Category Archives: living green on a budget

Bibliomania

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Jen| 25 Comments

Recycla and her family are avid readers and every evening the whole family can be found in their living room with their noses deep into books.  Because of their bibliomania, the family has stacks and stacks of books all over the place, as well as in bookcases throughout the house.  Even though the family regularly visits their library, they still manage to pick up plenty of other books along the way, whether they’re from used book stores or gifts from friends.  As you can imagine, shelf space is at a premium and Recycla is constantly trying to figure out how to squeeze more books onto each shelf.  (Hint:  Go with vertical stacks to maximize all available space.)

Luckily, Recycla has found a way to deal with some of the book chaos and keep the stacks of books from overwhelming the family — PaperBack Swap.  Captain Compost wrote about PBS a couple of years ago and Recycla was intrigued.

The concept is simple:  People post their extra books at the PBS website.  Other people browse the offerings and, when they find something they like, ask the owner of the book to mail it to them.  The owner of the book prints out a mailing label, pays Media Rate postage (usually around $2.50), and sends the book to the person who wants it.  Once the book is received, the first person gets a credit that can be used to acquire a new book at no cost to them.  That’s right, it doesn’t cost any money to receive books, as long as you have credits in your account.

Through PBS, Recycla has been able to share dozens of her books with other people, then use her credits to find new books.  Some are books that she had wanted to read for a while, but they weren’t at her library; while others have been serendipitous finds that she discovered while browsing the PBS website.

Getting a free book in the mail is like Christmas all year.  And when Recycla is done, she often re-lists it at PBS so that someone else can enjoy it.

PaperBack Swap also has a couple of great sibling websites that offer similar services for swapping DVDs and CDs.

Swapping books — whether through PBS or a more informal system with your friends and family — is a great way to reuse and share resources!

Tell the Eco Women:  How do you get your hands on books — from the library, from used bookstores, or somewhere else?

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Posted in 3 Rs, books, living green on a budget

A Greener Grill

Posted on August 25, 2010 by melissawest| 2 Comments

Yesterday Recycla wrote about how it can be a challenge to “green” the people you live with.  They agree in theory that doing better for the environment is a good thing, but in practice they still toss their recyclables into the trash and leave TV sets on throughout the house.   Enviro Girl lives with this kind of person and it has taken patience to change them.

One such matter took place over a year ago when Enviro Girl suggested that, while she loves being a carnivore and a steak grilled over charcoal briquettes is a culinary masterpiece, perhaps the Grill Master should ditch the lighter fluid.  Lighter fluid is basically gas–petroleum–packaged in a petroleum-based plastic bottle.  It’s not a healthy choice for the environment and at $9.00 for a 64 oz. bottle, it’s expensive.  Liquid lighter fluid also gives off emissions, half of which are purely due to evaporation before you even set a match to those briquettes, according to a 1990 EPA report.

Enviro Girl and her Grill Master watch the Food Network and saw many of the chefs using a chimney starter. Enviro Girl asked her Grill Master if that wouldn’t be a preferable way to grill–the professionals use them, why shouldn’t he?  But the Grill Master adheres to the BLTC philosophy (Better Living Through Chemicals), and besides, he has always grilled using lighter fluid.

Disregarding his protest, Enviro Girl ordered the Grill Master a chimney starter for his birthday.  For $15.00 (about the cost of two bottles of lighter fluid) she purchased a heavy-duty metal chimney starter with a wooden handle.  The chimney starter is a cinch to work–you simply crumple up some old newspaper and place it in the bottom of the chimney, then place your coals on top.   Openings at the bottom of the tube allow you to set a match to the newspaper and the Laws of Physics then go into play, setting fire to the charcoal briquettes.  Once the briquettes are ready (a couple of minutes later), you grab the handle and pull the chimney up, allowing the briquettes to fall into a neat pile in the bottom of your back yard Weber.

