Informative Link Time

The enemy of a good blogger is time, so instead of giving you a well researched, thoughtful post, I'm here to pass on a few links that should save you time in your quest to get green. (Maybe they'll save you more time than they've saved me, seeing is that I don't have time for a larger post right now.)

Ideal Bite - Become a "Biter" by signing up for their mailing list to receive daily Green tips. My favorite things about this service are that each succinct tip always includes at least two informative websites, and the service is going city-specific, with the Atlanta edition of Ideal Bite slated to begin in late 2008. I haven't found any downsides yet, but will keep you posted.

Big Green Purse - Run by author and conservationist Diane McEachern, this site is a woman's guide to shifting her spending toward clean, green, and eco-friendly products of all stripes. Big Green Purse cuts through the "greenwashing" and delivers the real green deal on shopping, while reminding us that using our purchasing power for good is the number one way to ensure a green world, stat. Even better, though billed as a site about shopping, BGP encourages reuse when possible. Be warned, if you've been at this for awhile, you may find some of the tips simplistic or even common sense. Just keep in mind that the site is shopping oriented and try not to cringe when reading that one of the ways to beat high gas prices is to "drive less." (It's oriented toward women, fellas, but don't let that discourage you from visiting. If you like, pretend it's Big Green Murse.)

The Daily Green - This is a site I haven't explored so much, mainly because it's so overwhelming. Instead of focusing on, say, shopping or a single daily tip, it's chock full o' articles, ideas, lists, recipes, weather, and just about everything you can imagine an informational web site would offer. (Including advertisements. Yuck.) Like it's content, the site's navigation can be a little all over the place, but for general questions, news, and some green-related things you wouldn't think to Google, this is your place.

And last but not least a not-necessarily-green recommendation, but one that will help you make the world a better place:

Kiva.org - According to their About Us page, Kiva is the world's first person-to-person microlending website. Basically, you log in, and start browsing through pictures and stories of real entrepreneurs in the developing world, and then lend a minimum of $25 to the entrepreneur of your choice. You can sort by industry, area of the world, etc. I made my first loan to a group in Mexico running a grocery store, and my second loan to a tough-looking female taxi driver in Bolivia. (You can see my picture on the bottom of both pages as one of the lenders. Hi!) As for downsides, my counterpart over at Green Pepper worries about corruption among Kiva's partners (the institutions that handle the actual loans) in developing countries, but as a safeguard, Kiva displays each partner program's repayment history using a star system. Kiva also recently got into a kerfluffle with animal rights activists after one of their partners requested a loan to fund a cockfighting venture in Peru. You'll have to let your conscience and sense of cultural relativism be your guide here, but you can read the Kiva CEO's response to the loan here.

Be prepared. Rather than saving you time, Kiva is likely to turn into an addiction. No matter how broke you are, expect to find a minimum of five people you want to throw money at every time you log in. Don't say I didn't warn you.

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Now for the question portion of the blog. Is there a green or sustainability related issue you'd like to know more about? Post it here, and in the spirit of the sites I linked you to today, I'll do the research and give you an answer in an upcoming post. You can ask about anything from the viability of alternative energy sources to where to buy a yummy, locally grown onion.