Water, Water Everywhere

As I was on my way to a medical appointment, pounding down 25 oz. of water in 10 minutes (literally), it struck me how millions of people in this world don't even get 25oz of water a week to drink.  Think about that:  884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in eight people. More sad stats (thanks to Water.org):

• A typical bathtub, if you are lucky enough to have the time to take a bath every day, holds about 151L.  Someone living in a slum typically only gets 30L for all of their needs; that number will be even less if you lived in a remote area.
• Waterborne diseases cause 1.4 million deaths in children every year.  Most are a result of drinking or bathing in unsanitary water.
• Millions of women and children spend hours a day collecting water from distant, unsanitary sources.

Oh, I could hit you with tons more statistics; they're all over the web.  My thought wasn't about stats, but about how #1, fortunate we are to not have to face thirst, real thirst for which you have nothing to quench it and #2, how much we waste without even thinking about it.  I recall how in the summer, my daughter would take a swig of water & spit it out all over the place, just goofing off.  Makes that seem not so funny, when you picture a sad little face that hasn't had but a sip of water in a couple of days.

I am well aware that this is a real downer and come on, do I really think about that every time I drink water?  No, but I am genuinely conscious of how I use it.  If I'm not going to drink the rest of my water, I put it in the refrigerator for later, or use water that I boiled spaghetti in to water my plants, etc.

As a B.A.B.E, I really do feel that I want to & should not only live the way I dream the world to be, but also maybe, just maybe, be an example to others.  Never know, it might catch on.

The Measure of a (Wo)Man

There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.

-- James Truslow Adams

My Uncle Johnny died yesterday.  He was a really good guy; nice guy.  The kind of guy that makes you sad that he died, just because he was so darn nice.  Death usually makes you think about someone even more; contemplating how they lived, what they did, etc.  Here is my Uncle Johnny in a nutshell:

He died at 64 years old after complications from quadruple bypass surgery.  He quit school in the 8th grade to take care of his family - 5 siblings and a Mother.  I know lots of men with higher education that can't even take care of themselves.

He worked his whole life, a good, honest job and I never heard him complain.  I know many people that were paid three times what he made and complained every day.

He was a "functioning alcoholic" for many years, but then chose sobriety and has been sober for over 30 years.  Know what the success rate of sobriety is?  Depending on the source, it's less than 10%...3 stats I read said less than 5%.  I would call his sobriety quite successful.

He helped my Mom and family with anything they needed, helped out at church, with Race for the Cure and many other things.  I know many people with twice as much free time that do nothing.

While my Uncle was in the hospital, a few staff members came in on their day off to check on him because he had made such an impact on the folks who worked there.  What will be our impact on those around us - while we're here and gone?

Stuff in Your Box?

How much junk mail do you get?  "Too much" was probably your first answer!  For sure, we are inundated with mail we don't want: each American gets roughly 40lbs of junk mail per year!  That's about 848 pieces for each household (Thanks, Time, for the stats) !

Junk mail is the antithesis of everything B.A.B.E stands for:  wastes time, kills trees, clutters your house.  Do you know that the U.S. composes 30% of the world total for junk mail?  Paper junk mail kills about 100 million trees each year, with 44% of it ending up unopened in landfills.  Boo hiss!  And how much money do these companies make wasting your time?  About $646 billion a year! No kidding!

How can you combat this postal assault?  There are several companies, some free, some not, that will free you from the bondage of unwanted junk mail.  Here are a few we found:

• CatalogChoice.org - rids you of unwanted catalogs.  You may need to give them your customer number off the back of the catalog.  This service is free.
• PrivacyCouncil.org, DoNotMail.org, DirectMail.com, StoptheJunkMail.com all allow you to get your name off lists to stop receiving junk mail.

Take a few minutes fill out some of these forms & rid your life of excess clutter, save trees & get some time for you!

Need Ink?

I live my life pretty green:  recycle, compost, buy 100% recycled content paper, CFL bulbs, buy local, blah, blah, blah.  But every time I run out of ink, I run to the nearest office supply & buy more.  I trade in my used ones, of course, but I still buy new cartridges.  Hellooo, refills!  Why this never crossed my mind, I have no idea.  So, my awesome friend took my old cartridges to Cartridge World (happens to be the place closest to where I live) and voila!  New cartridges, no plastic dumped in the trash & tons of energy was saved!  Oh, and I saved a bit of money, too!  Hey - saving the world & saving money?  You must be talking about a B.A.B.E!
For your reading pleasure, here are some nifty facts about ink cartridges, taken from the Cartridge World website (thanks gang!):

