Okay so if you ever latched on to the old 80s sitcom Punky Brewster, then you know who Soleil Moon Frye is. In fact, I’d go so far as saying that even if you never watched Punky Brewster, you’ve definitely heard the two words punky and brewster juxtaposed next to each other in everyday conversation at least once in your misbegotten life.

I saw the movie WALL-E recently. It was totally adorable and I expected that. What I didn’t expect was how the very premise of the film was most likely constructed to teach us all a lesson. If you haven’t seen the film, you should probably stop reading right about here.

H2O. Two Oxygen atoms and one Hydrogen. Water is essential for all life as we know it (thus the search for water on Mars). So who thought it would be okay to filter it, put it in bottles, and sell it?

Bottled water may be convenient but at what cost? The plastic bottles water is sold in use a ton of fossil fuels to produce and transport. According to Pacific Institute, in order to make the plastic bottles to quench America’s thirst for bottled water, companies used “17 million barrels of oil last year – enough fuel for more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year – and generated more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.”

Dasani (Coca-Cola) and Aquafina (PepsiCo), the two top-selling bottled water brands, have both made clear that their water is essentially filtered tap water. Can’t we just filter and bottle our own water and save the cash?

Evian, Poland Springs, and other brands may actually use Spring water, but think about the cost of transporting that water all over the world.

“But isn’t bottled water cleaner than tap water?” you ask. No. As a matter of fact tap water is regulated on a regular basis by the government, whereas the laws on testing tap water are less strict. According to www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org, “tap water is tested far more frequently and has more independent oversight by state and federal environmental authorities (EPA and DEP).” As a matter of fact, companies are often responsible for testing the water themselves. I know I feel slightly brainwashed after hearing that companies spend tens of millions of dollars per year trying to convince us that bottled water is cleaner and purer.

Treehugger.com (one of my fave websites!) posted an article yesterday about UC Berkeley students sequestering themselves at the top of a tree to protect a grove from being eradicated. Now, I’ve got to say that I am totally into acts of heroism and such, but these crunchy kids went just a bit too far (and I can say that because I’m “green” and not psychotic).

So, I was boopin’ around on the web tonight. I plopped to my usual iGoogle home page and gasped at an article entitled, “Ice-free North Pole… maybe” by TG Daily’s Humphrey Cheung. Of course, I clicked and read. I could not believe my eyes. Apparently, scientists are saying that there is a 50/50 chance that the North Pole may melt this summer.

So I went shopping on my lunch break today (I actually don’t waste too much gas because I work less than 10 minutes from my house (and my two jobs are less than 5 minutes away from each other). Fuel eco-friendliness aside, I went to TJ Maxx (and no, this is not a plug for TJ Maxx even though I do enjoy their cheap clothes). I was checking out the small, but awesomely cheap, beauty section of the store to pick up a new eco-friendly hairbrush (yes, such things DO exist).

Anyway, as I headed to the checkout counter, my jaw dropped, my eyes bugged, and my socks were violently knocked off at the sight of TJ Maxx’s very own Earth-friendly shopper fabric bag.

I know. So dramatic as usual, right?

So, I’m talking about my room. It’s dreadfully small and jammed with things I don’t need. What is a girl to do? I feel like I am the chief supplier of items for Salvation Army to sell, so I don’t always want to go to them.

This is the part where I answer my own question. Why don’t I just FREECYCLE my goods?

No. Not at all. SAY WHAT?
We hear the word hybrid all the time. We know it means electric. We know it means eco-friendly. “Good-on-gas” also comes to mind. But what does it *really* mean?

So, my brother whipped his Blackberry out at dinner the other night telling me I needed to see some website about a solar home in Maine. I’m not from Maine and being from the Boston area, the only thing I associate with Maine is boredom. But my brother told me I would be interested since I’ve caught the green kick, so I humored him.

Apparently there’s this couple in Maine, William and Deborah Lord, who constructed a solar house on a thoughtfully-chosen plot of land. The house isn’t too deep into the deep woods of Maine so that way, more sunlight can be absorbed by the solar roof.

photo courtesy of http://www.solarhouse.com/

My brief stint on blogger.com has come to an end and I’m going to move all of my posts to WordPress. I just prefer this interface. And I also changed the title of my blog. I feel like being groovy is more me. Really. And I think that there should be an equal amount of attention on me and on the subject of the environment.

Thanks for reading! Stay beautiful, stay green.