New Farmers Market at ASU Tempe Campus
During the Spring 2010 semester, ASU Tempe Campus will feature a Farmers Market on February 16, March 23, and April 20, 2010.
On each of those days, the Farmers Market will be open from 9 am to 2 pm.
The Farmers Market will feature about 20 vendors on Orange Mall, west of the Memorial Union Fountain, Arizona State University at the Tempe campus.
The Farmers Market is a collaborative effort sponsored by several ASU departments, student groups, and community organizations.
Remember to bring your own reusable bag!
For questions, please contact farmersmarket@asu.edu.
Donation Pickup Service in the Phoenix Area
AZGoGreen.org is a local donation pickup service in the valley, who strives to help keep usable items out of our local land fills.
AZGoGreen.org picks up resuable items for free and takes these items to non-profit organizations around the Phoenix area.
For more information or to schedule a pickup, please call 623-412-8027 or visit www.azgogreen.org
A Green Friday Deal
As you may know, thousands (millions?) of Americans this morning rushed into department stores and malls to commemorate the annual “Black Friday”.
Whether you participated in the Black Friday festivities or not, here is a fantastic deal that will not make you stand in a seemingly endless line at checkout.
Visit LetsGoGreen.biz, find neat eco-friendly products, buy a present for yourself or to someone else. At checkout (while sitting relaxed in front of your computer screen), use coupon code SHM20, and you will instantly receive 20% off of everything in your cart.
Let’s start this trend of purchasing eco-friendly products, and let’s call it “A Green Friday”!
But, instead of just on Fridays, use coupon code SHM20 at LetsGoGreen.biz any day and any time, and you will receive the same 20% off of everything in your cart.
But I suggest you do it today, so you can forever claim that you joined in on the first annual Green Friday event! 
High School Students in Tucson Taking Sustainability Seriously!
I was very happy to receive an email today (thank you Angela B.) regarding what one high school in Tucson is doing! Please read below:
High school students at City High in Tucson are dedicated to clean up 7 acres of land west of the Santa Cruz River.
The students will organize and lead a Garden Clean Up Day on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 from 9am to 12pm. Comprised of volunteers from the Tucson community, the high school students will lead the volunteers in the completion of the cleaning up activities.
Also, these students are creating a local organic garden in this area currently growing garlic, onions, and wheat.
For more information, please contact Jennifer Kinser by email jenniferk at cityhighschool dot org or call (520) 623-7223 extension 207.
“Keeping it Green” Festival in Tucson
I am excited to receive an email from my friend Priscilla Sheridan (from Who’s Green?) about the “Keeping it Green” festival in Tucson.
Presented by Tucson Electric Power Company, the “Keeping it Green” festival will celebrate Westcor’s 40th anniversary and is a joint effort between La Encantada and Who’s Green.
The Keeping it Green festival will take place on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 from 11 am to 4 pm. The event will feature free food, a special presentation from my wonderful friend Mrs. Green (Mrs. Green Goes Mainstream), green costume contest for kids, workshops from The Solar Store, Oasis Water Harvesting, Permaclean, and more.
Everything is free and is designed to inspire you to lead or maintain your eco-friendly lifestyle.
For more information or questions about the event, please contact Priscilla at (520) 749-5845 or priscilla@whosgreenaz.com.
Hope to see you there!
How does nature do it?
This is amazing!
This talk very effectively demonstrates the incredible lessons we can learn from nature about how to live on this earth more gracefully and more efficiently.
It’s about 20 minutes long, but I guarantee you will love it!
Please enjoy.
Celebrate Independence Day with an Eco-Flag!
This is one of the neatest products I have seen in a while!
You are looking at a picture of a very special American flag, it is the first-ever U.S. flag made of recycled water and soda bottles.
This eco-friendly flag will demonstrate patriotism and pride in your country as well as your commitment to the planet.
The stripes are sewn and the stars are embroidered. Packaged in a 100% recycled box. They are 100% American made!
Here is how you can get your own:
1. Visit Let’s Go Green web store
2. At checkout, use coupon code SHM20 and you will get 20% OFF
Happy Independence Day!
Take the Eat Local Challenge 2009!
