You know you’re tired of staying indoors and staring at that computer screen. It’s time for an outdoor adventure – made even more invigorating when someone else pays for the whole deal. So just sign your name and you may be one of four lucky duos to win a $2,000 certificate for an adventure trip for two – plus a $1,000 airfare voucher.

And if the thought of the outdoors is making you thirsty, you could also win a year’s supply of Honest Tea or Honest Ade, which you can sip while riding the Mountain bike you might win if you are one of eight runners-up prize winners. All courtesy of Honest Tea and the Sierra Club. So start clicking… the deadline is 3/31/10, but they’re awarding some of the prizes even sooner.

I have come up with a discovery so beautiful in its simplicity that I feel like 3M’s Art Fry and colleague Spencer Silver must have felt upon inventing the Post-It Note decades ago. And like those fine gentlemen, I am giving this discovery away free.

The technique for doubling the life of Post-It notes is so simple and elegant that I don’t know why I have not read about it before. As you’ll see when I reveal the technique below, (which I am affectionately calling, “Be Nice, Use It Twice”) you’ll wish you had started years ago.

Can you imagine the savings??? There are 6,005,000,000 post it notes sold every year – 6 billion – according to Wiki Answers. (If six 100-packs cost about $10, that’s $100 million right there.)

Though 3M’s sales are down 20% from last year, the company is still reporting first-quarter sales of $5.1 billion, — over $20 billion per year – and a good chunk of that is from those cute little sticky notes, according to  Industrial Distribution, a Reed Business publication.

Everybody loves to use those cute notes with the low-tack adhesive on the back. They’re not just stuck all over your office and mine. The FBI uses so many of them that they’ve coined a term for them: FLYNs.

“That stands for ‘funny little yellow notes.’ Except I’m cleaning it up when I say ‘funny,’” according to Fry, one of the inventors of the notes as quoted in an entertaining article by Greg Beato, called Twenty-Five Years of Post-it Notes.

The U.S. Post Office uses a higher-adhesive version of the yellow address labels to forward mail.

Who doesn’t use them?

So get ready to save big: Double your usage, double your fun. Here’s how.

Be Nice, Use It Twice Technique

1. After you have filled out the top of the post-it note – and you have already done the chore: BUY MILK, DEODERANT, DOG FOOD – Fold the note up and over at the point where the adhesive bar at the top ends. Make a sharp crease.

2. You will see before you a whole new post-it note. Write a second message, then lift the note back up a little and it will stand up like a little message-soldier.

The area to write on is slightly smaller. But the second-time around the note is even more helpful at reminding you what to do because it STANDS UP instead of lying flat on your desk. How cute is that!

If everyone took this simple step, we could save hard-working, multi-tasking Americans (with memory deficits that require post-it notes to survive) over $100 million a year. Maybe this simple act won’t exactly empty the landfills, but imagine how much space we could save by keeping over 6 billion of these little sticky suckers out of the dumps every year.

Be nice, Use it twice.

I have found the simplest, sweetest, no-strings-attached contest for cash I’ve seen in a very long time. You don’t have to play any mind-numbing games, write any clever slogans, take photos, shoot videos, go places you don’t want to go, stay in hotels you wish you hadn’t. You just fill out your name – you can handle that right?

The sponsors of the Live Better, Live Greener sweepstakes, Palmolive® pure + clear™ and iVillage, will write you a check for $5,000 that you can spend on either an eco-vacation for two (you get to pick ALL the particulars) or on green nursery products (move over, Michelle, you’re not the only one who’ll be gardening). Basically that means they are handing over five large with no strings attached. If that isn’t worth a trip over to the iVillage site to fill out your name, I don’t know what is. You can enter once a day, each day until the contest is over on April 30, 2009.

By Susan Seliger

Nothing beats saving some green while going green. Here are some down-to-earth sales that’ll provide that two-fer.

1. Home Depot – On Sunday, April 19^th, you can get a FREE CFL light bulb (they’re giving away one million) plus a free tomato, oregano or basil plant for every one you buy. On addition, they’ll tell you if you’re eligible for a $1500 tax credit on energy-efficient home improvement.

2. Amazon.com is celebrating a sale on selected green products for the entire month—from composters and solar chargers to a 400-watt wind generator.

3. ItsEasyBeingGreen.com is offering 25% off water efficiency and energy efficiency products and every other item on the site, from CFL bulbs and an LED Night Lite to EPA-approved high-efficiency toilets, on the real Earth Day, April 22. , 2009.

