Planet Green TV

On Saturday TLC will be airing a preview of the upcoming Planet Green TV that is scheduled to launch June 4th. According to their website, "Planet Green TV will be the first-and so far only-24-hour eco-lifestyle television network." The preview episodes TLC will be airing this evening at 7pm Eastern Time are titled Wa$ted and Greenovate. If you don't get to watch the preview, make sure to check out Planet Green TV when it takes over the Discovery Home Channel on June 4th as well as the Planet Green website.

Green Tip: Pay Your Bills Online

If you are not already paying your bills online, today is the day to start. Paying bills online will reduce emissions since the bill not have to travel to the company being paid, cut down on paper from the check and envelope you will not have to send, and you will save money from not having to use a stamp. Many, if not most, banks do not change any extra money to pay bills online. You can also signup to receive online statements which means reducing emissions as well as reducing paper. If you need copies of your statements for tax purposes, choose online statements and then print out the statements you need rather than having them mailed to you. You can help out the environment while at the same time making your bill paying life a lot easier.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

In case you have not, Google the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is a garbage pile in the Pacific Ocean that stretches off the coast of California, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. The size is estimated to be as "small" as the state of Texas up to twice the size of the United States. It is also referred to as the Plastic Soup as plastic is becoming a large part of the garbage that is circulating the the vortex. The plastic is photo-degrading into polymers that closely resemble zoo plankton, and are eaten by jellyfish thus entering the food chain. This article from the Independent does a good job explaining the basics of the garbage patch and how the soup is actually two lined areas that are known as the Eastern and Western Pacific Garbage Patches. The picture below from Greenpeace depicts the location of the patches (It was discovered later that the currents that are depicted below are incorrect and the actual path of the currents can be found at Ocean Motion).

VBS.TV decided to take a trip out to the area and document what they discovered. There are 12 parts but they are worth watching. As a warning, there is some swearing in the videos. I have posted Part 1 below and the other 11 parts can be found on the VBS.TV website. I encourage you to watch all 12 parts. It's amazing we have not heard about this yet in the mainstream media.

Unlikely Alliances

Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich are two "Unlikely Alliances" who came together to film one of the ads for the new We Can Solve It Campaign. Click the logo on the right of the page to get more info on the We Campaign.

Green Tip: Turn Your Computer Off

Get in the habit of turning off your computer when you leave work each day. According to this article on Planet Green, if every American worker turned off their PC one day out of the year it could save $4.7 million in engery costs and reduce engergy comsumption by 54.3 kilowatt-hours. Each day I am amazed at the number of co-workers who leave their computers on all night or in some cases all weekend. This is something easy to implement and takes very little of our time, but could have a huge impact.

Sigg Bottle

I purchased a Sigg aluminum water container yesterday. I have been using a Thermos mug for several years to try and reduce the number of plastic bottles I use but I decided that it was finally time and worth the money to buy one that does not contain Bisphenol-A (BPA) like the Nalgene plastic bottles. There has been some discussion on whether the inside liner of the Sigg containers contain BPA as well as if the warnings conerning BPA are just a myth. From researching the issue, I decided there was enogh information on the dangers of BPA to lead me to purchase a bottle that did not contain BPA. I was also considering Klean Kanteen because it is made from stainless steel and does not have an interior liner. I found pros and cons to each company but ended up going with the Sigg. Hopefully it will be worth the investment.

BBC Natural History Collection

I did not realize this was out until today. The BBC released it’s Natural History Collection. It contains 17 discs from the Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Life of Mammals, and Life of Birds Collections. I have only seen parts of the Planet Earth and Blue Planet series and have been waiting to purchase them. I will need to look into the Life of Mammals and Life of Birds to see if they are of the same caliber of the other two and worth owning. The lowest price I was able to find was from Overstock.com. If anyone has purchased this set or seen the other two series, feel free to comment on them.

BYOBag at Whole Foods

Whole Foods has been working to eliminate disposable plastic grocery bags in their stores and in honor of Earth Day, they will not longer be available starting today. Their F.A.Q. Section list their goal and what they are trying to accomplish.

Happy Earth Day

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Earth Day. In honor of Earth Day I am going to attempt to start blogging again. Even though there have not been any updates to the blog in awhile and there is not a lot of content on it, the site is still getting hits. Hopefully I will have better luck at updating this time around.

You can learn all about how Earth Day started and it’s history here and things you to celebrate Earth Day here. The site has many good ideas and tips to get you started but the most important one to remember that Earth Day is Every Day. Do what you can to create awareness and spread the word. More posts to come and it’s good to be back.