Curbside Recycling anyone?

Frau Frugal and I were dropping off our weekly recyclables at the collection center near our haus over the weekend. I was encouraged to find the dumpsters there to be pretty full, which is a good sign. While there another patron stopped by and began a 10 minute tirade as to why she did not understand why we did not have curbside recycling (mandatory) in our area. 'They had it down in Sarasota, why not here?", she said.

Frau Frugal and I kept our mouths shut as we have a canned argument as to why curbside recycling is NOT a good solution to recycling and a positive impact to our environment at this time.

Think of it this way, as I heard a reinforcing argument on Florida Matters on WUSF.org last week. The same type of trucks pick up the recycling contents as they pick up your refuse. The average stop for refuse is about 50 to 60 lbs of garbage. Recycling is 4 to 8 pounds per stop. Think of the amount of CO and CO2 and hydrocarbons being released into the air just for those stops. The expert on this program stated the city of Los Angeles uses over 800 trucks for both refuse and curbside. Eliminating curbside would cut that fleet in half!

Conveniently, I received my Men's Health magazine last week and the city of St. Petersburg received a grade of "F" for their efforts. Sounds bad, but I completely get Mayor Baker's stand on curbside service. Here is the article for your review: http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=health&category=metrogrades&conitem=8033017eecf1f110VgnVCM10000013281eac____

So, the Frugal's opinion on curbside recycling is this: Curbside recycling can only be effective if done so in a responsible manner and is not done as a matter of conscious driven necessity. In otherwords, create/foster/mandate an environmentally friendly collection system, then I am on board. Use an electric or natural gas powered vehicle. Do NOT use the same type of transport as the refuse collection. Until then, we choose to go to the center as part of our routine, not a special trip, just incorporate the stop into our errands.

Thanks for visiting our haus!

What I didn't spend money on this week....

To capture the potential impact of frugality I decided I would keep track of items and activities I either did myself or found a solution or an alternative to the expense.

I've attached an article for you to review. Basically with the economy slowdown, more of us are saving. Personal savings are up 2.9% in the last quarter of 2008. That even includes Christmas with all that negative savings going on!!

Here is the article: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/01/frugal-americans-hurt-economic-recovery/

So, for instance, I just ironed/starched 17 dress shirts. I didn't spend over $25 to bring them to the dry-cleaners. The Queen of Frugal (QoF) cut my hair with our clippers a bit ago. I didn't spend $15 for the haircut. (the clippers had already achieved their ROI). We buy our produce from a farmer's market or produce stand exclusively. We have sampled about half a dozen places and just found today's to be a great one. It is every Sunday at the Palm Harbor Historical Society Center at the corner of Belcher and Curlew Roads. Based on our $12 purchase, we didn't spend another $13 if we went to the grocery store. You should see the Romaine lettuce we got! We even shop a bit of green as we brought our own bags as referenced below!

Basically folks, if we just put some thought into your purchases and choices, you too will be in a position to say, "I know I didn't spend $xx on this, because I did this...." Save a week of groceries by emptying out and getting creative with your pantry and refrigerator. How much didn't you spend then?

Just some thoughts from Herr Frugalmeister and the Queen of Frugal. Talk to again soon!

Paper or Plastic?

We hear that or a variation of that each time we go to the grocery stores. In the book referenced below, "50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save The Earth", #5 is about New Ingredients. According to the book, "If just 25% of American homes used 10 fewer plastic bags a month, we'd save over 2.5 BILLION bags a year."

We have all seen the new wave of "recycled plastic bags". Commercially suggestive guilt indicators, you need to buy these to be "green". Each grocery store, super store, even the bulk stores have them (they're bigger too!). Usually sells for about $1 each.

If you are fortunate you can obtain a few of them at shows or conferences. In a few weeks time, we Frugals collected about 10 of them. We have some in each of our vehicles and try our best to use them each time we go to the store. We do get some plastic bags when we need to get just one item, but we recycle them here at home as trash bags.

One of the tags on a washable nylon bag we obtained (yes, nylon is petroleum based), states by using these bags, "..can save the average American 300 to 700 plastic shopping bags per year, which will save 3 to 7 gallons of crude oil." That means each of our households can contribute significantly to not only the manufacturing of these bags, but prevent them from entering into the wastestream and not decompose at all!

Putting it on a larger scale, there are 300 Million people in the US. (I know Nancy Pelosi said we were losing 500 Million jobs a month, you do the math or was it the work of alarmist speech writers?) If 100,000 frugals used the bags regularly for a year, there would be a savings of over 5.4 Million gallons of gas. How many gallons of gas do you use each year? Figure it out and leave me a comment. We estimate, our current usage in the Frugal household with three vehicles and a motorcycle to be about 2500 gallons a year. That's a figure we are going to work on in 2009.

It's not that hard to use the bags, the hardest part is remembering to bring them into the store when you get there. If you are packing the bags yourself, it may take some practice, but you can do it. Stick the frozens groceries together, boxes in another and fruit in another, you'll figure it out and hopefully won't crack some eggs in the process.

