Hippy Green

Since I have been receiving some interesting about recycling programs such as swaptree and second rotation I decided to talk about a new one Green Sight.

Green Sight solves the problem of recycling old electronic good as well as created a program for retailers. To my amazement, Costco has joined up and you can not only recycle with them, but on SOME devices get PAID! Although to my laughter, I noticed their website had a MAJOR error, unless your buying your video equipment off of a truck, a CANNON (note the spelling below!) Digital MiniDV can get you $40 plus get it recycled.

I am pretty sure its Canon, but hey, it’s a Monday detail.

Anyway, I have a couple of CRT monitors and a old pentium 133mhz computer that should get recycled. Oh, and big note, only COSTCO member,can use this service, I have posted others ways to recycle on my blog.

I love hearing from other green blogs as well as stories/articles that are current or up and coming. Please feel free to submit any stories via our contact page. Thanks again for all of those who submit stories!

I recently received this story and wanted to post it up. This stories comes from the co-founder of Swaptree, Mark Hexamer.

As a former Vermonter let me congratulate you on a fantastic blog. Lots of great green tips, comments, and insights on there.

Since your both green and tech geek, I wanted to introduce you to a site I co-founded called www.swaptree.com. Swaptree is a unique website that allows you to swap and recycle your books, CDs, DVDs, and video games for free.

You simply list the items you have and the items you want, and Swaptree’s trade algorithms, instantly find the members who want what you have and have what you want. So on Swaptree one copy of Harry Potter The Deathly Hallows, can be traded to another member, and another, and another, saving trees and pollution in the process. After all do we really need 40 million copies of Harry Potter on the planet? Shouldn’t say 5 million be enough? Lets recycle all the paper AND all the books.

Moms (and their children) in particular may find Swaptree interesting. What mom hasn’t been frustrated when they buy a $55 dollar video game for their child, only for them to get bored of it 2 weeks later and want another, or when they spend $200 on Baby Einstein DVDs, only to have their child quickly move onto the Dora stage. With Swaptree, parents can trade through their children\’s\’ stages by simply listing what their children are no longer interested and trading them for the items they want now, for free.

Anyways I encourage you to take a look at the site and give it a try. I feel Swaptree is inline with the spirit of your blog, in that its all about sharing, recycling and consuming less.

Thanks in advance for your time, and let me know if you have any questions, and please keep up the good work.

Best

Mark Hexamer

Swaptree has also been covered on treehugger and on grist.org.

I took a look around Swaptree and am VERY impressed. I have always encourage recycling while moving as well as keeping green. Seeing this website I will be sure to test it out since I have over 200 DVDs. So take a look, give it a try, and comment below.

Just received a great article from Doug Fraim, Thanks! This is especially great because I have so many electronic devices that I need to properly recycle.

Today a company called Second Rotation announced a comprehensive service designed to give people an easy way to recycle unwanted items, be it an iPod, an xBox or an old GPS system. Second Rotation launched earlier this year and dedicated itself to giving people a place where they could trade in their unwanted gadgets for cash, keeping them out of the basement closet and most importantly, out of the trash, all while putting them into the hands of new owners. Now, you can now turn to Second Rotation to recycle items they have little to no value or are broken altogether and ensure that they never end up in the trash.
To identify which products it takes for recycling, Second Rotation has sifted through millions of online sales transactions for pre-owned gadgets to determine product values, and to identify products that are recyclable. In fact, a great deal of their research comes from monitoring eBay and seeing which items are not getting sold. Once a consumer identifies their recyclable product on www.SecondRotation.com, they can ship it for free in a box with another product they are looking to sell, or pay to ship it on their own. If the product in question is not listed in Second Rotation, consumers can contact the company and have that item added. With the addition of recyclable products, Second Rotation now tracks over 6,000 electronic products that it helps to keep out of landfills.

www.secondrotation.com

It seems everyone and their mom is jumping on the “green scene” trying to be “social responsible”, “organic”, and “environmental”. It just amazes me how much we have changed in the past couple of years, but then again we had help. (Thanks Al!)

