If you’ve ever traded in a car or tried to sell it on your own, chances are that one of the first things that you did was to figure out the car’s Kelley Blue Book value. (You can also use this valuation if you hope to haggle with a dealer about a new-car and how much you think you should pay.) For as long as I can remember, the Kelley Blue Book (KBB) has been the gold standard for determining a car’s worth. So I was pretty excited to hear from the KBB people yesterday about a new section on the KBB website devoted to green cars.

Here’s what the KBB press release had to say about this new section:

“Kelley Blue Book’s new Green section allows new-car shoppers to obtain information about alternative-fuel technologies, such as hydrogen cars, diesel cars, hybrid cars, natural gas cars, electric cars and flex fuel/ethanol vehicles, as well as fuel-sipping gasoline cars. Kbb.com’s vehicle experts also will keep consumers up-to-date on the latest Green news and information from around the automotive world. The video section of KBB Green offers an in-depth, inside look at the latest eco-friendly vehicles on the market from both the Kelley Blue Book perspective and the carmakers’ themselves. KBB Green also features helpful tools such as the Perfect Car Finder® and the all-new Fuel Efficiency Challenge.”

This new section kicks off with a list of the Top 10 Green Cars. (Sorry about the annoying pop-up window on this preceding link, which asks for your zip code and doesn’t offer a “no thanks” option. I’m guessing that KBB has it there to tailor advertising to your geography. Whatever. It’s still annoying.)

I must admit that while some of the names on this list didn’t shock me–it’s a no-duh to expect the Toyota Prius to top such a list–some did surprise me. Can you imagine that a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid would be on a list about top green cars? My guess is that the “regular” version of the Tahoe is so fuel-inefficient that if you want to compare apples to apples–or Tahoes to Tahoes–that the hybrid version is definitely going to earn a gold star for being more fuel efficient than its V8 ancestor.

What I like most about this list is that four of the top 10 cars are not hybrids. This is great news for people who might not be able to pay the extra bucks that are automatically tacked onto a hybrid’s price tag. However, what’s not great news is how hard it has become to find affordable, fuel-efficient cars anywhere. I’ve read news reports about how a few years ago, SUVs were all the rage on the new and used-car lots. Now, people are trading in their SUVs for fuel-efficient cars, and, well, now these gas sippers are hard to find.

Add to that the fact that some car manufacturers simply can’t keep up with demand for their fuel-efficient cars, and while you may know which fuel-efficient car you’d like to buy, the real challenge becomes where to find one.

Of course, this is all moot to me since we own our Saturn VUE outright (not the hybrid version), and we just paid off our Ford Freestyle (purchased used last summer). Right now, it doesn’t make any sense for us to trade in these cars with V6 engines, in hopes of finding something more fuel efficient. (Ever heard of that phrase penny wise and pound foolish? Yeah, well that would apply here.) I mean, according to KBB, my Saturn VUE has a trade-in value of $6,730 to $8,350 and my Ford Freestyle has a trade-in value of anywhere from $10,565 to $12,700. That would hardly get me a Toyota Prius or Ford Escape Hybrid, which start at $20,870 and $27,775 respectively.

Hey, guys. I’m quoted in a Business Week online article about the “latte effect”–how people are cutting back on frivolous things like lattes in this economy. Heck, I’ve never been one for lattes when I can brew my java at home for free.

Anyway, I submitting some ideas to this writer, about how we’re cutting back to save money outside of coffee purchases, in response to her query on Help A Reporter (HARO). You can read what I have to say in this Working Parents: The Money-Free Weekend piece. Enjoy!

Later today we are meeting with a general contractor and an architect to discuss a renovation we’d like to do on our house. There’s a lot that this renovation needs to accomplish, including replacing a 50-foot-long retaining wall that is holding up our upwardly sloping backyard and preventing it (and our 50,000-gallon swimming pool) from rushing into our home. The current retaining wall is made of wooden railroad ties that I think are older than I am. They have rotted out, and in some places, they are leaning forward at a 45-degree angle. Yeah, we’ve got to do something soon.

Because we are planning on having a poured-concrete retaining wall put in as a replacement and it will sit about 15 feet behind the back of our house, we figured that we could use that new retaining wall as a foundation for a 15-foot extension. Today’s meeting with the general contractor and the architect will let us know what that retaining wall will entailing (structurally and financially) and if an addition within the retaining wall-as-foundation is doable.

Assuming that our project can move forward, we would like to keep our renovation as green as possible. Granted, our budget won’t allow us to have everything be green–such as reclaimed wood, which can be up to four-times as expensive as original wood. However, if I can get my contractor to find affordable wood that is Forest Stewardship Council-certified, we’ll go with that option.

Other ways we hope to green our renovation–and maybe save green in the process–include these two areas of the home/yard:

* Landscaping
When the contractors start to work on replacing our retainer wall, they are going to have to rip out a ton of landscaping plants, including azalea bushes, evergreens, myrtle ground cover, and more. My hope is that while there is heavy equipment here, we can get them to carefully take out those bushes, and move them around to the front of the house where I can replant them. In addition, if we do landscape with any new greenery, I’ll be sure to choose native species that don’t require excessive watering to keep alive (this is called xeriscaping, which I’d written about in an earlier post).

* Kitchen cabinets
Part of the reason that we’re looking forward to folding in a house renovation into the new retaining wall/foundation is because we need a new kitchen and entertaining space. I mean, the kitchen we have is perfectly functional but it’s ugly and needs to be redone. (See the photo above to understand what I mean.) The appliances are at least 30 years old, so gosh only knows how energy inefficient they are. It’s time to move on up to Energy Star-certified kitchen appliances. Plus, the kitchen is really small (about 80-square-feet), and it’s completely cut off from the dining room.

