I just wanted to report back on my task of declining catalogs via Catalog Choice, as I wrote about yesterday.

I just spent 20 minutes on the site and opted out of nearly 20 catalogs.

This was so easy and something I can easily see myself doing on a regular basis if additional catalogs show up in my mailbox.

Like I said earlier I have no intention of curtailing my direct mail shopping and don’t want catalog companies coming down on me for suggesting that I’m contributing to the decline of our economy. I love to shop with companies like L.L. Bean and Pottery Barn. I just would like to do it via the Internet and save paper by not getting their catalogs.

Let me know if you’ve had a similarly easy time on Catalog Choice–or if you’ve uncovered another easy way to cut down on the number of catalogs coming into your mailbox.

Over at Green Boot Camp, we’re on Week Seven of our habit-changing plan. This week we’re discussing why using reusable grocery shopping bags is a great habit to get into.

I’m not sure how this is possible, but one pass through of my house this weekend (during our frenzied cleaning) produced nearly nine pounds of catalogs. Or a pile that’s about the size of two big phone books–you know, the kind that your grandparents might have used as stand-in booster seats when you were young? I’m talking the big and thick phone books. I haven’t done a magazine and catalog purge for a few weeks, so seeing all of these catalogs in one place really drives home how much catalog mail we’re receiving.

I know that catalogs are recyclable, but the truth is, to be green, you need to pay attention to the order of the three Rs.

The first is REDUCE.

Then it’s REUSE.

And then it’s RECYCLE.

Ideally, we all should be reducing the amount of stuff that we buy and bring into our homes. Knowing that I have this easy option of reducing the number of catalogs I receive by registering my preferences with Catalog Choice, well that’s a step in the right direction.

Let me explain how Catalog Choice works, how it worked for me and how it can work for you.

First, you need to collect all of the catalogs in your home, because you’re going to need the customer numbers to make sure that your getting off of the mailing list “sticks.” And the only place to find those customer numbers is on the back of the catalogs themselves.

Then, you’re ready to being using your computer. Click over to Catalog Choice.org and from the home page choose the “Get Started” button. From there you need to set up an account, which will only take a few minutes, and then click the “Sign Up” button.

(Note: the website neglects to tell you that before you can successfully start “declining” catalogs, you have to accept the registration email that they send to you as soon as you finish signing up. So after you’ve finished with the sign-up page, make sure you toggle over to your email account and click on that confirmation link in your email. Unfortunately, when you do click on that link, it doesn’t bring you back to the page where you just were but an entirely new window. I’m not entirely convinced that going back to the previous window gets you to a page with the right cookies, so I’m starting fresh from the new window that clicking on the registration-confirmation link brought me to–and I would recommend you do the same.)

On the next page you come to, there will be options on the left hand side of the screen from which to choose. Select “Find Catalogs.”

Once you get to this page, you’ll see a search window with two tabs. You can “search” for your catalog by name. Or you can “browse” the list of catalog companies currently working with Catalog Choice (not all companies are).

I decided to “search” and plugged in the name of the first catalog in my pile, Uncommon Goods. (Love their stuff and will continue to shop with them online. But I just don’t need their paper catalog, which just ends up in the recycling bin.) And after clicking on “Search,” Uncommon Goods came up with a button next to it that says “Decline.” I clicked on it.

Clicking on “decline” brought me to a page where I needed to plug in my customer number. (All your other information appears automatically from when you registered.) I found my customer number of Uncommon Goods directly above my name on the mailing label. I typed it in, clicked on “Decline Catalog,” and I got a confirmation page saying that this catalog was successfully declined. All told this took me about two to three minutes.

I’ve got 28 more catalogs to get through, but this means that when I’m done, I’ll have 28 fewer catalogs coming into my house each month. Multiply that by 12 months and, well, it’s easy to see what an impact you can have on reducing your paper output if you just opt-out of these catalogs. Again, I’m not saying that you can’t continue to shop with your favorite retailers, but use the website instead and save a couple of trees by avoiding the printed catalog all together

I’m having some girlfriends over for breakfast tomorrow morning, after the kids go to school, which means that I’m spending most of today straightening up the house.Whenever I have one of these marathons cleaning sessions, inevitably I end up with stacks of mail that I haven’t had the chance to go through in the past week–and which I’ve done a good job of stashing throughout the house. I just picked up a pile from the sideboard in the dining room, another from the table in the entrance hall, yet another off of my husband’s desk, and I’m about to grab the pile in the kitchen by the phone.

