Our Sustainable Waste Impact, By the Numbers

It can seem like a daunting tasks making any greater impact with our daily sustainable habits, but this infographic I found puts things in a pretty positive context. While we're not where we need to be by a long shot, we've done a lot in the past several years to make a good impact. With everyone doing their part to make their habits more green, we can get to a better future when it comes to energy, waste, and maintaining harmony with nature. This particular resource focuses mostly on trash, recycling, and re-purposing. I hope to continue highlight how what we do makes a positive difference in the world. It's incremental and aggregate, but I know we all can make an impact if we work together.

See the rest of the awesome infographic here.

What I'm Geeking Out About This Week - 09/12/14

Here's to another week in geek!

This week's stuff is all local places and events I've been enjoying lately. I share these in an effort to encourage you all to get out and shop local! I'm sure there is more cool stuff going on than you know in your cities and towns and awesome stores to support with people who live in your community!

• Bangor Greendrinks

If you read my previous post about some life updates, you saw a picture from a fun event here in town called Bangor Greendrinks. As the name implies, it is a monthly community gathering for folks to have a drink and share their love of sustainability in all its forms. The events are held at different local establishments and have different local breweries supply the beer as well as a different local shop donate food for the event. It's an awesome community effort that I plan on going to every month. I've already met some cool people out at the gatherings and I look forward to meeting many more!

• Bull Moose

I usually buy all my movies and games from Amazon these days but I recently was introduced to a super cool local store called Bull Moose. It's a local chain that sells new and pre-owned movies, books, games, and music (including vinyl). The games are everything from NES to Xbox One and they have comic books, all sorts of movies, and lots of other cool stuff. I have really appreciated their customer service and their prices are very competitive. Even if I'm paying a little bit more, I've enjoyed the personal touch and the opportunity to shop local for all my geeky media needs.

• The Juice Cellar

These cool cats were at the most recent Greendrinks event and had some delicious samples of their all-natural, locally sourced juices and smoothies. I got to chat with the owner and founder at the event too, which was awesome, and I am really looking forward to their opening of their second location in downtown Bangor. I also thought it is super cool that they're doing an IndieGogo campaign to help launch this new endeavor, which is great marketing and helps have great community buy-in from the start. Yay for local healthy food stuffs!

Thanks for stopping by!

What I Was Geeking Out About: May 2014

Hello fellow geeks and nerds! In an ongoing effort to better serve up my delicious content to you, here is a monthly wrap-up of all my recent geek outs! Enjoy!

• May 02, 2014
• May 09, 2014
• May 16, 2014
• May 23, 2014
• May 30, 2014

Have an awesome week!

Thank You, Earth, For Letting Me Keep My Stuff Here!

I'm personally passionate about sustainability. It's something I work to embody in my daily routine and my overriding philosophy in life. I strive to do more with less, eliminate needless clutter & noise, as well as work to have the most positive impact on the world around me that I can. On a personal level, this takes shape in donating old clothes, recycling whenever I can, using reusable bags and bottles, and generally purchasing goods that are all-natural and sustainably made. On a more macro level, it takes shape for me as being a point of contention and a principle I hold onto in whatever context I'm in. A lot of my classmates and colleagues think of me if they're about to print out a bunch of paper now, which I appreciate since they're now at least aware of their habits due to my efforts. So I encourage you to go outside, enjoy the beauty of nature, and do something nice for this place we all call home. If we all work together on this issue, we can make a big impact for the future.

Happy Earth Day! And thank you Earth, for letting me keep my stuff here for a while!

Why I Love Sustainability (And How You Can Too!)

Salutations readers!

I just wanted to jot down some thoughts on sustainability since I realized it is one of the driving forces in my life that I continually do my best to uphold as well as infuse into my work. The reasoning behind my green passion has many facets, namely productivity, saving money, and obviously less waste and less clutter.

On the topic of productivity, I see sustainability measures moving us to a cloud-based place where information and resources are easily accessible from any computer, any time, with no need to waste any paper. With the advent of far more easy to use services like Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, SignNow, Prezi, Evernote, and iCloud, it has never been easier to not only backup important documents, but be able to share and access photos, videos, and documents. Playing into my final point, I am on a personal crusade against paper so any time I can save a tree, I do so!

An adage I like to repeat when it comes to sustainability is that I am "Saving the world, while saving money." Quite a few places nowadays will give you a few cents off for using a reusable cup or bag when you visit their stores, which obviously will return your investment (ROI) in those bags or cups very quickly. Also, utilizing a filter for your tap or a pitcher with a filter will give you a ROI from not having to purchase bottled water so often and only have to periodically purchase a new filter every few months.

Lastly, with the reduction of clutter and waste. I continually keep a stern eye to the things around my living space. If I don't need it, I either recycle it, sell it, or donate it if I can. I see all of these as sort of paying it forward while also (at times) paying me. At the very least, it's clearing up space. As much as I have been moving lately, keeping my life streamlined is important to me and it also keeps me less scatterbrained when trying to find things I need.

So that's my two cents. I'd appreciate any helpful tips you'd like to share that you do to do your part for this floating rock we all call home.