Happy Thanksgiving! Wouldn't it be nice if everyone, everywhere in the world, could sit down, eat a nice meal, and give thanks with their friends and family today? There is A LOT of wasteful food and energy on this day, so please be responsible when celebrating Thanksgiving. Make every effort to compost the organics, and recycle/re-use everything else. One thing that unfortunately goes hand-in-hand with Thanksgiving is Black Friday, or the busiest shopping day of the year, that follows just one day after Thanksgiving. If you have plans to wake at 4am and shop till the sun goes down, please take a moment to think about the consequences. Most of the goods that are up for sale at 4am are items that were built cheap, which typically means built at the expense of the environment and people around the factory. Please don't run out and buy a bunch of items that have already taken a toll on our planet, and will eventually end up in a heap at your local landfill. Please, be responsible in your shopping. Thanks, and have a great couple of days.

The collection of December 07 photographs by photographer Chris Jordan, titled An American Self-Portrait, incredibly eye-opening for anyone who has not seen them. Just link over to the global intelligencer to see for yourself. Images included are:

- Two milion plastic bottles (used every five minute in US)

- 1.14 million paper bags (used every hour in US).

- 426,000 cell phones (disposed every day in US)

- 15 million sheets of paper (used every five minutes in US)

- 106,000 aluminum cans (used every 30 seconds in US)

There is more too. Please note that these figures are the ones listed alongside the photographs themselves. I wonder if those figures have gone up or down since 2007, what do you think?

An astounding 78 percent of voters, surveyed in post-election polls, believe investing in green technologies is needed in order to revitalize our broken economy. Many of those polled in the survey also claimed that global warming needed to be an area of great focus for this new U.S. administration. There was much support among the youngest voters, and that helps ensure that education and awareness is running strong with the generation of people who have the most at stake. Now we need to follow through on this! You can read more about the post-election poll at Zogby International.

This is taking things a bit farther than just old aluminum/tin can recycling, but it is just as easy. Find some type of a bins to place used bottles/jars and aluminum/tin cans in, and when you are getting ready to throw one away just put it in the bin. Once it fills up, take it down to the local recycle center.

You'd never imagine how much aluminum and plastic waste you have, until you start sorting it out. Just find a large bin to keep used plastic bottles/containers and aluminum/tin cans in, and when you are getting ready to throw one away, simply place it in the bin. It's that easy. Once you realize that a bin of plastic would just go sit in a landfill, instead of being recycled, it almost makes you sick.

Green Groove is very excited to promote the National Recycling Coalition's "America Recycles Day" this November 15th. There couldn't be a better way for Green Groove participants to be a part of this great day than by going to their website to take the pledge. If you are making progress on your goals, and need to ratchet things up a notch, don't miss out on this opportunity to educate yourself on the importance of recycling. Get involved, do it, go now - http://www.nrc-recycle.org/americarecycles.aspx

This is a perfect chance for you to play with all those fancy knobs and dials you know nothing about on your dishwasher. There is usually a temperature setting on there, and if you turn it down, your hot water heater doesn't have to work overtime while you dishwasher is running. That way you don't have to run two appliances at once. If you hand wash, turn the hot water down - you aren't going to get out of this

No more lazy showers while water is wasting. Get in, get out. Seriously, water conservation is not played into your Green Groove goals as much as it should. This will be an excellent effort to keep water conservation in your green lifestyle.