Environmental Ideas

People won't do anything, even saving the earth if there is no financial incentive. So in order to save environment, we must make it benefitial to do so.

Got some ideas here.

1. Durable Coffee Mugs
Look at the lines of your local Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. People line up and willing to pay $2 for their morning coffee. Free Coffee should be a basic benefit of a company! In that expensive $, there is also the disposable cup that is wasted.

Let's Dunkin and Starbucks to sell durable mugs (ok, they already do). Give customer a discount if they use the re-usable mugs. That is, pay just $1.75 if you use the durable cup. That way, people will BUY the mug to save $, and stores will use less paper/foam cups and benefitial for the environment! win-win-win situation.

2. Free shopping bags, make people pay for plastic bags
Even at $1 a reusable grocery bag, is the American public going to bother to buy one instead of the free plastic bags at grocery stores? How about giving them out for free. Make collector editions so it is fun to own one! After that, make customers pay a quarter for each plastic bag at grocery stores. The govenment will surely be able to recover the cost of the free bag. Plastic bag usage will instantly come down (ask Ikea how many bags it saved)

3. Fewer other models, lower cost of the hybrid
It is prohibitively expensive to get a hybrid. It costs at least $5000 more than a
regular car. How many gallons of gas to use before it make financial sense? And there are so few out there. The Toyota guy I talked to say I must wait at least a year to get a Prius. Ok, America will continue to burn gasoline and make Earth global warm like Venus if it continues that way. GM has how many models? All those chevy and pontiac stuff don't sell that well anyway? How about discontinue them, mass produce the Volt or another hybrid model... concentrate effort on it to lower the cost... make it more cost-effective and available than the Japanese models! I'd love to "buy American", but that American product needs to be better and cheaper than others!

4. Recycle cans with incentive
When I was a kid, coke (and great tasting soy milk!) comes in glass bottles. You pay extra deposit $ for the glass bottles and when you return that you get the money back. Look at a typical alumnium can, a handful of states do that. It should be extended to all 50 states. That makes people recycle cans with financial motivation... Better yet, don't drink that much pops. Look at those cute 100 calorie cans.... It takes at least 10 minutes of jogging/running to burn that!