David Durante has lived at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for four years. That's long enough to be annoyed by the lack of recycling bins--and do something about it. Last year the gymnast founded an athletes committee that recommended ways to green the facility. Now the bins are in, gymnasium lights are turned off when not in use, and thermostats have been adjusted. Think your gym could use some Durante-esque improvements? Brainstorm with fellow members, then talk with management to make them happen.
Breaststroke champion Tara Kirk lives green in affordable, DIY ways. When it came time for new dishes in her Palo Alto, California, apartment, she glued the old ones together to make a colorful tabletop. And rather than replacing her couch when she wanted a fresh look, she covered it with $100 of faux suede. "I had serious doubters," Kirk says, "but it worked."
Learn how to make a tabletop like this one by Tara Kirk
Have you found creative ways to reuse household items? Tell us about your projects!
I am the last human on the planet to have not seen Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and for that I apologize. In 2006 I was too sleep deprived to even watch the copies urgently pressed upon me by three well-meaning friends. But as of last fall, my two former toddlers were finally in public school--yes, my husband and I insisted on public--and I had time to address global warming.
I decided to rip off the Band-Aid and convert to total solar energy. While a natural for sunny Southern California, surprisingly, none of my polar-bear-fate-bewailing, lightbulb-changing, hemp-bag-toting friends had it. Which meant--bingo!--I could now happily eco-stalk them as they had ruthlessly eco-stalked me.
Bicycles get a new twist with these innovative designs for land and sea. ItBike (above) won't let you walk on water--but it will let you glide gracefully on the surface. It's sturdy enough for the adventurous among us to give it a go on moderate ocean waves. Those who prefer a smoother ride will fit right in among paddleboats in calmer waters.
A Patagonia vest designed in the United States, sewn in Mexico, and recycled in Japan generates 44 times its weight in carbon dioxide emissions. That's according to the company's footprintchronicles.com, which tracks the life cycles of ten products. Patagonia empowers eco-conscious shoppers by putting the info alongside the "buy" button. With only a few tracked products so far, Patagonia knows it can do even better: The company's chief environmental analyst says it's "learning out loud." That means we get to learn too.
Today's gas prices make many of us think about driving more efficiently. "Hypermilers" go to extremes, eking out up to 100 miles on a gallon of gas. They may take cues from Granny (50 miles per hour in a 65 zone, anyone?), but Web sites like greenhybrid.com and cleanmpg.com now lend gas-sipping efforts a competitive spirit. Join the fray with these tips:
Travel light An extra 100 pounds of cargo can reduce your mpg by up to 2 percent. Remove that surf rack when the waves are flat, and take the rock collection out of your trunk.
Face out Back into parking spaces. Cold engines use more fuel, so three-point maneuvering is more efficient at the end of a trip.
Use cruise control Pressing the accel button lets you speed up in smaller increments (and burn less gas) than even a feather-weight foot on the pedal.
Brake (very) gently Skilled hypermilers coast to a crawl with hardly a touch on the brakes to avoid wasting an ounce of fuel at traffic lights.
Even if your kids are young enough to worry about ice caps only in the world of Club Penguin, they can learn to save the planet with new online games. In Recycle Roundup, Gus the Gorilla snags falling trash and sorts it into bins. In SpongeBob & Patrick: Dirty Bubble Busters, the plucky sponge attacks ocean goo with a vacuum. And early-teen gamers can race to save the planet of Helios by replacing fossil-fuel power plants with wind turbines and solar panels in PowerUp.
Having gone pro, Joanna Lohman of Maryland won't be playing in Beijing, but she may still have a presence on the field. She cofounded a group called GreenLaces this year and hopes to have 1,000 Olympians wearing bright green recycled-plastic shoelaces as a sign of specific pledges to take on climate change. (Think of it as an enviro-spin-off of the LiveStrong wristbands that adorned athletes at the Athens games.) "As a high-profile athlete," Lohman says, "you are leveraging your body to inspire others to be more eco-conscious."
