Until today, it’s been illegal for North Carolinians to water their lawns with gray water. But it looks like the extended drought and water restrictions have been enough to change lawmakers’ minds. According to the The News and Observer, state officials will “tweak state laws that suggest it’s an illegal practice” to reuse gray water from bathing or washing dishes.

So if you’re trying to conserve water, and you live in North Carolina, feel free to grab a bucket and collect and reuse gray water from washing dishes or bathing or taking a shower (perhaps a Navy shower? Yeah?). Dump it on your yellow, withered stalks of grass, pour it under a brown, crackly bush, or use it to wash yo’ dusty car. Just remember, you can do this with GRAY water, but please don’t reuse BLACK water (water from toilets). That’s still illegal in “The Old North State”.

Earthships are houses made with discarded tires, bottles, and cans, put together with lots of dirt. Many of them are self-sufficient, creating their own energy, and capturing their own rain-water. Since they’re made from reused/free materials, and supply their own electricity, heating, and water, they help conserve natural resources while also saving chunks of money. I’m down for anything that helps the environment AND saves me some dinero.

But I digress. I now present to you, courtesy of Earthship.net, “Earthships 101”.

Earthships 101: Part One:

Earthships 101: Part Deux

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Dang I want one.

Look above. That used to be a yellow cheese school bus! Man, when I first saw this, I was too interested. I read all the steps, and looked at all the pictures of what Jake Von Slatt did. What he did was buy a cheap school bus (a little more than $2,000) and transform it into a beautiful, homemade RV. I like his homemade RV for a couple reasons:

1. He did it cheaply. The bus cost about $2,000, he did most of the work himself (or with his friends), and he got a LOT from the dump, craigslist, or freecycle.
2. He reused a lot of materials, thereby creating his RV in a very “green” way (reused bus, materials from dump, reused mess off websites).
3. You can see the process of the bus’s conversion. Seeing all the steps it takes is really interesting, and makes me want to (one day) attempt something like this. It’s really cool, so por favor take a look at it.

Anyhoo, enough with my thoughts. Enjoy this video of Von Slatt giving you a tour of his homemade RV that came from a lil’ ol’ cheese bus.

If you’ve been staying up late at night, contemplating making the switch from plastic bags to reusable cloth bags, but you don’t yet have a tote bag, well then you are in luck. For I present to you, three two different ways to get a free reusable tote bag.

1. Free Eco-Friendly Bag – for businesses/retailers only. They put your logo on the reusable cloth bag, so you can sell them to customers, or give them away to promote your green business.
2. Free Klean Kampsite Bag – heavy duty, reusable bags with Velcro seals and ties to keep them closed. Great for camping / RVing (to coin a word). Did not work in Firefox for me.

So now you have no excuse to not be using them reusable cloth bags. Go out and get some free ones, and, as Michael Jackson said, “Heal the world, make it a better place”.

Hut hut hike! It’s almost Super Bowl time, and for many o’ us, that means going to a party to watch “The Big Game”. All too often, this means a lot of trash and wasted energy. Make sure you don’t get penalized for roughing the Earth by following these helpful Super Bowl party hints.

Kick an Extra Point with Online Invitations!

Instead of throwing a desperate Hail Mary of paper invitations to people to your Super Bowl party, throw a quick shovel pass of an online invitation (much higher completion rate), through email or Facebook or what have you. This will cut down on paper waste, as well as speed up how soon they receive your invitation.

Don’t Let Your Environment get Sacked by a Blitz of Trash!

• Don’t use disposable plates/cups/forks/chop sticks. Serve people with reusable plates and cups.
• Recycle any bottles or cans that there be. Make sure people know about this, so they don’t just automatically toss their can into the trash.
• Decorate with reusable decorations. That way you can use them each year to bring joy to people, instead of having them sit in a landfill.

Choose First-String Food!

The Super Bowl is for all the marbles; don’t let the benchwarmer food into this game!

• Serve local food. Check your local farmer’s market or local food store.
• Avoid food with way too much packaging. Go for the food that’s naked and ready!
• If you want, serve vegetarian food. It takes a lot less energy to get a pound of vegetables than a pound of meat. Plus, it’s healthier!