The Grill Master was miffed by the gift and snubbed it.  But Enviro Girl didn’t buy lighter fluid ever again and eventually he ran out and necessity forced his hand.  Reader, two days ago the Grill Master confessed that he loves his chimney starter–loves how it’s easy to use, it works quickly (no restarting the flame, no adding more lighter fluid and lighting another match).  The chimney starter costs nothing to use and it doesn’t smell like lighter fluid.  It’s mess-free and uncomplicated.  The Grill Master became convert to the chimney starter.

Make your back yard charcoal grill more environmentally friendly by using a chimney starter instead of lighter fluid.  Make your family more environmentally friendly by gifting them the right “green” tools.   Trust the Eco Women–it really works.

Tell us, reader.  Do you grill with charcoal?  Do you use a chimney starter?

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Posted in 3 Rs, food, living green on a budget

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Rechargeable Batteries: Use, add more juice, use again, and again, and again

Posted on August 16, 2010 by melissawest| 3 Comments

Enviro Girl has long recycled her family’s worn-out batteries.  She keeps an empty yogurt container in the cupboard next to screwdrivers and packages of AA and 9 volt and AAA batteries.  When her children were younger, it seemed she was always prying open the back of a toy and replacing spent batteries.  The hardware store in town collects used batteries for recycling, so Enviro Girl didn’t feel too terrible about the amount of batteries her family used and she felt virtuous keeping the heavy metals and chemicals out of the local landfill.

Until she realized she was buying AA batteries almost every month and recycling a tub full of batteries four times a year.  Her digital camera was a particular battery pig.  Something had to change.

Enviro Girl had seen rechargeable batteries—initially they were expensive and hard to find, but now even Energizer makes their own brand of rechargeable batteries and sells chargers that plug into regular wall outlets.  Enviro Girl asked around, read some consumer reviews, and when she did the math it made sense to invest in her own.

She bought an Energizer recharge battery charger that works for AA and AAA batteries.  When the batteries die, the charger plugs into a wall outlet and brings the batteries back to life again and again.  Instead of installing 2 new AA batteries every 4 weeks (costing $26.00 a year), Enviro Girl purchased 2 new AA rechargeable batteries, 2 AAA batteries and a charger for  $42.00.  As she adds to her household’s inventory of rechargeable batteries, the savings will continue to add up.  She figures if she gets even half of the “hundreds of uses” out of these new batteries, she’ll come out way ahead financially.  She chose the Energizer brand because it’s sold at most retailers, including her favorite local hardware store, so it’ll be easy to buy more AA and AAA batteries as they’re needed.

When the rechargeable batteries die, she can still recycle them, but by buying fewer batteries, Enviro Girl uses less packaging waste and spends less money.

Solar or crank-powered flashlights, phones and cameras are still the ideal, and Enviro Girl always buys the renewable option when she can.  She owns hand-powered flashlights and a solar-powered radio and calculator.  But for battery-operated toys and appliances, Enviro Girl looks forward to a smaller ecological footprint through using her Energizer recharge batteries.

For more information on rechargeable batteries, head over to Green Batteries, a web site that gives price and product information on a range of rechargeable batteries and accessories for all kinds of uses–including laptops, solar ovens and converters.

Tell the Eco Women:  are you using rechargeable batteries?  What type?  Are you satisfied with them?

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Posted in 3 Rs, electronics, living green on a budget

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Eco Back-to-School: Swap, Don’t Shop

Posted on August 11, 2010 by melissawest| 5 Comments

The cost of school supplies like pencils and notebooks can run up to $100 if you have a few kids heading back to school this fall.  Tack on book fees, activity fees, gym shoes and lunches and things start to get expensive.  According to the National Retail Federation, the average family will spend about $606 on school supplies and related expenses.  Enviro Girl has three kids going to school full-time this fall and even with recycling many of last year’s supplies and leftovers  she shelled out $150 on school supplies.  But she won’t spend $606 getting her sons back in the classroom and here’s why:

Instead of back-to-school shopping, she’s back-to-school swapping.

