Awesomeness Defined

Well I finally did it this morning, I Googled ‘awesomeness’ and you want to know what I discovered? There is a whole lot out there on this one little word!

First of all Urban Dictionary defines awesomeness as:
An unmeasurable amount of awesomenimity something can produce.

Wow! That seems above and beyond the best ever right? And that was just one of the definitions. The general rule of thumb seems to be that awesomeness is something way beyond the standard level of awesome.

Next I discovered that there is an entire website dedicated to nothing but awesomeness -- awesomeness.com. Score! Well I’m not exactly sure where the 585 area code is but if you live there you can have Awesomeness come on over and hook up your computer network. Not only that but they will service or repair it too.

Scrolling down I discovered that you can actually buy awesomeness from Amazon.com. Well that didn’t exactly surprise me considering they have everything else for sale over there but then again, isn’t awesomeness a state of mind? I had to explore further. Turns out awesomeness is a tag that users can attach to products on Amazon. Some of the things people considered for the awesomeness category include: a T-shirt with a great white on it, Stanley heavy duty utility knife blades, organic celery seeds, Living Life As A Thank You book, the Planet Dog Cozy Hemp Adjustable Harness and so many other items I could never list them all. If you’re looking for products that are even better than awesome head on over to Amazon and check it out.

Going back to Google I also found out that I can listen to awesomeness. Over at Last.fm people listen to their favorite grooves and rate them in categories including awesomeness. Curious what some people think of in this way? How about NOFX, Radiohead, Michael Bublé, Beats Antique, The Appleseed Cast, Alice In Wonderland, Skye, DJ Bitman and Paramore not to mention a whole bunch of others. Not sure who any of those acts are? Well Last.fm lets you find out!

I was also amazed to learn that awesomeness is available to watch, read, join and most importantly read about. For example, Harvard Business Review has an entire post dedicated to what awesomeness means to businesses everywhere entitled The Awesomeness Manifesto.

And all of this was only on the first page of the search! Whew!

I guess what it all comes down to is that awesomeness is everywhere, we just have to be open to recognizing it even if it isn’t defined as such.

What is your personal awesomeness?

An Eco Friendly Pillow from EcoTex (?)

My title for this blog was created prior to my researching for this article and now I am slightly mystified so let me share the current situation and hopefully someone can shed some light.

Yesterday Matt and I went to one of the big box stores to pick up a few items for our new home as we desired to spend a little less money but acquire everything we needed in one location. (This is our tradeoff, less gas driving around to many stores but not shopping at local places). One of the items on our list -- pillows. Ours are so old I barely remember purchasing them and so it was time to change.

Perusing the aisles and squishing a whole bunch wrapped in plastic can be a mind boggling experience as there are so many to choose from. I saw standard, queen & king sized, medium or firm squishiness and prices all over the map depending if the item in question was a brand name, memory foam, hybrid (foam / poly fill), feather fill or store brand. We settled on a couple standard sized, standard squish ones in a low to mid price range. The felt like the right choice for us and we pushed the cart on.

Rounding the corner of the next aisle however opened up another row of pillows. My eyes immediately went right to this pillow


Reading the package I learned this pillow is filled with fiber made from recycled water bottles, the plastic packaging will begin to biodegrade in about three months and that the cotton cover is bleached using 100% hydrogen peroxide. Best of all the price was exactly the same as the others we had selected so we put the originals back and purchased the EcoTex pillow instead, feeling great bout our choice.

Until today.

I always like to link back to the company website (especially when doing a Leaf Rating Review) so since there was none listed on the package, I Googled EcoTex. The top selection was this website:
http://www.ecotex.com/
Upon reading through it definitely is not the correct location so I went back to Google and began searching for anything to get the right website. When nothing produced the desired results, I grabbed the pillow and read through the tag hoping for something.

The parent company that makes the pillow I have is named Springs Global so I looked them up. Not only could I not find an actual website for these folks but I must have visited over twenty websites and found nothing related to a pillow named EcoTex other than this Natures Sleep pillow which is not only completely different looking but is not even close to the same description.

As a total last resort I went to the big box store’s website and searched for this product in every possible manner but to no avail. Is this package from the alleged company EcoTex is nothing more than a clever way to get people to purchase the product or does the company really exist and creates recycled water bottle fill and biodegradable bags? I suddenly became very aware of the fact that it is quite possible I was duped by some form of greenwashing. This does not please me as I am a careful consumer who enjoys reporting back on as much great stuff as possible for all of you readers who enjoy learning. In this case the learning was in the doing.

