Tap Project

From March 16th until the 22nd, I know I'm a little late, restaurants all over the country will ask you to donate a dollar for your glass of ice water that you order with your meal. By donating a dollar for your water it will give a child 40 days of clean drinking water.

How amazing is this? We don't even have to do anything out of our ordinary day. Go to lunch with friends or go and have a nice romantic dinner. Just pay a dollar more and you could help save a life.

The Tap Project website has a search engine to find restaurants in my area that are participating in the cause. Unfortunately there aren't any that I've found. How sad is it that one of the most overpopulated places in America and also one of the richest becomes one of the ignorant and cheapest?

Look for yourself.

Lunch Time

When you were in high school, or perhaps you still are now, how much food do you think was wasted in your cafeteria? I know I wasted a lot just by myself. A recent article on USA Today’s website looks on the brighter side of cafeteria waste.

San Diego State University will use only trans-fat-free oil for cooking. To
minimize environmental effects, the university has a food composting program,
and leftover biodegradable scraps are used by campus landscaping. Last year 50
tons of waste were turned into compost; this year the target goal is 75 tons.
Oil used in cooking is also recycled to produce bio-fuel that runs the campus
vehicles.

This plan seems beneficial for the school and the surrounding environment. Many schools such as Slippery Rock University and schools in Southwest Washington are jumping on board as well.

It all adds up

Need to calculate your harmful footprint? I’ve done this once before and I must say this website does it a little differently than most. If you don’t like to read bar graphs then don’t do this. A great plus that they’ve added after you fill in your zip code, home size, and email address and after they show you several bar graphs of what you are doing to our planet you can choose to click on “Projects.”

It is a button at the bottom of the screen and after clicking on it a new page shows up with numerous and I mean NUMEROUS ways to help your ecological footstep be a little bit smaller than it is right now. You could replace windows, install energy efficient appliances, or perform water and energy audits in your household.

This is only the tip of project ideas. There are even prices for products and what it will save you annually and what it will save you in water, energy, and CO2 wise.

If you’re looking for a jumpstart to becoming more ecologically aware then this is the place to do it. You might be surprised at how much of a footprint you are actually leaving; I was!