I know that clutter busters say that the key to keeping a clutter-free home is to touch paper only once, but we get so much damn mail that it’s damn near impossible to touch the mail only once–meaning dealing with it on the spot. Because of what I do for a living–write for magazines–we get a ton of magazines, usually free subscriptions that I’ve finagled from airline miles I’ll neversuse. I’ll bet that I could open my own magazine library.

Because my husband and I are homeowners in good standing, we also get a slew of credit-card and so-called “mortgage-assistance” letters regularly in the mail. And, because we like to shop online, we get tons of catalogs.

Recently, I saw a Today Show segment (click here to watch it) about a new service called Catalog Choice. Designed to help consumers cut down on unwanted catalogs, it is a “sponsored service of the Ecology Center in Berkeley, California.” (I’m not quite sure who sponsors the Ecology Center, but they seem like all-around good guys since they’re in charge of Berkeley’s curbside recycling program and other good-for-the-earth initiatives in the Bay Area.)

Of course, you might not find the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) qualifying the Ecology Center as all-around good guys. In fact, it seems that the DMA (where I held a staff job in 1992, albeit briefly) considers the Ecology Center and its Catalog Choice program a direct competitor.

You see, the DMA not only offers its own opt-out-of-direct-mail program, called Mail Preference Service, much like Catalog Choice does, but DMA benefits financially from people who participate, in that they charge consumers a dollar for mailing in an application to be taken off of lists. (Registering online is free, much like Catalog Choice is.) Nonetheless, the DMA is trying to be all doom-and-gloom about Catalog Choice, seemingly freaking out consumers with claims that our privacy isn’t being protected if we register with Catalog Choice.

I find these scare tactics a bit over the top, since DMA’s opt-out program requires consumers to enter a credit card number to verify a person’s identity. And, I quote from the website: “The credit card number will be used to authenticate and validate the consumer’s identity through a no-charge transaction. As with many credit card verification programs, consumers may see an authorization pending for 3-7 days, and no charge will be issued to the monthly bill.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t like my credit card number being “out there” like that, though I’m sure the DMA does a solid job of using encrypted software on its site to protect people’s privacy.

I’ve got to get back to my cleaning now but in my next post, I’ll give you the 411 on how Catalog Choice works–and works for me. I’ve got quite a stack of catalogs to go through. I figure since I’m already getting email alerts from the retailers I want to continue doing business with, there’s no need for me to get physical catalogs in the mail anymore. If you’ve already successfully used Catalog Choice, I’d love to hear your feedback.

For Week Seven of Green Boot Camp, I’m focusing on helping you identify phantom energy suckers or vampire power suckers in your home–and then driving a wooden stake through their heart. OK, that’s a bit graphic. In reality, I offer advice on setting up a charging station in the home to cut down on energy use.

Every time there is a national election, there is some kind of buzzword or buzz phrase that catches Americans’ attention, and often lives on infamy long after the election is over. I’m thinking of things like “It’s the economy, stupid,” (Bill Clinton, 1996) and “Read my lips: no new taxes” (George H.W. Bush, 1988).

In 2008 it seems that “green-collar workers” or “green-collar jobs” may be this election’s catchphrases. Both democratic candidates have been talking about creating jobs in clean energy, thus the verdant color of those workers’ collars. (Gee, will they all wear the army green Dickies that my grandfather wore as a Maine apple farmer, so that their clothes match their title?)

Fashion jokes aside I think it’s awesome that these candidates are thinking outside the power plant or glass tower when talking about ways to stimulate the economy. If green isn’t America’s new red, white and blue, I don’t know what is.

An article in Environmental Protection magazine lists some of the hottest green-collar industries and provides stats to support our growing green economy. For example, in some places, green job opportunities are forecast to grow up to 40 percent in the next year. And there are even job sites now dedicated to eco-friendly jobs, such as Green Match Maker (where you can not only find jobs but learn about things like carbon-offset options, this decades version of stock options, I guess).

If I were looking for a new job, I would be focusing my job hunting in the green area for sure. In the meantime, this gives me hope that people will continue to be interested in reading about green topics–and that I’ve got a strong future as a green-collar magazine writer.

Week Five of Green Boot Camp focuses on appliances–first laundry room appliances, then kitchen appliances. Check it out.

I was just reading an article in a recent Wall Street Journal about energy audits which came out of one of the paper’s reporters having paid to have a professional energy auditor, well, audit her home. Her article explained how these energy audits work and what they’re supposed to uncover–energy leaks in your home that, when fixed, should cut down on your energy bills.

One thing that the article mentioned was that you have to pay for an energy audit and big bucks, too–up to $700. I realize that I should have figured this out, but for some reason I always assumed that energy audits were something that your energy company did for you for free to help you save money. But when you think about it, why would they?