I would love nothing more than to be completely incorrect and have to print a retraction to my allegations of greenwashing by a company that does not exist so please if you belong to this company, recognize the photo of my pillow package or simply know the website I could not locate in all my searching please let me know immediately!

Unfortunately I will be unable to grant the Leaf Rating I wanted to grant as I am unsure as to the validity of the claims made by this product.

Today’s motto? Essentially, live and learn:

Study, learn and purchase armed with as much knowledge as possible but be aware that sometimes even then the final result might still be undesirable.

Sharing Is Caring

I am a member of Focus the Nation, a non-profit organization that is committed to fight for clean, renewable energy resources. This morning their news letter arrived in my inbox detailing some of the upcoming events and where they would be held. All the way at the bottom was a link to 41pounds.org which was described as a service that will stop all unwanted junk mail for five years. Having never heard of this particular organization before, I went to the website and read each page, looking to gain a broader perspective on what and how they do it. For $41.00 (US) they will contact and stop all unwanted mail for five full years -- catalogs, credit card offers, fliers -- anything with a name and address on it and $15.00 of that donation goes directly to an organization in the drop down menu. It sounded pretty good (especially since FTN was in the list), but while reading through the list it occurred to me that many of the organizations on it were local to southern California.

I love SoCal but presently live in Massachusetts so my wheels began to turn and I realized that the only organizations I currently belong to as a member are all national. This made me stop to think -- where are my local organizations and how can I find them? I thought about the saying:

Think Globally. Act Locally.

Now that is not to say that acting globally does not help because I do truly care what happens to the rest of the world but starting at home will give me more pride in actually being able to watch that effort come to fruition.

So where can I research local organizations? How do I join them? What makes them reputable?

I had a lot of questions and only the internet to guide the origins of my search. So I opened up Google and typed in “Environmental Org my hometown and state”. To my surprise and delight my own town website came up with links to three committees and the Sustainability Action Plan. The Town Selectmen voted eight years ago to join with the Cities for Climate Protection Campaign that would require a plan be put into action.

Eight years ago! I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do! My town issued part one of their Sustainability Plan just two years ago and a committee was formed so the first thing I did was register for an account to their website so I could learn more about upcoming events and town meetings. I learned that the next will be held tomorrow night at 7:30 PM and emailed the moderator of the meeting to see if it was open to the public. Finally, while waiting to hear back I called my Mom, who also lives here, and asked if she too would be interested to attend if we were allowed and she said sure!

There were two additional committees listed and I fully intend to research both in the same manner in order to get more involved right here in my own town. I will continue to donate to and support larger organizations such as We, 1Sky and Focus the Nation but to begin an effort right here in my own town makes me feel more connected to the air my own community breathes every day.

What are you doing to support local organizations? Tell me about your experiences!

Welcome to the Green Leaf Reviewer

First of all I would just like to say thank you very much for stopping by, we are brand new and hope you will enjoy the format as it evolves through time.

Next I would like to tell you all a little bit about what we do here at Green Leaf Reviewer. Our mission is simple -- review any and all things environmental. Movies, books, music, products, people, everything! The world is the environment and everything in it can be discussed. One day a review may be completed for an eco-conscious movie such as An Inconvenient Truth while the following day I might post a review of my next door neighbor because they tossed a plastic bottle in the recycle bin for the first time. Anything and everything goes.

I will do my best to post a little something everyday but since I am a real life person (waving hi to all current and future admirers!) life sometimes does get in the way. Please bear with me, especially in these early stages as this gets off the ground. With that in mind, I would also like to draw attention to the Google advertisement box on the right side bar. If something looks interesting to you please click on the ad. This will help me to raise funding to ensure this blog can grow. I appreciate it and thank you in advance for your kind click.

Finally, the Leaf Rating System I developed will be applied to every review completed on this blog. As many critics do, I have a rating system from one to five. One is considered "don't waste your time unless you are really bored" while five is "get yourself out there and experience this yesterday!!" Clearly 2-4 are everything else in between. Here is what a Two Leaf Rating would look like:

The opinions expressed with each Leaf Rating are mine alone. I do not expect everyone to agree with everything I say although whether you agree or not please feel free to comment! Getting people to talk about the environment is the best way to bring the issues it faces to the forefront and then fix them!

Thanks for your visit, please feel free to subscribe to this blog so you never miss a Green Leaf!