Category: Frugality/Frugal Fun

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , , ,

Maybe once or twice a year, I actually get an unsolicited bulk e-mail that is targeted, relevant, and has a subject line that makes me open it. nd while I absolutely detest spam, I don’t object to this. If I am exactly the right audience for an offer, it’s not spam; it means a company is doing its homework and compiling a list of actual prospects.

This morning, I got one with the subject, “recycle related/reuse and swap search engine.” Since I write about the environment and have a 40-year commitment to encouraging reuse, I opened the e-mail.

This is an excerpt:

ecofreek.com is a search engine that searches the web for free and ‘for swap/trade’ items people no longer need from over 45+ major sources, providing the most diverse and accurate results anywhere in the world.

Also included are items for trade like books, sports equipment, antiques, automobiles, bicycles, motorcycles, CDs/DVDs, computers, property, seeds/gardening supplies, and lots more.

We also encourage people to exchange and re-use items though our search engine and also our ‘places to give things away’ section. Feel free to recommend us new resources as well, we have a section we link to other environmental/green sites.

We hope you enjoy your experience at our site and welcome any and all feedback.
Please contact me for any questions about our site/service or working together.

Sincerely,
Nicole Boivin – Founder

She also included her personal e-mail and phone number.

So I went over to look, and I like what I found (mostly).

As a longtime participant in Freecycle.org, I was interested to compare. I found several major differences:

1. The search engine is elegant and allows you to choose a geographic area ranging from your own town or US state to anywhere in the world. Freecycle restricts you to your own community.

2. Ecofreek is web-based, rather than e-mail-driven, which means you can search for what you want instead of just posting a wanted or offered notice and hoping for response.

3. Freecycle is about gifting. While gifting is an option at Ecofreek, swaps are also encouraged.

I did get very weird results when I clicked a suggested link (not a database result) for free samples of Kashi. And I do see that this site will need to be prepared to deal with people spamming the message boards (I saw one or two noncommercial spams). But I think it’s a good addition to the frugality and environmentalism toolbox.

And I will write to Nicole and ask her how I get listed in the environmental section she referred to.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

According to a new study by Environmental Health Perspectives, biking instead of driving for trips under five miles turns out not only to be healthful, cleaner, more fun, etc.–it’s also apparently good for the economy to replace car trips with bike trips.

As a long-term bike fan (and sometime bike commuter all the way back to high school), I’m not surprised.

(via @undriving)

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business Tagged with ,

Fascinating article by Marc Stoiber on how Patagonia’s latest environmental initiatives tells customers not to buy what they don’t need, and to make what they do buy last forever. And if it doesn’t last forever, Patagonia will take it back and recycle it for you.

It may be counter to common logic, but Stoiber thinks this will increase sales, and tells why. And I agree, for reasons I cite in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green—that caring and an envirnmental/soial justice agenda build fans and build the brand.

Patagonia is always a great company to watch and learn from, and this initiative does not surprise me.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business Tagged with , , ,

With all the partisan conflict gridlocking Washington, it’s refreshing to read about a 16-year-old partnership between deep environmentalists and deep conservatives.

The “Green Scissors” project, with participation from the likes of Friends of the Earth on the environmental side and the Heartland Institute among the conservative groups, targets $380 billion in wasteful government spending that happens to also foster environmentally negative impact.

Among the programs suggested for the chopping block:

  • Ethanol Excise Tax Credit
  • $49.6 billion in subsidies for the troubled, environmentally disastrous nuclear power industry
  • $109.6 billion in highway subsidies
  • A $5 billion natural gas subsidy

Download your own copy of this year’s (and previous years’) reports at https://www.foe.org/green-scissors.

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Demographics/Psychographics, Frugality/Frugal Fun, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life, Web 2.0/Social Media

flashmob:“a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual act for a brief time, then disperse.” (Wikipedia)

For the year or so that I’ve been watching the occasional video of flashmobs gathering in public places to perform, I’ve wished I could be part of one. But I didn’t wish strongly enough to organize one.

All the videos I’ve been sent took places in major cities like Amsterdam and Philadelphia. I live in a very rural area whose biggest city (Springfield, MA) has a population of only 155,629. And yet, to make a flashmob, you only need a dozen or so people.

I think a lot of the allure of flashmobs is that for the most part, we live in a society where entertainment is provided, prepackaged. Until 1877 when Edison invented the phonograph, if you wanted to hear music, you gathered some friends with instruments and songbooks and made some. If you wanted a theater experience, you played charades. Public concerts outside of major cities were few and far between. Now, every tiny town has live music 20 or 30 nights a year, and many have music every weekend night all year long. We are, for the most part, deprived of the opportunity to not only make our own entertainment but perform it for others. The flashmob at the Holyoke Mall had one day’s notice, no rehearsal. Singers were to wear a solid color indicating their part (my alto wife wore green, other parts wore red or white)—and of course, many people who just happened to be there joined in the singing.