My energy company has a vested interest in making sure that I pay the most for my electricity. Why would PECO want me to pay less for my energy? Also, the reporter pointed out that many professionals who market themselves as energy auditors actual sell the so-called energy-saving devices and services that they’ll eventually recommend to fix your energy leaks. Hmm, isn’t that a little like the fox doing a security audit of the chicken coop and then suggesting that the chickens need a security detail of foxes each night?

If you do enough common-sense thinking about energy leaks in your home and a little bit of research, I’m guessing that you can do your own energy audit for free. And come up with solutions that work for your home and your budget.

Let’s start with draft windows and doors. Stores sell kits of plastic film that you can install over your windows to create a barrier against the drafts. These are great, if you don’t intend to open your windows ever. I’m a bit claustrophobic so the idea of sealing myself in my house with these plastic kits makes me want to ring up a therapist. However, I know that using tight-fitting window treatments can have a similar effect, and I can throw them open in the morning to let the sun shine in–a great free way to warm your home. But seriously, if you’ve got an old house with old drafty windows and you can’t afford to replace your windows (read: big bucks), these film kits available at home improvement stores are probably a good idea.

With regard to drafty doors, there is weatherstripping that you can stick around the door’s frame so that when it shuts, it shuts tightly. Sometimes those nasty drafts come from underneath and you can easily put a draft stopper there. You can make one of these if you’re the crafty type (it looks like a long fabric snake) or pick one up at a craft fair or home store.

If you’ve got an attic, there is a simple visual test that you can do to determine if you need more attic insulation: when you’re up in the attic and you look at the floor (assuming the floor isn’t completely covered and you can see the joists), does the insulation come up to the top of the floor? If the pink stuff sinks below the wood, then you need more insulation.

What bums me out is that I could have used this advice on my own home before December 31, 2007. That was the government’s deadline for receiving tax credits on energy-saving changes you make to your home. I wonder if the government will come up with a way to offer similar savings in 2008 and beyond, especially now that oil has hit the $100 a barrel mark?

Probably the easiest way to to keep your energy costs low is to remember these two tips: keep your thermostat at 68 degrees instead of a balmy 72 degrees. And if you’re cold, put on a sweater or a pair of socks or wrap yourself in a blanket instead of turning up the heat. We have blankets and throws in our living rooms and family room, and this way, no one is ever left shivering.

What are some creative ways that you keep your energy costs low in your home?

I just got finished walking to the bank during my morning walking-of-the-dog, the multitasking I’d written about in a previous post. While I was out and about, I noticed two things that I’d never noticed before.

First, I caught the name of the company that collects plastic shopping bags outside the SuperFresh supermarket near the bank–and read that this company Hilex turns plastic bags into recycled plastic shopping bags, not the Trex decking that I assumed all bags were recycled to produce. Second, I discovered that the bench outside the SuperFresh said “Please take a seat on our recycled egg cartons.” (Environmental lifestyle expert Danny Seo recently wrote on Rethink What’s Possible about a similar bench and described it in an eerily similar setting to where I saw this bench. I wonder if he lives in my town?)

In the span of 20 feet I’d come across two examples of forward-thinking initiatives that took one thing and made it into something else. I wonder how many other things I pass by or see in everyday life that are also made of something else, or which easily could be? For example, I know that my cereal boxes are made from recycled paperboard and many of the magazines I read include recycled paper. That’s so, well, boring. I mean, paper into paper, been there, done that.

Where are the innovative uses–or should I say, reuses–or products in our every day life? If I were an entrepreneur looking for a new business venture, this would be where I was focusing my efforts–coming up with new products made from old things.

What we need more of these days are things like fabric made from recycled soda bottles, such as what Polartec does for its fleece products. Or, speaking of soda bottles, how TerraCycle turns soda bottles into bird feeders and containers for its organic fertilizer. (This isn’t so much recycling as reusing but genius nonetheless.) Actually, TerraCycle uses a brilliant method to get its bottle supplies. It encourages school groups to collect empty soda bottles for the company’s use and in return the company donates dollars to the schools. Recently, it expanded its reuse campaign to include yogurt containers, juice pouches and energy bar wrappers. It will use the latter two items to make fashion accessories. How cool is that?

I’m sure there are more companies like this out there, and I’ve just got to do a bit more digging to find them. In fact, I just found an “EcoMall” website that seems to list companies that specialize in recycled products. I’ll be checking that out later today. In the meantime I wish more companies would offer consumers like us financial incentives to submit our used paper, plastic and other recyclable materials to become something else. Somehow I’d bet that if there were dollars and cents on the line, the percentage of Americans recycling on a regular basis would go way up!

