06.05.08
Posted in energy, global warming at 10:10 am by greengirl
You’ve probably seen those vaguely unsettling commercials with Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich or Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson sitting on a couch in some outdoor setting. Weird as those may be (and they sure work to get my attention), they represent a cool organization. The We Campaign is part of the Alliance for Climate Protection, a non-profit started by Al Gore. They’re trying to raise awareness about global warming and climate change, convincing people one at a time of the scientific truth of this issue. They’ve got some great tips about what you can do to minimize your personal impact.
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05.27.08
Posted in home & garden, pollution, global warming at 7:16 am by greengirl
I subscribe to a great newsletter from Ideal Bite, and they send me little green tidbits every day. One of the most interesting that they sent, back at the beginning of the mowing season, is one about renting a goat to mow your lawn. Since I have wicked allergies to cut grass, I thought this sounded like the coolest idea. Only eleven states currently participate in the Goat Rental Directory, and I’m not entirely sure that all the links are accurate. But, if you know someone with a goat (hey! I do!), then borrow the goat for a while - the goat will get to eat, and you’ll have a nice lawn and neighbors that think you’re a little weird.
As far as ecological benefits, goats will eat thistles and even poison ivy, so you won’t have to suit up to mow the lawn or spray those horrible pesticides. And, you may be surprised to learn that running your gas-powered lawnmower for one hour produces as much air pollution as driving a car 100 miles, and the air pollution from the 20 million small engines sold yearly contribute one tenth of the mobile-source hydrocarbon emissions. The EPA states that grass-cutting folks spill more than 17 million gallons of fuel yearly, more than that spilled by the Exxon Valdez in the Gulf of Alaska. There’s even a handy calculator to find out how much pollution your lawnmower produces.
So, if you don’t know anyone with a goat and have no goat rental nearby, consider an electric, or even better, a reel mower. They’re cheaper than a gas-powered mower and much gentler on the environment in many ways.
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05.26.08
Posted in health, ecotravel, pollution, global warming at 8:13 am by greengirl
Since I now live in a warmer climate, I’ve been riding my bike to work on the non-rainy days for about three months. (Unfortunately, since it’s a warmer climate, the temperature is now - mid-May - at the intolerable stage to my frigid northern blood.) My round trip to work is about 3 miles, so it takes me about 20 minutes on my bike, including unlocking and locking the bike, walking from bike rack to door, etc. Given that it takes me 10 minutes in my car, it’s not really a big time suck.
I had originally considered what I was saving in terms of gas and carbon emissions, but the Commute Solutions website has a nifty calculator that reveals all sorts of other costs, like water pollution and wear on your vehicle. So, according to their calculations, I’m saving $3.39 each time I ride my bike to work. Assuming that I’ve riden an average of two days per week for the last three months, I’ve saved $81.36 by riding my bike. I get another figure - $2.19 per day - using the SmartTrips calculator, but I get the impression they’re not adding in as many factors as Commute Solutions. Their calculator also reveals that I’m reducing my carbon footprint by 0.15 pounds each day I ride.
Overall, according to suite101.com, a bike can travel 960 miles on the equivalent energy of one gallon of gas (I’m guessing this accounts for food used for the bicyclist’s energy). Is your car’s gas mileage 960 miles a gallon? If so, where can I buy your car?! With gas prices climbing, more and more people will be biking, so even if you’re not a cyclist, keep your eyes out for them and respect their rights. And this post would not be complete without a mention of BRASS - Baton Rouge Advocate for Safer Streets - who hosted a wonderful (if overly hot) bike tour of cemetaries this past weekend. Kudos to them for all their efforts!
(And I’m back, after an overly long and mysterious absence!)
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01.02.08
Posted in pollution, global warming, water at 9:01 am by greengirl
Peanut butter and jelly, that staple of children’s lunch time meals, is more amazing than you might think. According to the PB&J campaign (who knew?!?), one sandwich reduces 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions whem compared to a lunch with animal-based food. It also saves 280 gallons water when compared to a hamburger. Substitute three PB&J’s for three hamburgers in a month, and you’ll save as much water as switching to a low-flow showerhead. How? The theory behind this is about eating lower on the food chain. It’s all about the math behind the quantity of grain it takes to feed a cow that feeds us, versus skipping the cow and eating the grain ourselves. That’s a very simplified version, but you get the idea. Now, before all you ardent carnivores out there come after me with your steak knives, I’m not saying you have to give up meat entirely to achieve these ends. It’s just about reducing your meat consumption. Substitute just one PB&J (or bean burritos or vegetarian chili…) a month, and it’ll be like driving around for the day in a hybrid instead of a sedan. Little steps, people, little steps.
P.S. This post is especially for Mike, the peanut butter lover.
