It’s Monday. Resolution #5: invite your family to “Meat Out” at least once a week. Thousands of people have been celebrating Meatfree Monday, or, if you prefer, @MeatlessMonday to bring attention to over-consumption of meat and its environmental impacts. You’ll be in good company from Anne Hathaway to Pink to former President Bill Clinton. Lisa Simpson likes guilt and angst. At GMP, we like $avings. While the health and sustainability benefits may be well known, the fact is that this is a great way to save over $500 this year! This means leave the meat out of a family dinner that would otherwise include it, and replace it with another healthy source of proteins like beans or tofu or a rich mix of grains and veggies.

Need some menu suggestions, check out a few of these:

• Meatfree Monday
• Meatless Monday
• Like Italian, check out these youth friend recipes from Mario Batali (Pardon the Turkey Meatballs!)
• Is 2000+ too many from The Food Network?

Track your family’s “Meat Out” savings! And tell us the biggest hits and misses.

Assuming he makes it through the new aggressive TSA screening, when my Uncle Ronnie arrives at our house for Thanksgiving, he is going to be in for a few surprises. Inspired by GreenMyParents, I decided to help Uncle Ronnie understand that my passion for changing the world is NOT a fad. Maybe you have an “Uncle Ronnie,” who mocks sustainability but loves talking about the economy. Well, this year, I have been planning for his arrival, enlisting my mom & sister, and most importantly focusing on ways to change Ronnie’s behavior that WILL actually save him money. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. Curbside Service
   Ronnie is the kind of guy who automatically rents a car every trip, usually premium class, which means way big or bigger, so that it can sit in our driveway for the week. It took a few emails, but this year I insisted that my Dad and I pick him up at the airport. This thrifty tip will save a few hundred dollars at least $50 of which will be gas!
2. Thanksgiving unPlugged
   First thing that Ronnie does when he walks in our house: plug in two cell phones and a laptop. He usually he leaves the chargers plugged into the wall all the time. This year, I designed a way to kill the energy vampires travelling with my uncle by putting a surge strip in the family room so that he can plug in all his devices easily, and he knows we welcome each of them. He also will know that it is “brain-dead” easy [one of his favorite phrases] to switch all of them off with a single finger. If he killed vampires at his house he could save $150 a year.
3. Blue is the new green.
   When Ronnie gets upstairs to “his” room (which is normally my bedroom!) he will find a University of Michigan, sweatshirt I got for him, his alma mater. The note reads: If each of us tries to heat the house to our individual preferences, we waste a lot of energy. This year, we are keeping our thermostat a few degrees lower, and if you get cold, put on this sweatshirt. Go Wolverines!!”
   Annual Savings at home = $180!
4. Game ON!
   All week-end, cousins, friends and family gather in the basement to play my PS3. This drives my mom a little bonkers because I think she has a vision of us sitting around the kitchen telling stories or the living room playing board games together. So this year I suggested we have 1 specific tournament night. Instead of a few people playing scrabble and the a few others gathering around the PS3, this year we know that Friday night at 8pm everyone is expected to loosen up their opposable thumbs and break out their latest cheats to see who will be the reigning champion of our house – the individual winner and the winning team gets to decide what movie we will go see on the weekend! Who knew slaying vampires was a team sport!
5. My Uncle is “Clark Griswald”
   Uncle Ronnie LOVES to decorate his house for Christmas. So this year, I am getting a jump start on decorating our house. By inviting him to help me, he’ll see our new LED bulbs. He’s going to have a difficult time claiming that the bulbs from “before I was born” are better. I am sending him home with a couple boxes which could save him $20-30 a year – plenty to cover his favorite holiday treat, traditional Fruit Cake.
6. Black Friday is for Charging:
   For “black Friday” instead of racing to the mall with credit cards in hand, we are going to be trying the latest electric vehicles. I researched Teslas, Chevy Volts, plug-in Prius, Nissan Leaf, the Bammo electric motorcycle too, even a few bikes from Best Buy.
   
   

   Uncle Ronnie: How does 99 MPG sound?

   A bunch of us, including Uncle Ronnie, are going to be tooling around the block in quiet comfort in electric cars so new, we may not even know where to put the key… if they even have keys. I predict that this little outing will be very popular, in fact my Aunt Stephanie from SFO, has announced that she would be rather see what the hybrid Ford Focus feels like, instead of spending the day at the mall changing outfits and battling the crowds. We are going to see what charging cars is like, for a change!

An unexpected benefit of Uncle Ronnie not parking his rental car in the driveway: my sister Jessica can pull him off the sofa to teach her how to ride the bike he got her for Christmas, that way he wont be able to make annoying comments about her training wheels. While he may miss a touchdown or two, remembering this experience, will be priceless (for them both).

Milo
Age 15, Tampa, FL

Hello GMP fans. My name is Daylen, 13, and I am the head of sustainability in my house. I live in Los Angeles, California. My goal, like many of you around the world, is to save my family $100.00 by Earth Day 2011. The GMP Times is a space for us by us to share what is working in our house and to talk about our favorite assignments. Every two weeks I will try to post an interview with a GMP fan who has committed to saving their family $100. I will also be keeping a running narrative on my own personal successes and failures under my profile for this column. To all you pet and plant lovers, I have a compost, a garden, two aquariums, a puppy, a cockatiel, and four adults to green. Needless to say my hands are full and there is a lot of money to save around my house. Please join me on this journey that is ours to create together!

GMP Champion Scoop

Related GMP Assignments: Chapter 1 Energy: Energy Vampires: “Eliminate Standby Power”, Appliances and Electronics: ”Lighten the Load”, Lighting: “Light Your Home Using Less Energy, Saving More Money”  Chapter 3 Boost MPG: “Green the Family Ride”, Park the Car: “Bus It, Tube It, Hike It, Bike It”  Chapter 5: Food: ” More Fresh Local and Organic

Ziane’s projected GMP Savings is $330 for this year with just 3 assignments completed. I met Ziane in the GMP office, he is one of the Green My Parents 2010 summer interns. Ziane has been helping to get the word out about GMP on our Facebook page and our twitter feed. Ziane has just begun to implement GMP assignments in his house and his savings so far are inspiring.

Ziane is on the path to saving well over $100, which means we are a lot closer to saving $100 million!!!!! He is reaching these savings by following GMP energy, food, and transportation assignments. Ziane and his family cultivate a lot of fruit trees in addition to spending quality time together in their garden. Ziane was so inspired to share how gardening quantified into savings that he made and posted a video on our GMP facebook page about how you too can do this at home. He rides his bike to school almost every day and saves energy by using energy efficient light bulbs in his house. To save paper he reads the news online and reminds his family to use reusable bags. He only takes three minute showers and tries his very best to be greener than the rest. In conclusion, Ziane teaches newcomers to leave a smaller and greener footprint on the planet. If we can get more and more kid to do this, than we might shoot past our goal of $100 million by a long shot.

GMP is changing the world one house at a time! Here is some data I put together on Ziane’s dollar saving madness:

1. Action: Energy, Light Bulb Switch
   Savings: energy efficient light bulb saves $40 and uses 75% less energy
2. Action: Food, Gardening
   Savings: with fertilizer and other costs factored that $3 or $4 pack of tomatoes can average $125 to $250 worth of tomatoes
3. Action: Transportation, Bike Riding
   Savings: Riding your bike 5 miles to school saves your mom $16.45 each week on gas. In a month it saves her $39.48 and in a year it adds up to $164.50. Imagine if we can get 100 kids to save $164.50 EACH!!!!!!

Pass it on and come back soon for more tips.