Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the NY Times has taken a break from writing a book (he has been on leave from writing columns for many months).

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

So we see from Mr. Friedman’s introduction that this is an issue both parties, to some extent, are getting wrong.

The Environ|Mentality: There is usually a way to make your consumption less envirohumanly toxic, but there is also usually an available excuse you can make. Overcome that temptation by realizing a little effort goes a long way.

We all have done it: “I’m in too much of a hurry to take my soda can down the hall to the recycling bin, so I just put it in my own trashcan at my desk.”

“I get all confused when I use the double-sided copying function. I don’t know how to use it.”

My favorite: “Gosh, I print so much I go through a few trees every week.” Yes, admitting the crime of printing items that just as easily could have been viewed on your monitor makes it all better.

Sure, more and more electronics have built-in batteries, charged with a multitude of chargers with distinct prongs, so that most of us now have a collection of tangled charger wires laying around at any available outlet. It seems that for the most part, no two chargers are alike.

But we still use plenty of devices that still utilize conventional batteries. These include: remote controls, flashlights, children’s toys, and some of us are still hanging onto portable CD players (myself included). What do you do with your batteries once they have been used?

If you’re like most people, you are tossing those acid-filled tubes into a garbage can, to eventually leak and wreak havoc on the soil and maybe ground water of the area in which it is dumped. The cumulative affect of many thousands or millions of batteries can be devastating.

One day at work I was heading down the elevator when the doors opened up on another tenant’s floor. I could not help but notice a leather desk chair in perfect condition (at least to the naked eye). It had two neon orange tags on it to signify that it was in the freight area for disposal and not just for storage.

Seeing the item as free game for the taking — any piece of furniture headed for the dumpster essentially is up for grabs — I wheeled it onto the elevator and put it into storage until I could arrange for it to be taken home (I don’t own a vehicle).

A few weeks passed before I both had a vehicle in town (borrowed from my girlfriend’s parents) and had a pass to remove the piece from the building. This rule is in place because although the item was being thrown away, the orange tags are very easy to acquire and so many items could be taken out illegitimately in that manner. So, I had to get a pass in order for security to allow the item to leave the building. The pass serves as a validation of legitimacy.

The “Saved” Series will include items saved from being discarded in some manner, items doomed to be put into a landfill or closeted away from use. Instead of the potential user of these products buying new, we will show how these products, still with much utility left, are being used to improve one’s envirohuman impact.

By using a product that was left for “waste,” again, either by cleaning or fixing, one can usually help to reduce the amount of waste that goes into landfills (and other waste streams) as well as help to reduce the demand for new manufactured products.

Earlier today, I visited my local Bed, Bath, and Beyond and was pleasantly reminded of one of my favorite green plays on the market right now – Bamboo. That’s right, once just a desktop ornament, bamboo is used in literally thousands of ways and is providing a better, renewable alternative to oak, pine, or any other typical tree used for anything made from wood. Now I know that many have been conscious for years of the massive environmental benefits of bamboo products but I was introduced to them about 2 years ago through a friend while condo hunting downtown Chicago, IL.

We were looking at a pre-construction model of a 20-story high rise known as Emerald, an “eco-friendly and ultra-stylish condominium building” located in the bustling West Loop of Chicago. The development offered various earth-friendly alternatives to traditional condo choices such as recycled glass counter tops, low VOC paint, recycled fabrics, and my personal favorite – bamboo flooring!

Until recently, “Going Green” in corporate America meant one of two things: either a company listened to the Jiminy Cricket of its environmental conscience and accepted less than stellar returns on the investment or it had a CMO (that’s Chief Marketing Officer) interested in looking at the business through green colored glasses and spinning a feel-good “green” marketing campaign.

I’m sure both of these situations still ring true in many cases today; however, while a “green” marketing campaign does not a green company make, revenues, profits, and ROI are now soaring for many of the green, and in many cases, “greener” (not necessarily “green”) companies.

Why buy a tea kettle? How often do you put water on the stove to boil for tea or coffee (I use a French press) and you walk out of the room while it gets to boiling point? And how often have you forgotten and had half of the pot of water boil away, wasting gas, and likely leading you to add more water which then needs to be boiled? Repeat. Repeat. Waste. Waste.

If you’re like me, you don’t have time to watch the water boil. And you may have forgotten the water for a while. If it takes about five minutes for a small pot of water to boil, but you have the stove on for ten minutes, you’ve used twice the electricity (or gas) that is needed for the task.

Certainly, you could reuse just about any of the grocery bags that make it to your home still in one piece. But usually they do make it without breaking, because it’s common practice to put heavier loads into a double paper or plastic bag.

The amount of waste generated by grocery bags is avoidable by recycling them, either through a recycling center, or replacing your own packaging paper use, for example, with grocery bags. So at one time, I cut open paper grocery sacks to use the paper to package books I had sold on Amazon.com.

When I ceased my selling activity, I decided to change my habits in order to stop accumulating paper bags. (In retrospect, the paper is thicker than other packaging options, like recycled plastic envelopes, which would save slight amounts of shipping costs for me, as well as fuel savings for less weight shipped).

I have purchased a few reusable plastic grocery bags, shaped the same way as a typical paper bag, but they can be reused over and over, saving the stores from using paper or plastic bags for my use every time I go — I bring my own — saving the environment from having to endure the waste and recycling centers from having more to process (they have enough in newspapers).

The screen saver might save your computer screen from clouding over time due to images brandishing into it when it has been left on. I have never seen this happen to a computer monitor, but maybe that’s likely due to the ubiquity of screen savers and not because it cannot happen.

That aside, while the screen saver is saving your computer, it likely is doing something else: giving us all a false sense that it’s okay to leave the monitor on for a long period of time. Saving your computer and punishing our environment.

Sure, I know, computers have “sleep” modes allowing for the monitor to go into a more “restful” state and use less energy. But I have seen monitors remain on for way to long after the user has left. The attitude that pressing a button is too difficult just does not resonate with me. It’s a simple task and one that saves energy from being used unnecessarily.