November 30, 2004
San Francisco may put a tax on your sacks
If you’re one of those who cringe every time the grocery store clerk hands you 24 plastic bags in which to carry your purchases, you might be interested to know that the city of San Francisco may just start charging the grocery stores 17 cents for each of the bags they use. Hooray! Go for it, you wacky San Franciscans!
Those stupid little bags mess up our roadways, get stuck in recycling machines, and get into the oceans and kill marine life-—not to mention suffocating the occasional human infant. City experts think consumers in that town bring home something like 50 million bags a year, and it costs $8.4 million to clean them up. The idea behind the 17 cent fee is to cover some of those costs, but also to change people’s behavior. Oh, yeah, the fee will apply to paper bags as well, in an effort to reduce all bag-usage.
Are you a paper or plastics person? Do plastic bags concern you? Use the comment box below.
November 23, 2004
When is bacteria good for you?
In this discussion of probiotics, you’ll learn why it’s important to have some “good” bacteria roaming around in your intestinal tract. In short, the “good” stuff helps eliminate the bad stuff, and we don’t seem to have as much of the good stuff helping us out these days. When it comes to finding these “probiotics” in food, the article authors recommend “take a look at yogurt” and “be aware, not all yogurts are made equal.” They say to look for "Live and Active Cultures" on the yogurt label, and then to look for several of these probiotic bacteria: Lactobacillus acidopholous , Bifidobacteria (Bifida), Lactobacillus casei, and Lactobacillus reuteri . Guess what! Stonyfield yogurt had them all and we were the only yogurt mentioned by name in this article by nutritionists.
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November 09, 2004
"Herd" any good cow jokes lately?
Do you know any really silly and/or really bad cow jokes? We'd love to hear them.
You know, something like:
Q: What do you get when you cross a rooster and a cow?
A: Cockadoodle moo!
We use cow jokes to entertain our callers, in the unfortunate event we have to put them on hold. Currently, we're running low on the jokes.
If you have a cow joke to tell, send it to us. If it's one we haven't used yet, we'll send you a Stonyfield Farm frisbee for your trouble.
Just use the comment box below. (There's a bit of a delay as we check for SPAM.) If we pick your joke, we'll write back to you to get your full mailing address so we can send you your prize.
Your help would be "moo-velous".
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November 04, 2004
How active are you in the community?
Now that election season has passed (it has, hasn't it?), it's a good time to think about how you can get involved and make a difference in your community. Perhaps, one day, we'll see your name on the ballot?
We'd love to know how involved you are now, by the admittedly few ways to measure we've noted below. Thanks for your input! If you'd rather leave a comment, do so by using the comment button at the bottom. (Comments take a while to appear as we check for SPAM, but don't worry.)
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November 03, 2004
Now's the time to give your home an energy check-up
The price of fuel oil for home heating is expected to hit record levels, if it hasn't done so already, just in time for the thick of winter. How timely, then, that the Rocky Mountain Institute has just issued a series of Home Energy Briefs (funded partially by our Profits for the Planet Program) to help homeowners look for ways to reduce energy costs. In addition to home heating, other topics include lighting, water heating, electronics and appliances. Check out and download the home heating energy brief--before winter really takes hold!
http://www.rmi.org/images/other/Energy/E04-14_HEB4SpaceHeat.pdf