When we do the renovation and move the kitchen into the new space, along with a larger dining room built off the existing one and opening into the new space, won’t be chucking out the old kitchen cabinets. Our plan is turn our existing kitchen space into a pantry that this house sorely needs, which will allow us reuse all of the current cabinetry and counter tops. The only things we’ll need to dispose of will be the appliances–electric stove, refrigerator and dishwasher–and I’m confident someone on Freecycle will take those off our hands for us. Or maybe we could donate them to the Smithsonian, since they’re so old and old-fashioned?!

* Exterior Siding
Currently, our home has split, wooden “shake” siding. These are what look to be individual pieces of varying size wood that are nailed into the exterior of the home. Ideally, I would like to be able to reuse this siding on the renovation, not only because it’s the green thing to do but also because it will save me from having to buy all new siding. However, I understand that not all wooden siding comes off easily or in one piece. So I can request that the contractor do his best to remove the siding so that he can use it to re-side the addition, but the cost in labor for him to slow down the removal process might not make up for the money savings of the reuse.

After our meeting I’ll write a follow-up post on any other green-saves-green ideas the contractor and architect might have. In the meantime, if you have any ideas on how we can do an affordable green renovation–either by reusing items we already own or purchasing new items that save energy or are good for the environment and, most importantly, won’t break my budget–please post a comment to let me know. Or you can send me an email.

In response to my recent post about our renewed attempts to lower our electricy bill, I received a number of questions about the new approach I was going to try to save electricity. This involved raising the thermostat when I left the house, and lowering it when I returned. Many people had heard that if you make your home hotter (or cooler) than it needs to be, your cooling or heating system will have to work harder to get the temperature back to a comfortable place when you return–therefore using extra energy in the process. This means that whatever energy you may have saved by turning off the a/c or changing the thermostat setting, you’ve now used up in cooling off or heating up the home. In fact, here is an amalgamation of two of these questions:

Q: Is it true that you’ll save more energy if you leave your thermostat at a single point throughout the day/I’ve heard that if you raise or lower your thermostat by more than eight degrees, you’ll end up using more energy getting the temperature back to where it was.

A: From what I can tell, this raising/lowering the thermostat idea is right up there with all kinds of urban legends. (In fact, there’s a discussion on Snopes.com, the ultimate website for snooping out urban legends, on just this topic. And the folks there seem to be perpetuating the myth.)

Why am I calling it a myth? Because every reliable (i.e. government or respectable energy website) I could find said the exact opposite of what these folks asked in the question. These websites showed that if you fiddled around with your thermostat’s temperature, you would actually save money in the long run. (Check out this Energy Star website chart on programmable thermostats that shows you how you could change your thermostat throughout the day and save $180 a year in energy expenses.)

Another website I like is Mr. Electric (dude needs a haircut but his advice is spot on). He also explains why you want to raise and lower your thermostat to save money. Scroll down to the question that begins “I was reading about turning the air conditioning off during the day to save on costs” to see his take on this topic.

Steven Harris, CEO of Knowledge Publications, a company that sells books on alternative energy, had this to day on the topic: “[T]he 8 degree difference has NOTHING to do with how hard the AC works during the day. It does NOT work more to cool the home from 85F back down to 70F when you come home. It would work harder to keep it at 80F all day long and then when you got home it would work just as hard moving the house from 80F to 70F.”

Bottom line: I’ll be keeping my a/c off whenever possible and the windows open, and when it’s warm enough outside that windows open isn’t an option, I’ll for sure raise the thermostat and turn the a/c to auto or off when I leave for long periods of time. The less energy I can use–and therefore pay out to PECO–the happier I’ll be.

It will be interesting to see what our next energy bill looks like, now that we’ve got these two measures in place. In addition, because we’re taking short trips, here and there, in the next few weeks, that means that we can leave the a/c off for extended periods of time. That’s got to save money. I’ll let you know what happens when the next PECO bill shows up.

Last week I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about how storage-container company Rubbermaid was planning on raising its prices on its products, now that petroleum costs so much more. I realize that plastics are made from petroleum, but, as I read this article, I couldn’t help but wonder: why wasn’t Rubbermaid investigating other ways to produce plastic without turning to the old stand-by, petroleum?

This article bothered me so much that I wrote a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal. I have no idea if it will make it into print, but here’s it is below:

Dear Editor:

As someone trying to live a greener lifestyle, I’ve taken to relying on reusable containers for packing my kids’ lunches and storing leftovers from dinner. Not surprisingly, these efforts help in reducing my trash output. Some of the reusable containers I have in rotation come from Rubbermaid, which is why I found your July 16, 2008 Marketplace article “Rubbermaid Wants to Be Less of a Commodity” so disturbing. I like supporting companies that help me live a more eco-friendly existence, but now I’m not so sure that a company like Rubbermaid fits that model. The idea that the company wants to raise prices on its products, because petroleum prices have gone up, rather than looking into other ways of producing its same products, seems so backwards to me. Plenty of other companies have turned to recycled plastics for their products, such as Recycline in Massachusetts, which makes everything from shaving razors to storage containers out of recycled plastic. Just a quick visit to the American Plastics Council website would offer ideas and ways that Rubbermaid could look towards post-consumer plastic content for its products rather than doing the same old, same old with petroleum. I understand that everything costs more these days. However, rather than simply raising prices and passing those costs onto the consumer, why not investigate other ways to make your product? I realize that buying recycled plastic may end up costing more but you know what? As a green-focused consumer, I’d pay more for a Rubbermaid product that I knew contained recycled content. On the other hand, a Rubbermaid product made the old-fashioned way with petroleum and that costs more? Well, I just might not buy that at all.