Facts About the Environmental Impact of Printer Cartridges

• It takes about a gallon of oil to make a new laser cartridge.
• Almost 8 cartridges are thrown away per second in the United States alone!
• In North America alone, over 350 million cartridges per year are discarded in our landfills, and that number increases by 12 percent annually!
• Every remanufactured laser cartridge saves nearly 2.5 pounds of metal & plastic waste from being deposited in landfills.
• A laser cartridge thrown into landfill can take up to 450 years to decompose. Some components made of industrial grade plastics will take over a thousand years to decompose.
• 70 percent of used printer cartridges throughout the world are currently being thrown out.
• In one year, if the world’s discarded cartridges were stacked end-to-end; they would circle the earth over three times.

We Can Make a Difference!

Every single cartridge saved from a landfill makes a difference. This will not only protect our environment but save consumers thousands of dollars. Now imagine the difference when individuals, then organizations, then cities, then states and then nations start participating! That is Impact with Effect! At Cartridge World we are not only making a difference, we are changing the world!

Did You Know? 

• Most printer cartridges can be refilled or remanufactured.
• By bringing your used cartridges to Cartridge World, you can help protect our environment, and save substantially compared to the cost of a new cartridge!
• Cartridge World is dedicated to saving consumers, businesses, and the planet!

www.cartridgeworld.com/environment/think-green/

Debt Hanging You Out to Dry?

Watching the Today Show this morning & it's amazing: apparently people are starting to charge again & get into debt.  Hey...look now!  We still have 9% unemployment, most of us don't have Emergency Funds and you never know what can happen!  I love things as much as the next gal, but you gotta be smart.  You're a B.A.B.E! We're kinda like the Boy Scouts: always be prepared!  Save for a rainy day first, then buy the fancy rain boots.  Got it?  You have to take care of you  'cause no one else is gonna do it.  No will power?  Find someone to help you get it.  The gals here are HUGE fans of Dave Ramsey.  There are many financial guys & gals out there who are awesome, but what can we say, we're Dave groupies!  His plan has helped many of us get out of debt, organize our finances and stop being stressed about money.  Sound good?  Check out our site to follow some of our friends' struggle to get out of debt.  Until then heed these tips from Jean Chatzky on Today:

1. Save First, Spend Second!
2. Arrange your current debt so you are paying the least amount of interest; using home equity loans, etc.
3. (This is from B.A.B.E) Get some willpower, a plan & work it, girl!

At what cost do we eat?

I started my Valentine's Day browsing Treehugger.com and came upon a slideshow concerning the treatment of farm animals, mostly chickens.  I just don't understand how anyone can treat a living creature in this manner.  How did our species evolve (or devolve) to this?  I have hunter friends, meat-eating friends (and veggie ones, too!), but none would think that it's o.k. to mistreat animals in this manner.  Maybe you don't want to know.  Maybe you don't want to see the images.  I can understand that; I wish I wouldn't have looked, kinda ruined my morning.  The thing is, there is enough information out there, enough stories have been on the news and in print that you must have an inkling that perhaps animals aren't treated so well in factory farms.  As humans that are allegedly evolving, we cannot permit this to continue.  It says something about us, as a race.
http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2011/02/10-horrifying-stories-of-factory-farming-gone-wrong.php

But there are options, things you can do.  This is what B.A.B.E is all about; relaying info and  providing options of how you can make a change to have a positive difference. So what can you do?

1.  Most of us have access to one of the following: Whole Foods, Farmer's Markets, local farm.  I will tell you right now that your chain store supermarket (Meijer, WalMart, Costco, Sam's Club, etc) DO NOT have much meat that has been humanely raised.  That's eat, don't even try.  That big cheap bag of chicken breasts you bought came from chickens crammed about 3-5 in a cage smaller than one that would house a bunny.  That's where they spend their entire life.  Sucks, to say the least.  
2. Join in Meatless Monday (or any day of the week, really!).  Just one day a week, ditch the meat & do a good thing, both for the planet & your health.
3. Support your local animal welfare/animal rights group as they often "raise some cane" over treatment of animals at local factory farms.  For some of you, this seems "too radical", but who will sound the alarm?  If you don't raise your voice, then support someone to do it for you...that's how it works.

Hope this helps; at B.A.B.E, our goal is to make us better women and the world a better place!

