Sign up for Windsource with Xcel Renewable Energy

You can choose to buy all wind power or just a certain amount each month. It is a great program for us urbanites to be able to utilize clean, sustainable energy. They say there is a waiting list to sign up, but we got it on our next bill!You might wonder how you, alone, get windpower.Well, the power you use in your home is not actually pure windpower.The way it works is that for every watt you purchase for your home, they buy that many watts ofwindpower to add to the grid.

Recycle!

Denver recycling has several options and a great system set up.They even have single stream recycling! Throw all your recyclables into the bin, and they ort them for you!For the list of standard recyclable and non-recyclable items, go here!

Re-use your and others unwanted junk

We use two websites to find items we are in need of, and, to get rid of our unwanted items.We would much rather re-use an item than end it to a landfill!

Craigslist

Hmmm, how to describe this website well, it is sort of a local mish-mash of everything from classifieds to events to personals and rants and raves.We usually focus on the section. We post our unwanted items and keep an eye out for things we could use.Right now we are watching for home improvement items to fix up our place.There is stuff all the time from people re-modeling or cleaning out the garage.

Freecycle

This site actually has a few ways to utilize it. It is based on email, but you can also watch the website for the posts.Basically, there are two kinds of postings. OFFER is something someone is giving away. WANTED is something someone needs. When someone sends in a post, it is posted on the website and automatically is emailed to everyone on the list in Denver.

And, both of these websites are completely free!

Especially keep an eye out for mystery boxes, they are great fun!You never know what you are going to get. Whatever you can't use, pass it on with some of your own random items.

Make earth-friendly purchases!

Wild Oats, Sunflower Market, and Whole Foods all have a great selection of recycled goods, and they have excellent environmental business practices. I recommend the paper towels, tissues, and any food packaging you can find that has been recycled.

I would also recommend several websites that offer products online.

Food Fight

Pangea

Re-usable water bottles

Instead of buying a case of water each week or month, buy a re-usable water bottle!You can wash it once a week or so and not have any plastic water bottles getting wasted. I recommend something that is shatter-resistant and has a wide mouth. Especially here in Denver with our super low humidity, this is a great way to help!

Transportation and Alternative Fuel Vehicles

Ride a bike, car-pool , or utilize mass transit. Buy a hybrid. Convert to or buy a bio-diesel, electric, natural gas, ethanol, or propane vehicle.

Denver is one of the best bike friendly cities I have ever lived in. You can get almost anywhere on the bike paths and trails.They even have an annual bike-to-work day. Bikes are great for reducing fossil fuel consumption and pollution while getting exercise and enjoying the sites at a more leisurely pace.

Car-pooling is great, you can use one of several carpooling websites or even organize your own carpool with your co-workers. Not only does it help the environment, you get to use high-occupancy lanes and make closer friends!

Denveralso has a great mass transit system.They have light-rail, buses, skyride,mallride, and they are constantly expanding. We love to use the busses to get us to from the GABF safely!

Hybrid vehicles are getting better and better. Quite a few of the major automobile manufacturers are offering them now.There are many different kinds of hybrids, most of which are eligible for tax rebates even!

There are several different types of Alternative Fuel Vehicles. Some are available from the manufacturer, others you have to convert an after-market vehicle.

Bio-diesel,

Electric,

Natural Gas,

Ethanol,

Hydrogen,

Propane,

Solar power rebates

With all the rebates being offered right now on so many levels, you can install solar power for your home for around 75% off. Even better, if you produce more clean power than you use, the electric company will actually buy it from you! Imagine getting a check each month instead of a bill! Xcel Energy has a wonderful description on their website.

They even have solar shingles now, check them out! Instead of having large solar panels, you can shingle your roof in them!

Water rebates

Denver water is now offering several water rebates when you purchase and install water-saving products. These rebates include high efficiency clothes washers, toilets (high efficiency and low-flow), ET controllers, and rain sensors. The rebates vary from $25 to $200, depending on the product. Please refer to the Denver Water Conservation website for details.

It is quite a deal, buy a product that helps save water in the first place, and then get a rebate as well! With the washer, your water bill is basically paid for quite a while! And when the rebate is gone, you still have a lower water bill!

For those of you that do directly pay your water bill (some apartments, HOA included,ect.), you are still eligible for the rebate. Just contact your HOA for your water account number. If you live in Denver (most likely the water bill is paid to Denver Water), send the rebate form to the address located at the bottom of the form. If you live in an outlying community that is not served by Denver Water, then the form needs to be sent to that water provider, and they will send it to us.

Sustainable Living Fair

The Sustainable Living Fair is a great event for learning more about how you can make a positive impact on the planet!

From the harsh reality of resource decline and environmental decimation, a new way of thinking and living has emerged. Join us for a weekend of enlightening solutions that sustain our lifestyles while sustaining our environment. The Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Fair is a solution based, hands-on, family oriented event designed to educate people of all ages and backgrounds about Sustainable Living Practices, Renewable Energy, Environmental & Social Responsibility, Natural Health, Green Building, Alternative Vehicles, Organic Agriculture and more.

Tiger Bracelets

I started this animal fund in Houston, TX at the Downtown Aquarium there. The bracelets are currently available in Houston and Denver in the Downtown Aquarium gift shops. They are supposed to be in Rainforest Cafe's around the country, but we don't have one here, so I can't check if they are in yet! The bracelets are $2 each and all the profits go to benefit Wildaid and the Species Survival Plan. The bracelet has two tiger paw prints and the logo Save the Tigers on the outside, and of course, it is tiger striped!

Wildaid is an international organization with a great goal

To decimate the illegal wildlife trade within our lifetimes.

They have already made huge progress with this goal in several very animal-sensitive areas of the world.