If it does make it into print, I would be interested to see what kind of reaction it gets or I get. I’ve dealt with the Rubbermaid PR people in the past. Super nice people, but I really think this is a problem they need to address and soon. I think green is going to be affecting consumers’ purchasing decisions more and more as our energy crisis grows. For Rubbermaid and other companies not to recognize this and continue to bury its head in the petroleum barrel is just not a good idea.

One of the green-and-frugal changes that I’m most proud of is how we’ve managed to cut our PECO bill since moving into our new house. Granted, in our old house, PECO provided us with both gas and electric–and here it provides electric only since we have oil heat (blech!)–but I clearly remember how electric consumed a greater portion of that old bill, even with gas added on. So when we moved here last year, I was determined to make sure that we used as little power as possible so we would pay PECO as little as possible.

As you know we’ve made a number of changes to decrease our energy usage, including:

1. Switched out our regular light bulbs for compact fluorescent lights

2. Gotten into the habit of turning off the lights when we leave a room

3. Begun using power strips so that when we’re done with an electronic, it is all the way the off and not still sucking phantom power.

And I must say that we’ve done a pretty good job along the way–so much so, that in the recent article on how our family is living green, I talked about reducing our energy bills by hundreds of dollars.

Thanks to that article, I received the following reader question (paraphrased):

Q: What have you done so that your electric bills have gone from $500 to $100?

A: Well, we don’t always get the $100 electric bills, but they have been more common than rare. In our old house, nothing was energy efficient, save for the dishwasher and refrigerator. In addition, we weren’t in the habit of turning off lights or raising/lowering the thermostat as much as we are now. While every month the electric bill wasn’t $500 in the old house, we’ve never hit that high here. Here’s how we accomplish that feat.

* I tend not to turn lights on during the day, and we use task lighting at night–meaning single lamps in a room, not the overhead kind. (I’m writing this is a nearly dark office, with only a desk lamp on.)

* As I mentioned earlier, all bulbs in the house the can be compact fluorescent are compact fluorescent. This really does add up.

* Finally, during transition months, when we need neither air conditioning nor heat, there is absolutely nothing turned on via the thermostat. We open windows as necessary or close them if there is a chill. We let the sun coming through the windows warm the place, or keep shades closed if we want to cool things off. Really, it’s only on these super hot, heat-wave days that the a/c is going 24/7, and I’m sure our next PECO bill will be higher because of it.

I was right on the last part. The day after this reader question came in, we got our PECO bill–via e-billing, so no paper, natch. And guess what? It was $403! That was a real shocker.

Then I downloaded the bill and looked at a graph for the year (which PECO so kindly shows on each bill), and it seems that July, August and September are our high-energy months. They were last year, and they are trending towards being the same this year.

And when you think about it, it makes sense: during those three summer months, we are running the air conditioning more, and we’ve got the pool pump going. I’m sure that those two items alone make our energy use spike. However, during the rest of the year, when we have neither the a/c nor the pool pump going, we use a quarter of the energy that we use during these three months, giving us our lower electric bills.

Since this whole lean, green life is a work in progress, starting today we’re making two additional small changes to reduce our energy consumption.

First, while we’ve taken to raising the thermostat overall, now whenever we leave the house, I’m going to raise the a/c even more. I mean, right now the thermostat is set for 72. In a little while I’ll be walking my daughters to camp. Even though I’ll be gone for only 20 minutes, I’m going to raise the thermostat to 78 while I’m gone. At the same time, whenever I leave, I’m going to switch the a/c to auto so that the fan isn’t running all of the time.

The second thing we’re going to try is not to run the pool pump as much. I don’t think we’ll ruin things if we swim from time to time without the pump running. We only swim for about an hour here and there, so why waste the money running the pump for that hour of time or longer (if we forget to turn it off).

In the meantime, I’ll wait impatiently for those transition months when I can shut off the a/c for good and throw open the windows. October can’t get here fast enough!

I try so hard to think about ways to reduce my waste, reuse what I can, and recycle everything and anything my trash hauler accepts. However, I often find myself confounded with toilet-paper rolls.

Are toilet paper rolls considered to be paperboard, like cereal boxes, which means I can recycle them curbside? If not, should they be recycled with regular cardboard? Also, I’m not so green that I’m going to reduce my reliance on toilet paper by substituting leaves or something. I still want my tp, but to ease my green conscience, I have started buying Marcal-brand toilet paper that is made from recycled paper. (Check out this Natural Resources Defense Council chart that compares the recycled content and “green-ness” of household paper items. The Marcal toilet paper, by the way, rates quite well–it’s 100 percent recycled, with 40 percent post-consumer content used.)

So that leaves me with reusing. Without younger children in the house to do art projects, what can you possibly do with used toilet paper rolls? Well, here’s one thing I’ve come up with.

These days, every time I unwrap a new roll of toilet paper, I take the paper wrapping, stuff it on the inside of the empty toilet-paper roll, and put it in the fire place. I’ve also taken to stuffing dryer lint and other kinds of paper in the rolls. I figure that come late fall, when we’re ready to fire up the fireplace again, we’re going to have plenty of “kindling.” My only concern is this: if we go through about one roll of toilet paper per week, pretty soon our fireplace (pictured above) is going to be overflowing with stuff toilet paper rolls.

I wonder how else I could randomly reuse these rolls if we run out of space in the fireplace?

Every once and awhile I’ll have an a-ha moment as I make my way through this green-and-frugal lifestyle. I’ll figure out a creative way to recycle or reuse something, and then I’ll think, “Now how can I use this on my blog?”

As a professional writer I know that it’s important to have a fully thought-out idea on a topic before opening your laptop and sitting down to tap out your prose. However, I realize that blogs don’t often follow the rules of traditional journalism–in at least as to how they’re formatted, among other things–and that there might be times when sharing little random nuggets with readers might make sense. This is sort of like those sidebars and boxes you see accompanying magazine and newspaper stories. These are random yet related thoughts to the main story that offer easy-to-digest information in bite-sized bits. That’s what I’m going for here.

