Recently, the GOOD website printed up GOOD Sheet #4, a nice graph of where the money given to gas stations goes. (GOOD defies description, but it's pretty good. Check it out.) Hard-copies of the sheet are available at Starbucks, but interested viewers can find an online copy here.

It's worth checking out: in a clear, easy-to-read manner, GOOD shows how the profit on gas is distributed and outlines the major factors that drive price. What it doesn't cover, however, is the ways that oil-producing companies actually use this money. Unfortunately, this is also the most important aspect of the oil market.

Oil is, perhaps, the most effective tool for wealth consolidation in the history of the world. Whether through technological innovation, conflict, or the luck of the draw, certain areas and people have ended up with large amounts of crude petroleum at their disposal.

Interested in investing in green technology? Or do you just grocery shop like a savvy eco-lover? Either way you'll want to check out this freebie. Mantra Venture Group, a company that "facilitates investment in sustainable, commercially viable technologies," is offering a free tote bag in green or red.

The company has a patent on converting carbon dioxide to fuel; whether or not you have the money to invest in that product, it's certainly an interesting venture and a snazzy bag that you can proudly store in your hybrid car or bike panniers.

Every day, WalletPop will be bringing you information about a fantastic freebie. Like what you see? Check back tomorrow for more!

Every year, millions of people spend billions of dollars on funerals. While much of this money goes toward overpriced caskets and sprays of flowers, a large part goes toward the embalming of corpses.

This process, which many states legally require as a prerequisite for open-casket funerals, uses pricey, toxic fluids, various artificial foams, heavy cosmetics, and non bio-degradable plastics, to maintain a look of freshness and health. The end result is a corpse that is preserved, not for millennia, as in the case of King Tut, and not for decades, as in the case of Vladimir Lenin, but rather for a few days, just long enough to organize a funeral.

Considering the high price and questionable returns on embalming, I was particularly interested in the case of Karen Hanrahan. An Illinois food educator, Hanrahan has kept a McDonald's hamburger in a cabinet for 12 years, occasionally taking it out to show classes as an exemplar of the incredible amount of preservatives that are used in American food. While the burger has gotten a little cracked and shriveled, it hasn't decomposed, and the bun is completely free of mold.

I used to be intimidated about bringing clothes to the seamstress at The Common Thread, a tailoring shop located in an upscale shopping/tourist enclave on the Upper Cape called Mashpee Commons. I ventured in last week with a pair Escada slacks ($8.00 new at a Hospice thrift shop) that needed to be hemmed.

When I went to pick up the slacks, the proprietor explained that she was "running behind." Her tailoring business has been booming this fall. When I mentioned this to a friend, she said that she had also taken slacks in for alteration last week and that her seamstress had told her the same thing.

Imagine, Americans repairing, altering, reusing and recycling! Does the economy need to practically collapse around us before "Shop Until You Drop" ceases to be the new national anthem? Given a president whose response to 9/11 was, "Go to the mall," shopping has been patriotic.

After decades of being drunk on dollars, we might actually be sobering up. If the clothing repair business is strengthening, what could be next? Here's an idea: customers could start buying shoes that can be repaired.

The shoe repair industry plummeted in the 1960's, with a 40% drop in stores, and has continued to decline leading into the 21st century. If shoe repair sees a resurgence, it will provide jobs for former prisoners who have learned the craft while doing time.

The Daily Deal for Saturday, September 27, 2008

Got grocery bags? If you're in Seattle, Washington or a number of other U.S. cities considering following the northwestern trailblazer, you might be replacing your plastic bags with something more permanent. The Gregory Gran Torino bag sounds like a great answer; it combines "the best features found in briefcases, messenger bags and urban backpacks and blends the functionality into a look that's distinctly contemporary and complete."

It's high praise from a bag manufacturer, of course, but it's a good deal so why not check it out? Other retailers had the bag listed at $74.95 to $128.95, so this is a screaming deal at $24.97 at Altrec.com. It includes a laptop sleeve, waterproof outers, and lots of room for books or groceries. Bike to class, bike to the coffee shop, bike to the grocery store, and your things will be fine. Best of all: no 20 cent surcharge to carry home your bagels and brussels sprouts.

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, New York tap water is incredibly fresh and pure. It comes from a reservoir in upstate New York and, as it wends its way to the city, it is filtered, processed, cleaned, and purified. A few years ago, Vogue food editor Jeffrey Steingarten studied the city's water and found it to be every bit as tasty as most mineral waters; ironically, it also had much less bacteria.

