Green Options

Despite the common idea that you need to be wealthy to really be green, there are many ways to both save money and be environmentally friendly. One of those ways, a personal favorite of mine, is buying used instead of new. Especially when you are buying books. Choosing to buy a used book rather than a new one saves a tree, lessens the impact from printing the book, and if you buy it from a local used book shop lowers the impact that shipping has on the environment.

But what about renting books? The Netflix CEO is taking the rental idea from movies to textbooks. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars buying new textbooks for a class you will only be in half the year you can now rent them for a fraction of the cost. It is definitely something I wish had been around when I was in college.

In my previous eco-dating post I described a possible afternoon out to share with your significant other. This time let’s explore a night in!

I have found that cooking with your favorite guy or gal is a great way to spend time together and learn something new. Aaron and I tend to make a lot of whole grain pasta with chunky organic veggie sauce. Whole grain pasta is less processed than typical pasta and any foods made from grains rather than meat are less energy intensive to produce.

After this hearty meal you can rent a movie that you have both wanted to watch. Renting instead of buying is a way to share and re-use resources, in this case DVDs or tapes, as much as possible before they must be recycled or sent to a landfill. For us, renting is a particularly attractive option because theater tickets are so expensive these days and rental businesses definitely give us more choices. If you’re not keen on renting but want the same effect try Netflix or buying movies on iTunes.

Editor's note: We're happy to be entering into a partnership with LighterFootstep.com, a site much like our that is geared towards helping people live greener lives. Next week, we'll start swapping posts with LF, but we decided (with permission of their editor, Chris Baskind) to jump in and publish this piece from yesterday.

It seems that a lot of what is written about lighter living is targeted to homeowners.

How else would

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