With this in mind I would like to introduce the concept of “Random Reusables.” I will post these reoccuring ideas randomly (no surprise there) when I have an a-ha moment about green-and-frugal living that I think readers like you will find helpful. I’ll start tomorrow. Stay tuned…

My local paper ran a front-page, above-the-fold story today on how I’ve helped our family to live green and save green. I figured the readers here would enjoy reading that story, which appeared on the front page of sister papers The Courier-Times and The Intelligencer (click here to read it).

If you know of any book publishers, TV producers or others in the media that might be interested, please let me know. I’d love to help spread my green gospel in other media!

One of my on-going quandaries about continuing to use ShopRite from Home was that it didn’t offer me the opportunity to use reusable bags. (Yes, I confess, I’ve been getting my purchased-online groceries packaged in disposable bags. Gasp! I do reuse them, though, as either trash can liners, dog poop picker-uppers or holders for recycling.)

However, all that has changed–and increased my brand loyalty with ShopRite–now that reusable bags are an option.

Recently, when I logged onto the website to place an order, I saw this message homepage:

IF YOU WOULD LIKE US TO BAG YOUR ORDER IN RE-USABLE BAGS, PLEASE INDICATE SO ON THE COMMENTS SECTION WHEN YOU ARE PLACING YOUR ORDER. ALSO LET US KNOW IF YOU HAVE BAGS THAT WE ARE HOLDING FOR YOU OR IF YOU WOULD LIKE US TO PURCHASE BAGS FOR THE ORDER.

My only issue was that I was ready to order groceries but I hadn’t yet dropped off a supply of reusable bags. So with my last order, I bit the bullet and purchased reusable bags that they could bag my order in. Each bag cost $.99 but guess what? For each reusable bag I use with my order, Shop Rite credits me $.05–every time I use them. (Using plastic bags again only nets you a three-cent credit.)

Before I left to pick up this order, I gathered up a bunch of reusable bags I already owned, wrote my name on them in Sharpie marker, and secured them together with a carabiner clip (see picture above). Shop Rite will keep these bags on hand for my next order. Then, when I go to pick up that one, I’ll bring back the reusable bags that I’d purchased and used to bring home my current order.

By the way I kept three reusable bags behind to keep in my car so that if I have to run to my local market or the drugstore in between, I’ve still got reusable bags on hand to use.

I spent part of my Saturday in a wasteland–an e-wasteland, that is. You see yesterday was the household hazardous waste drop-off day for my county, a day when you could get rid of items that would cause lots of toxic problems if you’d tossed them in the trash. Since I’d missed the day last year, I’d been holding on to a couple of things to get rid of.

First, there was an old television set–”Wow, Mom, this is really old–the TV has dials!” my older daughter exclaimed when she was helping us to load up the car. Then there were two desktop computers we’d purchased for the girls when they were really little but were just unusable now. In case you’re wondering why I didn’t just donate those old computers to a local school or good cause, well, I tried. But because those PCs were running Windows 95 and didn’t have Internet connections, no one wanted them. Also, we had three old-fashioned thermostats, filled with mercury, that we needed to dispose of. They were what came off the walls when we’d installed programmable thermostats in the house.

Yesterday’s drop off was at a local technical school, which is about 10 miles away from my house. I thought I’d remembered reading in the newspaper about last year’s hazardous waste drop-off day and the tons of people that showed up, but it wasn’t until I crested a hill near the school and saw the lines of cars–and the handful of police cars set up to help direct traffic–that I had any idea how many people go to these things.

It was 12:45 p.m., and I almost didn’t make the right turn into the school. The line of cars was intimidatingly long and because it was close to 95 degrees out yesterday, the idea of idling in that kind of long line didn’t appeal to me on many levels (comfort, carbon emissions and otherwise). However, I knew I wanted to properly dispose of my e-waste and this was my only chance. So I turned off the air conditioning, rolled down the windows, and turned on NPR to wait it out.

The campus of the school where they held this event is deceiving large, with a long winding driveway and tucked-away parking lots, through which people like myself had to snake before reaching the actual drop-off point. In the picture at right, I was already 20 minutes into the line and could count close to 50 cars in front of me and nearly that many behind me.

Surprisingly, the event was very well organized so that soon enough, the one line of cars split into two and things really started to move along. At one point it looked like I was ready to approach the drop-off point and be done with this, but then I noticed that the two lines wound around the back of the school and back around to the right again.

From what I could tell from the trucks I saw on the campus, my county had contracted with Clean Venture/Cycle Chem, an environmental contractor that knows how to properly dispose of hazardous waste. It seems that this company, which has locations in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey, partners with municipalities all the time to hold resident recycling days for items that you can’t normally put out with your trash.

Just before I got to the drop-off point, someone from the county’s planning commission (which had sponsored the event) stopped to ask me a few market-research questions–what township was I from, how did I hear about the event, what did I bring with me. Next thing I knew I was told to pull my car up next to shrink-wrapped towers and piles of computer monitors.

I hopped out of the car, popped the trunk, and two very large, football player-looking guys reached into the trunk and took out the two computers and the television. I handed them the box of thermostats, closed the trunk, and I was ready to go. It was 1:32 p.m. That wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d expected, and at least I can feel confident that I’d done the right thing in properly disposing of my household hazardous waste.

If your local government isn’t forthcoming about when they might be having a hazardous waste collection day, try logging onto the Earth 911 website. On the homepage, you can plug the item you want to recycle, along with your zip code, into the search boxes at the top of the page, and it should bring up a list of places that take this kind of hazardous household waste. (Unfortunately, a search of where to recycle computers in my area brought up Staples, which charges $15 for the privilege. No, thanks. I’ll wait until I can do it for free on one of these household hazardous waste collection days.)