On the other hand, old pipes, cruddy sinks, and other delivery-based concerns can sometimes make the city's water less than appetizing. Consequently, it isn't all that surprising to see the bodegas and convenience stores of Manhattan filled with gallons of bottled water. To support this bottled water addiction, Poland Spring trucks clog the streets as they guzzle gas and waste money, transporting millions of gallons of bottled water over hundreds of miles.

With this in mind, entrepreneur Craig Zucker has begun bottling and selling New York City tap water. After running water through a reverse-osmosis system that removes chlorine and impurities, he markets it under the name Tap'd NY. A 20-ounce bottle runs $1.50, a fairly high price for bottled water. On the bright side, Tap'd NY doesn't need to be shipped from the mountains of Vermont, the Springs of Maine, or the rocky beaches of Fiji, which means that it is, actually, a comparatively green option. On the other hand, even irony-enhanced New Yorkers might have a hard time shelling out cash for something they already get for free!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. Last weekend, as he drank PBR from a can at an art opening, he realized that Craig Zucker is a total genius!

Just about everyone is talking about something "green" these days. Whether it's green cars, green buildings, or just the green focused lifestyle itself, you can hardly turn around without someone pushing some green concept in your face. It's enough to turn a person, well, green.

I have always tried to maintain an earth friendly outlook myself. For me, that vision has been absorbed in the lifetime pursuit of trying to plant at least enough trees to offset the trees that have been utilized to serve my needs. Of course, I'll never know for sure if I've accomplished my goal. That's one reason why I haven't stopped planting them yet. That's also the reason why a particular blog post, from WeHeartWorld, piqued my interest.

The lively folks at WeHeartWorld, put together a list of ten companies which claim they shall plant at least one tree for each purchase of a specific item, or which facilitate the collection of donations for tree planting purposes. It's an absolutely fantastic effort, and I wish a host of companies would jump on that bandwagon. For instance, the "Plant a Tree for Me" campaign, sponsored by Dell, encourages consumers to make donations for tree planting. The claim is that a $99 donation to the Dell effort could provide a person with a one year carbon offset.

For all the trouble Iceland, Norway and Japan went through to defy the rest of the world and resume whaling, it's starting to look like whaling isn't going to be that profitable. Meanwhile, the whale watching industry continues to grow -- but how big it is no one is sure.

People have been hunting and eating whales for thousands of years, but we've also been wiping out large populations of whales, too. The International Whaling Commission, which started in 1946, banned commercial whaling in 1986, but a few countries keep at it. Japan does it under the guise of scientific research, Norway objected from the start and recently loosened its whaling rules. Iceland started hunting whales again in 2006. (Meanwhile a number of countries, including the U.S. and Canada allow sustenance whaling for native people.)

But once they get all this whale meat, there's still the question of who will want to eat it. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that in in Reykjavik a whale meat company is trying to "hook" urban hipsters on whale meat by selling it in vacuum-sealed ready packs and offering recipe tips.

As many WalletPop users have already demonstrated, while there's a lot of fun in coming up with great ways to save money, the real fun is in passing the ideas around. With that in mind, I was very impressed by New York State's "Stretching Your Dollars Effort" (SYDE).

Basically a bare-bones clearinghouse of thrifty ideas, SYDE allows New Yorkers to post their tips for saving on gas and groceries, as well as ideas for cutting the costs of home food prep and household expenses. It features text-based suggestions, as well as video and audio clips, some of which are a lot of fun to watch.

While a few of the ideas are specific to New York, most of them can be widely adapted to any setting, be it urban, suburban, or rural. More to the point, as good old-fashioned thrift has become a thing of the past, it's nice to be reminded of all the neat tricks and clever shortcuts that can add up to serious savings!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. SYDE reminds him of the wise, thrifty, and nurturing grandma that he never had.

Introducing a regular-looking pizza box with a special touch. The difference is that the box can come apart once it's delivered by your local pie dealer. While it starts out the size of a standard pizza box, customers can break the platter-size square into four plate-size sections using scoring and perforations.

Voila--a trashy dinner service for four, with no wasting water or soap on dishes after. I guess that sorta makes this box "green," as the manufacturer claims. If annual pizza consumption numbers in the billions, as some theorize (though of course, some must be served on plates in restaurants), sure, this could have some effect if everyone used it. Okay, maybe the "green" angle is a slight stretch, but it's also true that no trees died for the box, either. It's made from 100% recycled material, which presumably can be recycled again after supper. Every little bit helps, right?

Between producing supplemental book sections, needlessly updating editions, and incessantly lobbying teachers to assign particular textbooks, scholarly publishers have perfected the art of separating students from their money.

Of course, given the ever-increasing costs of tuition, it is pretty clear that universities seem to view students as little more than walking, talking ATMs. Under these circumstances, it's not really surprising that book companies would take the same approach.

