Couple topics on the horizon for Bring Me Up's environmental section. I want to incorporate the whole green theme for St. Patrick's Day but I also wanted to mention the current protest involving kangaroos.
The plan is a scaled-down version of a proposal last year to eradicate about half of the more than 6,000 kangaroos at two military sites in Canberra. Protesters have gathered to stop this, but it's not evident what will happen yet. The plan is to shoot the animals with darts and then euthanize them. The reasoning being that an excessive amount of kangaroos are said to be the reason for the extinction of rare lizards and insects in the area.
Now, I have been trying to figure out who started the "green talk." I mean, when and who and why? Suddenly everything is green. Green cars, green jobs, green architecture, green living...just the other day I heard a commercial about green mortgages! How did that happen and why green? Why can't it be yellow or orange? There is more to the environment than green, but I digress, I cannot find the answer. It's like the chicken and the egg I suppose.
Little things go a long way. I think the most important and the easiest way to be green...is to recycle. From one person to big companies, recycling can make HUGE impacts in our world. Just last month HP announced it is using recycled plastics gathered from water bottles, recycled inkjet cartridges, and other materials to create new ink cartridges made from 100% recyclable plastics. How awesome is that?
Ann DeLaVergne spent time making her own, reusable envelopes via a sewing machine to help in preserving trees and using less paper. She eventually went on to patent ecoEnvelopes with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
The envelopes zip closed, eliminate the need for a separate reply envelope, and are manufactured with paper from managed forests and contain up to 100 percent post-consumer waste content.
DeLaVergne used to be an organic farmer and beekeeper. The environment has always been important to her and she has spent a huge portion of her life devoted to being "green." The ecoEnvelope sort of became a passion and she took it under her wing, perfecting it and sharing it with the world. She received grants from the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance and the Eileen Fisher Foundation and won supporter after supporter, including the former CEO of one of the largest envelope manufacturers in the U.S.
The main objective of these envelopes is so businesses need not enclose an envelope inside your mailed bills and such. If you're not comfortable going paperless with billing then the least you can do is push for companies you deal with to use the environment friendly envelopes. As it stands right now 80 billions "reply" envelopes are sent each year in the U.S. alone and that is just unacceptable.
On February 20, 2008 the USPS finally decided they are going to take this green initiative and legally push the bill. The ecoEnvelopes have received a key National Customer Ruling from the U.S. Postal Service and this is VERY important. "The USPS National Customer Ruling is issued after an official testing and approval process. The ruling provides customers with increased confidence that ecoEnvelopes' unique designs meet the most stringent qualifications for use in the US mail."
"Eliminating return envelopes saves energy, water, and forest resources and reduces the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Every one million ecoEnvelopes used saves an estimated 250 million BTUs of energy and 37,000 pounds of greenhouse gasses. All ecoEnvelopes are manufactured on certified papers from managed forests using up to 100% recycled content."
