Things to do this long weekend: Go shopping, save the world!
Hello Bargain hunters and huntresses, I'm Mariel Garza, a guest blogger to help Julia for
a few days while she's doing God-only-knows-what-kind-of-debauchery in New York this weekend. In my real life, I'm an editorial writer and op/ed columnist for the Daily News, which means I write about things like local politics, state politics and, sometimes, national politics. But not always. My last column was on ways to do good for the local economy and/or the environment (like buying some porn and compact florescent light bulbs) with your economic stimulus check. If you notice that there's a decidedly green bent to to my blog posts, that's deliberate.
Here's a snippet of some of the column's advice:
Even the highest tax rebates aren't enough to outfit a house with solar-energy panels, but they could easily pay for a pack of compact fluorescent light bulbs, with hundreds left to spend on comfy yoga pants and soft T-shirts at American Apparel. Or you could invest the money in replacing the biggest energy-sucker of most homes - the refrigerator - with a more energy-efficient one.Other ideas are putting up awnings over windows to keep your house cooler (and give less to the city Department of Water and Power for AC costs - that's a win-win) planting vegetables and fruits (save money and eat organic!) in place of lawns or heat-retaining concrete patios.
There are endless ways to spend your rebate on candy, and save it, too. But there is one thing you ought to make a conscious choice not to spend your money on: gasoline. From an environmental standpoint, one of the worst ways you could spend your money is at the pump. Not only will it not go far, but it only helps justify (for a short time) gas-guzzling vehicles. The oil companies have enough of my money already.
I pulled out my water-sucking lawn and put in pretty rocks with part of my money and am going to blow about $100 in locally-owned clothes stores this weekend (finally, shopping is not only guilt-free, but highly encouraged! Look at me singlehandedly stimulating the environment!). Then I will save the rest by investing it in microloans in Latin America, via MicroPlace. It's not a huge financial return but you do get about a zillion Karma points. Priceless!
What are you going to do with you EcStim check? Let us know!
