126 Ways To Save The Planet (part two)

Here are numbers 46-93

47 & 48. Automotive: Donate cars or even bikes to a charity, church or temple. See http://www.guidestar.org/ to make sure your group qualifies you for a tax write-off. Take used oil and batteries to your county’s hazardous waste drop-off site (for locations, go to http://www.earth911.org/ and type in your ZIP code).

49. Batteries: Drop off at Circuit City, Walgreens or a hazardous waste drop-off site.

50. Books: Donate to a library, a preschool, a hospital, Bridge to Asia, which supports higher education in Asian countries (http://www.bridge.org/), or the International Book Project (http://www.intlbookproject.org/).

51. Building supplies: Donate tools, paint, plumbing fixtures, and other new or salvaged materials to Habitat for Humanity (www.habitat.org/local) or Rebuilding Together (http://www.rebuildingtogether.org/).

52. Cell phones: Call to Protect donates phones to women at risk for domestic violence (http://www.wirelessfoundation.org/).

53. Clothing: Goodwill or Salvation Army takes clothes in any condition.

54. Computers: The National Cristina Foundation donates used computers to pre-screened nonprofits (http://www.cristina.org/). Check out http://www.techsoup.org/ (“Ten Tips for Donating a Computer”) before foisting your outdated PC on a school or charity.

55. Eyeglasses: Lens Crafters, the Lions Club and many optometrists collect old pairs for the needy or developing countries.

56. Fluorescent lamps: These contain mercury so call a hazardous waste drop-off site.

57. Freecycle: It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns (http://www.freecycle.org/). As they say, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

58. Furniture: Give to a shelter like Brothers Keeper (352.622.3846) or Interfaith (352.629.8868) or check www. excessaccess.org for other needy groups.

59. Hangers: Most dry cleaners will accept.

60. Ink-jet cartridges: Take to Staples or Office Depot. Hewlett-Packard accepts its own cartridges by mail (http://www.hp.com/).

61. Medications: Take to a pharmacy for safe disposal.

62. Orchids: OrchidMania (http://www.orchids.org/) nurses plants, resells to raise AIDS funds.
63. Packing supplies: Most Mail Boxes Etc. stores accept foam packing peanuts and plastic bubble wrap.

64. Tennis shoes: Shoes for Africa sends shoes to needy athletes around the world (http://www.shoesforafrica.com/). Nike’s ReUse-a-Shoe program accepts any brand (Niketown, 415.392.6453).

65. Toys: Try a family or women’s shelter, preschools or a Tot Lot playground.

66. Don’t fill out warranty cards on new appliances. You’re automatically covered by a warranty even if you don’t send in the card and you won’t be added to a new junk mail list.

67. Keep your fridge well stocked but not overflowing. Believe it or not, it runs more efficiently that way.

68. Ask your newspaper carrier and dry cleaner not to stuff your newspaper and laundry into plastic bags.

69. Borrow someone else’s stuff without embarrassment. Lend your stuff without getting annoyed.

70. Make it a game to use 10 percent less gasoline. Let the kids help keep track of how much you use and how to cut back.

71. Don’t line your oven racks with foil. Heat will circulate more efficiently.

72. Invest in a sturdy cloth bag to take to the grocery. You can throw it over your shoulder for hands-free carrying, it won’t rip if you catch it on the doorknob or the car door and they’ll be no need for “paper or plastic.”

73. Spend more time outdoors with a kid. Teaching children to appreciate the majesty and fragility of their surroundings is a surefire way to grow environmentalists.

74. Don’t be a butt tosser. The myth that cigarette filters are biodegradable is just that, a myth. Although the filters do eventually decompose, they release harmful chemicals that enter the earth’s land and water during the decaying process. There is nothing earth-friendly about the breakdown. If you must smoke, carry a 35-mm. film canister to store your used butts in until you can properly discard them.

75. Surrender your gas lawn mower. A study funded by the Swedish E.P.A. found that using a four-horsepower lawn mower for an hour causes the same amount of pollution as driving a car 93 miles. For more information, visit greengrasscutters.com.

76. Reduce junk mail. An estimated 4 million tons (34 pounds per person) of paper junk mail are sent each year in the U.S. and nearly half of it is never opened. If 100,000 people stopped their junk mail, we could save up to 150,000 trees each year. Reduce your junk mail by a) contacting the company directly, b) visiting www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.html and c) calling 888.5.OPTOUT to get off those lists for pre-approved credit card solicitations.

77. We buy five billion batteries every year and they are not biodegradable and they’re full of toxic heavy metals that could leak into landfills. Rechargeable batteries are the answer. Each rechargeable battery can replace between 50 and 300 throwaway batteries.

78 & 79. Re-use gift-wrap and greeting cards and help cut down on the consumption of paper and plastic by re-using wrapping paper, ribbons, bows and gift bags. These items should be good for at least one more wrapping and even greeting cards can be reused. Cut off the fronts and use them as postcards, or send the fronts to St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. The kids re-mount greeting cards and sell them to raise money for college.

80. Walk or bike Twenty-five percent of all car trips are less than a mile long so get in gear and get some pollution-free exercise.

81. Red alert for dry cleaning! Clothes are doused with a cancer-causing chemical called “perchloroethylene.” Look for a wet cleaner instead. These companies use delicate soaps, liquid carbon dioxide or silicone to wash your clothes.

82. Obvious, but worth another nag: Turn off the lights.

83. Read labels. Look for the signal words — caution, warning, danger, poison — which indicate the level of hazard, not just to you, but to the environment too. “Caution” is least hazardous and “danger” is most hazardous. 84. Buy recycled. This may sound simple, but it takes less energy to manufacture a recycled product than a brand new one. However, many manufacturers don’t go out of their way to tout recycled products, so you should know that aluminum and tin cans, glass containers and pulp cardboard have a fair amount of recycled content.

The U.S. estimates that paper and paperboard account for almost 40 percent of our garbage. Nearly 3.7 million tons of copy paper are used annually in the U.S. alone and that’s over 700 trillion sheets. By increasing Double-Sided Copying (85), offices could reduce annual paper use 20 percent. reusing paper (86) that’s already printed on one side by manually feeding it into copiers, printers and faxes could reduce waste another 20 percent. Other great ideas are:

87. Use two-way or send-&-return envelopes. Your outgoing envelope gets reused for its return trip.

88 & 90. You can Print on both sides of the paper and REDUCE MARGINS and FONT SIZES. This reduce waste and save both resources and money.

91. Request paper with pulp brightened without chlorine. Chlorine bleaching creates a toxic, bio-accumulative waste by-product called dioxin. Use paper labeled totally chlorine-free (TCF) or processed chlorine-free(PCF).

92. Request inks that emit low amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Non-petroleum-based inks are usually lower in VOCs.

93. Use cold-water detergent. Over 70 percent of the cost of washing laundry goes toward heating the water.