Her oldest son will attend parochial school this fall.  The students are required to wear uniforms, so he’ll need blue or white collared shirts and navy or tan khakis.   The school secretary advised her not to go shopping until after “School Swap Day.”

Two weeks before school, all the parents donate their children’s outgrown uniforms.  Parents in need of new sizes will find everything necessary for the school year laid out on cafeteria tables in the school commons.  In the spirit of Christian love and sharing, there is no charge.  The participants are simply expected to take what they need and leave behind what they don’t.  They’ve done this for years, saving families thousands of dollars.  The school secretary explained to Enviro Girl that each family gets a brown shopping sack per student and is encouraged to load it up with school clothes.  Anything left behind at the end of the day goes into a storage closet until next year’s swap.  Enviro Girl imagines this works quite well because in the world of school uniforms, no fashion trends come into play and a blue polo shirt from five years ago or last month looks pretty much the same.

Enviro Girl has  friends who do a back-to-school swap in their neighborhood.  It’s the same concept, only instead of tables full of white and blue polo shirts and navy and tan khakis, there are tables full of snow pants and coats, mittens, sports equipment, blue jeans and shirts–all organized by size and gender.  They don’t keep track of what you give and get in this neighborhood, but generally everyone donates and receives the same amount of clothing–hand-me-downs and hand-me-ups.

In tough economic times, clothing swaps are becoming the rage.  Heck, Clothing Swap even has it’s very own web site with tips on how to organize a successful swap event  for women’s clothing.   Enviro Girl’s town coordinates swaps of team t-shirts and uniforms and field trip t-shirts for the elementary school.  Not only does this save people money, it reduces the demand for new things, thus reducing our consumption of more resources like energy and water and cotton.  Nothing is greener than reusing, making clothes swapping a much more environmentally friendly practice than clothes shopping.

Enviro Girl has no plans to swap for her 2 younger sons this fall since they’ll inherit their big brother’s hand-me-downs in turn.  She will buy them new gym shoes, but that’s a post for another day.  Meanwhile, if you aren’t  swapping yet, Enviro Girl encourages you to get started and get greener!

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Posted in 3 Rs, clothes, eco kids, living green on a budget

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Eco Back-to-School: Shopping for College Kids

Posted on August 10, 2010 by kimkasch| 2 Comments

Sending kids off to college can be difficult in more ways than one. It’s very emotional but it’s also super expensive.

The Green Queen has had three kids in college so she knows a thing or three about watching her budget because tuition at the University of Oregon (a state sponsored, public school) is currently estimated at $20,789.00 per year for a resident undergraduate student taking 15 credit hours (which is the average).

So for a four-year college education, at an in-state university, (for one kid) you can expect to spend over $80,000, and this does not include any “Other Costs”, like if your kid gets sick or hurt and has to go to the student health center.

Plus there are additional administrative fees together with mandatory fees which aren’t included in this matrix. The Green Queen remembers having to pay “additional” fees for any physical education class and lab fees for any science courses (and even some math courses), additional instruction fees for music and art classes. Plus there is even a mandatory matriculation fee of $300.00 for all kids enrolling.

So, as you can see, college can be super expensive.

But the Green Queen has found a few ways to help fight these sky-high costs that seem to keep inflating faster than any balloon she has ever seen.  Let her share her sustainable secrets which will also help Protect the Planet at the same time.

Your first-time college kid is going to need all sorts of house-hold items. She sent her sons and daughters off to school with hot-pots (which sell new for $15 to $20 — you can buy more expensive ones but that defeats the money-saving inspiration) for heating up soups, teas and cocoa -– to help avoid some of those “other costs,” like mid-day and late-night snacks.

