Monthly Archives: August 2007

Office Depot’s Green Tips

I was reading over at TreeHugger about the work Office Depot is doing to encourage people to be more green. I’d noticed the campaign before, but hadn’t looked at it much. I buy office supplies so rarely.

They have a pretty good guide for buying green on their site, as well as other information for those wanting to consider the environment as they shop.

No matter where you do your shopping, having an idea as to how to keep it greener is nice. So much comes down to simply recycling and using recycled items, along with knowing how much you really need to buy.

At this time of year, I’m more interested in how to green my school supply shopping than anything else. In some ways that’s similar to how you shop for an office, especially as the kids get older. My daughter is entering kindergarten, however, so there aren’t too many similarities yet. She just has so few needs.

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Newsweek and the Global Warming Hoax

Looks like the current Newsweek should be an interesting read. I read about it over on Green Options. They’re looking into the global warming deniers. You can read the article online, which saves needing to buy the magazine.

With a $10,000 reward for scientists willing to deny global warming, the people who don’t want it to exist are pretty serious about making it look bad. Never mind the chances that it’s a real problem. They’d rather keep earning their money without worrying about consequences.

I’ve said it before. Global warming or no, the environment needs better care. We’ve made progress in some ways through the years, and now have more rules protecting the environment from the most obvious of abuses. But global warming is one heck of a risk to take.

Let’s see… if we’re wrong about global warming and/or the causes, the worst that happens is we spend money cutting back on pollution for no reason.

At best, we give the human race a chance to survive in reasonable comfort. Hmm… that’s such a difficult choice, really. Your money or your life, potentially.

Go read the article. It’s always good to keep up on what the naesayers are trying to get people to believe.

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Getting Out of the House

Have you taken much advantage of summer yet?

Getting out into nature is an absolute must so far as I’m concerned. I don’t much care whether it’s a trip to the beach, camping or hiking, but I love to get my family out and active.

throwing rocks

I’ll be the first to admit that this is not easy. It’s especially true in my case where we only have one car, so if my husband is at work the rest of us are limited to where we can walk to. No problem – the park is about 10-15 minutes away by foot, even with kids. And they do love the playground there.

But for serious, getting out of the house stuff, we haven’t done that well this year. Not the way I would like, at least. No camping trips yet, and none on the horizon. It’s just been a busy, busy summer.

We are taking a trip soon, but it’s to visit my dad, not to camp or anything like that. It’s been about 3 years since we went to his house (but we’ve seen him other times), so we’re really due for that as I see it. But I’m thinking if we can swing it, next year needs a nice, long camping trip. We’ve really done much too little of that.

What is your family’s favorite way to get out of the house?

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Greening the Kiddie Pool

I have to admit that I love my kiddie pool. It’s a great way to allow the kids to cool off in the hot weather we get here without turning on the air conditioner.

We have a fairly large kiddie pool. It’s one of the ones that inflates through three rings, and the water gets a foot and a half to two feet deep, and about six feet in diameter. Part of our backyard is wood chips that the landlords put in. I destest these, as they’re the wrong sort for walking on, and give splinters like mad, but it means we can put up the pool on an otherwise useless section of yard.

kiddie pool

It’s a lot of fun for the entire family and it has really helped my kids to comfortably advance their swimming skills. My son, at 2-1/2 has gone from clinging when we take him in a big pool, to propelling himself around just a bit.

Some of that’s scary, since he thinks he can do more than he can. But we’re aiming for twice a week at a big pool so that he learns quickly.

It’s helped my daughter improve too. She’s 5 and it’s just deep enough that she can practice her swimming. In a big pool she seems to now be inventing her own sort of breaststroke. Given that we weren’t able to sign her up for swimming lessons this year, I’m pretty impressed.

But I do always feel a little bit bad about kiddie pools. They aren’t the most environmentally sensitive thing to have. But I do what I can. Continue reading →