The big brouhaha coming out of this week’s North American Auto Show in Detroit was all of the green concept cars that automotive companies had unveiled. There was the Saturn VUE Plug-In car–with its green exterior, natch (see photo at right, courtesy of GM Corp.) Chrysler showed off its Dodge Zeo, a fully electric car. And the granddaddy hybrid-car company, Toyota, talked up its new plug-in Prius.

Of course, many of these cars are merely “concepts” because automotive companies believe that there isn’t enough market share to justify large-scale production. (Um, what about the fact that Toyota Prius sales were up nearly 94 percent in 2007 when Edmunds.com says that overall car sales are down? I’d call that market share, wouldn’t you?) Some cars, though, are near-future realities, such as the possible 2010 production start of the Saturn VUE Green Line hybrid electric vehicles.

We own a regular Saturn VUE, with its less-than-stellar 25 mpg rating on the highway. When we were in the market for a new car this past summer, we considered the hybrid VUE–along with the hybrid Toyota Highlander–but just couldn’t justify the cost. A regular VUE starts at just above $21,000. The Green Line Hybrid VUE is almost $4,000 more.

As you may know car companies charge more for hybrid vehicles, because they are more expensive to produce–or so they say. This may be true for now but remember when computers first came out? They were mega expensive because the technology was new. Given that notion and how computers prices have plummeted over time, shouldn’t hybrid cards become more affordable as the technology becomes more commonplace?

Truthfully, if car companies really want to attract average Jane car buyers like me, who want to do right by the environment by adding a hybrid to their carpooling fleet, then why aren’t they working to make production more cost-efficient and the cars themselves more affordable?

In the real world I would love to be driving my kids to and from soccer practice in a hybrid. However, until we’re out of the carpooling years (when we need seating for seven) and saving for college years, we simply can’t afford to spend $4,000 more for a car like the hybrid VUE.

The best I can do is to figure out ways to make my non-hybrid car as energy efficient and eco-friendly as possible. Some ways I do this–and you can to–include:

* Not warming up the car or leaving it idling.
A cold car, such as one that has been sitting overnight, produces more bad-for-the-earth emissions when it first starts up. So while you might like to use that auto start remote on your key chain to make your car toasty and warm for your morning drive, grab a hat and gloves instead, and don’t leave your car idling.

* Practice hypermiling whenever possible.
This crazy term hypermiling is all about getting the most gas mileage out of each tank of gas by changing how your drive, brake and park. One excellent hypermiling tip is always to pull through a parking spot so that you’re facing outwards to leave. If you park the traditional way, where you have to back out to drive away, you’re using twice as much gas to get in and out of a parking spot. However, if you pull in nose first–and then pull all the way through–you can drive right out when you’re done with your errands, thus saving you gas.

* Be efficient with how your organize your errands.
Everyone knows that cars get their worst gas mileage with around-town driving, what with stopping and starting at traffic lights, or driving from parking lot to parking lot to go to the stores. You can save gas–and the environment–if you plan ahead for how you do your errands. For example, my chiropractor’s office is in the same shopping center as the UPS Store, the pharmacy and the grocery store. So whenever I need to ship a package, pick up a prescription or grab something for that night’s dinner, I try to piggyback all of those errands into one trip to the chiropractor. I leave my car in its original parking space, and walk to the various stores I need to visit. This is also a great way to sneak extra exercise into my daily routine.

* Walk whenever possible.
And speaking of exercise, if you can figure out a way to walk places that you would normally drive to, do it and leave the car at home. At least twice a week, I’ll walk to the bank to make a deposit, and I make it a part of my morning walk with my dog. Oftentimes, I’ll stop off at the post office, too. Once a month, I add “pay the mortgage” to my walking to-do list, since the bank that holds our mortgage is on the way home from the post office. For a Type A person like me, this notion of multitasking–exercise and errands all wrapped up in one–makes me so happy. The fact that I’m also helping the environment and saving money on gas doesn’t hurt my outlook either.

If you’ve got creative ways to make your non-hybrid cards more eco-friendly, I’d love to hear them.

Our country is having a bi-polar moment with regards to bottled water.

On one hand Americans love their bottled water. Each year our consumption of bottled water rises about 10 percent. Last year alone Americans gulped down 8.3 billion gallons of bottled water, and spent $11 billion along the way.

On the other hand, Americans are starting to think outside the bottle, and recognize how potentially wasteful and expensive drinking bottled water can be. Studies show that eight out of 10 plastic water bottles end up in landfills (not recycling bins) each year. Add to that a little fact that consumers seem to forget–plastic is made from petroleum, meaning that the chilled bottle of water that you just pulled out of your gym’s refrigerator case came from a ton of fossil fuels. The Pacific Institute estimates that it took 17 million barrels of oil last year to make plastic water bottles. That doesn’t really whet your appetite for a cold, prepackaged bottle of water, now does it?