Hotpot about $20.00

; About $20.00Another Option for About $20.00About $15.00About $60.00 and may defeat the money-saving inspiration

A small dorm refrigerator to keep some personal food products on-hand, so they could bring food from home whenever they came for a visit or buy less expensive food at stores away from campus. Brand-new you can find these for about $125.00 and used is even better.

Dorm Fridge at $126.99 new

The Green Queen found one for $30.00 on Craig’s List.

On Craig's List for $30.00

Plus, they’ll need an iron
(No, they never used it at home, but just in case)
a compact ironing board;
a laundry hamper;
soap dish;
shower caddy;
and . . . on-and-on the list outgrew the Green Queen’s budget faster than Lance Armstrong whizzing by on a new bike.

But everyone can try some earth-friendly shopping ideas to help cut the cost of college and survive the high-cost of a college education in the United States. Here are some of the Green Queen’s (well-used) tips:

1) Try shopping at local thrift shops, second-hand shops and especially GoodWill because they not only help you find reusable, inexpensive, household items and clothing, they also have a mission to help others find work and better their lives. So, besides helping the planet you will be directly impacting people’s lives to make them better able to support themselves and their families.

2) Coordinate with other parents of college-aged kids to carpool rides. Kids all want to come home at the holidays and breaks so why not help each other with the physical and mental move from school-kid to college-kid and maybe just to commiserate about the high-cost of an education in the United States?

3) Check on-line, Craig’s List, eBay, and maybe just do a Google search for some of those more expensive items you can buy on-line, you just might find some great deals.

4) Post fliers for electronics, calculators, books, right as classes end (like outside the door where they take their finals) so that you can buy used before the students who had “your” class the first term sells their goods. You’ll get first dibs on barely used items and they’ll get a better deal than the college will pay them for their used books, etc.

You have to remember pre-owned items are always going to be less expensive than store-bought brand-new items. And while the Green Queen can’t help at all with that emotional part of dealing with the empty nest, she can sure come up with a couple ideas on how to help stretch the budget because she has been doing it for a looooong time now.

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Posted in 3 Rs, eco kids, house stuff, living green on a budget, school, transportation

Eco Back-to-School: Greening the PTO/PTA

Posted on August 9, 2010 by melissawest| 3 Comments

Few organizations wield as much power in school districts as the parent/teacher organization.  They influence decision-making.  They affect morale.  They connect people–parents, teachers, administrators, communities.  PTO/PTA groups do good things, but Enviro Girl would argue that they can do good things with even greater environmental consciousness.  Positioned as PTA president for her kids’ elementary school, she has encouraged changes in how the parent organization and the school does business.  It only takes one parent to act as a catalyst for change at their child’s school.  Some take on curriculum, others become vigilant soldiers in the war for  playground safety, and Enviro Girl has become a one-woman show touting environmental issues at her kids’ school.  Below are just a few ways any ordinary person can become an Eco-Superhero and “green” their local PTO/PTA.

1) Keep fundraising event focused (Family Night Out, Brain Bowl, talent night etc.).  People have enough stuff, so quit selling it.  People enjoy events and events build community spirit and bring the focus on FUN instead of STUFF.   Enviro Girl’s PTA has done everything from donkey basketball to carnivals, sock hops to spaghetti dinners.  Her PTA’s biggest fundraiser is the Brain Bowl–participating students collect pledges and then get quizzed on questions designed by their grade level’s teaching team.  The Brain Bowl requires volunteers and 2-3 reams of paper.  The profit for their organization averages $8,500 a year.  Enviro Girl’s PTA keeps the Brain Bowl from getting stale by limiting who participates–only grades PreK-2 do it, so the participation rate never flags. Enviro Girl gets regular solicitations from companies begging her PTA to sell their pizzas and gift wrap and candles.  She gives them her standard rejection line, “Sorry, but we only do event-based fundraising.  No thanks!”