You can also try searching your local government’s website or the website of your state’s department of environmental protection to see if there might be information on there about similar e-waste recycling/collection programs in your area.

POSTSCRIPT: A local newspaper article reported that about 1,800 people showed up for this collection day. No wonder the lines of traffic were so long!

An interesting email popped into my in-box this morning. It was from Lands’ End and was all about how Lands’ End can help parents like me shop for back to school. I’ve been getting tons of these emails lately, now that retailers are salivating over potential back-to-school earnings, even though industry projections show just a slight increase over last year’s spending. (Hey, in this economy I guess any increase is an increase worth having.)

However, what caught my eye wasn’t the back-to-school message but what the subject line said: “Go back to school with backpacks that are Guaranteed. Period.”

I clicked through the email to get to the Lands’ End website, then found the “Guaranteed. Period” area in the “About Us” section.

It seems that, like L.L. Bean, Lands’ End offers an unconditional guarantee on its products. No need to quibble about what lifetime of a product means–Lands’ End take on the whole thing is this: “If you’re not satisfied with any item, simply return it to us at any time for an exchange or refund of its purchase price.”

In my previous post that talked about L.L. Bean’s lifetime guarantee–and a comment I posted in response to someone tsk-tsking me for returned a worn-out backpack–I mentioned that these kinds of guarantees only make me a more devoted customer. In fact, to my detriment, I am way too loyal to companies that treat me right–so much so that sometimes it’s hard to stay on budget when purchasing certain items, because of my loyalty.

Like L.L. Bean. I’m not going to have to think twice about buying an article of clothing from a company like L.L. Bean or Lands’ End (love their bathing suits for girls), even if it costs more, because I know I’m getting a great product the company will stand behind. Similarly, I’m going to continue to drive the 20 minutes to take advantage of Shop Rite from Home, because the staff at my local Shop Rite are experts at customer service.

For example, a few weeks ago I purchased a bunch of bananas that browned a few days after I’d picked up my order. I wasn’t happy about this, since the bananas were now unusable, so Shop Rite credited me for my purchase. Today, I went to pick up my latest grocery order, and 10 minutes after walking in the door, Shop Rite called: they’d discovered two more bags of my groceries that they’d forgotten to take out of the refrigerator cabinet. I fully expected them to say that they’d just credit me the amount I’d spent on those items, and then it would be my problem to figure out how to get milk for the week. But I was wrong. Shop Rite made it their problem, and 30 minutes later, my left-behind groceries were delivered to my door. (I think I also like the folks at Shop Rite because whenever I bring my dog with me to pick up the groceries, they always give him treats.)

I’m similarly loyal with other products, many of which happen to be Procter & Gamble brands: Tide (for their new eco-packaging and how well it washes my clothes), Cascade and Dawn dishwashing detergents (all the ladies in my family have been using them for years), and Venus razors (full disclosure, I just did a project with the public relations agency that represents Venus–though my work wasn’t for Venus–but I was a Venus fan for many years prior).

Thank goodness there was a recent P&G-sponsored coupon section in my Sunday paper. I think that the coupons that I cut out from it helped me to save about $4 on my grocery shopping this week.

Maybe I might have spent less–and saved more–buying other brands, but at least this way I feel confident about the products I use and know that, for example, I can toss my Tide or Cascade liquid bottle in recycling, instead of putting them in the trash. In fact, the American Chemistry Council’s website includes a link to retailers that offer products made from things like recycled laundry bottles. Here, you’ll find everything from apparel to video cassette tapes that includes recycled plastic. How cool is that?

Well, not really. I don’t have any sponsors for this blog–not yet, at least. However, I do subscribe to a media-leads service so that I know when reporters, producers and others are looking for green experts like myself to interview, and therefore I can get myself into the media. How do you think I got quoted in this awesome Christian Science Monitor story, which lead to the daily paper in my area wanting to do a feature on this blog and me? (That will be in the Sunday edition; I’ll post a link when it goes live.) In addition, I use the service when I’m working on a magazine article and need to find experts.

Anyway, this service is called Help A Reporter Out, and today the very creative genius (but not evil genius) founder Peter Shankman has asked for people to post a message about his service to the world. Hey, I’m all about good karma, so here goes:

“Get Sourced. Get Quoted. Get Famous: www.helpareporter.com – Putting Journalists and Sources together, one quote at a time.”

I’ve even included this message on my LinkedIn and Facebook updates, to if you want to check those out as well.

A number of years ago, I wrote an article for Woman’s Day magazine on creative ways to save money on back-to-school shopping. While Staples wasn’t having any one cent sales that I know of at that time–and therefore I couldn’t offer that in my story–there were a number of pieces of advice in that article that still ring true for me today. One such piece of advice was that if I needed to get my kid a musical instrument, I would look for a used on on eBay or from a store like Music Go Round, instead of buying new.

Another piece of advice that I continue to use in my everyday life is this: it’s worth it to spend a little bit more money on an item that is well-made, will last a long time and/or comes with a lifetime guarantee. That’s because once you buy a product from a company like this, you’ll never have to pay for another one again–thus making your money, and your savings, go a long way.

Once such company that stands behind its products is L.L. Bean. (Jansport also offers a lifetime guarantee on its school-related products, like backpacks and bags.) Here’s how L.L. Bean promotes that guarantee on its website:

Our products are guaranteed to give 100% satisfaction in every way. Return anything purchased from us at any time if it proves otherwise. We do not want you to have anything from L.L. Bean that is not completely satisfactory.

