at home

The road to the recycling bin may be paved with good intentions, but Americans still have a long way to go in this department — especially considering how much waste we generate. Reasoning that a little incentive couldn’t hurt, former management consultant Ron Gonen founded RecycleBank: a program that rewards households for their recycling efforts.

Each participating household gets a big blue recycling bin embedded with a computer chip. Each week the cart is scanned and weighed at the curb, the weight converted to points, and the points credited directly to an individual account. The points can be redeemed for discounts and rewards at hundreds of participating businesses, including Sears, CVS pharmacies, and Home Depot. To Gonen, it’s not just the economics, it’s the quantifiable sense of accomplishment. “RecycleBank tries to ensure that everything we do is measured — and we share those numbers,” he says in a Time magazine article. Like the Climate Change exhibitions multiplier effect interactive, a counter on the home page tracks the number of trees and gallons of oil that members have saved to date. Municipalities win too, because costs drop when less waste goes to landfills. Since launching successfully in Philadelphia in 2006, RecycleBank now operates through much of the Northeast. See if your town or borough is already a RecycleBank partner, or if not, how you can help make it happen.

We heard about GoodGuide.com from Daniel Goleman, the author of Ecological Intelligence, when he was a guest on Bill Moyers Journal. This consumer website rates over 70,000 “safe, healthy and green” products (food, personal care, household chemicals, and toys) on a ten-point scale. Ratings are broken down according to the social, environmental, and health impacts of the product. You can see how Beech-Nut Butternut Squash, Ecover Floor Soap and Surf's-up Beach Barbie stack up against the competition, and easily access the methodology and the sources on which the ratings are based. The site also makes it easy to compare prices and find stores by zip code, and has a “news and recalls” section.

GoodGuide originated as a UC Berkeley research project, when Dara O’Rourke was smearing sunscreen on his five-year old daughter Minju for the umpteenth time and wondered (for the first time), “What’s really in this stuff?” An Associate Professor of Environmental and Labor Policy at Berkeley, O’Rourke did his homework and was dismayed to discover that the sunscreen contained a toxic ingredient. Realizing how little consumers know about the products on their shelves, he created a team of scientists, technologists and industry professionals to remedy the information gap. This resulting web resource gives us, in Goleman’s words, “radical transparency”: the actual costs of many of the bottles and boxes we choose between every day.

If you’re reading this blog, you probably recycle, keep the thermostat low, and agonize over your gas mileage. But are you ready to live without a refrigerator? A recent article in the New York Times describes the pros and cons of fridge-free living, a move endorsed by one vanguard of the green movement. These people shop often, are strategic about food choices and storage (coolers! windowsills!), and know what stuff (butter! eggs!) doesn’t have to be refrigerated. And they save energy.

But how much energy? Refrigerators consume about 8% of the electricity in an average home — way less than heating and cooling systems, for starters. Other environmentalists maintain that ditching the fridge actually increases overall energy consumption, because of food waste, the cost of food and packaging, and time and travel. Does it make sense for big families to unplug? What about switching to a mini-fridge? Going freezer-only? Check out the well-informed commentary on environmentalist Deanna Duke’s Crunchy Chicken blog and tell us where you stand.

Newsweek has released highlights of its 2008 Special Election Project, whose reporters get behind-the-scenes access to the campaigning presidential candidates on one condition: nothing gets published until after Election Day. Most of the report deals with serious campaign issues, but one of the lighter moments recorded Barack Obama talking candidly about dumb debate questions.

Uncomfortable with the format, Obama said, “I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me ... answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I #!#%ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'.”

We hope the Obamas do change the light bulbs in their new home, but we’re delighted to see the President-elect recognize the need for collective action. What kinds of efforts to address climate change would you like to see in your school or office? Your neighborhood or community? What new energy policies would you like see on Obama’s agenda?

We’ve heard from a lot of people who are “powering down” their households in various ways, taking mass transit or shopping more carefully. But some people in are taking it farther, way farther.

A recent article in the New York Times profiles several “fully green” citizens, who are totally committed to reducing their carbon footprints. Sharon Astyk, who lives in a farmhouse in Knox, NY, has unplugged the family refrigerator and plays catch with her six-year-old son instead of making the long drive to a baseball league. Jay Matsueda goes without heat or air conditioning in his Culver City, California condominium, and runs his 1983 Mercedes on waste cooking oil. Anita Lavine reuses Ziploc and other plastic bags — for up to a year. Some people find this behavior extreme. If you think just about anything can be recycled or reused, “you may be ‘carborexic,’” the article quipped. But environmentalists like David Gershon, author of Low Carbon Diet, applaud this vanguard for setting an example the rest of us might aspire to. What do you think?