Love Makes the World go 'round

Love...focuses on everyone else, right?  Who do you love, how much, etc.  But today, just take a minute and ask yourself: "how much do I love me?"  That's right, sister, we said it!  Today, take 15 selfish minutes (we use the term "selfish" in a very selfless way!) and think about what you love about yourself.  What do you love about your personality?  What do you love about your physical appearance?  What do you love that you do for others?  If you are having trouble thinking of anything, you have another problem...a lack of loving oneself.  Now take 15 more minutes and write down 3 things that you are going to change for and about yourself that will make you love you.  You have until March 15 to implement those changes...we're going to check on you! 


Now give yourself a big imaginary hug and a couple of air kisses and remember: you cannot fully love someone else until you first love yourself!

Marketing Your Food

As I was cooking my eggs this morning (organic & 2/3 egg whites w spinach), I was thinking about how when I have the good fortune of getting my eggs from a local woman, I frequently get an egg with double yolks.  When I buy eggs, even organic (or not), that never happens.  Why?  Because mass-produced eggs get x-rayed (or whatever it is they do) so that all our eggs are perfect..the same size, the same color, etc.  Are we really that pampered?  Seriously, do we have to have all our eggs that uniform?  You can go through a plethora of things we buy and see how it’s been marketed so we like it better:  our pickles are colored with food coloring (NOT good) so they look more “pickle like”, I guess, add all kinds of color so cheese products look “cheesier” & we bleach paper (toilet, writing, towels) SUPER white so it looks better??  To wipe your, well, anyway, there is obviously not a need for it to be super white.  

We color everything, make it all perfect, all so we’ll buy it.  It just seems strange how we’ve gotten to this point.  The whole process really treats us as though we are that dumb, that easily manipulated, that we have to have the “pretty colors” in order to buy the [food].  There have been several studies (possibly) linking food colorants and additives to ADHD.  I don’t know; I’m just sayin’….

OUR REAL DUTY IS ALWAYS FOUND RUNNING IN THE DIRECTION OF OUR WORTHIEST DESIRES.

— RANDOLPH S. BOURNE (1886-1918) AMERICAN WRITER

Time Management

I have a real job, I’m a hairstylist.  Full time and I love it.  I also have an intense desire to never worry about money, to retire nice & loaded, able to see the world - starting tomorrow if I were to be brutally honest.  Traveling takes money, so that means I need to make it.  I also have an intense desire to make the world a better place.  So, I have an organic clothing company (www.2EcoChics.com) and B.A.B.E (www.BeABetterEarthling.com) to help me achieve both desires.  I have an awesome family, one member a pre-teen girl.  But managing all of this takes a lot of time - well-utilized time. As I’m writing this, watching the clock tick away telling me its time to get ready for work - after I work out (!), I realize how precious our time is and how much we can accomplish if we 1) use our time wisely & 2) don't try to shove in too much into what time we have.  Well, #1 is a goal that I’m always working on & #2 isn't working out so well this morning.  I better go, as my cat just puked on the floor & I have to clean that up before I work out, get ready & head off to work.  Rats.

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Louis Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

— H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Steer Clear of the Clearance Aisle!

You can almost smell it - a sale!  Look at all those shelves with red and yellow stickers, permeating the air with wonderful fragrances of 50%-75% off.  You think you’re going to pass out from the overwhelming aromas of saving money.  But wait!  That mass in your head - your brain - it’s starting to work,  Hold on, do you really need that sky blue vase for $1.50?  Those brown pants are a great bargain for $15, but you already have 2 pair & now it’s spring.  But look at the pretty signs!  The store is begging you to take all this crap off their hands!  You’re just trying to be a good customer!  But your brain is stronger than that; you’re  B.A.B.E!

Oh to resist the machine that is the sale.  When you start to respect your money, not just love it for how it makes you feel, you will start to feel a sense of power, a sense of control, over what you choose to do with your money.

I will never forget the day I chose not to enter the clearance aisle.  I will not tell you the store, lest my coolness factor be shot all to heck.  I took one step inside the “area” and my brain kicked me in the back of my own head.  ”YOU DO NOT NEED ANYTHING IN THIS CLEARANCE SECTION.  BACK AWAY FROM THE SALE”.  I swear other people could hear what my brain just screamed at me.  I in fact, did not need one thing from that sale section.  I chose to walk away and now regularly do that.  I feel a sense of control over my money and have far more of it in my wallet, now that I passed over that $1.50 sky blue vase.