Admittedly, textbooks have always been somewhat pricey. When I was a college student, there were some semesters in which I had to choose between books and food. In most cases, I would check my texts out from the library, but there were times when I had to resort to sitting in the stacks of the college bookstore, my notebook on one knee and a textbook on the other as I feverishly took notes and hoped that the employees wouldn't kick me out.

In the, "old days" if you were a teenager, particularly in a small town, the cool thing to do was to drive around. What was once relatively inexpensive recreation no longer is so although "riding in cars with boys" will always have its allure, there is likely to be less of it.

For parents who prefer it when their kids stay home, rec rooms can be a good option. "The rec room, once a wood-paneled corner of the basement with a dumpy couch and a TV with rabbit ears is enjoying a revival in more upscale form"

It's possible that the faltering economy will help reverse two decades of the frantic activity that middle and upper class Americans have recently referred to as "childhood." As budgets tighten, over-scheduled children and teenagers may actually be spending some time at home. Down time, creative time.

Kimberly Stevens' September 14th article, above, describes the upscale edition of the "low and loungy" rec room trend. This is the "movie theater" version outfitted from CB2 and Pottery Barn's PBTeen line, which includes items like a lounge chair with a jack for an iPod or videogame system (the $399 iChair).

If you have more money than brains, you may want to go for broke refurbishing the rec room. Alternatively, help the kids figure it out themselves. This is a creative project of the highest magnitude involving everything from activity options and furnishings to house rules. It can be done on a budget (with recycled furnishings) and doesn't require a 100-inch screen or a $399 chair.

Imagine, if you will, that you are wandering through the aisles of your local grocery store. While shopping for detergent, you find yourself on the horns of an ethical and economic dilemma: you're loyal to one brand, but you find your attention drawn to another product. The new, prettier product costs a couple of dollars more than your regular choice, but it claims that it is better for the environment.

Having read Walletpop's fantastic piece on greenwashing, you wonder if the "greener" product is actually more sustainable, or if it is a scam. You ask yourself if it is really worth the extra money, or if you're paying a lot more for some guilt-inducing marketing. Before you know it, you are embroiled in a wide-reaching philosophical crisis that pits your bank account against your soul in a struggle that makes the Cuban Missile Crisis look like the "Green Stamps" episode of The Brady Bunch. Worst of all, you've got another 30 items on your list!

Thanks to a new website, you may be able to preserve your morals, protect your bank account, and find answers to your question, all in the time it takes you to dial a phone number. The GoodGuide, a scientist-reviewed product-comparison site, attempts to rate products based upon their environmental impact. While it is still only in beta, it already offers information about over 60,000 products, and the site's organizers are planning an expansion into other consumer goods. Best of all, it will soon enable users to access information from their cell phones. The plan, ultimately, is to make it possible for consumers to uncover the green bona fides of almost any product while they're in the store.

Having relied for far too long on a few green companies for most of my morally uplifting household chemicals, I'm pretty excited. With any luck, I'll be able to expand beyond my current dependence upon Seventh Generation, Method, and Dr. Bronner!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. Green guilt makes him blue.

It's hard to imagine the degree to which the internet and personal computers have changed photography. Once upon a time (about ten years ago), hard copy photos were treasured keepsakes. They were irreplaceable, and families would often come together or fall apart over the distribution of favorite snapshots.

In my house, this was a particularly difficult thing. After my parents died, some of my relatives descended upon my family's collection of old pictures and, under the pretense of "making copies," began to abscond with original photos. I managed to hold onto a few keepsakes, but many of my originals have become lost to the fleet fingers of fellow family historians.

Brandweek is reporting that bottled water sales grew by less than 1% in the first six months of 2008. That's quite a comedown for the industry that was growing in double digits in the early years of the decade. Just last year the Beverage Marketing Corporation was predicting the U.S. bottled water market would grow 7.4% this year.

There are lots of reasons for the decline. Magazine articles and books critiqued the colossal waste of the $16 billion American water industry. The National Resource Defense Council issued a lengthy report on mislabeling and impurities in bottled water.

Then there were worries about the bottles themselves. CNN noted that less a quarter of all those plastic bottles gets recycled. We've worried about the 1.5 million barrels of oil that the National Conference of Mayors says is used to make all the plastic bottles for our bottled water. For a while some were worried about drinking from bottles with PET (polyethylene terephthalate). But now we've switched to worrying about bottles with BPA (bisphenol-a). Two U.S. agencies issued reports, one saying BPA is fine, one saying it alters hormones.

But for all that my favorite reason for people buying less bottled water (and per person it would be less just because of population growth) is that people are wising up. The recession is making people pay attention to how much money they've been blowing on bottled water all these years.