I can still remember a 10-year-old backpack from L.L. Bean that I’d first used in college, then in my early working years, but which had begun to rip. Because I still wanted a backpack–and because my mother lives in Maine, near L.L. Bean’s flagship store–I brought that backpack with me on my Maine trip, took it to L.L. Bean’s customer service desk, and within a few minutes, they had replaced my worn-out backpack for a brand new one, for free. I’ve used the same guarantee to replace one of my daughter’s backpacks, though I had to pay $1.50 for the replacement because she wanted an “upgraded” model (I spotted her the buck fifty), and at the end of winter, I used that guarantee once more on my winter coat.

You see, about five years ago I’d purchased a full-length, down-filled L.L. Bean parka-like winter coat. It was the perfect coat for walking the dog on cold winter days, even if I did look like the Michelin Man tire guy. While the coat was pretty pricey (about $200), it was washable, warm and wonderfully versatile. It had a removable hood, Velcro closures on the cuffs to keep out cold breezes, and a zipper and snap closures in the front for extra warmth. Then, last winter, when I took the coat out for the first time, I noticed that the zipper had broken. No worries, I thought. I’ll just use the snaps to keep the coat closed, and then in spring, I’ll return it.

Unfortunately, when I went to return the coat this past spring (at a new L.L. Bean store that had opened in the Lehigh Valley area), it was out of stock and there wasn’t anything comparable to replace it. I could have waited and returned to the store another time to attempt the return at that time, but that store was more than an hour away, and I couldn’t justify the gas. So I asked what my return options were, and the clerk told me that they’d take the coat back, and give me a gift card for the full value of the coat–still about $200. (Man, if all of my investments held their value like that.)

Which brings me to how this money-back guarantee solved my reusable bottle issue (sort of), as the headline of this blog posting says.

As you’ll recall when the news broke last spring about BPA being found in some reusable bottles made of polycarbonate, I bid farewell to my Nalgene bottles and went on the search for new bottles. One bottle I’d found in the interim that my eldest daughter has claimed as her own is a bottle from We Add Up. It’s a sports-top water bottle made from recycled plastic and costs only $10.

My youngest daughter and I aren’t fond of the sports-top bottles, so we’ve still been looking for other kinds of bottles that we can use daily, around town, and for packing in lunches.

Well, yesterday a new L.L. Bean catalog arrived, and in it was L.L. Bean’s version of the Kleen Kanteen, a stainless steel reusable bottle that I’d heard great things about but could never find locally. Bean is now offering a stainless steel “Bean Canteen” in three sizes (12 ounce, 18 ounce and 27 ounce) and seven colors (black, pink, blue, red, silver, orange and green). All the bottles are open-mouthed, come with a loop top and have a carabiner clip for easy attaching to lunch boxes.

At an affordable $16.95 for the 18-ounce version, we’ll be using that L.L. Bean gift card with the dough on it from my returned coat to stock up on these bottles for free.

On Tuesday we finally got around to taking advantage of the Staples one-cent school supplies sale. Good thing, too, since the sale ends on Wednesday.

But before we went to the store, I took an inventory of my school supplies box so I didn’t overbuy or buy duplicates of what I already had.

So what did I already have?

* 1 5-subject notebooks
* 1 3-subject notebook
* 12 1-subject notebooks
* 1 composition book
* approximately 500 sheets of lined, 3-hole paper
* 1 3-ring binder
* 1 3-pack of glue sticks
* 2 soft pencil cases
* 1 hard-side pencil case
* 5 folders
* 1 pack of 100 large index cards
* 5 stretchy notebook covers

One of the things that the teachers in our school district like to do is to color code the kids’ school supplies. So if they request that you get a red spiral notebook for math, they also want you to get a red folder. The same goes for a yellow spiral notebook and folder, a black spiral notebook and folder and so on.

Currently, the 12 1-subject spiral notebooks we own seem to be in all of the colors that the teachers tend to choose–yellow, blue, black, red, orange and green. Because none of the 5 folders we had matched these colors, my goal at Staples was to secure two folders in each of these popular colors. Also, I’d noticed in the Staples circular that pencils were on sale as were small containers of hand sanitizer.

In the past, if I’ve waited a day or two to go to the Staples one cent sale, I’m usually plum out of luck–in that the store has been shopped out and you can’t get a rain check for when more inventory shows up. For some reason, however, this time I lucked out.

Not only was the store fully stocked, but I was able to find everything I needed in the one-cent range. My only setback was that I was limited to 10 folders only, so we settled on two of each folder in black, red, green, blue and yellow. If somehow my kids end up with a teacher who favors orange, I’ll spring for the orange folders then.

All told we spent a whopping 13 cents on school supplies. Yes, you read that right: $.13.

Oh, but wait–it gets better. Because I signed up for one of those Staples Rewards cards way back when, you know the ones that they scan whenever you shop at the store, I’d recently received a rewards check for $16.50, which I used to pay for my purchase. Which leaves me with a $16+ store credit that I must use before August 31st.

I’m sure we’ll be doing plenty of back to school shopping by the time 8/31 rolls around. And if I’m lucky, there will be plenty more opportunities to get great deals on back-to-school supplies. I hope you’ve been able to take advantage of similar deals near you.

Coming up in the next few days: back-to-school products with a green twist. I’m currently collecting information for a forthcoming post. If you know of anything great and green and perfect for back to school, post a comment to tell me about it.

One of the pieces of good gas-mileage advice that I’ve heard time and time again is making sure that your car tires are properly inflated. The idea is that if the tires are low on air, your car’s gas mileage will plummet. It’s been in the back of mind for quite some time now to check my car’s tires–especially after my husband casually commented that my back left tire looked a little low–so we took advantage of the recent holiday weekend to finally get that air check done.

