Photo by 24thcentury, under a Creative Commons license

Whoever invented Styrofoam peanuts needs to die a laboriously slow, painful death. Even if I weren’t an environmentalist, Styrofoam peanuts would still be near—if not AT—the top of my shit list. They stick to everything: your hands, your clothing, your rugs—even your cats, who of course make things worse by cannonballing into the white abyss, spewing the putrid things everywhere. If that’s not enough, Styrofoam has the temerity to crumble into static-cling-loving confetti that you will be breathing in and cleaning off your floors and furniture FOR DAYS. I mean, you must really REALLY loathe someone to mail them a box full of Styrofoam peanuts.

I don’t care if you “recycled” them from another source, I’d rather have my exposed liver julienned by a flock of psychotic, inbred geese than try to shake off another fistful of Styrofoam peanuts, while I scream ineffectually down the darkened hallways of my own private Hell.

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Add a hearty serving of Planet Green to your life by copying the HTML code below and pasting it into your e-mail signature, Web site, or MySpace page.

We’ll have a different tip each month to help you spread the word about just one thing everyone can do to make our planet a little bit greener. Insert the code now, then lean back and relax—our Internet elves will magically replace your existing tip with a new one every 30 days or so.

Photo by piper, under a Creative Commons license

Take Action, Start a Petition
The Care2 Petition Site makes it a snap to start your own petition. First, identify the target of your protest, then draft out a call-to-action message and decide on your goal number of signatures

Quote of the Day: Carlo Petrini on Taking It Slow
“The quest for slowness, which begins as a simple rebellion against the impoverishment of taste in our lives, makes it possible to rediscover taste.”

Event of the Day: Farm Aid 2007
Are you going to Farm Aid?

Farm Aid 2007: The Press Conference
While we’re recovering from yesterday’s completely awesome Farm Aid 2007, here are a few clips from the press conference, courtesy of the official Farm Aid blog.

Quote of the Day: Marion Nestle on Advertising to Children
“Adults may be fair game for marketers, but children are not. Children cannot distinguish sales pitches from information unless taught to do so.”

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Photo by purplekey, under a Creative Commons license

Quote of the Day: Ray Anderson on Flight
“Drawing the metaphor of the early attempts to fly. The man going off of a very high cliff in his airplane, with the wings flapping, and the guys flapping the wings and the wind is in his face, and this poor fool thinks he’s flying, but, in fact, he’s in free fall.”

North Branch Mocha Brownie Soap
Coffee grounds are a natural deodorizer you can between rub your hands to get rid of the pong of garlic, onions, or fish after you’re through preparing the nosh.

Data Storage Just Got Shinier, Sexier
Personal data storage meets personal accoutrement with this heart-shape Swarovski-crystal-encrusted pendant—part of a new line by Philips and Swarovski known as Active Crystals.

How to Hack Your Swiffer
We scoured the Internet landscape to find the best ways of fulfilling Zaccai’s sustainable dream, so you can haul your pre-green Swiffer dust mop out of retirement and back into action picking up cat hair and errant dust motes.

Quote of the Day: Peter Nicholson on Why Design Matters
“Design, whether in the form of fashion, architecture or other discipline, is essential to achieving greater sustainability.”

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Photo by Wired

A Very Special Interspecial Reunion
A lion that was raised by humans, but was released into the wilds of Africa, reunites with his former handlers a year later. What else can Treehugger say but “OMGKITTIES!!!11!!!”

Wired’s Artifacts from the Future: Fusion Food
Possibly coming to a produce store near you: Monsanto’s Cinna-Del, the only GM apple that expresses both cinnamon and sugar, only $26.99 per kilo!

Penguins March into New Patagonian Marine Park
Squawk if you’ve heard this one: The government of Argentina is creating a new marine park along the isolated Patagonia coast to officially safeguard more than half a million penguins and other rare seabirds, according to the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

Peace, Love, Earth: Yeah, Baby
Designer Anna Mkhitarian reinvents that tired hippie standard—the ol’ peace sign—into physical, wearable mantras that, though unsubtle, remind us what our groovy voyage on Spaceship Earth is all about.

Global Warming Wants to Eat Your Flesh
We’d have used a picture of flesh-eating bacteria diligently at work, but all our options made us want to disgorge the contents of our stomachs, so here’s a nonthreatening—dare we say even cuddly?—microscopic look at the insidious beasties themselves.

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Photo by Secret Leaves

Ann Hirschfeld and Sharon Derry are the co-conspirators of Secret Leaves, a charming St. Louis, Missouri-based company that breathes new life into discarded books and vintage papers by transforming them into scrap journals, photo albums, and note cards. I spoke with Ann about her love of old paper, and the growing role the environment plays in running their business, right down to the smallest detail.

1. How did Secret Leaves come about?

Sharon [Derry] had a card/paper arts company called Papeterie, and I worked part-time for her here and there helping to assemble the journals. A little over a year ago, we were talking on the phone and she spoke of her desire to start a web-based paper arts business. She wanted to pursue it full-time but was not interested in doing it alone. She wanted a partner. I immediately said, “Pick me!” We met a few times to discuss her goals for the business and she did—pick me. This was April of ‘06 and we’ve been working together ever since. It seems like we’ve come a long way already.

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Photo by Steve Bailey, under a Creative Commons license

I love this quote from Susan Rubin, co-producer of the film Two Angry Moms and founder of the advocacy group Better School Food, from an article excerpted by CalorieLab:

You get angry when your boundary has been violated, and the food industry has violated our boundaries with what they are offering out kids. I’m just trying to protect my cubs.

I think every penny is worth it. To me, food is health care. You can pay the farmer or the doctor.

(Emphasis is mine.)

I can really attest to that—since I started cutting back on processed junk for mostly local, organic food two years ago, I haven’t been sick once. (Well, other than my regular migraines, for which no earthly balm can abate.) My friend Felicia trumps me with THREE.

Oh ginger nubbin, I’m going to plunge you into some dirt so fast, you won’t know what hit you.

Can you tell I’m avoiding real work? My mother used to have the same problem with me as a kid. She’d shake her head and ask, “What’s wrong with you?” And I say, “I wish I knew Ma, I wish I knew.” Except I never called her Ma. And I probably just grunted in response before shuffling off to my room to read comic books.

Photo by Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images

Yes, NASA made an honest mistake, but that doesn’t change the overall global trend. (Read top climate scientist James Hansen’s response.) Why is there still debate over this? It’s not a matter of religion, politics, or personal ideology—in this case there actually IS a right or wrong answer, and the fact is the earth is heating up because of unrepentant, unrelenting human folly. In the end, it’s not about the environment, it’s about the survival of the human species.

The environment will repair itself—flourish, even—after we’re gone, because, as David Suzuki (I love this man) says in The 11th Hour, the planet “has all the time in the world.” But we don’t. We who needlessly, recklessly consume and endure the drudgery of work just to be able to overconsume again, at the expense of another’s suffering; we who have lost touch with the things that are truly important and of worth—we, our children, and their children will just be a blackened footnote in Earth’s history.

Earlier, I overhead two men fussing over the volumes of their iPhones. Thousands of years of civilization and it all boils down to whose ringtone is LOUDER.

In theaters Aug. 17—that’s tomorrow!