Enter the bottled water industry, which is trying to make the best of both worlds–get people to continue drinking bottled water but make it appear to be a green thing to do. What got me thinking about this was the recent news that Burger King has kicked Pepsi-Cola’s Aquafina to the curb in favor of Nestle waters’ new “eco-friendly” bottled water called Pure Life. According to Nestle these bottles are better for the earth because they are made using a thinner layer of plastic that doesn’t require as much petroleum, and because of this, the bottles are easier to recycle.

OK, so good for Nestle for trying to make a step in the right green direction but that doesn’t solve the problem of people not recycling their plastic water bottles, does it? Thin, easier-to-recycle plastic or not, if most water bottles end up in the trash, then we haven’t really solved any problems in the long run, have we? (By the way, Coke isn’t getting off easy these days: the Tappening campaign plans to deluge Coke’s headquarters with one million plastic water bottles when the new CEO takes office later this year.)

Here’s what I’d like to see: fast-food restaurants taking a page from coffee shops. I’m thinking of the ones that let you bring your own reusable and refillable coffee mug into the shop, and then they reward you by giving you a discount on your Joe because you saved them from using a cup. Why can’t I bring my reusable water bottle with me to a restaurant and use it to hold my soda or, gasp, tap water? And why can’t the Burger Kings and McDonald’s of the world reward me for doing so?

In the meantime, save yourself the dough with bottled water (which is three times as expensive as gas these days), and just don’t buy it. Instead, invest in a reusable water bottle, such as the “Filter for Good” bottle from the people at Nalgene and Brita water filters, and take it with you everywhere. If you don’t like the taste of your tap water, put a filter on the faucet or get one of those filtered water pitchers that you can fill and keep in the fridge, thus giving you fresh, cold and free water whenever you’re thirsty.

Click here to learn how you can get into the habit of turning out the lights to save energy and money.

It’s clear that this past week was the time when most people finally took down their Christmas tree. How do I know this? Well, of course there is the timing of it all–the 12 Days of Christmas culminate on January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany. This is traditionally when many folks finally take down their tree and put away their Christmas decorations (though, blasphemous as it may seem, we cleaned up from the holidays on New Year’s Day, because we had time to do so). But what really tipped me off was today’s morning walk.

You see, it’s trash day in many neighborhoods. As I traversed the sidewalks and streets today while walking my dog, I saw tree after abandoned tree lying on the curb, waiting to be tossed into a garbage truck. If I owned a pick up truck, I swear I would have taken it back into these neighborhoods and tossed each of these dying trees into the back of the truck. Then I would have driven them to a garden center or dropped them off at a municipal recycling center where they would have been ground up and recycled into mulch.

Does no one else find this tossing out of the trees as upsetting as I do? Why aren’t local businesses doing more to keep Christmas trees and other holiday greenery out of landfills? Don’t they realize how trendy going green is and how doing so could help their business? (Just this week USA Today named “going green” as the Top 3 business trend for 2008.)

If I owned a gardening center or any retail business for that matter, right about now I would be offering some kind of incentive for my customers to bring their Christmas tree in for recycling, such as a $5 off coupon on a future purchase. Or, if I owned a gardening center, I would recycle the tree, offer the coupon, and then use that recycled tree/mulch around the shop, which would save me money in the long run–no need to buy mulch this spring. Perhaps I might even offer customers the option of taking home that mulch for their own gardens, along with a coupon. It’s amazing what people will do for a discount.

I’ve seen just one or two ads in my local paper about nearby towns that are recycling Christmas trees if you bring them to their municipal lot. But what about the other towns? And what about the big trash collection companies like Waste Management and Allied Waste? Why aren’t they stepping up to help recycle Christmas trees?

It bears repeating that we Americans create 25 percent more trash during the holidays. Wouldn’t it be great if these towns, municipalities and trash companies could do something to cut down on that number–even if was just recycling Christmas trees? According to the National Christmas Tree Associations, 35 million Christmas trees are sold each year. Now imagine how much less trash there would be in January if all of these trees were kept out of the waste stream.

I’m thinking of writing a letter to the editor of my local paper on this issue. If it bothers you enough, you should do the same.

In the meantime, if by some reason you still have your cut tree and aren’t sure what to do with it–and don’t want to throw it out–consider these tips:

* Log onto Earth 911 and type in “Christmas tree” in the search box at the top of the page, along with your zip code. It will show you where you can go locally to ecologically dispose of your Christmas tree.