Anyway, I was reading an interest article on small biz trends dot com about how their is a HUGE trend towards going Green!

Reading and seeing how companies like Eco Lips who sells organic lip balm has also pushed consumers to go “green” with other organic products. This article also gives facts such as 2.5 million plastic bottles are put into landfills every HOUR!

Anyway, I just see this trend with Big Business buying Green and wanted to stress that this is JUST THE START!

One thing that I have been MEANING To get off my chest is since my move out west I have seen HOW NOT GREEN ARIZONA IS!

Yes, you read that right, a place with at least 211 FULLY SUNNY DAYS a year, you would THINK this is PRIME REAL ESTATE FOR SOLAR! But if you live here, like I do, you will see that something as BASIC AS RECYCLING is MISSING!

My apartment complex DOES NOT have RECYCLING! I DID NOT believe this at first, but after much asking, they TOLD ME to THROW OUT ANY CANS, BOTTLE, ETC. UGH! Well, me being a bit Green inside, I collect all my recycling and drop it off at a friends house WHO DOES have recycling.

Think about this, we have a LARGE trend towards going GREEN, but something as simple as Recycling is NOT DONE due to (what I am told) COST! The city would RATHER DUMP BOTTLES then RECYCLE THEM! WTF!

On top of this, those towns WHO DO recycle put it ALL TOGETHER, so this means our TAX DOLLARS is PAYING SOMEONE TO SEPARATE IT! Growing up in New Jersey the “armpit of America” (from what I am told) will FINE YOU IF YOU DONT RECYCLE! I would ALWAYS see recycling in the cafeteria at schools, FORCED TO recycle batteries, boxes, glass, plastic, cans, etc. They have even mandatory a new ruling in the town I grew up, which requires you to “take the tops off bottles”. They WILL NOT take them if you DO NOT remove that CAP.

Okay, Sorry about that rant, but for a country that is divided we need to UNITE and NOT BY GOING TO WAR, but by looking within and HELP OURSELVES FIX REAL PROBLEMS then START NEW ONES.

If your are in the phoenix metro area and are thinking green, you should stop by and watch the feature film, “WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?”.
Its a great movie and there will be a gathering of others who want a change.
I will not make it tonight, but maybe the other dates.

Heres is the info you need to stop by and speak to other alternative thinkers.

DATES: WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 26, OCT. 3, AND OCT. 10
SHOWTIMES: 6:30 PM
LOCATION: HARKINS VALLEY ART
509 S. MILL AVE. (DOWNTOWN TEMPE)
TEMPE, AZ 85281
(Parking on 5th or 6th St. east of theater – free with validation)
FEATURE: WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?
SHORT: NOBELITY

If you do attend, please comment below and let me know how it goes.

As most of you know I have moved to Arizona and have been enjoying the “hippy” style out here with my prius. I have recently been shopping at Wild Oats and Whole Foods. Well tonight it finally hit me, how much more it costs for staying organic or even trying to buy products that have less carbon footprints. I am amazed at the price difference, but also the quality. I have fun myself much happier due to the amazing taste and well quality food, but have also saw a nice hit on my Credit Card/Bank accounts. It makes me wonder how so many people who want to go green, are staying green and not going red with their bills. I AM saving a lot on gas by having my prius, just hit 1300 miles and on my 4th tank of gas, not bad considering the A/C is ALWAYS ON and have been driving in traffic all last week.

Anyway, I wanted to post some questions and hope that some of my readers post comments about it, but let me know how your staying green without going red.

Do you find it hard to stay green or to buy organic? Do you think it’s worth the cost to help the environment as well as you body?

It seems with every new account I open along with the piles of junk mail I receive, there is always a lot of wasted paper. I have been meaning and trying to reduce my paper trail. I find it hard enough to shred all these documents that contain personal information about me as well as accounts to banks, credit cards, etc.

So what? Well, I have been moving to paperless with all my bank accounts, credit cards, and even insurances. I even found with USAA I save $50 every 6 months because is saves them money too! Imagine that, they pass along the savings.

