Sunday, April 08, 2007

Being cheap, apathetic, lazy and saving the planet!!

On my recent trip to Austin I read the latest issue of Real Simple. I think I love this magazine because it was made for people like me. It sorts all my issues into neat little charts and lists. Gives me only the basics and makes me feel more organized (which speaks volumes since I am a complete and utter scatterbrain). This issue even had a bit about being a hypochondriac covering: symptoms, what you imagine the issue is and the probable culprit. I took it all to heart...I am not dying of any rare disease, I probably just have a cold or something!
Back to the point.
They, like every other magazine I've read recently, had an article on simple ways you could live a life more "green". What I love about this new trend in eco-friendliness, I mean, besides the whole saving the planet stuff, is that many of the activities are things I have done for years out of sheer cheapness, apathy or laziness...and I used to be given a hard time about it.
Not any more!! Ha HA!
No longer will I think twice about wearing my favorite pair of jeans or socks over and over and over again before surrendering them to a wash. I am being ECO-FRIENDLY!!! All you clean freaks out there are killing the planet.
The hodge podge of eclectic thrift store furniture that fills our home is a prime example of REUSE! All those GoodWill clothes I wore in high school because I thought they were "groovy" and that made my dad cringe...simply ahead of the curve.
Packing as much crap in the washer as possible(when the clothes start walking) is CONSERVING water and energy...not simply being too lazy to keep going up and down the basement stairs.
Saving glass jars and styrofoam trays for art supplies and (my favorite) bear-shaped honey bottles for soap dispensers? Again, NOT being cheap-the term is ECO-FRIENDLY.
This green living stuff rocks...
We even used half the heating oil we usually use by installing a kick-butt, propane fireplace in our living room. Using less oil AND finally getting a fireplace in our 100+yr-old, New England home. Priceless.
Now, I don't agree with my dad on all his views on the subject of global warming and the environment, but I kind of share his sentiment that the "sky is falling" panic might be a bit melodramatic, but if it mostly results in good things....can it be that bad?
I may be wrong about the melodrama, but I have to believe that point of view, because if it is really that bad, then we are all screwed anyways and what would be the point?
Hmmm, maybe that's just the laziness talking.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Recycling cartridges

We recently bought a fantastic new printer for FocoLoco. The Epson stylus photo R2400....This thing is RAD. Large format, archival ink....beautiful quality.
The only bummer is that you can't send in the cartridges for recycling!!
Over the past few years we've gotten so used to recycling the ones from our HP photosmart that I was kinda dumbfounded by this...I assumed that ALL cartridges were reusable.
What makes this an even bigger bummer is that this printer uses 9, yes, NINE cartridges. That leaves a whole lot of empty cartridges to deal with.
They can kind of be recycled by being ground down and melted to make packing materials, but most cartridge centers will no longer accept them because they already have way too many and more than they can even use.
"However, we do appreciate that it uses more energy to transport, sort and crush these cartridges than can be recouped by recycling." -Print4less-