As most of us linger in blogland, the paper-free platform makes it easy to forget the footprint left behind; even if the footprint is a tiny computer mouse-shaped print, it is still brimming with carbon emissions. Luckily for us, there is an effortless way to offset a blog’s dent in the environment.

An initiative started in Germany, the Make it Green program reaches right into the United States to help you square up with Mother Earth. The My Blog is Carbon Neutral initiative has partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation to plant a sapling in Plumas National Forest on behalf of your little piece of online real estate. Your blog and/or website can be responsible for a fir or pine sapling planted in Northern California, offsetting your site’s carbon footprint for fifty years. Now you can use “˜ecologically conscious’ as an adjective for your website in addition to the rest of your life.

The preservation of forests is a great compensation toward excess carbon dioxide (and thus global warming); take it one step past forest preservation toward forest creation by participating in this program. Isn’t it poetic for the intangible cellulose-free online demographic to collaborate for a tangible change in oxygen production?!

The post Blog for Oxygen appeared first on EcoSalon.

Here’s a whole new kind of scam – pretending to be exposing an animal rights outrage. As greenUPGRADER reports, the “Human Society Of America” (there’s no such organization) claims to have exposed the appalling use of kittens are shark-bait (not true) and are asking for donations to give to animal rights groups (who know nothing of these events). Bless.

At last! A use for discarded banana peel – shoe polish. (A much nicer alternative to the usual variety which is filthy stuff at the best of times, and in some cases is toxic and even stains skin!)

Regarding the fight to reduce carbon dioxide, it’s possible there’s more at stake than we thought. Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory now believe that if CO2 levels continue to rise, there will come a point where the global climate’s ability to recover will be so diminished that irreversible changes will take place, despite any countering measures we might undertake – and it would take a thousand years to get back on track.

Count me among those people who obsessively love the taste of vanilla (so good in all sorts of things), but have no idea how to extract its goodness. Correction: count me among them no longer, thanks to bethany actually.

If only the U.S. were as bike-friendly as Copenhagen (although it’s getting there). The cycling mothers of Japan want their government to be as well, in the wake of new laws banning sannin-nori (“three on a bike”). And in a country with a famously low birth rate, some are even threatening to stick to one-child families to make the government pay attention.

Just imagine if your favorite search engine were vetted by a discerning team of researchers who sifted out all the wheat from the chaff so you didn’t have to. Searching a keyword and actually finding what you want? Impossible, surely – but that’s the admirable philosophy behind Sweet Search. Let’s just hope they have a lot of researchers.

And speaking of sweet, here’s my nomination for Wrong Of The Week: the Baskin Robbins Chocolate Oreo Milkshake. Are you sitting down? You would be after this monster – it’s 2,600 calories (that’s not a typo) and 135 grams of fat. In other words, it’s more than the recommended daily calories for an active man in a single drink. I fear for my species.

For happier news, Small Business Trends looks at how rural small businesses in America are going to be shaping up over the next year – and the theme is Local Local Local. We couldn’t agree more (the new President will probably have his hands full with the economy).

When trimming back on a household budget, it’s worth taking a good hard look at grocery shopping. Here are 20 ways to do that courtesy of Woman’sDay – and the star, for me, is #4: “DIY and save.” May 2009 be the year of the Ingredient, sending prepacking packing.

There are people who never seem to get sick, and cheerfully fly around at work in glowing health while the rest of us fight off the seemingly inevitable winter cold that’s doing the rounds. But it’s possible that there’s a secret behind the invulnerability – and it may involve massages, ginger and cold showers. Alicia Potter and Diane Mapes explain at MSN.

With all the current talk of energy independence and living off the grid, it’s surprising to see a major green site arguing just the opposite – but Sarah Lozanova makes a good case for staying grid-dependent at CleanTechnica.

Challenging another common assumption is Carly Weeks for GlobeLife Health, who argues that free-range chickens may not have as great a life as we suppose.

The problem with science (a journalist friend tells me) is that nothing’s certain. It’s woolly, vague, full of probabilities and possibilities. In other words, no good at all for stringing an arresting headline together. But this is because EcoGeek’s Law Of Incremental Suck matters more than exact deadlines laden with doom. Every day is progress – every day helps. It doesn’t help sell newspapers, but that’s just too bad.

Roofs should be alive! Our obsession with green roofing is hardly a secret, so you’ll understand how much fun we had looking through these examples sent in to the Huffington Post by its readers. But now we want more – MORE. Any others that you’d care to suggest?

Hello, what’s this: people eating a billion frogs a year? No, it’s not a bizarre Monty Python sketch but a sober analysis of UN trade data…and even John Cleese et al. couldn’t make some of these delicacies up!

Image: Peter Giger

The post Eco Links to Green Your Weekend appeared first on EcoSalon.