Well isn't that nice

Environment Leader reported a few days ago that Pepsico Inc. is going to reveal how it measures the carbon footprint of one of the products it markets in the U.K. Well whoop-dee-doo as they say. As one of the largest sources of plastic bottles in the world, Pepsico absolutely needs to make sure that it does all that it can to report its carbon footprint, reduce its carbon emissions and in general, do better for the environment.

Look, we all like to drink a Pepsi now and then, and who really can eat just one Lay's potato chip, but Pepsi is one of the driving forces behind the misuse of fresh water today, and the proliferation of plastic bottles on our beaches and just about everywhere else.

As the bottler of Aquafina water -- just tap water pushed through a filter and then sold for more than the price of a gallon of gas -- Pepsico contributes to pollution on grand scale. Read the book, Bottlemania, to see just what went on to create the wild demand we see today for bottled water.

The company does try to put forward a positive environment story. A visit to its website and a read through the company's corporate sustainability report shows in excruciating detail the lengths that the company goes to be green. I give them a point for that. But the bigger picture is one of corporate profits being pushed way out in front of planet sustainability.

Pepsi is doing something; a lot of other companies are not, but let's not hurt our hands patting the big guy on the back.

Carpet You Could Live With

The economic crisis is affecting everyone. Unemployment is higher than it has been in more than a decade and in some places as many as one out of every six working age adults is without work. To put it bluntly: the economy sucks right now.

The housing market from Rhode Island to Miami and up to Seattle is bad -- improving-- but still bad. In the midst of the worst housing downturn in seventy years, a lot of homeowners have learned that moving up to a better home just isn't an option right now. Their alternative is to make the home that they have a better place for them to live. So they're remodeling.

From ripping out old kitchens and baths to making the tough and costly decision to add on a room, homeowners are rolling up their sleeves and building their own dream home right where they are. But while many homeowners are remodeling, not enough of them are doing so to keep earnings at the country's largest do-it-yourself superstores climbing. Six weeks ago, The Home Depot reported a drop in earnings and so did Lowes.

More importantly, however than how well the big stores are doing, is what are homeowners doing when they're remodeling their places top-to-bottom.

I hope that they're recycling. As a kid I remember a buddy and I scoring big time stuff for our clubhouse from the curbside trash of neighbors. I especially remember the carpet remnant we dragged through the woods to our very own Fortress of Solitude. I remember because when we started a fire in an old cast iron pot -- we wouldn't think of just starting a fire without protection -- we forgot that the heat would pass through the pot and start burning our precious red shag carpet. We survived and tossed the burnt rug into the trash along with miles and miles and tons and tons of other old, worn carpet from everyone else's homes.

That doesn't have to be the case today: homeowners can choose to recycle carpet. The Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE -- yes, overused and corny, but it works) is a national association committed to keeping old carpet out of landfills and directing it to be reused. There's a carpet recovery/recycling company here in Northern VA. According to the CARE website, the organization and its partners have diverted more than 1.3 billion tons of carpet from America's landfills. That's a lot of shag!

Put another way, by diverting and recycling the carpet into other uses, CARE and the homeowners that choose to go this route have helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 238,000 tons or about the equivalent of two million barrels of oil.

The fact is there are opportunities for all of us to do something with our garbage that is better than letting it pile up in a landfill somewhere. So when you're remodeling your home or doing just about anything, think about how what you're doing can be done with a green theme. You'll like the result and our grandchildren will too.