Holy smokes! According to the guidelines on my tires, they are supposed to have 44 psi of air or 44 pounds per square inch of air. Each of mine had about 33 psi. I knew they were low but I had no idea how low they’d gone.

According to a Goodyear Tire expert, when tires are about 20 percent below where they should be as far as air pressure goes, you can expect to increase how much fuel you use by 10 percent. Given that my tires were more than 20 percent lower than they should be, I’m guessing that I’ve been burning through more than 10 percent more fuel. What a kick in the tire that was for me.

Here’s another reason to ensure that your tires are properly inflated: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that under-inflated tires (along with worn out or simply old tires) are a leading cause of traffic accidents. That means that if you keep your tires properly inflated–and you replace them when they get worn out–you’ll reduce your risk of a tire-caused traffic accident.

Thankfully, we own a compressor, which my husband used to fill all of my tires to the recommended 44 psi. I swear that ever since, the car feels like it’s been running more smoothly. Well, at least my conscience is clear now, and I can feel good about the fact that I’ve improved my chances of not having my tires cause an accident. I hope the gas mileage improves as well.

Let me ask you a question: when you find yourself with a CD or DVD that’s no longer useful, what do you do with it? If you’re like most people, you simply toss it in the trash. You probably figure that, at only a few millimeters thick, what kind of damage could a compact disc do in a landfill? Well, the scary thing is that millions of CDs and DVDs end up in landfills each year so think about it: if you were to stack up one million of these discs, that would add up to a pretty significant amount of waste.

One way to cut down on CD waste all together is not to use them. I mean, Fortune Magazine reported that music-lovers have downloaded more than five billion songs from iTunes since 2003. Imagine how many CDs that has saved. Also, when it comes to software purchases, you can opt for the online download that not only saves you from getting a CD that will become obsolete in the near future but also you’ve saved on all of the packaging you no longer need because you got the software online. (Downloading software is #42 on this very cool “50 Ways to Help the Planet” website.)

I’ve got another DVD-saving tip: if you can get something via your cable TV company or by Tivoing it, you’ll save yourself from buying a DVD. Case in point: a friend of mine, who has been looking extremely fit lately, turned me on to the Biggest Loser’s Power Sculpt workout with fitness instructor Jillian Michaels and some of the cast of this reality show. While I’ve never watched the show, I’ve been watching–and doing–the 20-minute power sculpt workout religiously. I get it for free from my cable provider. Granted, the show I get via Exercise TV On Demand does not include the full power sculpt workout that you would get from buying the DVD, but I do love the free price (be still my frugal heart). Also, it doesn’t hurt that by “downloading” the program to my TV, I haven’t created any waste.

OK, so the above advice would qualify in the “reduce” part of reduce, reuse and recycle. Let’s move on to the “reuse” portion.

I don’t know about you but any time I get something sent to me on a CD, like a press kit or maybe a playlist a friend burned for me (legally, I hope), if I can, I try to erase the disc’s contents so I can reuse it. Oftentimes, this is a challenge since not all CDs are rewritable (I think they should be). Then I’m left with a circular piece of useless metal. Well, have you ever really looked at a CD? They are kind of pretty, especially on the data side, which has all kinds of pretty rainbows and star burst patterns on it when you hold it in the light just so. That’s why last Christmas I took some of my useless CDs, strung them with ribbon (recycled from somewhere else, of course), and hung them on our Christmas tree. I’ve also seen folks reuse CDs as drink coasters. And last spring, when my older daughter participated in an Odyssey of the Mind competition, we marveled at a team in her division that has crafted a butterfly costume out of used CDs. It was gorgeous–and food for thought for our costumes next year!

Finally, if you’ve got CDs that you can no longer use and you can’t figure out how to reuse them, then, believe it or not, you can recycle them. I just discovered The CD Recycling Center of America. Based in Salem, New Hampshire, not only does this company recycle the metal compact discs but also it will recycle the paper inserts and the jewel boxes that normally hold CDs, DVDs and software programs. This company works with everyone from individuals to schools that want to have a recycling drive, and you can get all of the details about sending them your CDs to be recycled here. Note: you will have to pay to send the CDs to the company, but at least it isn’t charging you a fee to do the actual recycling, which some of the older-school CD recycling facilities once did.

Are you aware of other ways to reuse or recycle CDs and DVDs? If so, share your ideas and tips by posting a comment.

My kids have only been out of school for three weeks, but according to advertisers, we’re about to go full on into back to school. I’ve seen a few clothing ads on TV, and the back-to-school issue of CosmoGirl arrived this past week (my older daughter subscribes), with cute fall clothes–and Vanessa Hudgens–on the cover. And in this week’s Sunday paper, there was a circular for Staples annual “1 cent deals,” which begins on today, Sunday, July 6 and goes through Wednesday, July 9. (It’s for brick-and-mortar stores only. If you search on Staples.com, you’ll find nothing as remotely cheap as one cent!) Though my daughters’ supplies list won’t be posted on the school’s website for at least another month, you can bet that I’m going to be heading to Staples in the next day or two to take advantage of things like 1 cent 8-packs of pencils and 1 cent 2-pocket folders.

I learned about the Staples 1 cent trick last year, which helped me cut my back-to-school shopping costs in half. (The National Retail Federation says that the average family spent $92 on school supplies last year; we spent about $90. However, the year before, when we hadn’t adopted any of these money-saving approaches, we spent nearly double that per kid!) This year I hoping that nother trick I’d learned last year–the school supply box, a concept I’d learned from another mother I know–will help us cut our school supplies shopping bill by even more.

Much like the gift closet, whereby you stockpile all-occasion gifts that you pick up on sale, the school supply box is the place where you stash leftover school supplies from the previous year–and that are still in good condition. In fact, right after the last day of school in June, we went through both of my daughters’ backpacks to see what kinds of supplies we could salvage. I think we turned up three or four spiral notebooks that their teachers had insisted the kids must have for the class but which, in reality, were barely touched. You can bet that those ended up in our school supplies box.

