Everyone Taking Small Steps Can Lead to Big Changes

Climate change is a big problem, perhaps one of the most severe the world has yet faced. It effects us all, and progress can be frustrating when political leaders do not lead in this area. Fortunately, we do not have to wait to make small changes in our lives that make a big impact on the planet, and author Elizabeth Rogers has compiled that list in The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time.

This book contains hundreds of small steps any individual can take right now to reduce their impact on the environment and slow degradation. Some examples are:

----->"Don’t ask for ATM receipts. If everyone in the United States refused their receipts, it would save a roll of paper more than two billion feet long, or enough to circle the equator fifteen times!
-----> Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth. You’ll conserve up to five gallons of water per day. Throughout the entire United States, the daily savings could add up to more water than is consumed every day in all of New York City.
-----> Get a voice-mail service for your home phone. If all answering machines in U.S. homes were replaced by voice-mail services, the annual energy savings would total nearly two billion kilowatt hours. The resulting reduction in air pollution would be equivalent to removing 250,000 cars from the road for a year!"

These are all very simple steps that do not require more work. In fact, many of these ideas save ourselves time and money, and reduce resource consumption. It's a win-win! 

Please check The Green Book out at the library or buy it from Amazon for $0.01. The everyday tips, if done in aggregate, can lead to changes of a global proportion.

Vacuum cleaners at their worst...

Written By: Dan Flatten

Have you ever noticed how ineffective, and useless your standard vacuum cleaner is after sometimes only a month of use? Well I sure have, I just recently purchased my 4th vacuum in the last 3 years. Granted, vacuums endure lots of use and abuse, however, not enough use to last less than a year for me. The most recent vacuum I purchased was over a hundred dollars and was a name brand, Dirt Devil. This vacuum, much like the others I've purchase in the past, worked great at first! Soon there after using it for about a month, I noticed the suction went way down. I took it apart, didn't notice any broken or missing parts, yet it seemed to not work nearly as well.

I'm a single male, living by myself in a relatively small house, and only vacuum at most 3 times a month. How is it that this nearly brand new vacuum works at roughly 50% capacity after only a few times of use? I would argue that this is planned obsolescence at it's worst!

Now, I may come off as some vacuum salesman here, but I assure you I have no affiliation to any vacuum cleaner company. Having been fed up with my current vacuum cleaner, I was complaining to my boss about it in a casual conversation and she mentioned that she just recently bought a Kirby vacuum cleaner from Goodwill, only paying $20. Some of these vacuums are nearly $3000 new, but according to her are well worth it. She stated that the 15 year old Kirby vacuum works better than any other store brand vacuum she had ever used and she could still purchase parts for it even though it's so old. This tells me that if Kirby can do that, there's really no reason other companies don't have similar life expectancies other than planned obsolescence.

Not only do Kirby vacuums work better and last longer, they come with those spare parts and parts that you can order from the company to get the vacuum in working order again instead of throwing it away and purchasing a new one. Have you ever known a company like Dirt Devil to sell parts for their $100 to $200 dollar vacuums you see so commonly displayed at retail stores such as Wal-Mart? Of course not, and that's because these companies want to build vacuums at a low cost, keeping profit margins high, and keeping you coming back to by a new every so often.

The next time you consider buying a vacuum, try and weigh these pros and cons. Just think, if you have to by a vacuum every couple months for $100, that's about $600 a year, or $3000 in just five years. Money is one thing, but also think about the usability. These cheap vacuums hardly work, more or less pushing dirt around your house, versus sucking it up. So when you're in the market for a new vacuum, which is likely pretty soon given the facts, consider buying a product that is well made, has spare parts or parts you can order, and cut your cleaning time in half with just a larger initial purchase.