4. Seventh Generation – the green cleaning and paper products company, is offering lots of coupons for discounts on its excellent range of eco-friendly products.

5. Not just for Kids—The Scholastic Store is having a giant sale on books and DVDs and more all about Planet Earth and butterflies and lions and tigers, oh my.

Photo credit: www.Goinggreenproductsonline.com

]]> http://www.goodgreentips.com/2009/04/5-big-sales-and-free-green-products-%e2%80%93-in-honor-of-earth-day/feed/ 2 http://www.goodgreentips.com/2009/04/green-freebie-win-a-ford-fusion-hybrid-%e2%80%93-plus-a-trip-to-see-american-idols/ http://www.goodgreentips.com/2009/04/green-freebie-win-a-ford-fusion-hybrid-%e2%80%93-plus-a-trip-to-see-american-idols/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:11:04 +0000 susan http://www.goodgreentips.com/?p=750 By Susan Seliger

If you’re feeling so happy you’re tempted to break into song about an American car company getting into the hybrid game — and getting 41 MPG, as Ford clams for its new 2010 Fusion — then sign up to win one. Ford, the sponsor, will also award the winner a trip to LA plus VIP seats to hang with the idols at the show. The only catch – you have to watch a video of the idols fooling around with Ford cars in order to enter this contest. If that seems like too much to ask, see if you can find a teenager lurking nearby to handle this part of the transaction. But then you just might have to share driving rights. Your choice. We just tell you where to go to find greener pastures – the journey is up to you. Start here. Deadline: 5-08-09.

Photo credit: LA Times

]]> http://www.goodgreentips.com/2009/04/green-freebie-win-a-ford-fusion-hybrid-%e2%80%93-plus-a-trip-to-see-american-idols/feed/ 0 http://www.goodgreentips.com/2009/03/send-this-to-your-favorite-college-students-only-win-a-free-toyota-prius/ http://www.goodgreentips.com/2009/03/send-this-to-your-favorite-college-students-only-win-a-free-toyota-prius/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:10:00 +0000 susan http://www.goodgreentips.com/?p=693 By Susan Seliger
Every prize you can win in this “Live Green/Get Green” contest – except the big Grand Prize — was created with materials that would have gone to waste – but now can find a home with your favorite college student. If you’re over 18 and enrolled in a college or university, you can enter this General Mills contest every hour, for a chance to win some little green stuff (like a recycled Nature Valley messenger tote bag, Chex Mix laptop portfolio sleeve, or a Lucky Charms notebook). Each entry steps up your chances at the biggie – the fuel-efficient 2009 Prius.  So if you want to be a big green hero on campus and save energy and money while driving your friends around  (not to mention getting to back up like a pro using that cool TV screen gizmo) , start clicking – the deadline is April 30.

In this video by Ecopolis, the award winning science show on The Science Channel, you’ll meet Valcent Products’ Glen Kertz explaining what part algae biofuel could play in our energy future.

Here are 10 companies that are doing more than talking about turning pond scum into fuel — they are small companies actually doing it. Maybe this is where you should put your retirement savings instead of that dwindling 401K.  (For more on these companies and a peek at five more, see this post from Earth2Tech on 15 algae fuel startups:

Aurora Biofuels
Bionavitas
Blue Marble Energy
GreenFuel Technologies
Inventure Chemical
Live Fuels
Petro Sun
Solazyme
Solena
Solix Biofuels

For more on saving money and energy, check out these posts:

And tell me what you’ve been doing to save energy and money in your daily life.

Photo credit: http://www.cyclelicio.us/

Want to be the hero at your local school? You can win a hybrid, energy-efficient school bus for your school – worth $200,000 – plus a scholarship for yourself or your favorite little scholar. All you have to do (if you are 13 or older) is write an essay under 500 words about how committed your elementary or high school is to going green. Talk about what your school has done, how it teaches the kids to think green and whatever it is doing to make the planet greener.

Teachers—here’s your lesson plan for a week. Get your students to come up with ideas for greening up the school, launch the project, and get everybody in the school to write an essay about it. That’ll increase your chances of winning your school a green bus. Value of the bus: $200,000. Value of the lesson to your kids: Priceless.

This amazing green contest is sponsored by IC Bus, LLC, in Warrenville, IL, which produces hybrid buses and says that every school bus keeps 36 cars off the road – imagine the pollution prevented.

Warm up your imagination – think green — click here and start writing to win: Deadline for essay submissions: April 30, 2009.

Photo credit: www.cleanairsys.com

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