2) If fundraising must be employed, try to do this through local businesses.  Reject the magazine subscriptions from a company in Texas or candles shipped in from China. Gift certificates from the cheese factory up the road, spirit wear from a local seamstress and crafts from local artists are all acceptable “stuff” to sell.  Fundraising in this fashion keeps the money local and increases the quality of the products sold.   (Even though her PTA doesn’t sell them, those cheese gift certificates are very popular in Enviro Girl’s neck of the woods, especially around the holidays.)

3) Purchase exclusively from locally owned and operated businesses. Sure, treats for Student Appreciation Day cost less at Sam’s Club, but the guy with the local grocery store up the road is part of your community and hey, his price isn’t unfair.  It’s just a little more.  Plus you save gas by driving a half mile for treats instead of driving 20 miles!  By supporting local merchants, you reduce transportation costs and spread the local love and support that you ask in return every time you knock door-to-door soliciting silent auction donations.

4) Purchase and use a few big Igloo cooler/drink dispensers for events like the teachers’ luncheons and school dances.  Instead of buying bottled water, offer lemonade and water in the coolers. The cost difference is nil, the reduction in plastic trash and waste is significant.

5) Organize t-shirt swaps–instead of parents purchasing new school shirts each year for the early childhood field trips, coordinate passing along t-shirts each year. The same t-shirt swap can work for park & rec sports teams and Scouts, too!

6) Put money and elbow grease into the abandoned and decrepit Nature Center on your school’s property or create a native prairie or garden on that unused tract of grass in front of your school building.  With the PTA’s support and some grant money, Enviro Girl’s kids have a nature center used on a regular basis by classrooms and ecology has become a huge part of their classroom curriculum with the new resources made available.  One of the most popular summer school classes at their elementary school is Bird Watching!   The PTA recruited Boy Scouts to build an outdoor classroom in the Nature Center (and earn their Eagle rank in so doing) and now the space is even used by community groups!  Their nature center includes a butterfly garden, prairie and woods so students can explore a variety of ecosystems in one area.   The biodiversity of a schoolyard garden is healthy for the environment and provides the school with an excellent teaching tool.

7) Support the schools’ “healthy foods” campaign by offering yogurt and muffins in lieu of cookies and candy bars as a snack on test days.  If your school doesn’t have a “healthy snacks” rule, advocate for one.

8) Support TerraCycle programs by recycling drink pouches or any of the other packaging the company upcycles.

9) Show your teachers love and appreciation by serving them meals or buying classroom supplies.  Quit buying them coffee mugs and pens and plastic crappe.  Teachers really appreciate food and books, consumable and plastic-free.

10) Go paperless by setting up a website or Facebook group and emailing monthly meeting agendas and minutes.  Enviro Girl’s PTA has done so, creating less work and using fewer resources, resulting in greater parent participation.  Turns out everyone is on Facebook, few folks read the school’s monthly newsletter cover to cover.

11) Take on the environmental issues at your children’s school.  Request that the school busses turn off their engines while idling in front of the building at the end of the day.  Advocate for healthier school lunches.  Beg the school to use non-toxic cleaning supplies.  Demand that the school building meets air and water quality standards.  With the weight of a PTA/PTO behind a movement, great change can take place.

12) Support environmentally conscious curriculum.  Pay for a guest speaker or a school assembly like Shows That Teach or ECOSiZEME to educate students and raise awareness about environmental issues like pollution, trash, consumerism or water conservation.   Hire an artist-in-residence for your school to demonstrate how to use recycled trash to create beautiful things.  Buy books or magazines for the school library or classrooms that take on environmental issues.

Some of these ideas cost money, others are free or cost-neutral. The bottom line is this: one parent CAN make a difference by bringing one idea to the table and “greening” one part of a school’s practice.  What can you do this year at your child’s school to make it greener?

Disclaimer:  The Eco Women are not employed by any of the companies or groups mentioned in this post.

