Help the environment and balance your budget
Two things have happened recently that made me realise we are at the 'tipping point' of environmental awareness.
One is that my company began implementing some green initiatives - a company whose rubbish bins were often filled with styrofoam cups and lunch boxes and where dozens of television and computer monitors used to hum ceaselessly overnight.
My favourite eco-friendly tip offered by my colleagues was to reuse the coffee-cup protector sleeves, which for some reason, is both a sensible and amusing thing to do. But these nifty inventions do help prevent people from doing something even more wasteful, which is doubling up their paper cups to protect themselves from the hot liquid.
The other is that Live Earth was a total flop audience-wise. Not because people were unaware of the need to protect the environment, but because everyone, including people like me, had already heard enough about it. Eighteen years after Time magazine put 'Endangered Earth' on its cover, yeah, we do finally get it.
Which leads me to the next topic - how can we help save the environment while saving money?