It's Not Easy Being Green!

Did I tell you we're an EARTH HOUR store? What's that mean? It means once a week we actually turn all our power off. I'm a little late in telling you we celebrated our first EARTH HOUR on EARTH DAY during our Lunch Hour. It was fun. Mind you, we get a lot of light - we have beautiful display windows - the back is kinda dark, but it all works out.

One of the things we did at our store is have the lights rewired to switches so we could have less lights on during the day. We've replaced many of the ballasts. Old ballasts leak carcinogens! They also drain more power. They now make LED replacements - you can even remove the ballasts - they are very expensive - but they last for 50,000 hours, compared to the average 6,500 hours a fluorescent bulb stays alit. They also don't give off that infernal cacaphonic humming noise. HMMMM, where was I?

Sidney, Australia hosted the world's first EARTH HOUR over a year ago and wow, just the folks turning off power for an hour saved over 10% of the energy used that day. If you're wondering, how will we ring people up - we have battery back ups and the computers run on those and safely power down if the power isn't back on in time (a real necessity in a small Midwestern town prone to storms - n'est pas?).

We chose a GREEN company - Creative Imaginations - to purchase some of our products. We stick primarily to independents and Vintage, Funky, Flea Marketey (is that a word), Shabby Chic - but we love Creative Imaginations for their Narratives line, their FFA stuff (farmin's big ya know, tippin' hats to the guys and gals feedin' us), and other fun products.

We RECYCLE - packing materials, boxes, paper, etc. We use chipboard to make stuff, you know we're into flea market finds. YES, I'm a Flea Marketeer. This is our planet, friends, the only one we've got, and if we don't stop global warming, I hear all the Reese's will melt! Now, that's a tragedy.

Make a difference, sort your trash, use your stash, (ohmigosh - did a person opening a store actually tell you that - heck yah - the more you save the more you have to spend!), plan your errands together, carpool (it's way more fun anyhoo), do what you can, your kids will thank you when they pass the Earth on to their kids.

It's not ours anyway, it's borrowed, and we want our scrapbooks to last for GENERATIONS, yah? So, while it's not EASY being green, TRY. I've got a GREEN set of GOODIES to ship out to you in a RECYCLED box, for all of you who list the ways you'll try to go GREEN in the future. Just make a comment - and check back to see who wins on Wednesday, May 7, 2008.

The winner will be chosen at RANDOM. It's only fair.

Your planet thanks ya kindly.