The mission of the Species Survival Plan (SSP) is to help ensure the survival of selected wildlife species. It is a program put together to help save animals from extinction in the wild. The basic premise is to keep the endangered and threatened captive animal gene pools diverse. I have personally participated in several SSP programs. My first was with a brother-sister pair ofmarkhor goats at the Little River Zoo. We grew them up from little shin-high babies and then swapped the female with an unrelated female at another animal facility. The resulting pairs where matched up by the SSP program to keep theMarkhor gene pool diverse. Last I heard, they where in their 3^rd generation of offspring! It is truly amazing to be a part of this special program. Currently I am helping with the Sumatran Tiger SSP match-up here at the Denver Downtown Aquarium. We swap our tigers with other facilities all the time for breeding, following the advice of the SSP program (opposite picture is Jalan, Marah, and Besar).

Geocaching(& CITO)

A great activity on many levels! It utilizes many earth-friendly features, (for us at least).

Geocaching: is an entertaining adventure game forgps users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of agps unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.

Cache In Trash Out: is an activity intimately tied togeocaching. While out there on a cache hunt, we collect litter along the trails and properly dispose of it. On certain days, we also participate in much larger clean-up events that involve and benefit the larger community.

This is one of the caches we have placed, re-using a peanut butter jar for a cache container. We also gave it a recycling theme and placed it next to a recycling bin!

font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'>The ultimate re-using cache:

Petfinder.com class=MsoHyperlink>

A wonderful site for finding a loved one to adopt! Not only do they have most of the adoptable dogs and cats in your area, they have everything from horses to snakes to parakeets and ferrets! You can also go to your local pet shelter to adopt as well. We prefer to support no-kill shelters that choose not to euthanize surplus animals.

My rant for the day:

Please make wise choices when selecting a pet, research the care and living requirements very carefully. I have taken way too many phone calls in this life time from someone who made a bad decision. i.e. some fish are 2 in the pet store, and grow to be 3 feet long! Snakes grow too, most zoos can't take your 6 foot boa constrictor (that goes for your 4 foot iguana as well!). And, please, don't even consider monkeys or large cats. Monkeys are only cute for about 4 months. Then, you try to find someone to give them to, after they bite you a few times and tear up your house (perfectly normal behavior for a monkey). Unfortunately, they have serious mental problems and usually health issues (ask me about the playboy capuchin I used to care for). Well, that leaves us with tigers and other large cats. There is a HUGE problem with large cats right now. It is estimated that there are more tigers in Texas then there are in the wild. Think about that a second. Too many! Also, they do not make good pets. They are expensive and they are only cuddly for about 6 months. Then they become tigers. 300 to 800 pound carnivores that don't understand pet, only wild instincts. One unfortunate owner left their tiger cub home alone one day and found a very happy tiger when they got home. Ever seen a cat chase a feather? He decided to go for the ceiling fan, unfortunately, the ceiling came down with it. Oh yeah, and zoos and sanctuaries don't have any more room for the surplus exotic unwanted animals!

Consider Vegetarianism, even for one day a week!

At the very least, try some of their yummy recipes once a week! You will feel better, be more healthy, stop harm from coming to our animal friends, live longer ,... you get the idea. It is even easier than ever today with all of the meat alternatives commonly available on the market.

Try Veg

Vegan Outreach

Vegetarian Times

All about Veggie

Veg Family

Look for the Energy Star logo

Energy Star is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy helping us all save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices.

Look for the star on anything you buy (or re-use). It is found on washers, computers, air-conditioners, electronics, and even for your whole home! You know you are getting an energy efficient product when you see the logo. Our washer is rated at almost the lowest energy rating available today at around $7 a year. That is a large improvement over our older antique washer.

Buy items with re-usable or at least recyclable packaging

Get familiar with what your area recycles and watch for it in your food packaging. Even better, save the energy used to recycle the packaging and re-use them! Peanut butter jars make great containers for storing bulk food in. You can even use chalkboard paint on the lids so you can write what is in each time you use it!

Make good choices at the grocery checkout

Request paper instead of plastic at the grocery store, it is much easier to recycle. If they give you any hassle, tell them you will use plastic when they start offering to recycle it! But, even better than paper or plastic, bring your own canvas tote bags! Some stores will even give you a bag credit (usually a nickel) or let you donate the credit to a local organization. We even have a couple tote bags made from recycled materials!

Recycle your old cell phones!

There are several companies that will take your old cell phones and chargers for free, and even some that will pay you for them. When you recycle them, it actually helps save the rain forest! There is a mineral mined from the rainforest that is used widely in cell phones. Recycle them so they don't have to mine more!

The Conservation Committee here at the Downtown Aquarium accepts donations of old cell phones. The money this raises is used to support conservation here inDenver. We support several local animal and conservation organizations. Drop on by the aquarium and knock on the education door to drop your old cell phone off!

Xeriscaping

Is a wonderful way to have a home with beautiful landscaping but use plants that require little to no watering (also known as water conserving landscapes)! Colorado has a Xeriscaping website that explains all about it.

Why Xeriscape? For most of the western United States over fifty percent of residential water used is applied to landscape and lawns.Xeriscape can reduce landscape water use by 60% or more. Efficient water use doesn't mean changing our lifestyle. It means reducing water waste, such as improper irrigation, and finding ways to achieve attractive, comfortable landscapes without excess water use. Your landscape is an investment in your comfort and in the value of your property. A goodXeriscape will increase your property value by as much as 15%.Xeriscape can also reduce water and maintenance costs by up to 60%. Xeriscape helps extend water supplies. When water use is restricted, inefficient water-thirsty landscapes suffer first. Protect your landscape investment by drought-proofing it.