Is my trash your treasure? If you own any TerraCycle products, there's a chance it was once my own trash. Because each month, over 200,000 pounds of trash end up in this eco-friendly company's warehouse to be reused in new products.

If you stepped foot into any Walmart during the Earth Day season, you may have seen their Capri-Sun pouch backpacks displayed next to bulk packs of Capri-Sun and perhaps you even purchased their Skittle package kite that was positioned next to the sweet rainbow tasting Skittles candies.
                       
What TerraCycle does is revolutionary to the green industry. Instead of using organic materials, they use recycled materials. The image above illustrates how an ordinary Pepsi bottle and recycled spray cap are turned into the perfect plant food sprayer. Other well known brand names like Capri-Sun and Skittles are also being collected and redesigned into usable items like TerraCycle plant food, coolers and kites, to name a few.
                    
This concept of re-using items to create new items, was displayed most artistically by some of my favroite artists, Sue Webster and Tim Noble. Their art is compiled of trash fresh off the streets of London. By projecting light through the meticulously placed trash, this duo has most certainly lived up to Terracycle's motto, "Outsmart Waste."

To collect the recyclable goods for new TerraCycle products, major companies like Kraft Foods Inc., Kellogg Co., and  and Nabisco have organized trash drives in schools. You can start your own TerraCycle brigade in your school or community too.
           
Other companies are sending TerraCycle their trash in hopes to offset their carbon footprints. Cumbersome cardboard boxes and wasteful plastic wrap used to package goods are usually tossed into dumps, but by donating these materials to TerraCycle, businesses are able to contribute to sustainable living.
Unfortunately, as this garbage is sent to TerraCycle warehouses there is not enough demand to produce more materials. Their eco-friendly initiatives are making a dent, but after a major Earth Day promotion, they're still seeing losses.

Retailers are being urged to carry TerraCycle items and with hope that they're able to survive in our economy, larger scale eco-friendly products can be created and even greater environmentally friendly initiatives can be taken.

40 years ago, on April 22nd, 1970 Gaylord Nelson took a stand for the environment. The democratic Govenor of Wisconson founded Earth Day as "an environmental demonstration" designed to teach people about conservation issues. The premise was simple: "All people, regardless of race, gender, income, or geography have a moral right to a healthy sustainable environment." One might argue that truer words have never been spoken.

40 years ago, on April 22nd, 1970, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day. Today, it is estimated that 1.5 BILLION people will undertake 31 billion acts of green organized by 19,000 organizations in 190 countries. This astounding fact shows how far we've come in the past 40 years, but one monumental truth remains: the damage facing our environment is more prominent than ever. I now pose a question:  Yes, Earth Day is today. But what about tomorrow?

Today is the day when the world will be bombarded with "green" facts. It's our duty as environmentally concerned individuals to make sure that these facts are not just shared today, but tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. Everyone will be told that bringing a reusable tumbler to the coffee shop will help cut down on paper waste, but will they do that? Everyone will be told that bringing reusable grocery bags to the grocery store will cut down on the billions of plastic bags that end up in landfills, but how many people will be toting their non-woven totes into the store? We need to lead by example and make our voices heard. We need to stand up for Earth Day on April 23rd. We need to stand up for Earth Day on May 4th. We need to stand up for Earth Day on Memorial Day and on the 4th of July and on Halloween. We need to stand up for Earth Day on Thanksgiving and on New Year's Day.

We need to lead by example and encourage others to join us. We need to stand up for Earth Day every day of the year because the truth of the matter is that Earth Day isn't really about today. It's about tomorrow.

At Motivators, we like to think that everyday is Earth Day. One April 22nd the world will join together to celebrate the beautiful world around us and combat the rising environmental issues we face. Our Earth Day promotional items will help to spread the word about living an eco-friendly lifestyle, but our eco-mission doesn't stop there.

We've partnered with the American Forests Global ReLeaf program to help give back to the environment. For every eco-friendly promotional product order we receive, we plant a tree. But as a part of our Earth Day efforts, we're practically planting a forest.

Our Earth Day Tree Campaign extends the ReLeaf program to our standard promotional products orders as well. However, to encourage customers to choose environmental items, we'll plant two trees for any eco-friendly promotional products on-line order. Even after our Earth Day promotion is over, we'll keep on planting those trees to show our dedication to the environment.

Want to join in on the eco-action? Learn how to plant your own tree! Not only is it something great to do for the environment, but it is a fun process that can bring people together while brightening up any home or office yard.

As Earth Day approaches, green efforts are popping up all over the community. Starbucks kicked things off yesterday with their, "Bring a travel mug, get a free coffee" green promotion. A local bar is promoting a $25 personalized beer glass on Earth Day. Bring it to the bar all spring and summer and receive free beer. And from Africa to Alabama people are organizing environmental events.

