One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster. But what about the rest of Thailand? Journey with me, if you please, 370 miles to the north-east of Bangkok to the Wat Pa Maha Chedio KaewSisaket temple (nicknamed Wat Lan Kuad, or “Temple of a Million Glass Bottles”).


Wat Lan Kuad monks started collecting discarded glass bottles way back in 1984 so they could decorate their buildings. Apparently, their creativity with how they reused the glass bottles inspired tourists to start bringing bottles to the temple. Today, their seemingly fragile (yet actually pretty sturdy) temple is infused with over a million reused glass bottles! Hot dang!

I’ll leave you with some pictures of this magnificient temple. It’s purty cool how they used the glass bottles and even the metal caps of the bottles. ¡Disfrute los fotos!





I found out about this from good ol’ Been-Seen, who in turn found out about it from some Yahoo page that don’t exist no more.

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Welp, here we are for the “Festival o’ frugality“, a mish-mosh of different ways to save money, many of them having to do with the environment. Without further ado, I present to you, the festival.

DestroyDebt has compiled a whole 76 ways to save money while helping the environment.

Condo-Blues is on a mission to seal up his ducts and save some electricity and cash money.

Here’s yet another way to save money by cutting electricity costs from DepositAccounts.

BargainBriana has some good tips on how to cheap out on your various holiday parties.

Carole takes some time out of her busy day to teach us all how to make a natural birdseed wreath. Cheap, and it helps our animal friends.

The Well Run Dry shows just how dang easy it is to save money (and lower your eco-footprint) by riding a bike.

Here are some handy dandy ways to save money on groceries, brought to you by Fire Finance.

Here be some timely Thanksgiving leftover tips from A Simple Walk.

Stolen Moments has some easy tips for sticking to her grocery budget.

When you’re traveling for this Thanksgiving weekend, Savvy Frugality says why not think of the good ol’ train system?

Madison shares some free mess for this Black Friday.

Here are some frugal ways to have Family Fun© with your children, brought to you courtesy of Grey.

Oh snap, mom n’ dad have found out how to get Legos cheaply. Kudos, y’all.

LuluGal has written a beautiful piece about how to “magnetize money”. Give it a looksie.

David Mitchell dares to ask the age-old question: real or fake Christmas tree?

Martin Dasko flips it on everybody and explores when it’s NOT okay to skimp on money.

How in the world can you save money AND the planet whilst remodeling your abode? Aahz knows how.

vh waxes philosophical while also thinking about potential money savings.

Heather Levin shares some ways to save money on laundry day (many of them are “green”, if you will).

Wow, that was a LOT of submissions. A big muchas gracias to everybody who submitted to this week’s festival. Sorry to anyone who didn’t get posted, there were HUNDREDS of submissions, so don’t feel bad. Until next time, this is Joe, signing off.

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If you’re like me, you probably have at least one really old pair of shoes lying around somewhere. They’re too old/holey/torn up to wear, and yet you cannot find it in your heart to throw them away, discarding all those hours of hard work from child labor in the Philippines. But hearken, there’s a way to recycle your old sneakers!

Good ol’ Nike has set up a shoe recycling program, wherein you turn in your old shoes and they ship them to a processing plant. At the plant, they separate the old shoes into 3 different materials (rubber, foam, and plastic) and grind them up. They’ve recycled more than 21 million pairs of shoes since 1990!

Once they’re ground up, they can be turned into running tracks, new shoes, basketball courts, or even new clothes. That’s a lot better than just throwing away your old shoes to just sit in a landfill for centuries. So take a look around your house, find some old sneakers, find the nearest dropoff location, and recycle your old shoes.

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The Free Cloth Tote Bag Bonanza continues with a superbly crafted tote bag from Stouffer’s. Yes, Stouffer’s, maker of famous frozen dinners, is giving away free grocery tote bags. Here’s how to get your very own so next time someone asks if you want flimsy plastic or wasteful paper bags you can rudely thrust your cloth bag into their jealous face.

