I had these 2 old CRT televisions sitting in my condo for the last 4 years. One my wife and I never watched. The other we watched only when we were being lazy on a Sunday morning or one of us was sick in bed. We decided to try not having a TV in the bedroom, so I went to Craigslist to sell them both. Over 2 months, I probably posted my ads 4-5 times lowering the price of the televisions each time. I think by the last try, I was asking $25 for a 27″ and $15 for a 19″. Still no takers.

I figure the cost of paying to recycle these suckers (they are super heavy!) would have been somewhere between $50 and $100. There was no way I was just going to find a random dumpster and toss them. That’s in no way environmentally responsible. So, I stuck them out at the street in front of my workplace around 12:45 and put a sign on them that said “FREE (works just fine)”. I figured they might be gone by the end of the day if I was lucky. For giggles, I went out around an hour later and they were both gone! YES! Sending stuff off to a new home for free gave me the ability to do the right thing without having to pay someone to do it. Now I have free space in my condo and the good feeling of having done what I thought was the right thing.

So, if you have electronics in your house that you can’t sell or can’t give away online, put it out in front of a busy street near where you live or work (or even at a friend’s place) and put a FREE sign on them. Bet you your electronics find a happy new home!

Right on the heals of my post about the wind turbine here in Worcester, MA, I just read a great article on Google’s Philanthropic Blog on what they’re working on to get our nation moving faster to renewable and cleaner energy. It’s great to see such a large company that is a household name take the initiative in helping us get to where we need to be. A lot of corporate and personal responsibility needs to be had in the near future to get us off of fossil fuels which dominate our fragile economy. For the most part, I think Google is on the right path…

This probably isn’t that interesting to most other people in the world, but it is to me since I live in Worcster, MA and I love hearing about clean energy making progress. It’s something that just makes sense and we’d be foolish not to embrace it. Anyway, Holy Name Central Catholic Junior Senior High School did the research and actually followed through on building a 262 foot high wind turbine on their campus here in the city. You can just barely see it pop above the tree line as you drive down 290 west bound through the city. I saw it the other day and couldn’t believe what I was seeing right in my own back yard. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was excited to see it.

What I find particularly exciting about this is that Worcester is known for its weather. We get all sorts of weather patterns coming through the city because of its central location in Massachusetts. We always seem to at least have a slight breeze all times of the year. It gets especially windy in the Spring, Fall, and Winter. So this type of renewable energy in our city makes total sense. I’d like to see more of these pop up around the city. They don’t look ugly if you ask me, and with the abundant wind resource we have here, it makes perfect sense to help power the city.