recycle

Nowadays, I only buy a new video game if it's something I absolutely cannot wait to play — Heavy Rain or Alan Wake, anyone? Since a used game is at least 30 percent cheaper than its new version, I end up saving a ton of money that I can use on important things like, you know, more games. Most of you are with me too: 74 percent of GeekSugar readers also hit the used bins for games.

Have I got a deal for you. On Friday I went to GameStop for my usual video game purge. (Sidenote: Besides buying used games, I also sell them. Since I'm always in a cycle of buying and reselling games, I figure I'm never that far in the red.) Instead, I was told by the sales guy to come back on Monday. Since the look he gave me signaled that he knew I was a card-carrying GameSpot member, I dutifully complied. Thank goodness too. GameStop is currently offering a 50 percent trade-in bonus on all used games and members get an extra 10 percent bonus on top of that.

I went in with Ghostbusters and Legend of Zelda for the Wii, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for the Xbox 360, and Mario Kart for the DS. Instead of getting a trade-in credit of $56, I scored myself $90 in GameStop bucks — cha-ching! According to GameStop employees, the end date of this deal is up in the air, but it will definitely be happening all week. Gamers, I'm talking to you: put down the controller and start selling.

Update: Looks like the deal ends on Mar. 14!

Source: Flickr User Moe_'s

You can recycle and trade your textbooks and your gadgets, so why not do the same with your clothes? With ThredUp, you can! ThredUp allows you to trade in the items in your closet that you just don't wear anymore for something that catches your eye from someone else's virtual closet. Like a giant online thrift store, you post the items you want to trade (or sell), and ThredUp will send you suggestions from other members on items you might like. If it's a fit, just send away your clothes in a pre-paid envelope, and get your new items in a few days.

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One of my planet-friendly faves, ReCellular is not only helping to make mother Earth a little more comfy, but is helping to aid the earthquake victims in Haiti as well. Although there are other high-tech ways to donate your cash to relief efforts, this one is a no-brainer: go to ReCellular's Phones For Haiti website and recycle your old phones. 100 percent of the phones' worth will go to the Red Cross, and will help get the victims of this week's quake the supplies and medical attention they need. All you have to do is print out a paid shipping label, and send the phones off for a good cause. If you've been holding on to that phone after an upgrade, now's the time to let it go!

Source

Last week, the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic Games revealed the designs for the gold, silver, and bronze Olympic Medals, and it turns out they have a geeky touch. The medals, designed by Canadian artists, are made from recycled materials from used electronics — 6.8 metric tons of circuit board diverted from landfills.

The medals are the first to feature a curved design, and are individually laser etched — no two are the same. I love the Olympics even more now!

I may talk a lot of game about refreshing your gadgets and accessories before you head back to school, but let's face it — things can get pretty expensive. Between a new Fall wardrobe, books, and tech, you may blow your budget before the school year even starts.

But good news! I found one way to save you some serious cash during your school year — rent your textbooks from Chegg instead of buying. Chegg is an online textbook rental service that lets you use your book, as you need it — with super fast shipping and returns — instead of dropping a load of dough on a book you'll only need for a semester. The process of book renting and reusing is eco-friendly in its own right, but Chegg will also plant a tree for every book you rent. So now, good for the environment also means more green in your wallet.

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Ever since Party suggested using wine bottles as darling water holders, I've been wanting to share an eco-friendly tip of my own. If you're like me, you've got a surplus of plastic clamped clothes hangers sitting in your closet. I often return hangers to the dry cleaners, as a way to recycle them — but I save the ones with clamps, and turn them into chip clips.

It's beyond easy: carefully twist the clips off (or, if they're soft plastic, you can remove them with a sharp knife), and you've got a useful (and completely free!) clip for chips or anything else that needs preserving in your pantry. Have you ever done this before? What other upcycling or eco-friendly tips do you have for keeping a green kitchen?

A colossal food fight is one way to use up the season's supply of subpar produce. But scientists have discovered another: convert rejected fruits into biofuel. The study, conducted by USDA researchers and published in the journal Biotechnology For Biofuels, found that the 360,000 tons of fruit rejected by US retailers each year could be converted into roughly two million gallons of biofuel. Research team leader Wayne Fish said that 50 percent of the fruit, which is typically left in the fields and not sold due to cosmetic imperfections, is fermentable into ethanol, which can be used as fuel, “We’ve shown that the juice of these melons is a source of readily fermentable sugars, representing a heretofore untapped feedstock for ethanol biofuel production." I'd never considered that fruit could be a viable source of renewable energy — but I find it refreshing (although perhaps not as refreshing as, say, an In-Sandíary).

Are you surprised to hear that watermelon could have potential past the typical Summer barbecue?

Recycling your cell phone is definitely great, but it can be a little anticlimactic. Send the old phone off to the recycling center, feel good about self and earth, but then it's over. No tangible karmic payoff.

Hope Phones, however, lets you recycle that old phone and put it to good use (upcycling, you could call it). When you donate a cell phone to Hope Phones, the phone goes to a medical clinic in a developing country for their use. And they couldn't make it any easier; just click the red "donate" button and slip the phone into an envelope (they pay for the shipping).

Instant cell phone karma.

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This past weekend as I exited the Embarcadero train station here in San Francisco, I noticed this ginormous cell phone recycling station. Upon further inspection (and research), I realized that LG has put up these Ecomobilize cell phone recycling bins in BART stations across the Bay Area to help combat the estimated 130 million cell phones that will end up in US landfills this year.

I've already provided some simple ways to go green, but LG is making it really easy with their ecoMobilization movement because you can either drop off your phone, chargers, or accessories at one of these boxes, or text the word ECO to 57895 and reply to the text with your mailing addy. This way, a prepaid package will be delivered to your house so you can mail it away yourself and recycle your phone no matter where you live! Although I am hoping that the Ecomobilize bins pop up in subway stations across the country.