Best Buy is a Good Bet for Recycling Batteries

I've been collecting spent batteries in a coffee cup on my counter for a few weeks now.  I've made the switch to rechargeables, and as if my batteries-in-use knew the jig was up, they all seemed to conk out at once.  The outdoor sensor for my weather station, the indoor station, the TV remote...they were dropping like flies.  I also had two spent ink jet printer cartridges that I moved around from place to place in my office.  I knew not to drop them in the trash, but... surely I can't throw these in the blue recycling bin!

I knew Home D collected spent CFL lightbulbs - I googled "recycle batteries" to quickly check if they took these other things as well.  Up came Best Buy first.  Since they're really close, I popped over today.  Even before I entered the store, I saw their recycling bins with big signs: batteries, ink jet cartridges, and cell phones.  Easy being green...

Their website states that they also accept other small appliances and electric cords.  I have small tangle of orphan cords outside in the garage. Once I unearth that, those will go too!  I expect I'll actually have to enter the store for that task!

Newspapers Worldwide Call for Climate Change Action

From Scientific American's 60-Second Science podcast

It’s like the publishing version of one of those scenes from a sci-fi movie where an alien invasion impels traditional adversaries to join together to face their larger, common threat. Today 56 newspapers, in Pakistan and India, in Israel and Lebanon, in Tawian and China, in Greece and Turkey, in Africa and in North, South and Central America are publishing an unprecedented joint editorial calling for meaningful action to face the threat posed by climate change. The editorial, published in 45 countries in 20 different languages, appears on this first day of the Copenhagen climate conference. The British paper the Guardian led the effort, which involved weeks of negotiations to reach a final version.

The editorial notes that “the science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2 degrees C...a bigger rise of 3 to 4 degrees C would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.”

The editorial recognized that “the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.”

So while gleeful anarchists like Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe go to Copenhagen to try to sabotage the proceedings, the worldwide array of newspapers attempts to remind the conference participants and the people they represent to keep their eye on the ball—the ball in this case being an oblate spheroid with almost seven billion human inhabitants and a fever that desperately needs to be treated. As the Guardian’s editor in chief, Alan Rusbridger, said, “Newspapers have never done anything like this before but they have never had to cover a story like this before.”

—Steve Mirsky

Read the editorial:  http://bit.ly/71ut8f

North Counties: Officially Good for Your Health

We really ARE a Green Paradise!

San Diego/Carlsbad/San Marcos made the Forbes' Top 10 list of LEAST Toxic Cities in the nation.  I'm not surprised and know that my new adopted hometown of Encinitas is included in the "Tri-City" description.  

Let's take it and run with it!  Green is GOOD!

http://tinyurl.com/yhgecl3

They don't even make it in the house...

About 90% of my mail never makes it inside my front door.

My trip to the curb-side mailbox always includes a stopover at my recycling bin.  Flyers, coupons, those unsolicited VAL-U-PACs and U-SAVE-UMs go right in the bin.  Those fake newspapers titled THRIFTY-SAVE and the like go in, too.

Catalogs get a slightly different treatment.  I rip off the back cover, the part that includes my address, and throw the rest in the bin.  (Ok, I admit there are a couple magazines that I'll flip through before I recycle, but there aren't many.)  I take those address pages inside and fire up Catalog Choice (http://www.catalogchoice.org/) my favorite place to stop unwanted catalog mailings.  I've been a member for several years, and had really reduced the number of direct mail catalogs.  However, my recent move across the country, to sunny Encinitas (aka "Paradise") landed me back on all the mailing lists, it seems.  Catalog Choice collects my customer number and source code for each catalog and gets me off those infernal lists.

Opt Out PreSceen (https://www.optoutprescreen.com) gets me off the lists from credit card and insurance companies who troll for my (completely unlikely) business.

They don't come in the mail, but those gigantic phonebooks that trip you up when they magically appear on your doorstop (Who uses phonebooks?  They are sooo 12 years ago!) can also be stopped.  Check out http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/

Slowly, I'm finding and using other opt-out services to reduce unwanted mail and cut down on the time I spend standing over my recycling bin.  What services do you use to cut down on unwanted/unread mail?

What a Waste!

"...of our insatiable consumption, only 7% of the materials 'consumed' actually become saleable products - 93% is waste.

Of the 7% that actually becomes a usable product, fully 80% is discarded after one use and 99% because waste within six weeks of its purchase by consumers."

- Daniel Sitarz, "Greening Your Business"