I’ve been doing Weight Watchers since December of 2007 and one of the only ways I’ve made sure that I get my daily allotment of water in was to carry around bottles of Dasani water. It made sticking to water convenient because I could just throw the bottles into my trunk and grab them on the way to class or to work or to the gym. But after I’d finish the bottle off…right into the trash it would go.

But oh! I loved the convenience and I loved the taste. No one can argue with me that the different waters don’t taste different. Of course they do and to me, Dasani was my favorite. It still is.

That being said, drinking three or four bottles a day makes for a huge amount of waste. I’m embarressed by this waste, which is why I decided to stop buying the bottles of water and keep water bottles handy instead. last night, I purchased my first bottle.

It was serendipity. I was standing in line at my grocery store and on a little stand there was a bunch of Brita products and water bottles filled with Crystal Light flavor packets. The bottles were green and black with the Brita logo and the words FilterForGood.Com I Pledge to Reduce Bottled Water Waste

I picked one up for about $6.95 which I thought was a little pricy but I spend $5 on a case of Dasani water bottles and this bottle was filled with different flavors of Crystal Light. I thought it was a pretty good deal then. And when I got home I discovered that there was a coupon packet inside for bottles, Brita filters and Brita pitchers which is awesome because we’ve been talking about getting a new Brita pitcher for our fridge, a $19.99 value with a $5 off coupon inside this bottle. Score.

I’ve got a bottle of pink lemonade tasting water next to me right now at work and I’ve gone through about half the bottle (it looks like it holds 24 oz). I decided to check out www.filterforgood.comand was pleased to discover that it’s less a page about getting you to buy Birta products, and more about saving the Earth one bottle at a time. I signed up to take the pledge and the offered me all the same coupons I’d gotten in my bottle the night before. They also allow you to buy their bottles like mine online, though they cost $10, more than I paid, but they have different styles.

They also have a section on eco-friendly tips from a guy called Josh Dorfman the “lazy environmentalist” though his creep picture sort of turns me off. I’m willing to check it out though.

When you take the pledge you have to tell them how many bottles you tend to use a day. They add your location and your bottles per year to a map where you can see how many bottles have been saved in your state. My home state of Nebraska has pledged to save 381,790. Not bad at all.

So each Monday when my husband and I go grocery shopping and I usually spent $5 on a pack of 24 Dasani water bottles, I will now pocket that $5 into a savings account. One bottle at $6.95, a second I will buy to keep handy at work in the fridge, another $6.95. That’s it. In one year I will save $260 – $13.90= $246.10 That’s a big savings!

This year we are determined to change all that and start anew. But first we knew we had to get rid of the lawn mower that plagued us all summer long. It seemed like a good time to go buy one too since we’d pledged to make our life more Green. We went researching lawn mowers with our eyes set for a rechargable electric.

The Environmental Protection Agency states that a single gas lawn mower emits the same amount of volatile organic compounds in an hour as a car driven 350 miles. Imagine how many people own and use a gas mower! The EPA also states that about 17 million gallons of gasoline are spilled every year by clumsy homeowners filling their lawn equipment.

According to Electric Power Research Institute of Palo Alto California, replacing one half the gas mowers in the U.S with electric mowers would be an emissions equivalent of taking two million cars off the road.

The Pros of using an Electric mower include:

• Better for the environment, see above
• Starts with a key, no need for a pull cord
• Low maintenance, no belts or spark plugs to deal with
• Use between $5-16 a year in electricity
• So super quiet it’s hard to tell it’s on!
• Height adjustments are done with just a button or switch
• Cuts just as well as a gas mower
• No more oily, gasoline spills on the mower making it dirty and stinky in your garage

The Cons of owning an Electric mower:

• Until this year, 2008, electric mowers were hard to find and not all that great
• If they are cord electric mowers, you have to deal with a very long cord/extension chord
• If they are rechargable, they might not cover your yard in one charge
• Their decks are slightly smaller than gas mowers
• There’s a big difference between awesome electric mowers and crappy electric mowers
• They cost about $150 more than a gas mower

When we bought our mower, we decided to go with a Black and Decker model with a 19 inch deck, 24 volt cordless mulching mower. Amazon has it listed for $399, Menards, where we bought the mower, it was listed for $437 but it was on sale for $299. This mower is rated highest among the cordless mowers, but one of the complaints we heard was that it was very heavy. I can attest that my wimpy arms was able to pick it up and put it into the bag seat of my car, so I’m not real sure why one of the cons was listed as being heavy. So there you go.

We bought the floor model because they’d sold out of their stock items so we did not have to put it together (which I learned later only meant attaching the handle) The handle is very adjustable and the hight adjustment for the deck is done with the press of a button at the bottom of the handle area. The whole deck raises up and down with no effort at all. We plugged the mower in on sunday afternoon and decided to mow on Monday. The directions cautioned that it takes about 3 full charges before it gets up to its top power.

We have a large backyard and a smallish front yard, so our only worry was that it would not make it over both yards in one charge.

We were pleasently surprised that the mower really is super quiet! You wouldn’t even know it was a lawn mower by it’s gentle hum. Ryan took it out back to start mowing the backyard because it was in the worst shape. He was finished with it in about 20 minutes and the front yard was finished in about 15 minutes. All in one charge. He did not use the bag but chose to use it to mulch. The grass looked fine when he was done! We were realy excited about how it went.

We recommend this lawn mower to anyone. It is environmentally safe, quiet, wonderful. If you can’t find it in your neighborhood, Amazon offers free shipping on the item at $399. How great is that?

Here’s one more step in our effort to make the world a cleaner place.