North Olympic Peninsula National Park is offering a free nature walk. From this Saturday through April 25th, admission to the National park will be waived as a part of their Earth Day celebration.
                        
From Earth Day 2010 events organized at the White house, to a fun road side clean up in your neighborhood, great sustainable efforts are being made. The most note worthy name of an effort I've found, is, "Who's Your Mama?" The awesome Earth Day film festival has been running since 2007 and accepts submissions of films with the theme of eco-friendliness.

What are the Earth day events in your community? Whether you're planting a garden in the park or collecting trash on the parkway, your Earth Day efforts will help to spread sustainability. And to help spread the word about your green beliefs, incorporate eco-friendly promotional products into every Earth Day 2010 celebration.

Earth Hour took place last Saturday, March 27th. Across the globe, people were asked to turn off the lights at 8:30 PM and to keep them out for an hour in an effort to reduce climate change. An estimated 1 billion people participated in the event in 125 different countries. Check out the story of Earth Hour youtube style here.

World Wildlife Fund President and CEO Carter Roberts said, "Earth Hour is about Americans and people throughout the world standing up and saying ‘climate change is real and we need to do something about it now. From coast-to-coast, Americans provided strong affirmation that they are ready for the U.S. to be a leader in the green revolution."
                                 
Motivators recently ordered a big batch of imprinted recycled jar openers for our appearance at the Go Green Expo. Imprinted on each of the custom printed fluorescent Light Bulb Retread jar openers were the words, "Turn Out Your Lights!" Below it was the information for Earth Hour and their website address. On the other side were the words, "Turn On Your Branding!" and our Motivators contact information. We thought these were especially perfect for the green event because they're actually made out of post-consumer tires.
                                       
We made sure to reserve some of our eco-friendly promotional products for use at a later date. So, the week before Earth Hour, a couple Motivators headed out and hit the local streets with our giveaways. We hung out by the supermarket where shoppers graciously accepted out jar openers with their jars of spaghetti sauce and were excited to hear about the special event. We went to a tire store up the road and told them that these jar openers could be made out of their tires. They agreed to take a stack of our items and keep them on the counter for their customers.

      
Then on Saturday, I walked around the neighborhood and went door to door to promote the event in homes and businesses. I reached some very enthusiastic people and was so happy to spread the message of sustainability.

Unfortunately, at 8:30 PM I was at work at the Vanderbilt Planetarium doing a light show. I know, I knoooooooooow! It's awful of me! But work called and I didn't feel as guilty considering that many homes in our local Westbury shut the lights off because of Motivators.

Now let's gear up for Earth Day!

Earth Day, which will be celebrated on Wednesday, is a good time to look at the way electronics are using and wasting energy.

Among the culprits are devices that suck power while not in use. I'm not sure how they arrived at this figure, but the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that, "in the average home, 75 percent of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off."

The government advises unplugging devices or using a power strip to turn them off, but this is sometimes inconvenient as it will disable remote controls and, in some cases, require the device to go through a time-consuming start-up.

Some devices are designed to run 24 hours a day. Digital video recorders, for example, are always standing-by to record your programs. About 18 months ago, I put an energy meter on some of the devices in my home and discovered that my TiVo was using 30 watts 24/7 and a Motorola Comcast PVR I was using at the time was sucking 40 watts, regardless of whether it was recording a program.

Little power bricks also consume electricity even when nothing is connected to them, so it's a good idea to unplug items like cell phone chargers and iPod chargers when not in use.

Many people leave their personal computers on 24 hours a day. If the machine successfully goes into sleep mode, the power drain is relatively low. But it's not uncommon, especially for Windows systems, for the machine to run at full-throttle when it should be sleeping.

If you do leave your machine turned on - even while at lunch - try to configure it to go into sleep or "stand-by" mode after, say, 15 or 20 minutes of inactivity.

In theory, it will wake up as soon as you touch the keyboard or move the mouse. Unfortunately, Windows sleep mode doesn't always work properly. Sometimes it fails to go into standby. And if it does fall asleep, it sometimes fails to wake up properly. There are a variety of reasons for this, including some software that demands full power. But often the culprit is one or more device drivers or USB devices that either fails to let the machine sleep or interferes with its ability to wake up.

Screen saver software does not save energy. It's much better to turn off your monitor when you take a break. CO2 Saver, a free program for Windows XP and Vista, can help you manage your PC's sleep behavior.

In my limited experience as a beta tester, Windows 7 seems to do a better job at sleeping and waking than Vista or Windows XP, but this is machine and software dependent. So until we see widespread deployment, we won't know if Microsoft has solved the problem. Mac OS X seems to be less prone to insomnia or failing to wake up, but it's not exempt from these problems.