Thursday, I received an e-mail from the organizer of a local folk music sing-along: a flashmob would gather the following day to sing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus at the food court of the largest shopping mall near us, the Holyoke Mall (halfway between our house and Springfield, in a town of 40,005). On a Friday night just before Christmas, it would certainly have an audience. Better still, it was organized by the local opera company; the singing would be worth hearing.

The next morning, my wife, D. Dina Friedman, who sings in a community chorus, got an e-mail about the event that went out to all the chorus members. This was looking better and better. And the timing was perfect; we could drop our son off for the final rehearsal of his school’s winter show, go sing, and be back at school in plenty of time to watch him perform.

The singing was magical. Sound coming from every corner of the large and crowded food court, and a few stunningly stellar voices rising above the crowd. It reminded me of the time more than 30 years ago that I happened to be out on a lawn at my college while the chorus was rehearsing for their upcoming tour, and they invited me to stand within their circle and be surrounded by beautiful sound.

What amazed me the most, though, was not the event, but the aftermath. By the time we returned home after Rafael’s show, when I went to post something on Twitter, I found links to at least two different videos, including this very high quality one posted on the Springfield newspaper’s site.

I sent the link around, and got a couple of “wish I was there” or “how did you find out?” responses. And then last night, I went to a different performance, more than 40 miles away from the shopping mall at a retreat center in a really remote area (it happens to be the most beautiful house I know, one I love to visit for this annual storytelling concert)—and at intermission, I heard people talking about the flashmob and wishing they had known ahead.

In other words, even without a big-city backdrop, this flashmob had an impact well beyond the borders of the food court. E-mail made the event possible; social media gave it permanent life. “And I say to myself/What a wonderful world.”

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, People Helping People, poverty, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , ,

This time of year, we spend an astonishing amount of time dealing with food: harvesting from our garden, making salads, cooking, preserving, giving or occasionally selling surplus…but it is SO worth it!

Long before we had a garden of our own, I’ve been an advocate of local community food self-sufficiency. Not that a neighborhood or village would grow all its own food, but even the most urban could grow some vegetables and herbs, some berries.

Food is a basic necessity, and as such should be a right (ditto for drinkable water and health care, among other things). But in many poor communities, there are few gardens and not even any supermarkets. Rooftops, vacant lots, and even windowsills could change this—and in the process, empower residents, break down barriers, form friendships, save people money…and introduce folks to the absolute joy of eating fresh organic produce grown right where you are.

Yesterday, I made a batch of pure tomato sauce: no oil, no water, no herbs, no onions or garlic, just fresh ripe garden tomatoes, cooked in their own juice for several hours, until the sauce was about a third of the original volume, and had a flavor so royally rich you’d think it was made of 24-karat gold. Today, it was Dina’s night to cook. Earlier today, she went and got a couple of pounds of green beans out of the garden (along with another 40 full-size and 125 cherry tomatoes, enough corn for our lunch, celery, eggplant, edemame, zucchini, and I forget what else). She cooked the beans lightly for a few minutes in my super-intense tomato sauce and served them over couscous. WOW! Served with a salad of our own cucumbers and tomatoes and lettuce from our local CSA farm, plus some Turkish olives and feta cheese, it was a fabulous dinner.

Today, I made another batch of that good sauce (most of which we’re freezing for the winter), a batch of zucchini pickles, and a batch of dried tomatoes. Dina processed the leeks for freezing. I confess, we’re putting in a couple of hours a day. It really helps that I work at home and that Dina doesn’t have to go teach at the university in the summer. Seems like every break I take from the computer I am dealing with food. But come January, when the produce you can buy is almost inedible, we will pull some of our bounty from the freezer or from the dried stash in the pantry, and we will enjoy locally grown meals almost as good as those we’re feasting on now.

It’s an experience that should be shared widely. I feel very sorry for those people who’ve never had a REAL fresh tomato. Comparing it to a supermarket tomato is like comparing a perfectly aged French triple-cream gourmet cheese with Velveeta.

And I feel grateful not only to live in a place where we can have a garden, but in a time when consciousness of local organic and fresh foods is high, and where food is helping people know their neighbors and boost their nutrition.

Yes, a tomato can change the world.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun Tagged with , , , ,

I just found out today is World Water Day, which you can read about at https://liveearth.org/en/liveearthblog/celebrate-world-water-day.

Water is something far too many of us take for granted, but I believe it will be one of the most important resource issues of the coming years—something that could actually dwarf oil in importance, over time. After all, we have many options to fuel our appliances, vehicles, factories, schools, and homes, among them solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, magnetism, flywheel power, etc. But without clean water, we die—end of story.

