Kick back yet be productive in sustainable style.  Dimdim‘s an easy way to take a meeting without leaving a huge carbon footprint or the comfort of your home/office.

According to the company, “a typical 30-minute Dimdim virtual Web meeting with 5 attendees eliminates about 1.3 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions and saves an average $810 in travel expenses.” Best part — this web conferencing enabler is a free service for 20 participants of less.  Access via your Web browser, no software installation required. Sign up @ bit.ly/EarthsDay.

Did your watch die?  Earth Day just might be the right time for you to consider switching to an eco-friendly watch.  These Sprout wristwatches are made with a corn resin (biodegradable plastic substitute) case and buckle, organic cotton straps, bamboo dials, and recycled/recyclable packaging.

They come in lots of fun bright colors (think – a more tasteful and contemporary Swatch) and retail for only around $30.

Available @ Amazon.com and your local Sears, Kmart, or Kohl’s.

Any eco savvy shopper knows how to save green in more ways than one.  Be sure to check out the very discerning, Ecobunga for coupons and giveaways offered by truly green companies. Happy Earth Day, everyone.

UPDATE:  It’s official – Congratulations to our lucky winner, Bryan E., who was selected at random (via random.org) … Thanks to everyone for participating.  Stay tuned for our next Great Green Giveaway!  The original post, follows…

This Earth Day we’re celebrating in a very Neat way — this Great Green Giveaway is generously sponsored by The Neat Company.

Here’s a great way to de-clutter, reduce paper consumption, recycle those piles of paper and go digital.

One very lucky reader will receive a NeatDesk unit, (check out the brief video).  This awesome hardware scans receipts, business cards and important documents and exports the info to Excel, Outlook, your PDA or smart phone or simple pdfs.  NeatDesk is fully compatible with Turbo Tax, Quicken and QuickBooks (totally neat since the IRS accepts scanned images of receipts.)  Eco perk – the ADF Scanner + Digital Filing System is Energy Star compliant.

(Retail value:  $399.95 + free shipping to anywhere in the USA or Canada.)
Here’s how to Enter this Random Drawing:

• Check out the NeatDesk unit and discover how to help make your life clutter-free and more organized.
• Then leave a comment on this post, telling us why this NeatDesk is for you.
• Be sure to add the following address to your email address book: m at AlternativeConsumer.com.
• By close of business Friday, you can also enter NeatDesk’s contest (5 winners will be selected)!

One lucky winner will be selected in our Random Drawing, and notified by email. Contest ends Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 11:59p (EST). Winner has 24 hours to claim their prize, or offer is null and void. Winner’s names will also be included on this post.

*more ways to enter

• If you have your own blog, you can post about the giveaway with a link back to this giveaway post. To make sure we know, you can come back and leave a comment with a link to your blog post.
• If you Twitter, you can tweet about the giveaway once a day — be sure to refer to @altCon, and leave a comment linking to the status.
• You can also receive additional entries 3 more ways: subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter or become a friend on FaceBook. (If you’ve already signed up, just enter a comment to let us know.)

Note: this giveaway is also featured on free!grechen.

We can’t forget the furry creatures on Earth Day…this one’s from the archives.  America loves cats. Those tens of millions of felines need more earth-friendly and cat-friendly choices when it comes to the litter box. Historically kitty litter has been made from the clay-based combo sodium bentonite which is not a renewable resource and which, if ingested, can cause respiratory and digestive problems for cats.

Thankfully for cat lovers there are some greener, healthier alternatives. Here are some healthy choices:

• Purina’s Yesterday’s News is made from recycled paper, is low dust, 3x more absorbent than clay, fragrance-free and recommended by vets for post-surgery cats.
• Feline Pine made of recycled pine chips has no artificial additives; it’s dust-free, chemical-free and all natural. No trees were cut down to make the litter.
• World’s Best Cat Litter has an understated name and is made from whole-kernel corn which is said to be good on odors, 99% dust-free, has no respiratory or ingestion problem and can be disposed of as clumps without emptying the whole litter box.

We all know how ‘particular’ cats can be so they might not immediately take to the texture and feel of a new litter. You may have to put some of the old stuff on top to get them ‘going’.

• Unfortunately toxic stuff is all around us…Invisible Threats Mark Earth Day at 40 – msnbc
• On the plus side…Carbon, Nitrogen Link May Provide New Ways to Mitigate Pollution – sciencedaily
• Does this include green lighting a 3D remake of Gilligan’s Island? Hollywood Studios Recycling and Reusing at All-Time High – ecorazzi
• Which side is your company on? Betting on Climate Change – reuters
• There may be no planes in them but…Ash Cloud’s Silver Lining: Bluer Skies – myway
• The important theological question of cleavage…Boobquake Bid to Prove Cleric Wrong – orange.uk
• Amazing…Iceland Volcano Pictures: Lightning Adds Flash to Ash – natgeo