developed meathead with the stick legs next to you, you're not working out.


• If you think that Drakkar Noir is an acceptable substitute for deodorant, not only are you not working out, you shouldn't be allowed to leave your house.


• Wiggling your wrist so that your many bracelets clink together and slide up your arm and re-positioning your diamond-encrusted cross between your pushed up boobies is not what is called "correcting your form."

It's bad enough that the decor, with one wall the color of a day-old bruise, the opposite wall reminiscent of a fresh burn and flames licking at the walls in between puts me somewhere in the second circle of hell.

If everyone would just keep in mind that it's a fitness club, not a nightclub, it would be a lot more pleasant place.

And for the love of Christ, they give you a towel for free. USE IT.

Since this blog is environmentally oriented, let me throw out there that it would be cool to harness the energy from all us hamster wannabes on the treadmills to reduce the electric bill. Just a thought.

From where I sit here on the couch I can clearly see the two beams of light where the Twin Towers once stood.

Five years later, there is still no memorial. Five years later, we have not only not built any bridges with the rest of the world but have squandered any political goodwill the world once gave us.

Five years later, New Yorkers are still dying.

A report released on September 6, 2006 by Mount Sinai confirmed what we knew here all along. Toxic dust at Ground Zero is hardly news. And yet people seemed shocked, and that surprises me.

Of course it wasn't safe. Never mind the asbestos used for fireproofing, the lead, mercury and other heavy metals from all those computers and electronic equipment, the unknown chemical compounds smoldering for days afterwards.

Your nose told you that the air wasn't safe. You couldn't get away from that smell, all that pulverized concrete and god knows what else.

Not that that stopped me, my husband, or thousands of other New Yorkers from showing up at Ground Zero to help. I knew it wasn't safe but I had to do what I could to help. Everyone who could, did, whether it was cutting away debris searching for survivors or just carrying buckets of water from the marina to flush the toilets next to the chapel where the rescue workers were being fed and equipped.

Is it really any surprise that the same administration that gave us a "Patriot Act" that tramples our constitutional rights, a "Clean Skies" initiative that increased the acceptable levels of pollutants such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide and sent us to an unwinnable war over non-existant WMD's told us ONE WEEK after the Towers fell that the air was safe to breathe.

No, unfortunately, it is hardly surprising at all.

It's been a while since I've posted, mostly because I've incorporated most of the easy and viable changes into my daily routine to make my lifestyle more green. Most of the impact, however small, I'll never see, but I am happy to report that even with our week of 100+ degree weather my electric bill went DOWN $20 from July.

Which brings me around to today's way to save the planet - #50 in the Vanity Fair Pull Out (VFPO) - A Green Ending.

[disclaimer - this post is not a happy one, so if today's weather has already gotten you down, you might want to visit Talk Entertainment or some other fun website instead - like a Project Runway recap on TV without Pity]

Apparently it's not enough to worry about how your every day life is f**king up the planet, now I have to stress about how I'm going to screw the environment for my kid and future generations even when I'm not here.

I had never even heard of a green funeral until that episode of Six Feet Under where Nate takes matters into his own hands and gives Lisa the burial she would have wanted.

But apparently green funerals are not just for crazy hippie-dippie-crazy-vegan-chef Seattle tree hugging types, as evidenced by a recent product I read about in the Times business section recently.

The product in question - an ovoid coffin designed by a German management consultant called the Cocoon. You've got to see this thing to believe it.

In the interview with Mr. Spiegel, he spoke of his desire to create a coffin that would decompose relatively quickly but would have an organic ovoid shape meant to create

"an implicit analogy between the caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis and the life-to-death transition - a node to the old chestnut that death is just another journey."

Oh, those Germans and their wacky sense of humor!

I'm all for anything that is a little more environmentally aware, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. And for me, that line is right at the point where it looks like my final journey is not to the Great Beyond but to the planet Ork.

Nanu nanu!