Water is so important that I devote 28 of the 111 tips in my e-book Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle to conserving and handling water.

I’ll give you one of those tips now, because it’s a really easy behavior to change and is one of the biggest residential wastes of water:

#60. Wet the toothbrush with a small trickle of water, and then turn the water off! Turn it back on to rinse the toothpaste off the brush at the end. A family of four could save hundreds of gallons every month just from this simple trick.

(You can get all 111 tips for the princely sum of $9.95 US).

We need to look at our “water finprint” just as hard as we look at our carbon footprint. Start saving today.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, People Helping People Tagged with , , ,

Today is Blog Action Day, and this year, the international day of action focuses on climate change.

I could write about climate change for days, but I’ll keep it simple. Here are some quick, easy, painless things you can do to lower your carbon footprint, and some of them will save you a nice pile of money this coming winter, too.

  • Buy foam outlet insulator pads and plastic baby-fingers-out-of-electrical-outlet protectors, and install them in all the outlets on the outside walls of your house. You’ll be amazed and how much cold air you keep outside.
  • Eat for a day, or at least a meal, only foods grown within 100 miles (organically grown, if possible), and stop supporting the carbon-intensive culture of shipping foods all around the world instead of supporting local economies. You can get local produce, breads, dairy, and meat in most parts of the world.
  • Leave your car at home and go by bike, public transit, or on foot. In congested cities, it’s actually often faster to take a bike for distances up to about five miles; in more rural areas, it’s more like two miles. If that’s impractical, park your car in one central location and do all your errands without moving the car. I sometimes throw my bike on a bike rack, drive to one place, and then bike to all the stores I need to visit.
  • Saturday, October 24, is an international day of climate action. Click on the link. to locate (and participate in) an event near you.
  • Sign the Blog Action Day climate change petition, which has the support of Al Gore and others.
  • Do one thing to demonstrate a positive and easy change to someone in your life who’s skeptical that we can be Green without suffering.

    Need more tips? Spend a princely $9.95 on my e-book, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life—With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun

    I’m always looking for ways to keep stuff out of the trash, and I’ve been saying for years that we ought to collect and recycle the prodigious offerings of fur that our dog and cat leave around the house–that someone could spin it into yarn or stuff pillows out of them. But actually doing it was more than I wanted to bite off, so I either deposit the pet hair in the compost, put small quantities outside for birds to line their nests with, or (gasp!) throw it out.

    Today, I discovered someone has actually been running a business making yarn out of pet hair, since 2001, and has a long waiting list for the product.. Yee-haw!

    But VIP Fibers‘ market isn’t me; it’s people who want quality yarn from their own pet and are willing to pay to get the yarn made. Since I would never actually use the yarn, I’ll have to keep on searching.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun Tagged with , , ,

    While you’re reading this, I’m on my way back from the California desert. I’m actually writing it before I depart, from my home in Massachusetts where there’s plenty of water. But going to the desert, where water is taken for granted, always makes me reflect on how profligate we are with water, and how sorry we’ll be about that a couple of decades down the road.

    Yes, I believe that within my children’s lifetime, the price of water will soar, its availability will decrease, and we’ll have a serious resource crisis. Actually more serious than the oil crisis. There are plenty of energy substitutes for oil; we can easily generate the power we need from clean, renewable sources: sun, wind, water, and especially a complete rethinking of what is possible in the way of energy conservation. Reading people like Amory Lovins makes me aware that as a society, we could easily reduce our energy consumption by 80 percent or so, without any negative impact on quality of life.

    Water is not nearly as replaceable as oil. Human beings, other animals, and all the plants we rely on directly or indirectly for food need sources of clean water, and the supply is not infinite. So it’s incumbent on us not to squander the good water we have, through waste or pollution.

    The good news: like oil, water use could be sharply curtailed without any negative impact on lifestyle. I estimate that I probably use no more than 1/10 as much water as the average American–and I’ve met people who use 1/10 as much as I do. I’m not suggesting you collect buckets of rainwater and use them to flush your toilet, as one woman I talked to recently is doing. But I do suggest you look at the obvious places where you’re running water harder and longer than you need to.

    Here’s one simple, totally painless example: if you’re like most Americans, when you brush your teeth, you turn the water on (often full-force) and let it run for three minutes or so while you brush. When I brush my teeth, I do it like this: Wet the toothbrush with a small trickle of water, and then turn the water off! Turn it back on to rinse the toothpaste off the brush at the end. So instead of several gallons each time, I consume a couple of ounces of water.

    Want to know more? 28 of the 111 conservation tips (yeah, I snuck in a bonus tip) in my e-book, Painless Green: 110 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle, are about saving water.

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