Ann's blog

This is Eco-Annie again with some more helpful hints to make your money go further and help bring back the earth to her previous healthful shape. All of these things may take a financial hit upfront, but in the long run will save you much more than what you paid.

1. Having a meeting, get together, party? It doesn't matter whether it's at work, home or place of worship. Place boxes or bags out for recycling glass, plastic drink bottles and soda cans. Someone volunteer to take them to be recycled.

Oh how I love it when I'm right...I mean correct. I'll die before I ever go right. In today's Houston Chronicle, in the Parade's Intelligence Report under Health Watch, there is an article entitled "What's Polluting Our Rivers?" The biggest culprit?

Never having children who chewed on their crib rails, window sills or rocking chairs, I could never understand the phenomenon of those children that did. I understood the danger if the items being chewed were covered in lead-based paint, but never why children preferred to chew on these dangerously painted objects.

The numbers add up! And you know that with today's gas prices (and Heaven only knows what they'll be tomorrow) every little thing we can do to make that gas go further is a big help. Not only to our pocketbooks but to our little whirling blue and green planet.

These are ideas that I've gleaned from www.climateprotect.org/:

Are you one of those that leaves the faucet running while brushing your teeth, shaving your face, rinsing dishes or veggies as you wash them or peeling potatoes or boiled eggs? May a plague of camel chiggers find you and torture you for a fortnight! Turn the faucet OFF between uses! Put the veggies in a colander or a bowl. Same with the dishes. Put a coffee mug in the sink full of water for rinsing off your razor. You can save up to 10 gallons of water doing this for every gallon of water you REALLY use.

More ways to save:

1. If you live in a mobile home, build an insulating skirt around it.

2. If you live in a warm place like we do here in Texas, when it comes time to re-roof your house, try to use as light-colored shingles as possible. Preferably shingles made from recycled materials.

3. If you're having a house built, ask your architect and contractor about alternative "green" materials that are out now.

4. Whenever you need to replace a window, choose a high-performance, energy-saving window.

Last night I finished a fascinating book titled Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization, by W. Hodding Carter. In it, Mr. Carter not only writes how plumbers have changed history but that they have the ability to greatly help save our future. Simple technology in India is solving the horrendous problems of massive amounts of toxic and pathogenic excreta entering water supplies. Today as I'm working the polls and waiting for the mere less than 1% of my precinct's eligible voters to crawl from the woodwork and vote, I read in the Houston Chronicle where that has precisely started yesterday big time--in Texas!

Just as I can’t name all 7 of Snow White’s protective dwarfs, until today I couldn’t tell you about more than two of the 16 state constitutional amendments on the November 6 ballot.

The wonderful folks at the League of Women Voters have worked hard to gather and maintain this information. So rather than re-invent the wheel, we’re going to refer you to their handy website where you can not only find how to contact and write our president, but everyone on down to the municipalities and school districts in Fort Bend County. Sorry, but it doesn’t include the dog catcher. But it has websites for state agencies!