Mrs. Green Jeans

One thing we dig at B.A.B.E is spreading the word when a company is doing something right.  The fashion industry seems to be getting the message that we can all do something to help lessen the load on our planet.  One such company, Levi Strauss, has an entire sustainability initiative:  http://www.levistrauss.com/sustainability What does that mean?  It means that Levi’s is trying harder than the average Joe to have less of a negative impact on this world, significantly reducing their water & chemical usage in the manufacturing process.  Kinda cool!  Why should you care?  Well, as far as chemicals go, that waste needs to go somewhere & that kind of crap usually ends up in someone’s waterway.  Maybe not you, but some poor sap that lives downstream from a manufacturing plant.  Google “cancer clusters” and see what you learn.  Plus, did you know that our earth only has so much water?  As in, what we have now is all we’re gettin’.  I prefer mine to be as pure as possible & not be put through a gazillion chemical treatments to remove the other chemicals (seriously).  Your dollars, (i.e: what you buy) say what you support.  Think it over & go buy yourself a pair of Levi’s.

Stop and Smell the Roses

Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point (Harold B. Melchart).

This phrase always gives me pause as so many of us wait for the “big one” to the point that we fail to observe all the little wonderful things each day: little tweeting birds, a nice breeze, a bright sun, a good meal, making the red light, whatever!  Just consider how much better our week would go if we took notice of all these little things each day and then be pleasantly surprised when that “big thing” surprises us!  Have a marvelous week of little things!

Eco-Byte

Many gals wanna know: if I could do just one thing this week to be “greener”, what should it be?  There are many things, believe me, but we’ve randomly picked one: start buying your toilet paper, paper towels, napkins & copy paper as 100% recycled content.  25% of all trees in the world are cut down to make paper products.  That’s quite a number!  This is  one environmental mishap that you can actually make a difference in!  Seventh Generation, 365 Degree brand at Whole Foods, Marcal and Staples brand are all some brands that have recycled content.  Check it out!

THE INDISPENSABLE FIRST STEP TO GETTING
THE THINGS YOU WANT OUT OF LIFE IS THIS:
DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT.”
- BEN STEIN

Grocery Shopping Tonight?

Grocery Shopping Tonight?

If you’re like most folks, Friday is “the day”…making the trek to the grocery store.  Try these money saving tips:

• Steer clear of the non-food side of the super stores.  Juts added temptation you don’t need.
• Make a list…and stick to ONLY the items on the list!
• Stick to the perimeter of the store: this is where most of the healthy & fresher items are placed, as well as the items on sale.
• If you don’t need it, don’t pick it up.  You are more likely to buy it the minute your fingers touch the item.
• Clip coupons & check out the bulk bins

For more info, check out: http://ow.ly/3QmpT 

For the health of your body, not necessarily your wallet, organic milk & organic eggs are the best for your buck.  These items, when not-organic, are from cows & chickens that have been given large amounts of antibiotics, growth hormones & who knows what else.  If your budget allows - maybe you have extra cash if you’ve followed the tips above - these two items are something to work into your budget.  The FDA has not substantiated the claims that these medicines & toxins are passed onto you, but if you think they’re not, you’re crazy.  

Just a few shopping ideas..and while you’re ready to blow a gasket waiting in line, try checking out all the other people in line & find one nice thing to think about each of them :) 

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves. ~ Abraham Lincoln ~
Thanks @Maneuveringmotherhood for the link!

NOTHING IS EVER LOST BY COURTESY. IT IS THE CHEAPEST OF PLEASURES, COSTS NOTHING, AND CONVEYS MUCH.
(ERASTUS WIMAN). DO YOU HAVE IT?

Childhood Obesity; it's a Weighty Issue

Childhood obesity, it’s a weighty issue

Is there an obesity problem in America?  Yes, there is.  Is there a childhood obesity problem?  Yes, but caused by whom?  McDonald’s?  Most fast food chains offer healthier alternatives.  Do kids buy the food at the grocery store?  So where does that leave us?  Say it with me…..parents.  I saw an ad for Anytime Fitness, actually, that was awesome.   “There is no childhood obesity epidemic” (We just need better role models).  I wish there were billboards for that everywhere!  As parents or guardians, it is our job to choose meals that are for the most part, healthy for our children.  If you serve fried foods, soda & fattening desserts most days of the week, you & your children will be overweight.  If YOU allow your kids to spend hours on the computer, Xbox, etc., your kids will be unhealthy.  I’ve actually heard people say that “they can’t get their kids to do anything other than play video games”.  Who’s the parent??  The bottom line is that we are the leaders for our kids, their role model and if we’re lucky, their inspiration.  Junk food is fun in the “once in awhile/special occasion” way and we should be the ones to show and explain that to our kids.  XBox?  Totally fun!  But again, not in place of any exercise, sport, some kind of activity, reading, etc.  

We need to get to a place as a society where we “call a spade a spade”…there is no childhood obesity problem in America…there is a role model problem.

http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/obesity/