Dining in or Getting it "To Go", Where-ever it is, Refuse the STRAW

There are days when you just want to eat out. It's either you want to celebrate something, or you're just too lazy too cook your own meal. Whatever the reason is, eating out is no reason to forget to save the earth.

Usually, when we order food, we order a drink to go with it, and more often than not, a drinking straw is given with our drink. We have to learn and remember to refuse the straw. It's not helping the environment at all.

Why we shouldn't use straw

Straw is made from plastic, which we all know, doesn't decompose. What's more, straw is just a one-time-use kind of plastic. You don't reuse straw. It's downright unhygienic. Poses a lot of health issues. So what happens after you use it? Yep! it's for the dump fellas!

Straw is more trouble than it's worth

Straws in the dump is the least of all evils though. We're lucky if the straw ends up in the dump. Most of the straws end up in water ways clogging it up, or worse - gasp!, at the open sea or flowing rivers, where the poor sea creatures think it's food and swallow it! Imagine eating fish who ate plastic! wow!

But wait, straws protect me from bad stuff

Okay, hold on, protect you from what exactly? The germs and bacteria in the rim of your glass? What makes you think that it's only on the rim? Whatever's on the rim is also inside the glass, it was "washed" on the same tub of foamy hot water.
There's no point in denying that straws protect the enamel of our teeth. Yes it really does a good job at that. It's okay to use the straw for that reason, as long as your teeth is more important than saving the world :)

Recyle it

There will be times that we will forget to refuse the straw, or we cant drink our drinks without it (like shakes and frappes). What do we do now? Well we can keep the straws and reserve it for craft making like these:

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With that said, let's all learn how to refuse the straw.

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Staple Free Stapler at Think Geek

I was scouring the net for green office products to buy for myself when I saw this stapler in ThinkGeek! The moment I saw it, my geek-meter went on overload and my green idea light bulb exploded! Oh yeah! This is wicked!!!

Why is the Staple-Free Stapler Earth-Friendly

The staple-free stapler, doesn't need staples to bind paper together, which helps us reduce our consumption of staple wires which are very dangerous pollutants. (Imagine animals ingesting this, imagine you ingesting this). Not to mention reducing the accidents relating to staple wires. Blood, gore, and a heap of papery mess.

How the Staple-Free Stapler Works

It works by cutting flaps from the paper, folding the paper flaps the opposite direction, and then inserting the flaps in a slit it created. It uses the actual paper it's supposed to bind together to bind it together. Neat-o! There are some products on the Internet that offer customization of the stapler to add a logo on the last flap. Cool-io!

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Available Designs and Colors

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Plastic Bottle Trash Can

While Surfing on the Internet yesterday, I saw this cool idea for reusing plastic bottles.

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I saw this over instructables.com with instructions on how to do it. The instructions aren't very clear, but the concept of making it isn't very difficult (or so I think).

Now the next question, would I start collecting bottles just so I can make this? I don't drink soft drinks so it would be difficult for me to consume oodles of it jut to make a trashcan. I don't buy that much bottled drinks either. Being able to make this would be a matter of how often you consume bottled beverages, which is, bad for the environment. You could however still make this, let's say, you have the bottles up for recycling, or you had a party of some sort. It's a nice way to reuse plastic bottles nonetheless.

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5 Tips to be Green this All Saints and All Souls Day

I've been to 2 cemeteries already and I'm glad to just rest tomorrow. There isn't, however, a rest for being green, especially now that it's a long weekend here in the Philippines. Long holidays mean vacations or spending a lot of money on food and drinks because of cemetery hopping. The All Saints Day Holiday means family reunions and get-togethers in the cemetery. So how do you continue being green?

Tip # 1:
Carpool to the cemetery.
If you have space in your car, let your other relatives ride with you, or ride with them. It doesn't make sense to bring one car each if you can squeeze into one car. If you live far from your relatives, you can leave your car at their place or vice versa, then carpool to the cemetery. Not only are you saving on parking space, you're one less car on the road, and of course, you have a smaller carbon footprint

Tip # 2:
Bring your own food
Bringing your own food means food will definitely be cheaper. It's funny how food prices inflate inside the cemetery. When you buy food in the cemetery or outside the cemetery, you'll be using plastic spoons and forks, plastic/paper/styro plates and bowls, plastic/paper/styro cups and not to mention, using a plastic or paper bag to carry everything you bought

Tip # 3:
Bring your own drink
Reduce the use of plastic bottles. It's just so wrong in many ways. Nufsed.

Tip # 4:
Use washable utensils
Don't be too lazy and buy paper plates and plastic cups. Bring the sturdy plastic ones. You can bring water for washing the plates. Just rinse the flat- and silverware with water and wash them properly at home

Tip # 5:
Mingle
Instead of using your gadgets while passing the time in the cemetery, mingle with your family or go spelunking with your cousins. We once played hide and seek in the cemetery. It was so fun :)

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How To Think Green

In order to live a green life, you need to change how you think. We have grown accustomed to having new stuff and making life easier. We have learned that there are shortcuts that we can take to speed anything that we want to do, and this demand for shortcuts have endangered our plant, our lives.

The "New is Better" Mindset

I must say, the marketing campaigns of the 70s have successfully transformed our minds into thinking newer things means better things. Quantity over quality. A lot of people would rather buy 10 of the same cheap shoes than buy one quality shoe that would last year. "At least I have shoes that are 10 times new".

Imagine how much energy is spent in making just one shoe? Most shoes use virgin materials, meaning materials that are made out of the earth's resources. Imagine how many trees need to be cut and animals slaughtered to procure raw materials; imagine how much smoke was released in the atmosphere to turn the raw materials to virgin, workable materials. Imagine how much gas was used to ship raw materials, virgin materials and finished products from material warehouses to manufacturing warehouses. How much CO2 was emitted by airplanes and trucks for shipping? How much oil seeped in the oceans.

To think green we should have the:

Quality over Quantity Mindset

To live green, we need to change our mindset to quality over quantity. Buying lesser shoes would mean a lower demand for shoe manufacturing. Maybe you're thinking that you're just one person, and purchasing less wouldn't move the demand for shoes? Well, that's where you're blinded. Sure one person wouldn't make much of a difference, but if you count how much shoes you buy in a lifetime, you'll believe me in saying that it's enough to make an impact in the demand for sure. Now imagine that if 100 people all over the world changed their mindset, that would make a drastic impact in the demand.

"Good For the Planet, Bad for Me" Way of Thinking

I am surprised to find that a lot of people would rather put first their own comforts versus the sustainability of the world. Take straws for instance, people would rather use a drinking straw cause ice-cold beverages can damage teeth and their roots (or so they say), or that the drinking glasses weren't cleaned properly and they might get diseases from drinking on the rim (this excuse really had me wondering if the person who said it really understood what he's saying).

I'm still waiting for my front teeth to fall off, or something else, for not using straws. So far, I haven't had toothaches my teeth aren't that stained. And as for dirty drinking glasses, whatever's in the rim of that glass might as well be in the glass, since when the glasses are washed, they put everything in a tub of water, so the germs are pretty much all over.

 To think green we should have the:

"Right for the Environment, Right for Everyone" Way of Thinking

It's the age old saying, "Good doesn't mean it's right". It's time we stop fumbling with good and bad, and start working with right and wrong. Using a straw may be good for you but, it's not right for you simply because it's wrong for the environment. Whatever the earth is suffering now, we will suffer it back, twice- or maybe thrice-fold.

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