Sunday, September 23, 2007

Back To Green...Back To Reality

I have certainly gotten a bit off-topic what with my freezer paper tutorial and my philosophising about all things Massachusetts. It's not from lack of material. There are so many green things going on that it's just a matter of deciding where to begin...

As I alluded to briefly in a previous post, the Washington Post's Color of Money columnist Michelle Singletary holds an annual Penny Pincher of the Year contest in which readers are invited to submit their best ideas for frugal living. This year, Michelle was looking for Green penny pinchers and green penny pinchers she did receive.

Third place winner was Amy Haden of Scottsville, Virginia who manages to bring home over 50 pounds a week of discarded coffee grounds, banana peels and other compost-fit contributions from her place of work. Both her chickens and her garden benefits.

The second place winner was Shirley Orth, an nurse from Del Mar, California, who decided that the one time use of an emesis basin for holding IV supplies was a complete waste "disposing over 500 of these per month". Their solution came from the IV tubing packaging itself: it included a small tray which they now reuse in place of those pink, plastic basins. A while back I posted on this very topic and so did my blogging friend over at Mom Go Green.

The grand prize winner was Tom Sponheim of Seattle Washington, who evidently visits coffee shop restrooms. A lot. But he is merely to adjust the water level in the toilet tanks! Tom estimates that during one particularly productive rounding, his "three or four hours of work would result in a savings of about 500,000 liters a year of water."

1 comment:

Mary Beth said...

I used to be a hospital nurse and it is shocking shocking how much trash is thrown away daily--much of it plastic.