Hello everyone and welcome to Earth Day 2010!

We are very excited about the MI Earth Day Fest in Rochester. It will begin Friday April 23rd and end on Sunday April 25th. We will be selling our new book Larry the Litterbug. If you came to the show last year and were unable to see the book, don’t miss out this year!

Larry the Litterbug is a children’s book telling the story of Larry who learns to keep his home clean so his friends will stay and play. This book contains puzzles that allow children to use their imaginations and find items in the book.

At the MI Earth Day Fest we will also be demonstrating games for children that can be made from household recyclables. We will also have prizes for playing the recyclable games.

For more information about how to get to the MI Earth Day Fest, check out the website: http://www.miearthday.com/

Welcome to Earth Day. Can you feel it, like some thing new just happened? Is your thumb tingling and turning green?

Yeah, it’s not something you can feel and it’s not something you usually look forward to. It’s not a day about you but a day about saving the planet. “Earth” does so much for us, we would not even exist if there was no Earth to support us.

So lets give Earth a Day. Don’t just do something good today but make it a day of reflection. Use today to see what you could be doing better throughout your life.

Try to cut back on the amount of garbage you use in a year. Its not too hard. Look at getting a reusable bag for your favorite grocery store. These bags usually cost about 99 cents, they are much stronger than plastic bags, and they stay the proper shape and don’t dump all of your groceries in your trunk when driving home. Also, if you do collect plastic bags, many grocery stores have plastic bag collection bins so that they can be recycled.

As with the reusable bags there are many different things that you can do to save the earth that will also benefit you! Look for things to do that will save you time and money because it will be much easier to continue.

What do you plan on doing for Earth Day?

As stated plenty of times before, Greener Thinking has been designed to help people save the environment while also making money. It finally looks as though a city is putting the pieces together to make a concept that will change how people think. Boston is taking on two challenges, waste management and energy production, and it is hoping to come out on top financially. 

Many people know that compost can create heat through the decomposition of the organic materials. Many people also know that this same process gives off methane. Few people have ever tried to harness these unique characteristics and also make money with it. Boston is developing the idea to use this energy to their advantage, creating electricity and heating buildings. They will also be able to sell the resulting fertilizer for a profit. Another great advantage to this plan is the new job market it will create. Boston says that this will create new jobs that include microbiologists and soil chemists. 

This new business of turning garbage into green gold will bring jobs, produce electricity, and make money. Once Boston embarks on this new adventure and others cities start to see the results I am sure they will find that its actually very easy being green. 

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National Public Radio

As we like to remind you, Greener Thinking is a dual meaning, to save the environment while making money. Nike has finally taken this to heart and created a new “Environmentally Friendly” shoe. 

This shoe was made from scraps of other shoes, recycled rubber bits and a more environmentally friendly rubber sole. There is rumor that Nike will save millions of dollars while using this new design process. One problem I can see is that it does not look like this savings are going to be passed down to the consumer. The new line of shoes costs about $230. I don’t know about you but my theory is that if you can buy five tanks of gas at today’s prices for the price of a pair of shoes, you should go for what can get you the most miles. I know, I know, I like jogging too but there are really good shoes that are about a third of the price of these new shoes.

Hopefully this new idea of manufacturing with leftovers instead of throwing them in the garbage catches on. In the long run this will help shoe manufacturers make more money and also help people like you and me purchase some quality shoes without loosing our entire wallet. 

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Nike
PSFK
Wall Street Journal

Usually when you think of a pencil, you think of the old, trusty, yellow number two. But at Smencils, they want you to look at and smell pencils a new way. Smencils are pencils that you can choose one of ten different smells for. Smells like orange, cherry, and watermelon, or even chocolate and cotton candy. They say the smells last for a remarkable two years even if you don’t keep them in the included “freshness tube”. The best part about Smencils though, is that they are made from 100% recycled newspapers. They give some fascinating statistics on their site such as “172,000 Smencils can be made from 430 newspapers” and “recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times saves about 75,000 trees”. The idea to make recycled newspapers is a great one and we can only hope that as a society, more brilliant ideas like these will be developed and successfully turned into alternatives to the way things are done today. 

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Smencils

Walking around all of the orange and brown is nice for a change. Happy Halloween. I hope that you had some fun, but we are now back to Greener Thinking. While watching TV this week something caught me by surprise. NBC is having a “Green Week.” 

What is this you ask? Well I can’t tell you, it’s a secret… Okay, I guess, since you asked nicely. “Green Week” is a week worth of shows that all have green content in them. They also have a website that gives you tips on how to keep green. “Green Week” is scheduled to start on November 4th 

Some of the notable shows on their main website are “Heroes” and “Days of our Lives.” In “Heroes” there is week of green at Claire’s school to help get the students involved in the environment. The clip of “Heroes” on the site shows Clare cheerleading to plant a tree. “Days of Our Lives” is having a “Green Wedding” and there are also some tips on having a “Green Wedding.” From the preview their idea of “Green” in “Days of Our Lives” means organic food or organic plants… yeah… But there are also some better points such as the rings used in the wedding have jewels that are mined in a way that doesn’t desecrate the land. 

Pretty exciting I know, but at least NBC has taken a small step. This is not going to be the solution, but it is nice to see that people are beginning to take an interest where it counts, companies with enough money to motivate change. The only problem is that going green is still a new concept for big companies and they are still a little rusty on the delivery. I will be holding my judgment until “Green Week” is completed, but until then, go ahead and check out the NBC site and write us with your thoughts. 

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NBC – Green 
Green is Universal

Drifting through the infinite darkness of space, you find that everything that you know, everything that you have ever touched, and millions of people you have not even met yet are combined, smaller than your thumb. Only 12 people in human existence, as we know it, have ever set foot on the moon. Some people have conspiracy theories, but the most important people, the astronauts themselves still have the memories.

The difficult thing is to capture this somehow. Well you are in luck “In The Shadow of the Moon” is a new movie that travels through the entirety of the missions to the moon through the eyes of the astronauts. This movie shows the difficulty and concern each of the astronauts faced while trying to accomplish the impossible. 

One of the biggest impacts the movie had on me was when each pilot bared their soul and explained what they saw from space. They said even today you can see how big cities have their own atmosphere of pollution and that we have to start thinking about saving our planet. One astronaut stated after his visit to the “beautiful desert” (the moon) that we live in the “Garden of Eden” (Earth) and that it is very delicate so we must be careful.

Another interesting note is that the movie claimed in its credits that it is carbon neutral. I am not really sure how I feel about being carbon neutral, but it definitely does not hurt. Plus the awareness that this could bring is huge; the only problem is that it does not seem to be at all of the big local theaters.

If you would like to hear the tales of great adventure and strife this should definitely be on your list of movies to see. An extremely well done movie that helps to disprove the conspiracy theory and gives you new insight into how difficult the moon missions really were. I will easily give this movie a 9 out of 10. 

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conspiracy theories 
“In The Shadow of the Moon”