ThankYou Network's Eco-Friendly Rewards

I'm a member of the ThankYou Network site through my credit card, basically you get points every time you use your card and can redeem them for various stuff. Usually I stick to pretty boring rewards -- gift cards for Starbucks or whatever.

But yesterday I was surfing around the site and noticed they have a new category of rewards -- "Eco-Friendly" products. They range from solar backpacks to carbon offsets to compact fluorescent light bulbs.

The Green Miles grabbed a pair of self-charging mini flashlights. They're known as Faraday flashlights, named after the man who invented the magnetic induction technology that powers them. The generators inside the flashlights use the same concept that powers huge electrical generators, just on a greatly-reduced scale. All you have to do is shake light backward and forward to create the energy source necessary to power it.

Separately, I bought myself some reusable batteries and did the same for The Green Mom when I bought her a new digital camera for her birthday. All this was prompted by my shock and awe when I tried to buy four AA batteries for my camera while in California recently. Every place I looked was asking $4, but four rechargeable batteries with a charger is only about $20 -- and those are allegedly good for hundreds of charges. In this case, I'm doing the right thing for the environment by coincidence -- my financial interests and my climate consumerism are one and the same.