January 1, 2012

10 Green New Year’s Resolutions for 2012

Will you ride your bike to work more often in 2012?<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/vonderauvisuals/6551034999/sizes/z/in/photostream/" target="_blank">vonderauvisuals</a>/Flickr

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Happy 2012! Now that the champagne toasts are made and the ball dropped, it’s time to start thinking ahead: What’s your green resolution for this year? We asked you to submit yours, from big (solar panels on the house!) to small (not driving to the supermarket that’s embarrassingly close to home). Here are 10 of our favorites:

 

 

 

  1. “Going red meat free. I am not quite ready to take the next step into full-on vegetarianism just yet, but this is a big start. The beef industry, while very important to my state (Kansas) is a lead producer of waste, greenhouse gases, and more. Plus, the stuff they put IN beef these days is really not good for the human body. As a cancer survivor at 32, I’d really like to avoid having to go through it again.” —Christina A.
     
  2. “Ride bicycle or walk to work more often (commute is 4.2 miles).” —Daniel B.
     
  3. “Last year, my chickens ate my garden, so we will be building a chicken coop instead of letting them free, although they did a great job: I did not see one grasshopper or earwig all summer.” —Melissa S.

  4. “Convince husband to try Meatless Mondays.” —Miranda S.
     
  5. “Buying paper books hurts the environment and my wallet. This year, I’m going to hit my local library. I can even borrow e-books from it.” —Elizabeth R.
     
  6. “Buying everything except food and TP second-hand.” —Wendy W.

  7. “I want to reduce the amount of food I waste by buying smaller quantities and finding creative ways to use ingredients I already have on hand.” —Ilana G.

  8. “Hook up the rain barrel that has been in my garage since I moved a year ago.” —Tasia M.
     
  9. “Saving money early in the year so I can do u-pick berries and such over the summer and freeze massive quantities for use in the winter. “ —Megan H.
     
  10. “Moving to a town with a high walkability score & shared commuting options for work! My car will be happily neglected.” —Abby A.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

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The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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