Weekly Challenge: Make Your Blog Eco-Friendly

• Get an Eco-Safe Merit Badge that provides printing alternative for your readers. Rather than printing out a copy of your latest wisdom, your visitors can choose from options that include "Send this page to my email" or "Email me a PDF of this page" or "Download a PDF of this page." For sharing an entire page with someone (without printing off the post), they can download the PDF and then email it like mad.


• Choose affiliate ads that promote green products.


• Get your 350Challenge Badge and Brighter Planet will offset 350 pounds of carbon in your name. The initial goal of 350 bloggers has been reached, but they're keeping the challenge open so you can help fight global warming, too.


• Get a Friend of Farmland Badge from American Farmland Trust, and join the blogging challenge (five posts about farmer's market/local food experiences by September 30th; send in an email; get listed on the website; the top three will be featured in the Farm Fresh E-Newsletter).


• Promote local artists, markets, activities, and general amazing things about your community.


• Talk about your own green living efforts. Yes, even the itty bitty ones. And yes, even the failures. It's easy to get discourage when you think everybody else has this "green living" down perfectly, knows all the rules, and never messes up. The truth is, there are no rules. There are only a lot of people trying, in a lot of different ways, to do things a little bit better and smarter than we used to. So open up and share your own efforts. You'll encourage someone, and you'll end up being encouraged yourself.


• Find some great green blogs you enjoy reading (this one, maybe? wink, wink) and link to them in your blogroll. It's the same concept as sharing your own green efforts. Just keep the topics out there, show your readers that you're interested in living sustainably, and point them in the right direction for more help, resources, ideas, and general information.


• Get your Green.360ph.com Badge that says, "I Care About the Environment" and put it on your sidebar somewhere. You'll also get free tracking of statistics and rankings when you sign up, so if you don't have that already happening it's a double bonus. Oooh.


Got any more great green blog ideas? I'd love to hear!