www.twitter.com/thinkgreenmedia – Think Green Media on Twitter.

Tweets will be a combination of (Green) marketing and environmental and sustainable interest. Come follow us.

Also … If you are interested.
I’ve been (Nick, the guy writing this post) has been on twitter for a while now (twitter.com/forwardmymail).

Tweets are somewhat random in nature.

Here’s a list of what each of us can do everyday to help make the world better than how we found it yesterday.

• Vote for politicians who protect the environment
• Write letters to your local, state and federal representatives
• Get to know your local politicians
• Become an active member of an environmental organization
• Buy organic
• Use environmentally friendly household and outdoor products
• Don’t litter
• Don’t dump/allow hazardous runoff into the gutters
• Change your car’s oil and keep the tires at the appropriate levels. This will aid in better gas mileage
• Take mass transit when available
• Don’t purchase products from companies who are known environmental offenders
• Read the papers – be informed of what is on in your town, your state, your country and abroad.

I went to Macy’s last Black Friday. On the way into the store were green bins to collect recyclables. Not cans or plastics, but jeans and shoes and other clothing items.

I try to give all my unwanted clothing that’s good shape to those who will benefit from it. I had nowhere to put the threadbare pants with the stain and the rip. Now I do thanks to Macy’s and TerraCycle.

TerraCycle collects and recycles just about everything and produces really cool things like backpacks, holiday bows and pencil cases. A green Christmas all around. Nice.

Looks like we have big push to bring the electric car back to the market. Sounds good so far – jobs and electric powered cars. I’m not sure about the infrastructure support, but I guess we have time for that.

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?cl=16862550

For those who read the first line of this post and thought, “back to the market?”, read on…
Hopefully this electric car won’t end up like the first electric car – Find out about who killed the electric car the movie.

Well, we have a book site up. Shari Thurow and I published a book in April of 2009 that brought together search and web usability and now the site, after a month or so (give or take few months) is not live. Thanks for the patience.

When Search Meets Web Usability – the book companion site is live.

I wish I knew about this after I washed my iPod with my color clothes. Surprisingly, the little bugger didn’t work after the last spin cycle.

If you end up washing your iPod or iPhone, get a new iPod or iPhone and don’t have a home for your old one please consider recycling it before tossing into the garbage. You can also recycle cellular phones, PDA’s, Palm Pilots, digital cameras too.

Recycle your old or broken cellular phones, PDA’s, Palm Pilots, digital cameras here.

I wrote about Bluefields Bay Villas, an all-inclusive vacation villa in Jamaica in June of 2008 and how they don’t pitch themselves as a destination for ecotourism in jamaica. That was before I went there. This post is from my personal experience.

Ecotourism – Jamaica vacation
As I stated in my previous post on Bluefields, they don’t promote themselves as green and sustainable, but they do work with local communities, are mindful of the land and the reef just offshore. We can’t all be 100% green (myself included), but it’s steps like this that deserve recognition as the right steps toward sustainability and ecotourism in Jamaica.

I wanted to write about Bluefields once more as this is the time of year people start planning their winter get-a-ways. You might want to consider this ecotourism Jamaica vacation get-a-away. I know what you are thinking, Jamaica is unsafe, etc. That was one of my concerns too. Bluefields Bay is an hour from Montego Bay and about 4 hours from Kingston. It’s far away from the noise and the city. I didn’t experience anything remotely unsafe, but I think this is what people think of regarding “unsafe” so I figured I’d mention it.

Now the good stuff – all-inclusive, seaside view at a private villa, ala Jamaica ecotourism
There are few places that live up to the hype. This vacation villa in Jamaica did that and more. They took care of everything including picking up and dropping us off from the Montego Bay Airport, 3 meals a day, snorkel gear and a full cooler of drinks on the beach. It’s hard to describe just how good it was.

The weather in Jamaica
We went in July, and surprisingly, the weather in Jamaica for this time of year was very pleasant. I was expecting to sweat the entire time. The weather on vacation was probably better than the weather back home (NJ). I would go back in the summer again, but there something really nice about getting out of the cold too and escaping to a tropical paradise while everyone else you know is snowed in.

All-inclusive means all clean clothes
One of the things I dread about going on vacation is the post-vacation unpacking. That wasn’t my experience with Bluefields Bay. I left with a clean packed suitcases for my Jamaican vacation and I came home with a clean packed suitcase. They clean your dirty clothes. It’s a really nice way to return home.

You can see my pictures from our Jamaica trip on Flickr.

You can find out more about Bluefields Bay Villas and what they can offer your on your Jamaica vacations.

A quick thought on Thanksgiving. In the spirit of “taking small green steps”, try putting one organic offering on the dinner table this thanksgiving for everyone to enjoy.

It’s probably one of the toughest Thanksgivings in a long time for many people, economically speaking. An organic turkey might be more money than you might want to pay for a bird, if that’s the case how about lower cost items like organic greens or organic cranberry sauce?

Happy Thanksgiving.

1. Use computer and monitor power management. Doing so can save nearly half a ton of CO2 and more than $60 a year in energy costs.
2. Don’t use a screen saver. Screen savers are not necessary on modern monitors and studies show they actually consume more energy than allowing the monitor to dim when it’s not in use.
3. Buying a new computer? Make energy efficiency a priority while shopping for your PC and monitor. Look for the ENERGY STAR label or browse the Climate Savers Computing product catalog.
4. Turn down the brightness setting on your monitor. The brightest setting on a monitor consumes twice the power used by the dimmest setting.
5. Turn off peripherals such as printers, scanners and speakers when not in use.
6. Fight phantom power; plug all your electronics into one power strip and turn the strip off when you are finished using your computer. When feasible, we also recommend unplugging the power strip from the wall to avoid high voltage surges which may occur during an electrical storm.
7. Use a laptop instead of a desktop. Laptops typically consume less power than desktops.
8. Close unused applications and turn off your monitor when you’re not using it.
9. Use a power meter to find out how much energy your computer actually consumes and to calculate your actual savings.
10. Establish multiple power schemes to address different usage models. For example, you can create a power scheme for playing music CDs that shuts off your hard drive and monitor immediately, but never puts your system into standby mode.

The above tips and more great information can be found at http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/learn/saving-energy-at-home/

You can also get more involved by pledging to reduce your computer energy consumption. I did.

If you plan on going to vacation in Kauai or Oahu, Hawaii, you should probably go sooner rather than later.

Geologists say that more than 70 percent of Kauai’s beaches are eroding, and Oahu has lost a quarter of its sandy shoreline. They warn that the problem is likely to get significantly worse in coming decades as global warming causes sea levels to rise more rapidly.

Beach erosion in Kauai, Hawaii.