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08.31.07
Posted in ecotravel, pollution, global warming at 12:41 pm by greengirl
That scooter of cool is now even cooler. Vespa is rolling out (ick…bad pun…sorry) two hybrid scooters. One is the Vespa LX 50, and the other is the Piaggio X8 125. Unfortunately, I think they’re only launching them in Europe for now with European 220V plug-ins, and I doubt that more than a handful will make their way here since Vespas seem to have a smallish counterculture following here (and there’s always that plug conversion problem). Vespas always remind me of that song by the Who - Talking ‘Bout my Generation. I read somewhere that they wrote the song (with the stutter in it - m-m-m-my) about the kids in the 60s, I think, that used to ride their mopeds around London all hopped up on speed. What? Oh, that was a tangent?
I have been a slacker with updating! Argh! So, I’ll give you two posts today to make up for it…
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08.05.07
Posted in ecotravel, pollution, global warming, weekend census at 9:12 am by greengirl
This weekend, a list of hybrid automobiles, with mpg ratings for the 2007 model year cars:
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07.31.07
Posted in ecotravel, pollution, global warming at 2:01 pm by greengirl
(I’ve been so darn busy lately! Sorry for the lack of posts.)
It’s no secret that the S in SUVs is short for sucky-fuel-mileage. But, just how much are you saving by driving that subcompact? You can be proud to know that the average car emits 30 tons less CO2 in its lifetime than a typical SUV. And that average car will save enough energy in a year (as compared to the SUV) to power a color TV for 28 years or leave your frig door open for 6 years. !!! And that’s the average car; a fuel-efficient car saves $300 to $700 a year in fuel costs and 2 tons in greenhouse gases. And for those of you with a hybrid, even a family-sized hybrid (a sedan) is more efficient than a subcompact. A family will spend $2500-$2800 in gas on a conventional car, and only $800-$1500 a year on a hybrid.
For those of you who must drive an SUV or are stuck with one till you can afford to buy a hybrid (yeah, that’s me - it’s a small SUV tho), you can join the National Arbor Day Foundation or American Forests. A small amount of money can help to make your commute carbon neutral by donating enough to help plant trees to offset your driving. If you’re looking for a rental car, Enterprise has done its part by giving the Arbor Day Foundation a $50 million donation to plant 50 million trees. Woah!
All this info is thanks to the book True Green.
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07.09.07
Posted in energy, pollution, global warming at 7:32 am by greengirl
I recently stumbled across something that had never even crossed my mind: environmentally-friendly web hosting. Who knew? I don’t know why I never thought this might exist, since I design websites for a living - ya learn something new every day.
Sustainable Websites, Go Green Hosting, ThinkHost, Acorn Host and Sustainable Hosting are all 100% carbon neutral through the purchase of wind energy, solar energy or other green energy credits. And they’re all competitively priced. EcoSky uses a combination of energy credits and on-site solar panels.
Affordable Internet Services Online powers their servers through a bank of solar panels. Their solar panel system prevents enough emissions to be the equivalent of planting 3.5 acres of trees per year. Their tagline is web hosting as nature intended, which cracks me up. I have images of giant redwood tree data storage and kudzu for connectivity. 
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06.26.07
Posted in energy, ecotravel, pollution, global warming at 11:59 am by greengirl
Several months ago, I watched a really interesting documentary called Who Killed the Electric Car?. It followed the story of the EV1 in the 90’s, a car sold mostly in California that was recalled by GM and summarily destroyed.
Apparently, GM may be realizing it’s mistake because it launched the Volt at an auto show in Shanghai in April. According to the Marketplace report, it won’t be ready to go into production until the end of the decade, but at least they’re now moving in the right direction. Plus, the Volt can go 300 miles on a charge, rather than the 100 that the EV1 could go on a charge (if I’m remembering the documentary correctly).
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06.22.07
Posted in energy, global warming at 12:29 pm by greengirl
Being nearly a conjoined twin to my computer, I’ve written previously about the energy consumption of computers. While it saves 67% of the yearly energy use to reduce computer use to 8 hours a day, there’s been more than one time that I thought I’d turned off my computer only to find that it was on all night asking if I wanted to save a document before it would shut down. Well, now Local Cooling has a cure for that. Local Cooling is a free application from Uniblue Labs that claims to reduce your computer’s power consumption. Actually, according to Treehugger, it just monitors your energy use by looking at the power options in the control panel, but it is fun to see how much you’ve saved by having your monitor switch off in 5 minutes instead of 10.
Another program that has more use than Local Cooling is GreenPrint. I also found out about this from Treehugger. This one isn’t free but does have a 30-day trial download version and may be worth it in the amount of paper and ink that you save (their site says that average user saves $90 per year, at $0.06 per sheet). It shows you the document before you print and allows you to remove any pages that you don’t need to print (the last 3 lines of a stupid signature file in emails, for instance). It also creates PDFs so that you don’t need to print to paper at all. This is a nice, cheap way to get the PDF writing benefits of the relatively expensive Adobe Acrobat, with their price of $35 stacking up nicely to the hundreds of dollars that Adobe costs. It’s Windows only, but OSX users have always been able to print right to PDF.
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