Green business: February 2008 Archives

For Sunday's paper, I interviewed a lot of student fans from Delone Catholic high school about whether or not gas prices made it harder for them to get to the district championship game in Hershey on Monday night.

Two of them told me gas could never keep them away from the game. Many others shared the same sentiment.

They all told me they had driven to Hershey from Hanover, which takes about an hour, because they wanted to show school spirit and support their team.

Their way of getting around the gas issue: Carpooling.

I hate plastic bags in the grocery store. Unless I double bag, I can never make it to the car without one ripping.

That's why I think the idea of bringing canvas bags from home (or buying the ones some grocery stores offer) is a really smart idea. The canvas bags are more sturdy and they have more room than a plastic bag.

I haven't used them myself yet. I've just dealt with ripped bags. But I've seen more and more people either bringing their own bags or buying the ones offered at the check out, and I'm thinking about doing the same.

A bunch of the stores locally, like Giant and Weis, are selling the bags for 99 cents. Maybe I will pick one up next time I'm out. And if I decide not too at least I know now that these two stores also have recycling bins for plastic bags at the entrances. So I can bring my bags back to be recycled.

It's eco-friendly and feels like the responsible thing to do. I know I drive a lot and in a lot of other ways am not as environmentally conscious as I should be. This seems like one small thing I can do to play my part. It's nothing big. But it's easy enough that lots of people can do it and we can save a little space in all those landfills.

How do you bag your groceries? I'd love to hear!

My mom often hung clothes out on a clothesline to dry. I thought it was normal. Then, I went to college and had to learn to use a clothes dryer for everything; I was one of the few on that learning curve.

But in our current green revolution, clotheslines are coming back because they use solar energy to dry your clothing and not electricity produced with fossil fuels. That and other backyard fixes to carbon footprints in the suburbs are outlined in today's New York Times, seen here.

However, one problem the story touched lightly upon is the possible outcry from your local homeowners association, which makes rules like what shade of red your front door can be or how long your lawn can be, down to fractions of fractions of an inch.

I can only imagine what those groups would do if someone decided to put a wind turbine in the back yard to generate electricity or replaced the lawn with a continuous vegetable garden, let alone if you hung your underwear out to dry for all the neighbors to see.

Do you feel restricted in what you could do for the environment by your local homeowners association, local governments or local zoning rules, or even just by the unspoken rules of decor in McMansion country?