Enjoy the read and leave a comment or two as Herr Frugalmeister continues to shape this blog.

50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth *

*50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth *. This is a book by The Earthworks Group I picked up at a local thrift store a few months ago. Yes, call it book recycling, but it looked good and actually has some useful items to consider. The book was printed (on recycled paper and recycled ink (?)) in 1989.

I either heard or read somewhere Ed Begley Jr, saw the book, read the book and challenged himself to try each of the 50 things. I'll try to do the same, not because of Ed, but as a challenge to myself. I consider myself pretty green and responsible but know I can do more myself. The goal here is not to produce a number of converts, but just to show folks that what can be done easily by one person can be multiplied by others. It is not necessarily a "Save the Mother Earth" type of hype, but an increase in personal responsibility.

Anyway, I'll share with you the results on the things we Frugals try and adopt in our household.

http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Things-You-Save-Earth/dp/0929634063

Can I ask about your opinion????

We all answer questions each and every day. We even provide our opinion, solicited or not, but we do. We make choices each day about what we will wear, where we will go, what to buy, how much to spend, the list goes on and on.

I decided to sign up for some research panels to earn some extra cash to fund some bicycle rehab projects on my other blog. By earning money specifically for that project, it projects a zero impact on any current savings I have going on in the Frugal house. Call it confusing, but for me, it works.

For example, we have a coffee can that holds all of our spare change we have in our pockets, find on the ground, or whatnot. When we cash it in, it specifically will pay for some activity. We do it about once a year. 2008's cash in was about $92. I believe 2007's went to a fun evening at the Derby Lane dog track. Great buffett and a lot fun on betting on the dogs!

Here are the survey companies I signed up for. They are legit as I have been contacted on one panel and I know of two friends that have been contacted as well. Pays about $80 for a couple hourse of work.

http://www.superiorresearch.net/

http://www.taicompanies.com/

http://www.accudata.net/

I was on the Nielsen Media Research panel for about a year. No monetary compensation, but I did get to use a Smartphone by Cingular with internet access. I paid for the phone service, but also received $50/month to pay for the service. It was basically a free cell phone.

I have also been playing around with some on-line survey companies. Simple point and click, a few minutes here and there. After about a week and a few hours of my time, the balance is just over $15.00 between them. Not a lot, but as referenced above, I have bicycle parts to pay for. Those companies are:

www.inboxdollars.com

www.spotsurvey.com

Lastly, I added Google's AdSense to my blogs. Just click on each of the advertisements, if they interest you and I will receive a small fee. About $.50 a click so far. Thanks for clicking!

So all in all, to generate a bit more out of the air funding, Research panels, online surveys and saving pennies. They will all add up in the end with little impact to the frugal household budget as we rebuild two special bicycles.

Thanks for reading!

Can you spare some change brother?

Guten Abend! I have attached this link for an article I found about some money saving ideas.

I was thinking about something my son once told me; if a person stopped to pick up every penny them came across in the street or sidewalk, they would have collected over $180 in their lifetime. Folks that is $180 that you don't have right now! I don't care if the penny is heads up or heads down, it's still a penny. Those do add up.

We have a frugal coffee can that holds the spare change we find in our pockets, purses or drawers, about once a year we will take the can to a change counter and cash them in. Last time it was over $90. Talk about an evening out then on your spare change alone.

Some folks I know subscribe to the envelope method for their budget. Great idea, spend only what you got, not what your gonna get. Take the change from that each week and move it into another envelope. Over the next few weeks, you will have found yourself some decent entertainment money.

Enjoy the article, it is from 2005, but still pertinent today. Follow along if you wish as well. Thank you for your time and suggestions. http://money.cnn.com/2005/01/10/pf/saving/frugal_living/index.htm

Christmas is going to come early....

To keep our lives simpler, we Frugals have decided to begin our Christmas shopping for 2009 now. No pressure here, just a perusal down the end caps at Target for the soon to be hard to get items and beat the rush this fall. Now these hard to get items may not be because they are so popular, they may be because they are last years model and everyone under the sun already has that game, widget or gadget or so I've been told.

For example, when you see a drugstore start to sell those digital picture frames just like the office type stores, you know there is a glut on the market.....hmmm gift ideas?

Now we will take the lessons learned from 2008'a holidays and apply them to this years holiday season. We strategically plan for a month for Black Friday. (www.bfads.net) Our lists are checked and cross-checked against each competitor. We will then position ourselves at multiple locations to pounce on those bargains. Oh yeah, it can get violent, but hey, if I'm saving a few bucks, I willing to bleed a little. This year we are going to concentrate our efforts at one store location....Bass ProShops.

This is a store that knows how to treat it's customers on Black Friday. Picture and feel this.....40ish degrees and windy, 5 o'clock in the morning and the potential crowd headaches in front of you. Bass ProShops is glad to meet you with hot coffee, biscuits and donuts. Man o man, I'll turn to being a hunter just to continue to shop there.