AttemptGreen.com

So with our move to a new city, we had to find a new bank.  It was just getting to be a huge problem with the closest branch being 4 hours away (one-way).  With the banking sector in the state it is in, I was very careful as to where I was willing to put my money.  After much debate, we opened an account at Citizens Bank.  They are one of the larger banks in the Philly region.

This is a green blog, so why am I telling you where I opened a bank account?  The reason is because they have a new feature for their checking account that I wanted to talk about.  The name is called Green$ense.  Green$ense, to me, is a type of rewards program. You can earn up to $120 a year, depending on the number of non-paper payments you make.

So I was trying to figure out what makes it “green”.  Most of it you can do with any account and I’ve already been doing it.  They require you to do eStatements, so no paper is being generated to mail you a monthly statement.  You do not earn rewards on paper checks, again to try to reduce the amount of paper.  They provide online bill pay, again eliminating the paper.  That seems easy enough and something you can probably accomplish with just about any account.  The one thing different that they are doing with this type of account, which I’m not aware of another bank doing, is to give you a debit card that is made of recycled plastic.  They will also send you a monthly email with green tips and  your positive environmental impact by doing so much electronically, instead of using paper.  I haven’t gotten the email yet, so I don’t know how good the information is, but I’m hopeful.

While Citizens is marketing this with the green spin, I’m sure it is saving them a ton of money in not having to handle the paper.  Truly, most of this you can do with any bank and I encourage it (if you haven’t already).  Get your statement emailed to you.  Take advantage of online bill pay.  The less paper you use, the better.

A few months ago, my mom asked me if there was anything she could do to reduce the amount of water that was being used from washing hands in the bathroom.  She was looking for something she could either attach to the faucet or replace the faucet all together.  Living in the desert of Arizona, water gets very expensive.  When she asked me, I didn’t find anything right away online.  However, while recently doing some research into products that I want to put into my next home and stumbled into something called WaterSense. 

WaterSense is a label put out by the EPA to promote water-efficient products. By installing a WaterSense labeled bathroom faucet or accessory, you could reduce the amount of water by 30%.  Now pay attention, because I said faucet or accessory.  What I mean there is, my mom can go to the store and buy an aerator (with the WaterSense logo), then simply unscrew the old aerator from the faucet and screw the new one on.  No tools required.  This also means, that when I go to do all the upgrades on my new house (and there will be a lot of upgrades), I can buy a faucet with the WaterSense label on it.  If they tend to be more expensive, I’ll just buy whatever faucet I want and then spend a couple bucks on the aerator.

I don’t know why this WaterSense concept isn’t being promoted more.  This even goes beyond just faucets, but also toilets, showerheads, landscape irrigation and even just every day practices for water conservation.  For me, the faucet one is by far the easiest to do.  It takes less than $5 and less than 5 minutes.  Even if you don’t consider yourself handy at all, give this one a try.  I think of the task being similar to replacing a light bulb and I know you can do that.  I actually had a hard time finding instructions on the web because it is so easy, but these are decent.  If you aren’t sure if your product is already a WaterSense labeled product, you can look up products that qualify on the EPA website.