* Call your local gardening center and see if they will take back your tree to be chopped into mulch or can somehow reuse it (sort of like taking back boxes to a shipping center)

* Get out your saw and cut off the tree’s branches. Then lay them over your gardens to protect the soil for the rest of the winter. Or use these branches to create some kind of indoor or outdoor decorations. Finally, cut the main part of the tree into logs for your fireplace or to outline your garden beds.

* If your land includes a pond or stretch of woods that you own, let the tree become a habitat for other wildlife. You can sink the tree in a pond for the fish to enjoy or toss the tree in the woods where it can decompose naturally.

If you’ve got other creative ways to reuse or recycle a cut Christmas tree, let me know here–and include those tips with your letter to the editor of your local paper. Maybe we can inspire our cities, towns and local businesses to help cut down on the unnecessary trashing of these trees.

Perhaps I’ve had my head buried in the compost pile for too long, but it wasn’t until about a year ago that I’d learned of this concept of carbon offsets.

My family and I were getting ready to embark on a “fan cruise” with our favorite band Barenaked Ladies on their Ships & Dips cruise out of Fort Lauderdale. The organizing company, Sixthman from Atlanta, had partnered with a green company so that cruisers could purchase carbon offset credits while on board to make the cruise carbon neutral. According to organizers, people donated enough money to offset 3,250 tons of carbon from the cruise.

OK, that sounds really great, but what does that mean in the real world? Because it feels really vague, really “I’ll gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today” to me.

I mean, a cruise ship uses a ton of energy–one website, About My Planet, estimates that in one day, one cruise ship produces the same amount of exhaust as 1,000 trucks. Pee-yew! How can a so-called carbon offset really help?

Well, for one thing, it’s not like this giant, wind-powered vacuum appeared from the sky and sucked up all of the cruise ship’s exhaust as we sailed to Turks and Caicos and back (and rocked out with the band in the process, but I digress). No, that pollution was there to stay, and no amount of magical carbon offsets could make it disappear. However, somewhere in the world, that carbon offset money was going to support a green initiative, such as energy companies that are investing in wind power instead of coal-burned power. That means that in a perfect world, down the road there will be more things like wind farms up and running, and people will need to rely less on the pollution-producing energy sources, like coal. Then in our future perfect world, the air will be cleaner to begin with, and exhaust from rock band cruise ships won’t have such a detrimental effect on the environment. Or so folks says.

In the meantime, many companies and consumers are jumping on the carbon-offset bandwagon. I just heard about a new Bank of America credit card that lets you earn carbon-offset points. Of course, if you’re driving to the mall regularly to shop using this green credit card, you might be negating that credit card’s carbon-neutral effect. Travel companies like Travelocity and Expedia let you purchase carbon-offset points along with your airline tickets for what I guess would be your carbon-neutral vacation. (Hey, where does one actually go for a carbon-neutral vacation? I’m guessing some place with a lot of carbon-dioxide producing trees, right?)

This year, our frugal budget won’t allow for such luxuries as a fan cruise or the purchase of carbon-offset credits to ease our guilty conscience about taking a pollution-causing cruise. No, I think I’m good for now when it comes to carbon offsets.

Here’s my plan: I’ll continue to walk for my errands and earn free groceries with my ShopRite credit card. And if I want to support any pollution-decreasing initiatives, I’ll look into switching to PECO’s Wind Power program or installing solar panels on my house. Meanwhile, I’ll keep an eye out for other companies and corporations that join the carbon-offset parade. And who knows? Maybe they really are doing some good and, in the long run, we should support them by giving them our business. But I think it might be too soon to say.

Now for your viewing pleasure, please watch this “recycled energy commercial” for EDF Energy that left me smiling. Greenwashing, perhaps, but fun to look at nonetheless.

Click here for an overview of weeks four, five and six of Green Boot Camp, in which I’ll cover home energy expenditures.

Sometimes, living green and saving money doesn’t come with easy choices. For instance, I know that repairing my children’s clothing, as I’d posted about here, was the right thing to do for lots of reasons. It was easy, I could do it myself, and it saved me from having to go out and buy new clothes. Oh, and it saved the earth from discarded clothes tossed in the trash.

With food shopping you know that I take my reusable bags to the grocery store, but sometimes my writing business gets in the way of my having time to actually grocery shop, so I order my food online and drive to my nearest ShopRite to pick it up. Obviously, I can’t use reusable bags in this instance because ShopRite bags my stuff as they put it in the cart for me. I would have driven to the store anyway go food shopping, so sometimes ordering my groceries online feels almost like it’s a “carbon-neutral” decision, based on my current lifestyle, of course.

