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.

Last week I came home to find a large cardboard box from Papa Spud’s. What is Papa Spud’s, you might ask? Welp, Papa Spud’s is a company that delivers mainly local, mainly organic fruit and vegetables to Raleigh and its surrounding towns. Almost all their produce comes from inside North Carolina, which means that you’re supporting local farmers plus cutting down on the transportation pollution.

Here’s the plethora of nutritious vittles that greeted me when I tore open the box. Please note the insulating lining that keeps the produce nice n’ cold.

• 3 big yellow peaches from NC
• Pint of grape tomatoes (NC)
• 2 slicing cucumbers (NC)
• 2 big eggplants (NC)
• 6 red dale potatoes (NC)
• and from California, a ginormous bag of red seedless grapes

Since I opened the box, I’ve tried all of the foods and have only an eggplant and some grape tomatoes left. It was dang good, with no messed up fruit or vegetables. The grapes and peaches were especially good. I’m about to finish up the eggplant and tomaters tomorrow.

Oh yeah, they reuse their insulated boxes. Each week, you put them outside on your doorstep, and they pick them up when they bring your new vegetables. A simple, efficient, non-wasteful system.

Anyhoo, if you live close to Raleigh, you should go check them out. Their website explains how you can start getting local, organic food delivered to your house this week. The best thing about it is that it encourages you to try some new healthy foods, plus support yo’ local farmers, all without leaving the comforting womb of your own home.

To see the video and read more about the Zephyr-6, head on over to BBC News, and tell them EcoJoes sent you.

A solar-powered plane flew for a little over 82 hours, shattering its old record. The lightweight plane, known as the Zephyr-6, was flown as a demonstration for U.S. military, which is looking for new ways to provide air support for its ground troops.

Dang, 3 days in the air just from solar power. This might be even better than the solar powered bra. Pretty amazing. If they could somehow make solar-powered passenger planes, we could cut down on air pollution while also reducing our dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels. It’s a win-win situation.

I don’t have much to say about this, except that if I was a girl, I would be wearing one all the time.

Triumph International Japan has finally done it; our world’s environmental problems are as good as solved now, for they have done the un-possible — invented a solar powered bra. I haven’t seen a “green” invention this innovative since the new milk jug design came out and confused some people.

The bra is green (in color and philosophy), and has a solar panel attached to it that can be worn around the stomach. It generates enough energy to charge small electronics, like a mobile cellular phone or mp3 player or what have you.

Not only does this bra collect solar power, but it also has plastic pouches that can be filled with water in case you get thirsty. So I guess it might save some water bottles?

But alas, this ingenious invention has some downsides. It can get messed up if it rains on the solar panel, and also, it doesn’t work if it’s covered up with actual clothes. To me, it looks like someone just glued a flexible solar panel to a tanktop. We will be closely monitoring Triumph International’s continuing work on this creation…

Way back in the day, I wrote something about how to stop getting phone books. Welp, it turns out that what I wrote only works for some people. But what to do about the hundreds of millions of unwanted phone books that are made, delivered, and immediately recycled (or thrown away) each year?

It turns out that a student in Missouri started a website with the aim of mimicking the Do Not Call list, only instead of Do Not Call, it’d be Do Not Deliver Phonebooks. So if you want to help save energy, time, trees, and cut down on unwanted phone books, just

SIGN UP ON THIS SITE.

If you don’t think that phone books are all that bad, then por favor consider these “fun facts,” brought to you by YellowPagesGoesGreen:

To produce 500 million books [annually]:

* 19 million trees need to be harvested
* 1.6 billion pounds of paper are wasted
* 7.2 million barrels of oil are misspent in their processing (not including the wasted gas used for their delivery to your doorstep)
* 268,000 cubic yards of landfill are taken up
* 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity are squandered

Gadzooks, that’s a lot o’ resources! Do your part to help out good ol’ Mother Earth (and yourself), and sign up to stop getting unwanted phone books today.

Gracias to Tony for telling me about this site.

Dag, I haven’t updated this site in TOO long. I’ve been busy as heck at work, plus at home. Anyhoo, let’s get down to business.

Econo-Chem makes a very cheap (pennies a bottle), all-purpose, eco-friendly cleaning product. Part of their secret is that they sell you the cleaner in concentrated form, so it weighs less (lower transportation costs and less air pollution) and so you can dilute it to the strength you need. Let’s hear what Econo-Chem has to say about Econo-Clean, shall we?

Econo-Clean contains no phosphates, bleaching agents, acids or solvents. It works on a sodium-based lifting agent, which gets into the pores of a material, to lift and remove anything which is not permanently bonded.

To get the free sample, SIMPLY CLICK YOUR MOUSE BUTTON ROTCH HUR and answer some quick questions. Make sure you say that you’ll consider buying their product, and that you already have an empty spray bottle.

When you’re done, you’ll be the proud owner of some good ol’ Econo-Clean.

Good ol’ Wal-Mart and Costco have started using a new design for their milk jugs, and I think they’ve come up with a real winner. The new design has a whole mess of environmental and cost advantages compared to the milk jug design that you’re probably used to, but there are some people that jes’ plain don’t care for it. Here’s a brief summary of its pros and cons.

New Milk Jug Design Pros

• Less shipping materials – The old jugs had to be packaged with heavy shipping crates. The new ones can be stacked with just a layer of cardboard between them.
• More efficient transport – Less shipping materials means more milk jugs can be transported in each truck, so companies save money on gas and cut down on air pollution.
• Shipping labor cut in half
• Water usage cut by 60-70% – The old shipping crates had to be sprayed off after each run, since milk would spill on them and birds would roost in them
• Lower milk cost! – “Sam’s Club said [there] was a savings of 10 to 20 cents a gallon compared with old jugs.“
• The new milk jugs fit better in your fridge.

The Bad Side of New Milk Jug Design

Amy Wise, a homemaker in Ohio, said the new-fangled gallon jug spilled milk everywhere. Judging from the picture, I’d say her main problem is that she’s trying to pour the milk into an imaginary cup in her left hand. No wonder she looks frustrated.

Many people say the new milk jugs are harder to pour. But I think with more practice, people will get used to them quickly. With all the benefits (less pollution, cheaper milk, easier transportation, and more efficient use o’ materials), methinks that the new milk jug may be here to stay.

* The bodacious picture of Amy Wise was taken by David Maxwell of The New York Times.