Goal For The Green

About a year ago, Kent Basson, started OddShoeFinder.com, which allows users to buy and sell their mismatched pairs of shoes. It is aimed at people such as polio survivors who must buy a different pair of shoes for each foot due to severely mismatched feet. A few months after starting the site, he was
contacted by several people about accepting large batches of new name brand single shoes.

He started the site after his sister had an injury (due largely to neuropathy from diabetes) that resulted in her having to wear two different sized shoes. He saw that her options were few unless she wanted to spend a lot of money,or go to Nordstrom.  She still lives in their hometown in Alabama, which is far from a Nordstrom.

Kent ended up with over 11,000 shoes that were otherwise heading for a landfill. “We sorted and posted all the shoes we could as mismatched pairs. Rather than buying two pairs of shoes at retail prices, users of the site can buy a pair of shoes that was headed to the landfill for $10-20/pair.”

“We also found a use for boots for which we did not find matches. Construction workers wear boots in two different brands and styles when they pour concrete so that they don’t ruin their good boots,” Kent said.

A lot of perfectly able people also need mismatched shoes.  It is far more common than ever imagined, although most people just buy the larger pair and deal with it unless the difference is extreme. People born with clubfoot are also likely to need mismatched shoes.

He has also rescued quite a few matching pairs from among the thousands, so people who don’t have the problem of mismatched feet also use the site. He has 3000 skates (inline and ice) and cleats arriving next week, so the hope is that lots of people without serious disabilities will use the site as well.

This is not only a great way to save shoes from ending up in a landfill, but also makes filling this need alot easier, and far more affordable.  What a great way to go green and save some green too!

Allow yourself the time to relax, meditate, and enjoy the calming music and  beautiful seascape!

Ever heard of the Bakken Formation?

The U.S. Geological Service issued a report in April (’08) that only scientists and oilmen knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn’t been updated since ’95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota; western South Dakota; and extreme eastern Montana … check THIS out:

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable… at $107 a barrel, we’re looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years,’ reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It’s a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the ‘Bakken.’ And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada. For years, U.S.oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the ‘Big Oil’ companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken’s massive reserves… and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!

That’s enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight.

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. Our government has know about this for at least the last two years!

We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:

-8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
-18-times as much oil a s Iraq
-21-times as much oil as Kuwait
-22-times as much oil as Iran
-500-times as much oil as Yemen- and it’s all right here in the Western United States.

So, my question is why are we looking at drilling in Utah? Much of the area they are talking about there is beautiful and pristine.  It would greatly deface the beauty of the area, to drill and put oil wells there.  Why are’nt we looking at The Bakken area to greatly help us get off of our foreign oil dependence? Why instead are we looking at drilling offshore? Why is this answer being ignored?

Yes, oil prices have dropped significantly since July of this year.  But, that doesn’t mean that we can return to our gas guzzling ways.  I’m not saying that oil is the answer, but this is like sitting on a gold mine. It can at least lead us to oil independence.  I can’t help but believe, that the Bakken holds many more answers to our energy crisis than just oil. It at the very least would be a great place to start the journey toward energy independence and conservation.