Truth is, I’ve been stockpiling would-be school supplies all year long, and our box is now overflowing, meaning that we’re going to have to add a second school supply box to the mix very soon–especially if we do hit up that Staples sale before it ends. But the good news is that we probably won’t need any spiral notebooks or three-hole-punched lined paper–we’ve got leftovers from last year. And I made sure that my daughters brought home all of their stretchy book covers from the past year’s textbooks so that we can reuse them this coming school year. Other items we’ll be reusing for sure include their book bags, locker locks (we have to supply our own) and lunch boxes.

What have you been able to stockpile or can reuse when it’s time for the kids to go back to school?

I hope that you’ve got something fun planned for this 4th of July or Independence Day here in the United States. (If you live elsewhere, it’s just another Friday at work, though, right?) Anyway, here in America we celebrate our independence in 1776 by having barbecues, enjoying family get-togethers and watching fireworks.

This year, you might be interested in green and frugal ways to celebrate this national holiday. Here are some suggestions:

* Park it and walk to your celebration
A local shopping district near where we live is hosting a sidewalk sale, food bazaar and free fireworks this weekend, along with free parking and a trolley that will take people back and forth to the more than 100 shops in the area. In addition, since the fireworks display will be held at a local high school, people can hop the trolley for that as well–leaving their car where they parked it when they first arrived. We hope to partake of all of this greenness today. I know that in New York City, the Macy’s 4th of July fireworks are always a huge draw, and people are encouraged to take mass transit to the viewing sites since major roadways are going to be shut down. Maybe this year you can figure out a way to enjoy the 4th without burning through too much gas or cash. Some towns and cities are even deeming their 4th of July celebrations this year as red, white and green (forget about blue), like the Green4th in Austin, Texas.

* Entertain at home
I know that I always enjoy having special dinners out, especially on a holiday, but with the cost of eating out on the rise, I would much rather entertain at home. Plus, if you decide to do some grilling or cooking outside, you won’t risk raising the temperature inside your house, which will kick your air conditioning (and your electric bill) into overdrive. In fact, if you can avoid using the stove, oven or even the dishwasher during the hottest parts of the day, you’ll keep your cool longer and your power bills lower. If you must cook in the house, give your Crock-Pot or slow cooker a go. These tend not to produce too much heat.

* Go reusable, not disposable
You may think that it’s better to use plates and utensils that you can throw away–and therefore avoid running the dishwasher–but it’s better for Mother Earth if you stick with reusable everything. As I wrote about in a recent posting, you’ll actually save energy overall by washing dishes in the dishwasher rather than buying disposables. Of course, the only exception to this rule is if you find disposables that are made of recycled plastic (like the Preserve brand from Recycline) or compostable/biodegradable materials (like the Biodegradable Store sells).

* Find natural ways to bring red, white and blue into your day
Instead of buying an expensive cake full of artificial preservatives and other unhealthy ingredients, look to your local farmer’s market or the produce aisle of your grocery store for natural options for a patriotic menu. I’m thinking about serving watermelon, potatoes and blueberries, as a start. Or you can try this recipe for potato salad made from red, white and blue potatoes from The Food Network’s website.

* Don’t forget to recycle
Regardless of where or how you choose to celebrate Independence Day, don’t forget to recycle any plastic, glass, aluminum of paper that you use. In fact, putting out visible recycling bins for guests to use (should you be entertaining at home) is one of the many useful tips on The Green Year blog posting “Hooray for the red, white and green!”

Would love to hear how you made your red, white and blue day a red, white, blue and green day. Happy 4th!

Most parents feel pride when their children accomplish something academically or athletically. I do, too, but that doesn’t compare to how I felt when both of my daughters ended up planning green birthday parties this year. I guess having the Lean Green Mom as a parent has started to rub off.

It all started when my younger daughter Annie decided that she wanted to have a home-based party. Annie is a very detail-oriented kid with clear ideas for executing an event that would make Martha Stewart proud. Annie decided that her party should be as close to a backyard barbecue as possible. One thing we had to have–a red-and-white checked tablecloth. Next, Annie envisioned her friends eating off of those notched trays, sort of like what you would find in a school cafeteria, and we searched high and low in home stores for them. Finally, we spied cherry red trays at Target and snapped up 20. Next we needed to get reusable glasses and then take-home cups for favors, which Annie was going to fill with candy. Finally, Annie decided that we would cook all of the food at home, and instead of a big, wasteful cake, she wanted a giant baked cookie with icing on it. Her friends were equally green in giving her gifts inside reusable purses or satchels, or gift bags that we could keep to reuse. That was just a sweet coincidence.

What’s great about Annie’s party decisions is so much of what we got for the party is reusable–the tablecloth, and the trays and cups, which are perfect for nights when we want to eat dinner outside. I don’t have to worry about anything dropping and breaking, and we don’t create any waste because we’re not using paper plates or cups. Plus, everything is dishwasher safe.

My older daughter Jane has planned a similarly eco-friendly party, though it will be very different in nature. She invited a group of her friends, via evite.com invitations, to our house for pizza and cake. Then, a short time later, we are driving all of the friends to a local minor league baseball stadium so we can take them all out to the ballgame. Because her friends’ parents only have to drive a short distance to our home to drop the kids off–and then we’re taking one rented vehicle with all of the kids in it to the baseball stadium–I feel like we’re collectively saving gas and cutting down on carbon emissions in how everyone is being transported. We will be taking everyone home in a similar manner, too.

OK, so they’re probably not the kind of green parties that an Ed Begley, Jr. would plan for his kids, but every little bit of green helps.