PCs with ultra-fast processors and display adapters tend to use more power than somewhat slower systems. In general, notebook PCs are considerably more energy efficient than desktops, partially because they're designed to run on batteries and also because they have built-in screens that are powered from the same power supply as the rest of the machine. All-in-one desktops are generally more eco-friendly than machines with an external monitor.

Even though it doesn't affect your own power meter, the electrical demands of Internet services also add up. Every time you do something online, a server somewhere might have to access a hard drive while routers throughout the Internet are using energy to transmit the data that you're sending and receiving. I'm not suggesting you cut back on Internet use - just be aware that it's not carbon free.

And speaking of carbon, a McAfee-commissioned report issued last week by ICF International found that 62 trillion pieces of spam sent in 2008 had the same environmental impact as 3.1 million passenger cars or 2.4 million U.S. homes. A single piece of junk e-mail adds 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide, which is like driving three feet.

The ICF report estimates that e-mail from the average business user accounts for 288 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, with 22 percent of that usage related to spam. More than half the energy wasted by spam results from users viewing and deleting it, according to the report.

The process of getting spam from one place to another involves multiple phases - all of which consume energy. First, there is the scraping of Web sites to harvest e-mail addresses, followed by code and copy writing to initiate the spam campaign. Next comes sending the messages via the Internet to an army of infected "zombie PCs," all of which use energy to receive and retransmit the messages. Then there is the impact on servers that store and send the spam, the routers and other Internet infrastructure, and, of course, the PCs that finally receive and display the junk mail.

Add to that the resources used to attempt to filter the spam and it's easy to understand the potential environmental impact. If every in-box had spam filters, according to the report, we could cut energy waste by 75 percent. But eliminating spam at the source would save even more.

Via: Stop Global Warming

Looking to shed a few pounds before the summer? Losing weight is not only great for your health -- it's also good for the environment.

The following suggestions will help reduce your waistline and your impact on the planet.

• Eat fresh fruits, vegetables, and other real foods. High amounts of salt, sugar, and other unhealthy ingredients can hide in packaged foods. In fact, some flavored yogurts can contain more sugar than ice cream, according to Dara O'Rourke at GoodGuide, a database that can help you find healthy and environment-friendly foods. Manufacturing, packaging, and transporting processed foods to the store typically requires a large amount of energy and resources.
  
• Stay away from high-fructose corn syrup. It can make you fat and is linked to diabetes. Massive amounts of fertilizers are used to grow corn, and these chemicals are eroding America's soil and polluting the Gulf of Mexico.
  
• Choose lean protein such as chicken, eggs, sustainable seafood, and legumes. It's not high in saturated fat and fills you up so you're not looking for your next meal too quickly. Red meat, in particular, takes a huge toll on the environment. Raising livestock is one of the most significant contributors to a long list of environmental problems from climate change to deforestation to water pollution.
  
• Replace high-calorie soft drinks with filtered tap water. Obviously, anything you can do to cut calories is a win for your body. How does it benefit the earth? Fewer resources are needed to make bottles and cans and ship them to stores. It also puts less pressure on landfills.
  
• Cook your own meals instead of eating out at restaurants. It's harder to control portions when you go out to eat, and you have no control over whether healthy ingredients are used to prepare your meal. Besides, restaurants end up wasting a lot of perfectly good food.
  
• Walk and bike more. Exercise is a major component of any healthy weight loss program. You'll burn more calories and less gas by leaving your car at home.
  
• Don't deprive yourself. Satisfy your sweet tooth with a little bit of fair-trade dark chocolate. Studies show that the antioxidants present in dark chocolate can help lower blood pressure. Fair-trade cocoa farmers are paid fair wages, which allows them to take good care of their land.  

Via:http://green.yahoo.com/blog/the_conscious_consumer/65/diet-tips-that-save-the-planet.html

Personalized Roll Up Tote Bag Earth Friendly

Promote your company and also help reduce the impact on the environment with this custom branded ultra convenient roll up tote. This high quality eco friendly tote bag is constructed from 120G Polyethylene terephthalate (recycled plastic bottles). This egreen tote bag is sleek and stylish with compact roll up feature. This personalized eco friendly tote bag features a large imprint area to display your logo and message while helping our planet. So please visit Motivators.com Earth day giveaways section to get ideas how to promote your brand and save the planet at the same time. Here at Motivators, we care about saving the planet. That's why, whenever you place an order for this tote bag or any other eco-friendly promotional items, Motivators will plant a tree through the American Forests Global ReLeaf Fund. It's just one simple way we can do our part in helping make a difference. So consider the planet this April, and advertise your business at the same time with these custom printed Earth Day giveaways.