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Posted in 3 Rs, eco kids, issues, living green on a budget, school

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Saving green when going green

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Jen| 3 Comments

One complaint Recycla hears regularly is that it is expensive to go green. Au contraire! Going green can actually save you money while also saving Earth. Check out this list:

  1. Turn down your water heater — Lowering the temperature from 140 to 120 degrees will save you 6-10% on your water heater costs.
  2. Unplug unused chargers — Even when they’re not in use, plugged-in cell phone, laptop, and other chargers continue to use electricity. This can account for as much as 8% of your electric bill.
  3. Install fluorescent light bulbs — Yes, you’re probably tired of hearing this one, but that doesn’t matter because you can impact your electric bill immediately with such a simple step. CFL’s use a third of the energy of regular light bulbs and last ten times longer. And there are a variety of bulbs available that can give you different types of light without the harsh glare normally associated with fluorescent lighting.
  4. Install low-floor fixtures — All of the sinks and showers in Recycla’s house have low-flow fixtures. They aren’t expensive and are easy install (or so Mr. Recycla has said). Best of all, you can lower your water consumption by a whopping 50-70%.
  5. Upgrade to Energy Star appliances — If you’re in the market for a new fridge, stove, or other large appliance, buy one that is labeled with the Energy Star tag, which means that the appliance in question is 10-50% more efficient than standard models (depending on the class of product). And
  6. Landscape your yard with low-water greenery — Plant drought-tolerant grasses, shrubs, flowers, and tress that won’t require much watering (if any).
  7. Get smart about heating and cooling — Most households spend 50-70% of their energy budgets on heating and cooling, but there are ways to reduce this number. Just by installing a programmable thermostat will save you approximately $150 every year. During the warm months, set it for 78 degrees and reduce your cooling load by 10-20%. When you’re away, bump it up to 85 degrees for additional savings. During the cold months, for every degree you lower the thermostat, you’ll save 1-3% on your heating bill.

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Posted in 3 Rs, house stuff, living green on a budget

Organic Weed Control Part II

Posted on July 21, 2010 by melissawest| 5 Comments

In Monday’s post we covered weed barriers, a method of preventing weeds from growing.  Today we’ll address what to do with weeds that start growing despite your best attempts at suffocating their growth.  Fortunately, there are plenty of nontoxic options for the organic gardener.

1.  Pull them.  This is time-consuming and physically taxing, but it’s a guaranteed way to make the weeds disappear.  The trick is to pull out the weed and the root.  Enviro Girl recommends waiting until the ground is well-soaked by a good rain before weeding.  Then the roots will slide out like butter.  Another approach is to invest in a weeding fork–a nifty little gadget that grips the weed’s root and eases it out of the soil.  Enviro Girl also hoes lightly the soil around her vegetables–disturbing the soil enough to disrupt weed seedlings from establishing.2.  Pour boiling water on weeds.  This will kill them.

3.  Spray weeds with vinegar.  Because of vinegar’s  concentrated acetic acids, it is effective on smaller weeds.  The trick with vinegar is to get at weeds when they are small–4 leaves at most.  This web site offers this recipe:

Vinegar Weed Killer Recipe

• 120 mls (4 ounces) Lemon juice concentrate

• 1 liter (1 quart) white or cider vinegar

4.  Sprinkle Borax on weeds.  This isn’t quite as effective as vinegar, but it can kill weeds without toxic residue.

5.  These aren’t organic, but they’re less expensive and less harmful to the environment than the manufactured alternatives:  rubbing alcohol, bleach and salt.  Sprayed, dabbed or poured onto plants, they will kill them.  Salt is particularly effective with thistles, which have a really long root.  Chop off the thistle at the soil and pour a teaspoon of salt directly onto where the exposed root meets the soil.  Instant death.

Enviro Girl pulls weeds in her immediate yard and garden, spraying some problem spots with vinegar as needed.  She confesses to using glyphosate on industrial-sized areas on her acreage.  When you’re dealing with invasive species on 40 acres, distilled vinegar doesn’t quite do the trick.  She doesn’t take that decision lightly, and looks forward to the day when the prairie and tree plantings are established enough to make glyphosate unneccessary.

