I love that everyone is so conscious of their waste these days. We are a very wasteful country; we waste about 1 million garbage bags a minute and more stores are banning plastic bags everyday. As a country we're realizing that now is the time to change. I've been to stores and recognized the t-shirts that have been manufactured from recycled soda bottles. I love it, and journalists that are now sharing the news and living what they preach. For example Dave who is saving his trash in his basement and documenting everything at http://365daysoftrash.blogspot.com
Recently my brother; Preston Bassett, has been looking into Sustainable Living. Which those of you who don't know about it let me explain: Sustainable living refers to a specific lifestyle that attempts to reduce an individual's or society's use of the Earth's natural resources. Practitioners of sustainable living often attempt to reduce their carbon footprints by altering methods of transportation, energy consumption and diet. They are self sustaining trying to make or make do with solar panels, recycling rain water, etc. Think of it as waking up in a house that didn't need electricity from the power company, instead you have a battery pack in the basement that stores the power from your wind turbine, and solar panels. You get to work by walking, biking, or electric car. At work your building uses practical building resources to have waterless toilets, natural air conditioning, and recycles everything from paper towels to shredded legal documents. Everything you use gets a second life making another product. Circle of life thinking.
I try and do my part by driving very slowly in my Geo Metro which gets 50+ mpg, which isn't as good as the 80mpg scooters driving around but most people don't realize that those scooters are 2-stroke engines which makes more power with a smaller motor but pollute more than a 4 door sedan. So I am driving more eco-friendlier then the scooters on the road.
This is a solar panel prototype out of Japan which is the shape of flower leaf; LOVE IT
http://365daysoftrash.blogspot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_living