Get Local with GenGreen

A few weeks ago at the Green Festival I signed up for GenGreen, and thought you might want to as well. GenGreen is a website that lists information on green related resources by state and city. So, they make it easy to find information that is relevant to you. GenGreen has listings for green events, businesses, organizations, cooperatives, transportation, jobs, recycling centers, as well as other individuals. Though the listings for the Detroit area are sparse, using GenGreen I found out about the 8th Annual Ann Arbor Green Festival that I'll definitely hit up on June 13th.

GenGreen will also be launching a Green Marketplace later on this year. From what I read it seems like it will be like Greenzer or Evo, but with an emphasis on local options.

Re-Jean Your Wardrobe

Those of you who love your jeans, and invest a lot of time in finding the perfect pair, can probably understand the disappointment I felt when both my denim jacket and my favorite pair of jeans got crazy holes in them this past week. Okay, it didn't happen overnight, but now the holes are certainly past the point of public wearability, at least for me. No lie, my whole arm can fit through the massive elbow hole in my jacket and there is now an inappropriate amount of thigh chub that can be seen when I wear the jeans. Not good.

There's a way to give life back to these precious items. Of course I could sew a patch in myself, which is a smart, guffly kind of option indeed. But because I am not much of a seamstress, or tailor, or whatever the title would be, I'm thinking about sending my stuff to Denim Therapy. This company takes your worn jeans, evaluates the material attributes (like thread weight, fade, wash, grain, pattern, weave, and wear), fixes the problem with closely matched materials, and sends them back to you like new. You'll be happy, you're jeans will be happy, and you're save the earth some resources by not running out a buying a replacement.

The service sounds expensive, but it's pretty reasonably priced. Their site notes that the estimated repair cost is $7/inch, but an estimate will be offered upon their inspection of the garment. You will have to pay for shipping charges as well, so if you're far from Cincinnati you might want to go with the neighborhood dry cleaner's classic old-man patch.

Recycle Your Janky Cell Phone

My poor cell phone is on its last leg. It functions 100%, but the screen gets all weird and fuzzy sometimes and it doesn't flip open with ease as it once did. It's a sad, sad situation for all parties involved. I'm preparing for this unfortunate event by looking for electronics recycling companies. I found this article by Earth2Tech on 5 great places to send your dearly departed or obsolete gadgets.

I'm most interested in SecondRotation and BuyMyTronics.com, because I wouldn't mind getting a little money for my phone. I went through the steps at BuyMyTronics.com, which included giving information on my phone model and its condition. Their calculator estimates that I could receive $49 for my phone. Plus, they give an option to donate the money to a charity of your choice. At SecondRotation, their calculator estimated my phone's value at $41. You have to mail your gadget in yourself, of course, but both sites can send payment through Paypal for a quick, simple turnaround.

Pretty Guffly stuff.

Let the Music Play

I admit it. I'm an iPodoholic. I love my iPod and it pretty much goes everywhere I go. While walking to class and listening to my music the other day, I started thinking about the effect that iPods (and mp3 players in general) must have on the environment. So I started researching. I found this Greenpeace video on the toxins used in Apple's latest, the iPhone:



I've also found some blogs and articles regarding the "obsolescence" business strategy used by Apple and many other tech gadget companies. You can check out this 2006 interview with Giles Slade, author of Made To Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, or the more recent EcoGeek posting on unfixable gadgets, for more information on the woes of disposable tech. To be fair, I think it is also important to recognize Apple's approach to environmental responsibility. Their website explains their methods of reducing their impact through a timeline of taken actions. Regardless of which "side" you take on this one, you gotta love deliverables! However, there still must be something we can do to partially offset the impact of the beautifully crafted iPods we buy. That's when I found Tunes for Trees!

Tunes for Trees is fantastic. Instead of buying your iTunes through the iTunes Store, simply use this site to search for and buy your music. For every 10 iTunes that are downloaded through their site, one tree is planted. The music is in exactly the same format, completely compatible with your iPod, and costs the same as buying it through the traditional iTunes Store. Nice, right? The project launched just under a year ago and over 2,600 trees have been planted to date. This is another small thing we can do that directly effects the bigger picture.

As a wise person once said, "the inches we need are all around us."