• Go to Stouffer’s and register
• You will get 100 points
• Donate at least 20 points to get a free tote bag!
• Send me $4 via Paypal

It’s just that easy. That last step is very important people! So register for that site, donate your points, getchoself a cloth bag, and start eschewing plastic and paper bags once and for all.

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If you’re like me, you’d rather use a reusable cloth bag for grocery shopping instead of them flimsy plastic bags. You can fit a lot more in a cloth bag, it helps the environment, PLUS some stores reward you for using cloth tote bags. But who can afford to buy a reusable bag these days, what with the economy and hard times and all?

Fret not, for THIS LINK will lead you to a free reusable cloth bag. That’s right, just click it, fill in some form, and bah-bam, you’ll be well on your way to living a greener life, all for the low cost of zero. Act now, supplies are limited!

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Halloween. The very name sends tears streaming down any Eco-Hero’s face as they contemplate the mass murder of millions of innocent pumpkins. But fret not. Out of this pumpkin massacre, some good can come. And that good is known as roasted pumpkin seeds and homemade pumpkin pie.

Homemade Pumpkin Pie

Let us begin with the pumpkin pie recipe. Now I’m not talking about pumpkins from a can, or frozen pre-made pumpkin pies. No. I’m talkin’ ’bout some made-from-scratch, down-home, honest-to-goodness, homemade pumpkin pie.
Pumpkin Pie Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar
• 1.5 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons nutmeg
• one half teaspoon ground ginger
• 4 large eggs
• 3 cups stewed pumpkin, mashed
• 12oz of evaporated milk

Here’s whatchu do:
* Find a pumpkin (a jack o’ lantern will do). After appropriately mourning its brutal death, collect all the parts that were cut out (eyes, nose, mouth, the works).
* Skin these pumpkin pieces, and cut them into “manageable chunk” size.
* Boil these in a microwave or on the stove until you can easily push a fork through them.

* Mash up the boiled pumpkin.
* Add condensed milk, sugar, eggs, and spices.
* Dump it all into a pie crust (filling to about 1/4″ below the top).
* Bake at 425 F for 15 minutes, then bake for about 50 minutes at 350. You can tell it’s done if you stick a knife in it and it comes out pretty clean.

* Let cool on rack
* Eat the delicious pie made from the flesh of the defenseless pumpkins, or you can wrap it up using some reused foil from a restaurant, like so:

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

* When you clean out a pumpkin to make a jack-o-lantern, save the seeds.
* Rinse the seeds, removing any of that orange, stringy mess.

* Add a wee bit o’ oil, some salt, and any other flavors you want (hot sauce, honey, curry).
* Bake at 275 degrees for 10-20 minutes (until they’re golden brown), stirring the seeds when they’re halfway done.

* Congratulations, you have now made a delicious and nutritious snack from the guts of a freshly killed pumpkin. I hope you’re proud of yourself.

These are great ways to use every part of the pumpkin, much like the Indians (these Indians, not these) used every part of the buffalo. Let me know if y’all know any other good pumpkin recipes. Thankee kindly.
Also, it is not too late to enter the free giveaway contest!! Click here for some details.

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Please email your entries to ecojoe ecojoes . com

My stupid abacus broke again! AARRGH!!

How often have you been frustrated when performing rudimentary calculations on your abacus? Do you often want to calculate your energy savings, but you don’t know your maths? What about writing “80085″ on a calculator and showing it to a friend to get a good chuckle? Do you ever want to do that, but you have no calculator?

Take heart, because I am hereby announcing the EcoJoes Incredible Calculator Contest! I have in my hands TWO brand-spankin’ new calculators, and they are ready to help you calculate your way to a greener, thriftier life. But how can you win one of these calculators, you might ask? Here’s how:

Calculator Contest Rules

• Get a blog or website
• Write an article or page about a time when you saved money by being all green and mess
• Put a link in the article back to EcoJoes.com (so I can find your article)
• Wait for me to announce the winners, then sit back and enjoy your very own calculator

That’s it. So good luck everybody, and may the best man/woman/transgendered person win.

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