McGreeny’s Online World

May 22, 2009 · Filed under Pondering

Adirondack View

So recently I participated in this online chat with McGreeny sponsored by Clorox Greenworks products…

What, you haven’t heard of McGreeny? Ladies, meet McGreeny a.k.a. Josh Dorfman, author of “The Lazy Environmentalist” and “The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget.” His deal seems to be that basically, we as a species are lazy. So we’ll take steps to avoid destroying the planet as long as we don’t really have to get our of our Lazyboys to do so.

Maybe to a certain extent he’s right. I know Earth month has passed and we’re running the home stretch to summer and iced tea and air conditioning, and we maybe are a little bit lazy and don’t want to worry about how filling the kiddie pool affects our carbon footprint. Does the fact that I freeze my kitchen scraps in plastic ziploc bags and then drive them upstate to my compost pile and then throw away the bags (which are usually on their third or fourth use but still…) actually negate what I’m trying to achieve? Am I too lazy to think that through fully?

Anyway, this online conference was pretty interesting. McGreeny had lots of good tips for going green without breaking a sweat, but I was really struck by the incredible breadth and variety of online resources there are to help you greenify. Talk about not having to leave your LazyBoy! If you haven’t heard of these sites (and I hadn’t heard of most of them) check them out!

Tonic Mailstopper Are you so fed up with junk mail that you’d pay to get rid of it. For twenty bucks a year, you totally can. Plus, when you sign up, they’ll plant 5 trees on your behalf. That’s cool.
Gazelle, MyBoneYard, and greenphone will all recycle your used electronics. They may even pay you money for them. And either resell or recycle them. No kidding.
With RecycleBank earn points for recycling. From your home or business. And redeem them for stuff. Best of all, you don’t even have to sort the recycling. Just put them all in the big bin provided. This program seems to still be in the development phase but I think it’s cool enough to check out now.
Zinio Subscribe to and read your favorite magazines online and save a tree. Or two. Or three thousand.
Freecycle is one of my favorite sites ever. It’s like Craig’s List with no creepy personal ads! Just sign up. List stuff you have to give away. Take stuff you can use. Bye bye landfills.