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In my quest towards going green for the next year, I have decided that I shall be carrying my own coffee mug to all coffee stores from now on. Most coffee stores serve coffee in either plastic/styrofoam cups or partially recycled paper cups which you know eventually end up in a landfill. In fact, even popular stores like Starbucks use cups that are made out of only 10% recycled material. And we don’t even know what happens to the cup once it gets dumped in their trash cans. Does it get recycled? Or does it just get dumped? Well why bother to think about all that when you can bring in your own coffee mug? Not only would it make you green, it might just let a few people around you know that bringing in your own mug is totally cool at a coffee store! I have also heard that you usually get a discount too if you bring in your own mug.
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This post is part of my Green Project series.

This is one of those things that I fail to understand, no matter how many times or how hard I try. I just do not get the reason behind people’s fascination with bottled water. For the uninitiated, bottled water is the water that you buy at gas stations for a buck.08 and it comes in a PLASTIC BOTTLE. I could understand people drinking bottled water if there wasn’t enough clean water supply, e.g. in a third world country. But, for someone like me and you who has almost 24X7 access to clean, filtered water, I feel it’s a total no-brainer. Read more »

Last month, we started our green project as a pre-new year resolution and so far, we have seen some mixed results. I say mixed because there have been a lot of positive outcomes and at the same time, a few surprises. One such surprise has been our electricity bill for November. If you remember, I had posted our electricity usage for the last 4 months in this writing. We were really excited to see our bills coming down month after month. However, for the month of November, our bill went back up to $80.75. That is almost a 20% increase from the October bill. I’m not sure as to where we having been using up more electricity but I must admit, November was at least 10 degrees cooler than October in Austin. So the heater has been ON for a few hours daily the past 3 to 4 weeks. Now I wish I had more info on Nov 2007’s electricity usage for a better comparison YOY. But it wouldn’t be an accurate one since we were living in a different apartment then, a much smaller one indeed. I do have data Jan 2008 onwards for our current apartment. It’d be interesting to compare next month’s bill with Jan 2007’s. Till then, we are going to continue to strive for minimum usage/wastage and stick to our green project for the rest of 2009 (and thereafter too!). One way to save electricity during the Winter would be by turning OFF the heating while you’re away for work during the day.

www.365daysoftrash.com

I was watching CNN yesterday and saw this dude on TV. I was not able to catch the whole interview but did take note of the site he was talking about. www.365daysoftrash.com . I made a note to myself that I was going to take a look at this site first thing in the morning. What I saw has impressed me to no end. This guy is a crusader for all of us earth-friendly souls and what he’s doing must serve as a great motivation to all of us towards going green. In fact, many a things that he talks about are quite close to what I’ve written in my green project writeup. Check the site out and see for yourself how you can equip yourself to go green for the coming year! www.365daysoftrash.com . It’s absolutely amazing!

We have been using this detergent for over two months now and Khushi just swears by it. Not only is it way cheaper than its competitive brands, it is eco-friendly too. Works as good as any other chlorine-laced detergent except that it doesn’t have any chlorine in it. Check it out, you will like it too. We got it at a nearby Costco.

Here’s more info from the manufacturer.

In my Green Project Writeup recently, I had written about some of the measures we have been taking to go green. Changing all our high-wattage bulbs with CFLs was one of them. Here is a comparison of the last few electric bills and the effect that CFLs have had on our energy costs. Feels great to go green and save some green at the same time!

11/07/2008 - $67.36

10/08/2008 - $79.21

09/08/2008 - $85.35

08/07/2008 - $99.51