Back when I was a kid (a long time ago), the local grocery store would give S&H Green Stamps with every purchase made at the store.
The more money you spent, the more green stamps you got.
Paste them into a little book made for just such a purpose, and then when the book was filled (or better yet when several books were filled), you could redeem your books of stamps for usable merchandise—things like steak knives or toasters.
Those were the green stamps of my youth.
Time marches on, and now we’ve got a great new kind of green stamp—thanks to the United States Postal Service! This is a series of 16 “Go Green” postage stamps, each stamp showing a helpful hint on what we can do in our everyday lives to help protect our planet and to live healthier and more environmentally aware lives.
Each tip is simple, easy to implement, cost effective, and probably something we’re already aware of—but maybe just haven’t put into practice in our own lives yet. What a great and easy way to remind ourselves of these “green” ideas!
Walk, take public transportation, or share rides to help curb the huge volume of combusted gasoline fumes we spew into the atmosphere daily—fumes that are produced by so many single passenger vehicles on the road.
Ride a bike for the same reason listed above as well as for the fact that bike riding helps promote the overall health of your precious human machine.
Plant trees to help clean pollutants from the air and to produce more beneficial oxygen, so needed by that same bicycle-propelling human machine of yours we just mentioned.
Make a compost pile to utilize materials that can be converted back into usable organic matter to feed to your plants.
Recycle other goods (glass, plastic, paper goods, etc.) that can’t be composted but that would otherwise be sent to the landfill.
Maintain proper inflation pressure in the tires of your automobile to avoid wasting gasoline.
Do what you can around your home to conserve—things like adjusting the thermostat so as to avoid using so much energy to heat and cool your house. Insulate properly around your windows to prevent unwanted heating and cooling loss.
And—here’s a good one. Use energy efficient light bulbs. We’ve even got an article here in GardenVoice about the use of CFL (Compact Fluorescent Light) “corkscrew” light bulbs to conserve energy.
CFL: A Better Idea In Light Bulbs
Thank you USPS, for this great series of “Go Green” postage stamps that remind us to live healthier, greener, more environmentally aware lives!
