Buy a BoGo Light and Give Two Presents

Are you just starting to think about what you might be giving for gifts this Holiday season? Yah, me too. But I got a great tip from CoolPeopleCare.org this morning. They showed me the BoGo Light, which is a pretty cool looking solar powered flashlight.  Living in Arizona, it’s a no brainer. I can replace the darkened flashlights in my cabinets and garage, and presumably keep one fully-charged solar light at hand at all times.

What’s especially cool, is that when you buy a BoGo Light from their online store, you can click the “Give Twice” button. It allows you to purchase a second light at a reduced price and donate it to one of their many charities, including literacy, environment, healthcare, schools and others.

Check out the BoGo solar lights in action.

Don’t tell them, but some of my family members will be finding a BoGo under the tree this year with another one benefiting the troops. Don’t worry. I’m not giving away any secrets. Like most of the world, they rarely read my blog.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

Download your calendar from this link: parkhowellcom-eh2ed-challenge-calendar

And please feel free to retweet it with your Twitter world. Thank you.

My Top 10 Favorite Tips:

1. Wake up earlier: Since I wake up at 4:59 a.m. practically every day, this one resonates with me. I get more meaningful things done between 5:23 and 7:19 a.m. than practically any other time during the day. They point out that getting up a few minutes earlier every day buys you as many as 50 extra hours per year. Just think of what you can do with 50 extra hours.
2. What’s that lever for? Personal pet peeve: Use your friggin’ blinker and relieve some stress in those drivers around you. Your blinker is the only human element on your car. It’s kind, considerate, and courteous, and it says, “Excuse me, pardon me, I’d love to get over, thank you very much.”
3. Trick your plate: The next time you renew your license plate, sign-up for a plate that supports a cause. You’ll be a rolling brand evangelist and your cause will raise some money.
4. Digital donations: We spend one-third of our lives at the office, so naturally it’s an environment where we can make a big impact. Start by donating those old computers, printers, cells phones and other electronics to schools and charities.
5. Personalize the mug: More than 44 billion paper cups are used each year for hot drinks. So pal around with your own coffee or tea mug and use and reuse it.
6. Just click it: *Sam and Stephen prove in their book that that you don’t have to do much to end up doing a lot. For example, they point to the Animal Rescue Site that enables you to provide a half a bowl of food to a needy pet with a simple click of your mouse.
7. Get fresh: Frozen food requires 10-times more energy to produce than fresh food. Chew on that for a bit.
8. Take the bag back: 500 billion plastic grocery bags are consumed worldwide annually. So either use canvas (some prefer hemp) shopping bags, or re-use your existing paper and plastic.
9. Change the bulb: If every American household changed their five most-used light fixtures to energy-saving incandescent bulbs, it’d be like taking 8,000,000 cars off the road saving $6,000,000,000 in energy costs. That’s a lot of 0′s!
10. An email a day helps keep global warming away: Ok, so I wrote that one. You can’t blame Sam and Stephen.  Fact is, though, I subscribe to their daily email on the handful of simple things that I can do, and the cool events happening on and offline around the country to help me save the planet five minutes at a time. I highly recommend it.

What tips can you add to the list to help save the planet in under five minutes? And don’t forget to get your own copy of New Day Revolution.

Friends and co-founders, Sam Davidson and Stephen Moseley, created the site to educate on and demonstrate the myriad of little, easy things we can all do to make a big overall difference. And they’ve orchestrated an equally impressive set of green communication tactics to engage the masses.

Here are just seven that caught my eye:

1. Daily email tips on what you can do in five minutes
2. Robust website that offers events and activities specific to your city (9th Annual Strong Beer Festival in Phoenix) with an area to post your own events
3. A new book, “New Day Revolution, How to Save the World in 24 Hours” with more than 100 quick read tips
4. Links to other great green messaging causes like “A Pledge for a Song,” where you can download a free tune from Missy Higgins when you pledge to reduce your carbon usage by just two percent. See below for the 10 easy ways to do just that.
5. A library of searchable articles
6. Facebook and other social media venues
7. And of course, YouTube

Sam and Stephen have done an excellent job of making their easy environmental tips as accessible to the public as possible. I leaned about them in a Homestyles magazine (my wife’s an interior designer), so their P.R. machine isn’t bad either. I hope they’re on the front end of a trend to make green marketing and messaging, and the environmental lifestyle tips at its core, as easy, accessible and digestible as possible for the mainstream.

Hey, they got my attention with beer and music.

Ten Quick and Easy Ways to decrease your Carbon Output this year:

1. Drive smarter – keep your tires properly inflated, go the speed limit, drive less and walk more!
2. Buy local and organic – the average American meal travels 1,500 miles from the farm to the plate. Be more conscious of where your food comes from and you can pollute less at dinner time.
3. Call your electric company and switch over to green power! Most utility companies offer renewable energy options for just a few dollars more a month.
4. Replace incandescent light bulbs w/compact fluorescent bulbs. Compact fluorescents produce the same amount of light as normal bulbs, but use about a quarter of the electricity and last ten times as long!
5. Save energy at home! Caulk and weather strip doorways and windows. Keep your thermostat a few degrees higher in the Summer, and a few degrees lower in the Winter. It makes a big difference!
6. Get shower smart. Install low-flow showerheads and faucets and turn your hot water heater down to 120 degrees F to see hot water costs go down by as much as 50%!
7. Replace electronics and appliances with energy efficient models. Look for the Energy Star label when purchasing.
8. Plant a tree! Planting shade tress around your house will absorb CO2 and slash your Summer air-conditioning bills.
9. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! Recycling paper, glass and metal saves 70-90% of the energy used to produce new materials while keeping more waste out of landfills. Buy purchasing used clothes and furniture you save the environment from the effects of all of the energy that would have been used to create those same products if they were brand new!
10. Mount a local campaign against global warming and participate at the national, state and local level. Click here for details.

Do you have a tip to add to the list? If so, comment below and feel free to Tweet away!