Free Shipping Day has the potential to do so much good for the environment.  Visit www.freeshippingday.com for information including which retailers are participating.

Online shopping usually slows down as we get closer to Christmas because shoppers don’t want to pay expedited shipping charges. So shoppers get in their vehicles and drive from store to store and mall to mall to find their last minute gifts.

By offering shoppers one last chance to purchase their gifts online with guaranteed arrival by Christmas (while also giving them free shipping) this late into December, retailers are doing an immense amount of good for the environment.

According to Dr. Julia Edwards of the IMRG Online Green Awards 2008 online shopping can have 27 times less of a negative impact on the environment.

“The carbon emission of each item bought online and delivered to the customer is 132 grams of CO2. A staggering 27 items need to be bought on a dedicated car journey to the shops to achieve the same level of efficiency.”

Here’s a few tips on how you can be even greener with your online shopping.

• Order more than one item from a retailer in a single purchase to reduce packaging materials and transportation impacts to the environment.
• Recycle the packaging materials from your purchase.
• Select ground shipping methods over air shipping methods when ever possible.

Do your part for the environment. Ditch the car and go online to do your last-minute holiday shopping.

GreenGal's Green Baby

That's right - I had a baby 4 weeks ago which is why I haven't kept up on my blog lately.  However, I want to share with you how I'm staying "green" as a parent.

Cloth Diapers - Don't let anyone fool you.  These aren't any harder to deal with than disposables these days and clean up can be a breeze. 

When we first started with the cloth diapers we were rinsing them by hand in the toilet. Needless to say, it was a bit messy and gross.  I also used a lot more water because I washed my hands for a lot longer after each toilet dunking.  However, we now have a sprayer attachment to the toiilet and we can easily spray, um, deposits off of the diapers quickly before sticking diapers in the pail.  Voila!  Messy situation resolved. 

FYI - we purchased our diapers at www.greenmountaindiapers.com if anyone is interested.  There are lots of places out there to purchase cloth, fitted diapers.  In the future we're likely to continue using Green Mountain diapers unless I can find used ones for sale or donation.  Since our son came slightly earlier than expected, we had to hurry and get some into our house after he was born.

There are numerous studies out there (feel free to Google them)  that show that over the course of a child's diapered life, using cloth diapers is cheaper (by up to a few thousand bucks!) than disposables, even including water usage, than disposables.  Also, the environment is significantly less harmed in the making of and disposing of the diapers.  Think about it - when we're done with the diapers we can re-sell them to other new parents or give them away through Freecycle.

I'll continue to share my green parenting...please ask questions!

Montgomery Co. (MD) Upgrades Recycling Program

I'm so excited to share this news with everyone.  The county I live in - Montgomery County, Maryland - has upgraded it's recycling program to include more items that can be recycled!

The program now accepts the following items in their curbside recycling bins (and at the solid waste centers around the county):

This means that I can now reduce even more the amount of garbage that I send to the landfills. It also means that more plastics can be recycled and used for other purposes!!!  Thank you, Montgomery County (http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/apps/dep/solidwaste/collectionservices/material_detail.asp?categoryID=16).

Home Depot In Favor of Going Green!

OK, so that's not really the headline.  However, according to a New York Times article (http://tinyurl.com/6cb5ga) Home Depot is making it easier to use, and get rid of, Compact Flourescent Light (CFL) bulbs.

As most of the US population knows by now, CFLs (which use a lot less electricity and last longer) contain mercury which is not exactly a good thing to be wontonly tossing into the down dump.  In fact, there have been a lot of local news stories about this topic since about 1 month after CFLs became widely available.

Now, as the atricle linked above mentions, Home Depot is encouraging folks to bring their dead, but not broken, CFLs to their stores' Returns Desk.  Although that line is usually fairly long, I'd be willing to bet that they'll allow folks just dropping of CFLs to jump the line a bit.

Either way, it's excellent news for the environment - way to go Home Depot!

Beware When and How You Try Hyper-Miling

I just saw this report on our local morning news (www.nbc4.com) and thought I'd share the information with you. 

Apparently, "according to Maryland driving laws, slow speed impeding traffic is prohibited. Troopers have discretion to pull over motorists if they feel they are creating unsafe driving conditions---by driving too slow."

Here's the full report if you're interested: http://tinyurl.com/699xem

As much as I'm in favor of keeping speeds down and using gravity on downhill portions of the road to gain speed, I'm much more against getting pulled over and a ticket from a State Trooper!