Time again for our Website of the Week, when we showcase interesting and innovative online destinations. Our web guide today is VOA's Rosanne Skirble.
Robert Lilienfeld's holiday conservation message can be summed up in three words: Use-Less-Stuff. Lilienfeld is editor of the ULS report, which started as an electronic newsletter in 1994. Now it's featured online, at www.use-less-stuff.com.
"A great deal of what I do is to try to get people to understand that it is better to not to create waste than to have to figure out what to do with it after we've made it," he says.
Lilienfeld says readers can log on to the Use-Less-Stuff Website for the ULS newsletter or for conversation on the Use-Less-Stuff blog.
"Right now, there are some holiday tips for what people can do to have a good holiday season without spending too much money and time buying stuff," he says.
You'll also see an archive of ULS reports and research studies done on different products and packaging.
Lilienfeld says they all include references and weblinks for more information. Teachers can download a waste-prevention curriculum that Lilienfeld wrote for the National Science Teachers Association.
"The key thing is a giant poster called, 'Life of a Hamburger,' how when you throw away food there's a huge ripple effect all the way up the food chain back to the farm, and that's what this talks about.
"What you throw away, he says, "also wastes all the resources it took to produce the hamburger and the buns and the pickles and the lettuce and the special sauce."
More food and packaging waste accumulates during the Christmas holiday season than any time of year in the United States. So Lilienfeld's site offers visitors some guidance to change wasteful habits with a self-help checklist. He's not saying you should do them all, but he advises, "Find five or six that apply to your lifestyle and give them a shot. If it is right for your pocketbook, it is also going to be right for the environment."
Lilienfeld says these suggestions make sense not only at Christmas time, but throughout the entire year. Check out ways to create less waste at www.use-less-stuff.com or get the link to this and more than 200 other Websites of the Week, from our site, voanews.com.
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