Thinking way ahead I'll share that my staff decided to do a "white elephant" gift exchange last year with a commitment to not buy anything new, just find stuff at home to include in a fun gift exchange.  Then we drew numbers and everyone could choose a gift or "steal" someones -- great way to keep consumerism down for the upcoming holiday season!

I use a lot of pencils- I just researched which is better for the environment:  mechanical vs wood.  The answer isn't simple.  Wood decomposes but the lead is thicker and, depending on how the trees were harvested, the impact could be bad.  If you "don't lose things" you could be helping the environment by getting mechanical pencils and keeping them for a long time.  My question is- what if your eraser on the wooden pencil runs out?  Then you get those add-on erasers which fall apart- or you throw out the pencil before it's used up.  Not sure which way to go- ideas?

The challenge is going steadily for me this year. 

I've been enjoying "renting" clothes from LeTote-  they have an enviro-friendly cleaning practice for all rented clothes.  We've noticed that we're doing much less laundry since I started using this service.  And it's helped to clean out the closet, too!

In our department we have a new initiative, eliminating lots of paper- all forms for students playing on departmental recitals are now online.  It's been a long time coming but it's working great!