Today I was going through my Google Reader and saw iJustine (so hot!) received a solid 300 page bill from AT&T for her iPhone. I was shocked! So after reading this I was l thought, wonder how bad mine WOULD have been. So I logged in and downloaded the PDF of my bill. 55 PAGES!!! Most of the bill shows data transfers, even though its UNLIMITED! WOW!

I find this unbelievable and can only imagine the cost to send out all these bill statements to their customers. I would SUGGEST and/or REQUEST people switch to paperless. Not only are you saving the planet 1 tree at a time, but hey maybe you can convince AT&T (if their WILLING) to pass their savings along to us by not having them kill so many trees and pay LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY ON SHIPPING!!!

Tonight at the NY Tech Meetup the meeting changed its agenda, instead of a couple of presentations getting 5 minutes, it was an unstructured conference. There were 20 topics that was chosen by raising hand and calling them out. After the topics were picked, you broke off into areas where the 20 groups meet to talk about the topic. One person in the audience gave the topic of Clean Tech. So I walked over to the group that was Clean Tech and talked to the people crowding around.

Clean Tech, what is that?… well after speaking to a number of the people who walked over there, it was a discussion of ideas from energy efficient computers to solar/wind farms. The ideas of going green in New York is picking up and there seems to be a growing need. I have blogged in the past about how NJ/NY/CT has large tax breaks for renewable energy, hudson going green, and taxi’s going hybrid by 2012, but I feel that as a community we need to do more!

While talking green, someone wondered in the group asked if a NY Green Meetup needs to get started. Sounds Good to me! The only problem for me, is I am moving to Arizona. Since I travel so much I might be able to attend some of the meetings if this gets started an/or telecommute to them via ichat. Anyway, I handed out my contact info and my link to a couple of people, so please let me help organize and/or post some information in the comments. Also someone asked about Green Events, greenfestphilly is an event I was contacted about and blogged about.

Lastly, if this is your first time visiting Hippy Green, please contact me if you have any cool green tech links to show off and/or news. I always enjoy guest blogging and promoting green tech events here.

The past friday Goveneror of New Jersey, Jon Corzine (D) signed a bill to bypass the Bush administration and passed the Global Warming Response Act, which requires teh cut of greenhouse gases in New Jersey by 16 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.

Other states are joining in on hitting the goal of a 80 percent cut in greenhouse gases within each state, but these goals are targets that each state has set rather then a requirement. New Jersey is leading the charge followed by California who has similar target goals, but is not a hard mandate.

This Act tries to cut emissions mainly in cars by enhancing public transportation, car-pooling, and using rail roads instead of trucks.

Jon Corzine is hoping this bill is a WAKE UP message to Washington telling them, DO SOMETHING NOW about greenhouse gases, and yet all I can think about is HOW FAR WE ARE FROM MISSING THE BOAT!

So we are exicted because we are CUTTING emissions, okay thats great, but Toyota is going completely hybrid by 2020. Lets set the bar HIGH and do the same. Lets tell GM, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler that you have to be completely hybrid by 2015! This can be as simple as putting some battires and a regenerative braking system in place! We already have a car company who is rasing the bar but will only have an outreach to the upper class and not middle America.

Jon, I am with you on sticking it to Washington and trying to go green, but we need the technology behind it to invest and fund these projects that will give a larger piece of the pie. If you really want to see some changes taking place, contact Google! Google has enough cash to buy GM! Think about that as a possibility…

I was recently contacted by Christina, who is setting up GreenFestPhilly to help spread the world. I am not sure yet if I will be around that weekend, but if so I think I might come on down. Anyway, here are some short and sweet details about GreenFestPhilly.

GreenFestPhilly, a subsidiary of Urban Green Partnership, is organizing a huge green street festival on Sept. 9, 2007. The festival will take place on South Street in Center City Philadelphia, and run from 11am until 6pm. Featuring more than 130+ exhibitors, a number of green events including an on-site green wedding, a sustainable fashion show, an eco poetry project, and a MusicEcology concert, this event is all about “serious fun”. Various activities for adults and children alike! Save the planet. Save money. Save the date.

Website: www.greenfestphilly.org
Email: GreenFest@UrbanGreenPartnership.org.