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Posted in gardening, living green on a budget

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Liquid Soap: What a Dupe!

Posted on July 12, 2010 by melissawest| 3 Comments

Long-time readers of the Eco Women know our position on liquid soap.    Bottom line:  what you use for soap matters when you’re trying to reduce your use of plastic and other resources.  Bar soap is a better choice because  it costs less, it’s generally less toxic to your body and the environment, and it produces less waste.

Enviro Girl is constantly astonished at how advertisements convince people to spend money on things they don’t need.  Paper towels.  Air fresheners.  Fabric softeners.  Liquid soap.

And in a failing economy, shower gels are outselling bars of soap.  Shower gels that use tons more plastic packaging.  Shower gels that cost ten times more than bar soap.  Shower gels that are composed primarily of water.  Seriously.  Water is the main ingredient in most shower gels and liquid soaps.  This NPR story, Lather Up:  More Men Switching to Shower Gels made Enviro Girl shake her head in dismay.   It’s the economy, stupid.  It’s the environment, stupid.  It’s simply not necessary, stupid. Those were her thoughts.  Bad enough that Bath & Body Works and their ilk have sold shower gels to legions of teenaged girls and women who apparently want to smell like artificial fruits and flowers (Hello?  “Pearberry” doesn’t exist outside of a fragrance lab!).  Now Madison Avenue has convinced “real men” that shower gels are a manly option to bars of soap.

Take it from Enviro Girl, men.  Real women love real men who use bar soap.  Irish Spring.  Ivory.  Zest.  Lever 2000.  Dial.  If you buy your soap minimally packaged and lather up when you’re sweaty and dirty, you’re as sexy and attractive as if you loofah down with your plastic-wrapped,  faux-fresh-smelling shower gel.

Enviro Girl and all the men in her household lather up with bar soap.  Reader, do you?

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Posted in living green on a budget, personal care

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College Campuses Take on Bottled Water Bans

Posted on July 5, 2010 by melissawest| 3 Comments

Enviro Girl’s heart was warmed when she read about her alma mater’s recent decision to ban sales of bottled water on campus.  The student government at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point resolved to eliminate the sales of ANY beverages in plastic bottles–the sole exception being sports drinks.  (Hello!  Ban the sales of sports drinks in plastic bottles and Enviro Girl bets the sports drinks manufacturers will sell their product in aluminum cans.)   This decision was made largely to eliminate plastic waste–other benefits include saving money on recycling since aluminum can be sold for cash and plastic bottles–well, even when recycled, they’re incredibly wasteful.  And even when recycling is made easy and convenient, only 27% (the most generous statistic Enviro Girl could find) of plastic water bottles get recycled anyway.

UWSP is encouraging students to buy their own reusable bottles and fill them for free.  The campus has even added filling attachments to its drinking fountains to facilitate this new bottled water ban.  Free water definitely helps a student’s tight budget and it’s an environmentally responsible choice.   Some estimates report this ban on selling bottled water will reduce the use of plastic on campus by half.

UWSP isn’t the only college campus rallying against bottled water.  Evergreen State College in Washington is working on a campus ban, and Washington University in St. Louis, MO,  The University of Ottowa, and Belmont University in Nashville, TN  have succeeded.   Check out the Ban the Bottle web site to learn more about how to rally people in your community to ban the bottle.  The site also gives updates on organizations working on bottled water bans and news releases on bottled water.

What strikes Enviro Girl as funny about this entire story is that when she was a student at UWSP 20 years ago, bottled water didn’t exist.  Really wealthy people bought Evian or Perrier at grocery stores, but the average vending machine at college only sold cans of soda and sometimes juice.   Whatever did people do back then when they got thirsty?  Why, they used a drinking fountain or filled a glass with free tap water.  And they survived.

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