Annabelle says: Welcome to Wa$ted!

I am thrilled to bring you WA$TED where I was able to give 10 households an experience much like my own. I hope the show will give you ideas that you can translate into your life and will inspire you to become a part of the vital dialogue in becoming more conscious of the resources we are using. The best part is that you can save money in the process too.

My goal with WA$TED is to take the talk about going green and transform it into action of saving green: money. Nothing says, "Do you realize that Americans use 12 times the amount of resources as folks in the developing world" more impactfully than getting your own excess waste dumped onto your doorstep!

Good for your pocket, good for the planet.

Won't you join me on this journey? I'd love to hear from you and the needs and activities going on in your community. I'll be keeping a blog here at Planet Green letting you on some behind the scenes action, some of the important subjects we weren't able to tackle on the show and share some of my own successes and the plenty of failures I've had in my own attempts to make my footprint smaller.

If you're still a little dubious about what effect your efforts can have on the larger issue of climate change, I'd like to suggest giving this a quick read, it's a short essay by Michael Pollan on creating viral social change.

I'm particularly interested in hearing from you about innovations and ideas that everyone can implement that are either very low cost or better yet free solutions that we all can implement by just expending some brain power. So, welcome and let's talk!

EPISODE 1 Living Large with Mary Lou and Denny

One of my goals with the show is to help people to live more consciously when the cameras stop rolling, so I really needed to come up with sustainable choices.

Here's a little secret: I had heard from our research team that Mary Lou hated the way the CFLs looked in her chandelier so when we came back for our revisit, I have to confess, I came prepared with that knowledge. By agreeing with her that they looked awkward, I felt I was acknowledging that we weren't asking for perfection. Plus, they don't use that room very frequently and most significantly, there was at least 8000 feet more of space in the house to put CFLs in, so I felt it was an acceptable loss that would still allow them to see a large savings in their electricity bills.

One thing to keep in mind:

In the near future, all light bulbs on the market will be either CFLs or a new technology that will be developed. When we reach that point, we won't have to choose, so in some sense, it will be easier. In the meantime, it's true that CFLs do cost more, but they do last longer, I can tell that I definitely buy fewer light bulbs and you should see significant savings in your bills, so they should pay for themselves. I also think that many people, including myself, look better in lower light, so that's an added bonus.

Don't trash your CFLS:

Some stores and markets now offer places to recycle your CFLs, be sure to do that, as they do contain a small amount of mercury. Don't let this deter you from using them. Proper disposal techniques are available. The bulbs should be collected with your hazardous waste. Its true, you have to work a little harder to figure out where to take them, but that's what you should be doing with your batteries also, so just store in one place in your home and cart them all at once. Usually you can obtain the info on where and when hazardous waste pick ups in your area are scheduled by contacting your local municipality on line.

Saying hello to the hybrid:

I would have loved to able to give Mary Lou a hybrid, but we just didn't have that in the budget. Mary Lou told me as we were driving around that she had never been in a hybrid, so I was excited to introduce her to the technology and dispel a few assumptions she had made: that it was too small to be comfortable or too difficult to drive. She really loved the model we drove, and found it much more roomy than she expected and was open to the idea that when her next opportunity came, she might get a hybrid. In fact, I just went through this experience myself. I've been wanted to go hybrid for the last two years, but I couldn't break my car lease, so just made the move last month. By the way, all the scientists and researchers I know have advised me that the battery disposal issue should not deter you from going hybrid, it's still a good choice.

I also explored the idea of vegetable oil, I would love to drive and smell like a French fry, but my family insisted I wasn't responsible enough to prepare for long journey and they'd have to rescue me as I trolled around Southern California looking to score old cooking oil from fast food joints, so I demurred.

Missing in action!

One thing we weren't able to include in the show was that Nick really didn't want to drive the hybrid because where he lives, its not considered cool yet. I get it. But I advised him he needed to get new friends. That didn't make it in the show, but I really wasn't kidding! Really, if you think I'm kidding, Nick, please check out the interstitials that the very fetching Summer Rayne will be doing on PG. All the hot chicks have gone green, buddy! Another great place to see how people are getting involved in the greening of America is to check out energy action.net. "Youth united for clean and just energy"

Green is the new black as they say, so get with it, Nick, don't get left behind.

This week's recommended reading:

For our friends who'd like to go from bright green to a strong sage: I'd like to recommend a book called Garbageland by Elizabeth Royte- it's one woman's journey to find out the final resting place of her trash. I wasn't aware of this book when I took my journey for NPR, and it's a great read, both personal and gives the larger perspective.