July 5th to July 20th, 2009 marks this year’s Eat Local Challenge!
The Eat Local Challenge is hosted by food co-ops around the nation. The purpose of this event is to raise awareness and promote eating foods grown by local farmers.
If you are an avid locavore (someone who makes it a point to eat local foods), you are encouraged to eat four out of five meals with local food. If you are a novice, start out by eating five meals a week made with local foods. If you are somewhere in between, create your own goal.
Are you interested? Visit a co-op near you! Here are some locations in Tucson you can obtain locally grown foods:
Food Conspiracy Co-op in Tucson (Open every day from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.)
412 N. 4th Ave., Tucson, AZ 85705. Or call 520-624-4821.
If you are not in the downtown area, you can always buy locally grown foods from Whole Foods Market in Tucson:
3360 E Speedway Blvd, Tucson. Or call (520) 795-9844.
7133 N Oracle Rd, Tucson. Or call (520) 297-5394.
In addition, Whole Foods Market has a ton of locations in Phoenix.
Also, wherever you are in Arizona, you can still obtain locally grown foods from Farmers Markets in your area.
Pledge to eat as much as you can from locally grown foods!
Are you making water sense?
Similar to Energy Star, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sponsored the development of the WaterSense partnership program.
The WaterSense label makes it easy to identify water-efficient products, such as bathroom sink faucets, toilets, showerheads, and more.
Retrofitting the average American home with products that carry the WaterSense label can save, on average, 11,000 gallons of water (per home) per year! That’s enough to fill 11,000 gallon containers In all seriousness… that’s a lot of water that is being wasted every year… per home!
According to the Tucson Water website, about 80% of homes use 11,220 gallons or less of water per month. So, using WaterSense products has the potential to help you save quite a bit on your monthly bill. In addition to saving you money, conserving water especially here in the Southwest is obviously crucial.
The EPA has put together a very helpful resource that contains more information about WaterSense and tips to help you conserve water.
Ways to make your printing more eco-friendly
You may be good at avoiding unnecessary printing, but sometimes you may want or have to print documents. Here are several tips we’ve compiled to help you print in a more eco-friendly manner:
Smarter Ways to Print:
Doesn’t it bother you when you print a web page and after it’s too late, you realize that you printed all the ads, headers, and several other things on the web page that unnecessarily uses up ink and paper. Here are a few tips to help you avoid this:
> Before you print it, click “Preview” to see if you can avoid printing some pages.
> If you want to print an article from a website, look for a link that says “Printer Friendly” or something similar. Using this option will likely eliminate printing ads and other things that you do not intend to print.
> HP came up with a really cool plugin that can help you customize and select areas of websites to print. My favorite feature is that it allows you to combine areas of different webpages, so you can have a concise printout from different sources of only the info you want.
> Instead of the HP plugin, you can try GreenPrint, which can help you identify and avoid printing unwanted pages. In particular, I really like the built-in feature that keeps track of how many pages you did not print and how much money you saved.
The Eco-Friendly Font:
Who would have thought that there would be an “eco-friendly font”? It’s true… it’s called the “EcoFont”. Essentially, if you zoomed on the letters, you will see little “holes” and subsequently less ink is used when printing documents. Check it out and download the EcoFont. There is a professional and a free version of the EcoFont. It is a great way to help you save on ink.
Printer Settings
You can adjust the printer settings under “Properties” to print in lower quality (or “Draft” mode) which will use less ink. At the same time, the quality is not compromised significantly, so this could be an ideal choice for daily printing needs.
The Paper
Here is a simple one: use paper made from recycled material
The Ink Cartridge
In a previous post, we talked about the benefits of recycling printer cartridges – the benefits both to the environment and to your wallet! Instead of tossing an ink cartridge after it’s empty, you can refill or recycle it through services like Cartridge World (on their website, you can enter your zip code, and you will get a list of Cartridge World locations in your area). Recycling/Reusing an ink cartridge will cost you a fraction of the price of a new cartridge.
We hope that one or a combination of the methods described above can help you get started to make your printing habits a little more eco-friendly, which utlimately will save you money by reducing usage of ink and paper.