Ideal Bite

Wanna get more from your return before you sign at the X? Strategy: Make the most of home and car efficiency upgrade incentives (some even run through 2016). O yeah.

1. Good Car-ma

Old jalopy gone kaput? Donate it to your fave charity for a sweet tax write-off. Then upgrade to a new hybrid. Get up to a $3,400 tax credit if you're one of the first 60,000 buyers from participating manufacturers (hurry - only Ford's got eligible ones left). Plug-ins: Get up to $7,500 if you opt for one of the first 250,000 from any maker (see who has 'em Read the full post... 

Apparently I’m one of them now…well, me and 400 others. On Tuesday, I attended the Audubon Society’s Women in Conservation Luncheon at the Plaza. They honored six women with the Rachel Carson Award, whose ground-breaking 1962 book "Silent Spring" helped launch the modern environmental movement. The award recognizes women who demonstrate great leadership and commitment to conservation and in the past included Majora Carter, Bette Midler, and Teresa Heinz Kerry. This year’s honorees were: Read the full post... 

Even with green biz champ Al Gore out there telling venture capitalists that there's big bucks to be made in saving the planet, most of us who're trying to do our part for Earth aren't worrying about where that big money lies.

So it's interesting to see what Gordon Gekko types think about the green sector, since they're coming at it from an entirely different angle. In honor of Earth Day, investing website Motley Fool posted a roundtable discussion on green stocks conducted by a few of its analysts.

They're anticipating big boosts in conservation technologies, and stuff that doesn't require a huge change in people's habits - which makes sense. Read the full post... 

Turns out, we at Ideal Bite aren't the only ones who celebrate Earth Day every day  – the six extraordinary winners of this year's Goldman Environmental Prize do the same, and their every day actions have added up to enormous social and environmental change in Africa, Indonesia, Russia, South America, India, and our own Appalachian backyard. How? They’ll tell you – every day this week, look here for a different interview, eco-confessions and all.

First up: Yuyun Ismawati, Islands, Indonesia

So on Friday I met up with Goldman Prize winner Yuyun Ismawati, founder of Bali Fokus, an org that teaches people in poor Read the full post... 

My new bank gave me a cookie.

Yep, when I went in to set up my account at New Resource, there were cookies, there was candy, everyone was friendly – it was kinda creepy, in a It's a Wonderful Life way.

Now, this had mostly to do with their relative smallness, which is another benefit of most green banks: They're not megacorporations that don't care about your personal situation. Overdraft for 5 hours in the dead of night ("When Automatic Savings Attacks!") at my old bank and it was $35 carved in stone. New Resource? "Call to let us know, and if you can cover it that morning it'll be fine."

All those 1950s movies where the main character goes to make a withdrawal and all the tellers know their name finally seemed realistic. As I left, Tracy Read the full post... 

I got my fall fashion on at Gen Art's runway show this past Friday at the awe-inspiring, historic Los Angeles Theatre. I had a double invitation (read: double motivation to go downtown) because one of my friends had her collection in the show and another works for Gen Art.

If you haven’t gotten in on the Downtown LA Fashion Week action yet, check out this artsy fartsy fashion charity event affiliated with EcoNouveau tomorrow night at the MOCA. The cocktail reception kicks off at 6 pm, but the main event - the vintage runway show curated by fashion authority Cameron Read the full post... 

Wanna invest in the political future of our country? The Iowa Electronic Market lets you do just that.

The idea behind the futures market, which is run by the University of Iowa's economics school, is that economics can predict political outcomes. Example: It correctly forecast George W. Bush's 2004 win over John Kerry. 

Snap up some shares of Democratic dropout John Edwards for a paltry $0.002 today, and if a miracle happens, you could walk away with a few hundred bucks.

-Toshio...off to predict the near-future: a weekend of boozing at the Andersen Valley Boontville Brewfest...

Read the full post... 

Last night, an oh-it'll-take-15-min tax-prep process turned into an hr-and-a-half-long search for a school-loan-interest-deduction statement and digital-receipt PDF-making ritual. (Never say I don't love you, hyphen.)

Just say it: Taxes are painful, even if you're paying some poor (rich) sot to efile them for you. Solace? This tax season, I'm offering a foot or so of some tree to continue on living its life instead of shuttling a bunch of numbers to the IRS for me...and I'm offering y'all some misery to keep you company as you take care of your own.

-Jenifer Morgan...off to think about whether I'm going to spend that $11 refund all in one place...

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I have friends in London I desperately want to visit, but with the insane exchange rate I'd need to take out a bigger-than-micro loan to pay for it. On the other hand, when my Brit friends cross the pond to America, they go buckwild. $15 for a cocktail? Cheap as chips. $250 for a jacket? Not at all a rip-off.

For people in the developing world, the exchange rate is even more insane. With the cash you'd spend closing out the pubs on a Saturday night in Leicester, you can start a whole business.

(For the record, London's not even the most expensive city.)

-Toshio...off to count my pennies...

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I just closed a credit card that I've had for so long that the magnetic strip stopped working and the numbers were beginning to wear down - threadbare and wearing thin, she was. Cutting it up got me thinking about how many little sheets of plastic are floating around out there and arriving unsolicited in the mail, and no matter how threadbare they get, they'll still take eons to decompose.

Then there are all the toxins that are in the plastic, and all the toxins that are emitted during the production of the plastic. How annoying.

It appears that attempts at creating truly biodegradable cards haven't been so successful, and although cards like the one from Greenpeace are made from safer PET plastics, there has to be a better alternative, right?

-Jenifer Morgan...off to Read the full post...