Looking forward into 2008 I see myself getting increasingly busy (a good thing for my family’s bottom line), but this means that the 40 minutes or so that I take to drive to and from the grocery store to pick up my groceries may soon become time that’s too valuable for me to waste. So I’m considering switching supermarkets and ordering online from a store that will deliver the groceries to me. I know this would be a better choice from a time-management point of view, but is it a better choice for the environment–sort of like Internet shopping at the holidays possibly was? If the delivery truck was going to be on the road anyway, doing its rounds, and because it will be bringing me my groceries (or catalog orders) and saving me from having to put my car on the road, is this the greenest choice possible? I’m still not sure.

My newest dilemma involves our vacuum cleaner. Since firing the cleaning lady nearly a year ago, I’ve taken on the role of cleaning lady (though dwindling time might change that too, and then I’ll need to find a green cleaning service, if such a thing exists locally). Anyway, what this means is that cleaning tools like my vacuum cleaner have gone into heavy rotation.

With regards to our vacuum cleaner, we have a Kenmore Canister vacuum with a separate nozzle, which we picked up at Sears three or four years ago. It was not cheap, but it’s been well worth the money we spent. Without Sears paying me to say so, I can honestly say that it’s been the best damn vacuum cleaner I’ve ever owned. However, because I live in homes with mostly hardwood floors and I’ve got a dog that sheds, I use this vacuum cleaner a lot and it has taken quite a beating.

First, the wheels on the motorized nozzle fell off. I’ve screwed them back on time and time again, but the threading is shredded on both of the wheels and in the nozzle itself. Then the pieces of the telescoping wand started breaking off. I was able to keep the wand together for the most part, if I held it in a certain wway and didn’t push too hard. After our move, one part of the two-part telescoping wand disappeared all together, leaving me hunched over like an old lady while vacuuming.

I was able to do without for a few months, since a public relations person had sent me an Electrloux upright, lightweight vacuum cleaner to try out for a story I was writing. It worked fine during the story review, but about a month later the rotating brushes stopped working. And it no longer sucked up anything, which sucks big time. (Note to self: stay away from Electrolux vacuums.)

So I’m back to my handicapped Kenmore canister cleaner, and I don’t think my back can take it anymore.

This morning I looked up replacement parts on the Sears’ parts website, and here’s where my “half the distance to” dilemma begins.

To replace both parts of the telescoping wand and the wheels on the nozzle head, plus with shipping and handling (the parts are not available at any local Sears’ stores), I’m already more than half the price distance to a new vacuum cleaner. Granted, it wouldn’t be the deluxe model I have but a similar model currently retailing for about $150. There is a vacuum repair shop that just opened two towns over, but I can’t imagine that they would be able to repair or replace these parts for much cheaper than what Sears could. Of course, I will call them and ask, but I don’t have high hopes for their response.

I was brought up to believe that if you’re paying more than half the value of something to fix it, you are better off just buying a replacement. But is that still true in my green and frugal world?

Is it better for me to drive 20 minutes to get the vacuum cleaner parts replaced, regardless of how much it costs? Or should I just give away my partially functioning vacuum cleaner on Freecycle, and dig down and cough up the $150 for the new vacuum cleaner? In this day and age of seemingly disposable small electronics, you just have to wonder if you should be thankful for three to four years of a vacuum cleaner’s faithful service and accept that it’s time to move on.

Which do you think is the right thing to do?

How is it that we’ve come to live in a world where clothing is disposable–and I’m not talking about diapers! And how is it that I’ve managed to raise kids who think this as well?

Case in point: recently I picked my daughter up from a sleepover, and I noticed that she was wearing her friend’s shirt.

“Where’s the shirt you packed?” I asked, tossing her sleeping bag in the trunk.

“Oh, I put it on and it ripped,” Annie said, buckling her seat belt. “You can turn it into a rag if you’d like.”

I didn’t think much of her answer because, truth be told, I had grown used to turning unwearable clothing into rags, a trick I’d picked up from my mother. It was the eco-friendly thing to do and saved a ton on paper towels.

But as the days went by, I kept thinking about this torn shirt, which was still stuffed in Annie’s backpack. We’d bought it during our back-to-school shopping at Aeropostale and it was not cheap. I surely wasn’t going to buy her another to replace the torn shirt, and I couldn’t in good conscience “ragify” a shirt she’d worn for only a few months.

So I decided to mend it. This may seem like the obviously solution to anyone who was raised with a mother that sews, but the truth is, whose mother sews anymore?