Warning: Green Super Bowl Tips for Eco Pro-Bowlers

• Don’t watch the Super Bowl on an energy-sucking TV; listen to it on a low-watt radio, or better yet, just ask people the next day who won.
• Don’t buy any food. Instead, at halftime, go outside to forage in your yard/woods for any edible roots or grubs.
• Power of imagination. Set your brain lose, and just imagine the entire Super Bowl. Anything can happen! Another “wardrobe malfunction”! A crazy 4th quarter comeback! Streakers running all over the field! That player you hate gets injured!

Hopefully, this playbook of how to have a green Super Bowl party has got you fired up and ready to give 110%. Remember, when it comes to helping out the environment (and saving you some money), EcoJoes is ready to take the handoff and score a touchdown! (or else fumble miserably as the crowd boos)

Back in the day, CRTs were all the rage. For those o’ you that don’t know, CRTs are those big, heavy monitors that used to be all over the place. All the cool kids had them. But no more. Now, people can get flat-panel monitors for a lot cheaper than they used to be. This has led to perfectly good (except for the fact they weigh a ton) CRT monitors being thrown away. Which leads to what I saw yesterday…

Discovery of the Discarded CRTs

I was leaving work when I happened to see some mess next to the dumpster. I took a closer look, and fought down a wave of nausea as I realized that another office was throwing away two old CRT monitors. With tears in me eyes, I gingerly lifted them and brought them into my car, hushing their whimpers as I buckled them in.

Resuscitation of the CRT Monitors

I peeled into my house’s parking space and ran the heavy CRTs into my computer room at home. They were safe… for now. Luckily, I actually needed a CRT, since I had tried to set up Linux Mint on a computer, but had failed when it tried to use monitor frequencies that my other monitor couldn’t handle. Anyhoo, I ended up using the found CRT to successfully fix up that computer.

Where Can I Donate my CRT Monitor?

If you have a CRT you don’t want, you gots some options on where to donate it:

• Ask a public school or library if they want it.
• Give it away on Freecycle, Craigslist, or OhSoHandy
• See if Goodwill or another thrift store wants it

Why Shouldn’t I Just Throw Out My CRT?

First, it’s wasteful. Come on now. Second, there’s a lot of toxic mess in CRTs that could leak out in a dump, such as:

• lead
• phosphorous
• cadmium
• barium
• mercury

Moral of the Story

Instead of just tossing your old, faithful CRT monitor into the trash, give it a second life somewhere. You’ll be helping someone while helping the environment, too. Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Work. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Am I right, people? Welp, until you hit it rich with a lottery ticket (or by making millions off your green contraption), work will probably be a big part of your life. As long as you’re going to be there, you may as well try to “keep it green”, as the youngsters like to say.

Reuse Paper at Work

Do you know how much printer paper is used every single day by offices world-wide? A lot. That’s how much. But here’s a simple tip: when someone prints something, it leaves one side of paper blank. At my work, we put paper like this in a scrap bin next to the printer. If you’re printing something that doesn’t need to look “official”, print it on the blank side of the used paper. Voila, paper use cut in half.

Turn Off Them Lights

Too often in today’s work-a-day hustle n’ bustle world, people leave their lights on at work when they leave to get a few fitful hours of rest at home. A simple flip of a switch can save 15 hours’ worth of light-energy a day, slashing your electric bill like a serial killer.

Go Easy on the Thermostat

Try to use your air conditioner and heater sparingly. Oftentimes, there are other ways to regulate the temperature of your office. At my work here, when it’s hot inside, we can usually cool off the building by opening some windows. If it’s cold, use a low temperature setting on the thermostat. Try to use the AC and central heating as little as possible (but do use them if the temperature is unbearable).

There are three simple ways to save energy and money in the workplace. If every company would follow these three, simple steps, just think how much money (and energy and paper) could be saved. So please, print out this here list, and tape it to the water cooler immediately. By doing so, you will have done your lil’ part in saving the Earth.