On the highway to.....smog.

The recent rise in gas prices makes everyone who owns an automobile pretty irritable. To help save some gas money and conserve our earth here are a few tips to get you through.

1. An engine tune-up can improve your car’s fuel efficiency from 15 to 50%.
2. Opening your windows at high speeds causes drag and you fuel! Pop open the car’s vents next time.
3. By keeping your tires inflated you can save about one tank of gas per year.
4. Cruise control helps you maintain a constant speed and will most likely save you gas.
5. If you are waiting around for someone in your car, turn it off, it wastes more gas idling your car then turning it off and then back on.
6. Remove excess weight in your car. Ride light.
7. Observe the speed limit; you’ll save some money and quite possibly a life.

So you say you don’t care about saving a little money? That’s fine but you should look at the effects of car emissions on the planet. Driving a car is the single most polluting thing that most of us do. Motor vehicles emit millions of tons of pollutants into the air each year.

Need more examples?

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.

Incoming: TRAIN

Did you all like that train?

If you didn’t’ even bother to look at it then fine. Let me just give you some interesting facts that I found on the website.

Replacing every locomotive in North America manufactured before 2001 with GE's
hybrid technology would, in a year, cut smog-producing nitrogen oxide emissions
as much as removing one-third of all cars from U.S. roads.

Sounds like motivation to me. What’s wrong with the trains we have now you ask? A lot of things. The result of smog that comes from the exhaust of a train is just one thing. But this one thing is extremely harmful to the air that we breathe every single day. GE also has cleaner coal in the works for our future. They use coal on trains but I’m sure this train uses something different. A hybrid diesel-electric train is what is in the works here. A train that stores extra energy into batteries and helps to preserve the environment is all right with me.

I’ve never taken the train before but I’m tempted to try if this is what I’d be riding in. Plus this will save me gas money, which is on the rise.

Train Ride

I'm feeling a bit under the weather but that's no excuse to avoid better living. Take a look at this hybrid train; it's spectacular.

Plus the green color is fabulous!

Happy St. Patty's Day: Where's your Green?!

Today is just another reminder to live green. I hope everyone is wearing something green today. And it doesn’t have to be the color green. It can be organic clothing that is affordable!

Planet Ink, based in Fort Myers, Florida is a great place to go for inexpensive, planet saving T-shirts and apparel.

I probably should have posted this last week so you could have received this information and planned ahead for today but I wasn’t thinking very well.

The prices on this website are great and very affordable. The shirts are made from 100% Certified Organic Cotton They are also Screen Printed With Planet Ink, which is A Patented All-Natural Vegetable Based Ink. Isn’t that awesome?

Why chose organic cotton over regular? Regular cotton can release toxins into your skin. How disturbing is that? If you want a true eye-opener than watch the video.

I didn’t have a clue about this until I watched the video and researched the topic for my blog today. What a catchy thing the internet is!

My Motivation

There are a lot of people out there that have a passion for living green and helping preserve our earth for our future generations. Sometimes you get stories on why people are deciding to live this way. I’m going to tell you why I’ve decided to maintain this green blog and live the way I do.

I’m scared. Seriously. After watching An Inconvenient Truth made by Al Gore and etc. I just realized how much of an impact we are making on the planet and it not being such a good impact most of the time. Watching the glaciers melt and polar bears die because they couldn’t swim far enough to reach what was left of the icy land. It broke my heart.

Halfway through the movie Al Gore shows the temperature rising on average and it just getting hotter and hotter. I don’t know why I ever decided to move to Florida because I’m roasting 24/7! I can’t wait to move to a cooler climate but even when I move I’m sure the temperature won’t be as cold as it was 20 years ago. There was even a theory about Florida being flooded and going under water. I sometimes sit by my window and wonder what I would do if a huge wave of water was coming.

There’s nothing I could do and that’s why I’m trying to do all that I can right now.

I want to try and make these things fun that way more people will join in. It is my hope that people will realize the impacts they are making and will do a little bit each day to help the planet. Recycle a bottle or carpool next time. Just one thing will make a difference and it will make you feel better about yourself inside too.

Happy Hour

Are you thirsty and do you think water is the only eco-friendly substance to drink? Think again; especially think again if you are a wine connoisseur. French Rabbit Merlot comes from sustainable farmed vineyards in the South of France. Sounds exquisite, no? Not only are they grown properly but they are also packed in a lightweight, collapsible, 100% recyclable Tetra-Prisma container.

The French Rabbit Merlot packaging requires less energy to produce, transport, and recycle than regular wine bottles. There also isn’t a corkscrew, it’s a screw cap that makes it easy to savior the flavor and recycle the bottle when the party is over. Don’t think that’s enough good for the environment? Well the company has paired with American Forests. For every four bottles of win sold there will be one tree planted. http://www.frenchrabbit.com/ Sorry! My links aren't working correctly so I guess I have to spell it out for blogger.

If it isn’t apparent yet, the reason this wine is better is because wine that isn’t organic can contain pesticides that can be linked to cancer and contaminate water. Not to mention the harmful impacts of the plastic packaging on numerous wine bottles and crates.

I’m hoping to not assume but I would say that most people who drink wine do so as a leisurely activity. These people are also the ones who follow wine trends and would most likely jump on the band wagon of eco-friendly products.

Everyone seems to be jumping on the band wagon of an eco-friendly lifestyle. I’m not saying this is a bad thing but I think people need to do it for the right reasons. They shouldn’t jump back off the band wagon because one of their friends has. It’s important to come to this certain lifestyle and stick with it. Just like a diet. Stick with it but once you lose the weight don’t jump off because chances are you’ll just gain the weight right back.

Pick up a Book

During spring break I had the chance to read a couple books about the environment and such. Here are a couple suggestions.


The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River
by Richard White

It's an interesting read about the relationship between man and earth along the Columbia River. The book is not an action packed thriller. It serves its purpose and is not a form of entertainment. It's more for knowledge, obviously.

Organic Living (Organic)
by Daphne Razazan, Lynda Brown

This is more of a hands-on book. There are suggestions given to better the planet and the future of the planet.

These books will hopefully help educate people on the conditions of the earth now and how we can change the present state of harmful chemicals in our atmosphere to more clean surroundings.

Spring Break

I am taking the next week off because it is spring break and a vacation from my blog.

Don't be sad.

If you have little children to entertain or still have that inner child within then here is a project that will show the importance and uniqueness of wildlife. There are also two other projects on the pages that follow that project.

Enjoy!

They DO have candy bars!

After searching through my newly found eco-firms websites, I came across probably the most exciting topic to hit organic foods. Candy, but not just candy, chocolate! Of course it is located in Canada, so it might be difficult for the chocolate not to melt if it’s being delivered to Florida. But this is why they created a thing called dry ice, right?

How are these chocolates considered organic, you ask?

Our Chocolate Gourmet Collection comprises an assortment of premium gourmet
sweet and savory delicacies that have been made with the finest organic
and/or gmo-free ingredients. Items include; chocolate truffles, sugar coated
almonds covered in chocolate, chocolate bars, chocolate butter cookies,
biscotti, crackers, pates, tapenades, cheese, coffee, tea etc...

If you aren’t sure what gmo-free means. I’ll let the wise geek explain.

These candy bars sell for around $42. I’m not sure how many come with an order. I counted six in the picture. This might sound a little pricy for chocolate, but I’m at least tempted to try them out.

If I can eat chocolate that is better for me that doesn’t include all of the harmful ingredients in a regular candy bar then I think I’d do it.

Would you?

*Picture from Fresh Unlimited