“Take a break from your next hard-drive dump, and send the year’s most annoying documents to the Unloader. This nifty app destroys them in the most delightful ways.

Designed for Nokia by the Farfar ad agency in Stockholm, the program feeds your files into contraptions that Rube Goldberg himself would have admired. (We like “Ring of Fire” — which douses docs in gasoline and shoots them through a flaming hoop — the best.) The pleasures are virtual, but there are real-world effects: For every 100 documents destroyed, Nokia will plant one tree in Brazil. We’re good for a forest or two — are you?” – - VSL

http://www.the-unloader.com/

“Down in North Carolina, Duke management professors Jack Soll and Richard Larrick passed their morning commutes pondering the vagaries of fuel efficiency, and came up with the following thought experiment: What saves more fuel: (A) Replacing a 10mpg Escalade with a 20mpg crossover? Or (B) replacing a 25mpg Accord with a 50mpg Prius?

Counterintuitively, the correct answer is (A). Why? Because over the course of 10,000 miles, a 10mpg SUV will use 1,000 gallons while the 20mpg crossover will use 500 gallons — resulting in a 500-gallon savings. On the other hand, an Accord will burn 400 gallons and the Prius 200, for a net conservation of only 200 gallons.

If you guessed wrong, you’re in good company: After all, mpg is how automotive fuel efficiency has always been presented to us, and converting efficiency into consumption (as we have above) is a convoluted process. But Soll and Larrick found that when they expressed the same question in tems of gallons per miles, their subjects immediately realized that replacing the 10-gallon-per-hundred-mile megamonster with a 5-gallon-per-hundred-mile mini-monster brought the bigger gain. According to their study, the EPA should replace mpg ratings with a gallons-per-mile metric — such as X gallons per 10,000 miles — which would give consumers a better sense of their annual consumption. Definitely an idea worth discussing during your next car pool.” – - VSL

http://news.duke.edu/2008/06/gpmfuqua.html

“In May, the Department of the Interior, presumably between cocaine-fueled orgies, officially listed polar bears as a threatened species despite the efforts of the drill-baby-drilling-crazy governor of Alaska to prevent that classification. Most scientific experts agree that man-made global warming has greatly diminished Arctic sea ice, which amounts to the sidewalk beneath a polar bear’s paws going poof.

A couple of polar bears were recently spotted on New York City’s sidewalks, and they were not looking so good. Actually, they were inflatable bears, part of an affecting ad directed by Tim Godsall and paid for by Environmental Defense Fund. In the beginning, they are deflated, an indistinct bit of plastic trash perched atop a subway grate. As a train passes below, sending warm air up, the mama and baby bear rise — they’re alive! But then, just as quickly, the train has passed and they wilt. The message is simple: Leave the car, take mass transit, save a few polar bears. ’Nuff unsaid.” – - VSL

Paul at Living Green in Austin blogged about a GREAT idea: If you forget to bring your re-usable bags with you when you shop, purchase new ones (yes, every time) and use them for gift bags when giving a gift.  WOW!!  What a fantastic idea!! Thanks, Paul!! 
I always appreciate those great ideas from people who think outside the box!!  ;)