I guess I was lucky to have been raised by a mother who was raised in borderline poverty in rural Maine. Because of this my grandmother sewed and my mother learned to do the same. When I was a child my mother made a lot of my clothing, and stitched up anything that ripped or needed hemming (or letting out). Not surprisingly, one of her prized possessions was her sewing machine, a device I never quite got the hang of (I always managed to snag the bobbin, even when I took sewing in my 7th grade home ec class). Luckily, my mother was my Girl Scout leader, and I still remember her working with us to earn our sewing badge.

Our troop had gone on an overnight, and throughout that weekend we worked on various sewing projects and learned different hand stitches. We made squares of a quilt, sewed already earned badges onto our sashes (to save our mothers from the task), and created homemade pillows.

For this last project, I still remember how to do it. It involved placing the two pieces of fabric onto of one another, print side in; stitching three sides; “un-inning” the fabric so it was right side out; stuffing it with fluffy fill; and then carefully stitching the final side to finish it off.

If I wanted to today I could make new pillow covers for our living room, but who has the time? And if I were to figure things out based on hourly costs, I’m sure I would see how much cheaper and more time efficient it is just to buy new pillows at the store. Then again, in doing so, I’ve lost the opportunity to teach my children how to sew and that sense of accomplishment, that “Wow, I made that” feeling that comes with sewing something.

Last week I not only fixed Annie’s shirt but a pair of brown leggings that I discovered had come apart at the seams in four places. It took about 20 minutes all together, and then I placed each item back in the dresser–instead of in the rag bin.

“When did you fix my shirt?” Annie yelled from her bedroom yesterday morning.

“On New Year’s Day,” I replied.

“Wow, I didn’t know you could do that. I’m going to wear it to school today.”

I’m guessing that one of my 2008 resolutions should be to teach my daughters to hand stitch stuff. This way, when gas is $5 a gallon and they discover that all of those disposal, “Made in China” fashion items we’ve been buying forever are actually laced with lead, my daughters will have another option for getting the most mileage out of their wardrobe.

Growing up on Long Island, our favorite whipping boy was New Jersey. Most close-minded “Lawn Guy Landers” only knew “Joisy” as the stinky swamp you had to drive through on your way to somewhere else or the seemingly endless toxic dump on either side of the New Jersey Turnpike. Of course, having lived in New Jersey and survived, it really isn’t such a bad place. In fact, looking at Long Island from the other side of the East and Hudson rivers, it’s easy to see that it has its faults as well.

For example, 115-mile-long Long Island (which is not just an extension of New York City, FYI) is a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare. Want to get off the island? Well, unless you’re catching one of two ferries to Connecticut from either Port Jefferson or Orient Point, you’re only off-ramp is to drive west and take a bridge or tunnel to somewhere else. God forbid there should ever be an emergency evacuation of the island.

Then there’s the Long Island accent. (Watch Lorraine Bracco in the movie “Goodfellas” for a crash course in the Long Island dialect.) After being teased relentlessly in college about my accent, I worked hard to get rid of it. Four years spent in the Midwest helped to flatten it out even more, though I have to admit that having moved to the Philly area, which has accent issues of its own, I find myself waxing poetic for my “tawk” of origin and even slipping back into Long Island-ese from time to time.

And in the town where I grew up, there was the dump. Looming in the southern landscape like a ski resort’s bunny hill, this dump provided a lovely eau de methane whenever the wind blew the right way. Also, because it sat perched on a hill, I’m guessing that its runoff ran downstream into the town’s water source (though that has never been officially confirmed). But despite the smell or threat of tainted water, the real risk lay in driving near the dump.

The worst was driving by it on windy days–plastic bags and other refuse would come whipping across the road and onto your windshield without notice. You would be temporarily blinded on this winding, downward sloping road that was hazardous enough even on a calm day. As you prayed that your windshield would clear before you met oncoming traffic in the wrong lane, you did your best not to drive off the road. And as quickly as the bag would have blown onto your windshield, the wind would grab it and take it away.

After the town installed a tall chain link fence around the dump (probably because of residents’ complaints of blowing trash in their yards), the plastic bags would cling to the inside of the fence, shaking in the wind, like prisoners rattling the bars of their jail cells.

Of course, the dump has been closed for years now and maybe someday it will be turned into a bunny hill or something else. In the meantime, Long Island has taken a step in the right direction towards excess trash. Suffolk County (where I grew up) just enacted a Plastic Bag Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Measure that requires stores over 10,000 square feet not only to provide someplace for consumers to drop off their plastic bags for recycling but also to ensure that these bags do, in fact, end up getting recycled. This isn’t an outright ban of plastic bags like what San Francisco did but at least it should help cut down on plastic bags blowing in the wind against some chain link fence, sticking on your windshield or, worse, ending up in another town’s dump.

Green Boot Camp: Week Three–Recycling cardboard, cartridges, cell phones and more