Category: Eco Green Ideas

Best Tips for Green Living

The carbon footprints that are produced today will affect the lives of generations to come. That is why it is so necessary to reduce out current carbon footprint in any means possible. Often, the mere adoption of simple steps so as to launch a life of living green can deliver an enormous positive impact on the world as a whole.

Excess Energy Consumption

Whenever and wherever possible, it would help to employ the use of solar energy as a source of home power. This is true whether you wish to heat water in the home or providing adequate lighting. Solar Water and solar lights are the best example of the best use of the sun’s power. Such solar appliances are available in a variety of stores and the assurance of simple installation makes them a must purchase. Lowe’s and Home Depot would be good retailers to procure such items.

 It is also helpful to look towards eco and economically friendly LED or fluorescent lights. When combined with solar power, these lights will allow you to enjoy low electric bills. It also does not hurt to turn off the lights when no one is in the room. This will allow you to save money while also going green.

Additionally, you have the ability to lessen energy consumption in the laundry area, kitchen, and even the bathrooms by taking the following steps:

Always use tap water when operating a dishwasher and only run it with full loads.

Wash clothes with tap water as well and avoid using hot water. Lessen dirt from clothes through soaking them for 15 minutes prior to washing.

While not always preferable, taking cold showers instead of hot tub baths in the summer is advised. A programmable thermostat will turn on heat only when needed is helpful.

When purchasing appliances look for those that have an Energy Star Label which means energy use will be as low as 50%.

Resource Conservation Tips

Within the home, water is among the most wasted resources. You have the potential to reverse wasteful practices by way of adopting small measures such as brushing your teeth with a glass of water as opposed to letting it run non-stop. Also, it is wise to only water plants when necessary and look towards a water saving device for installation in the toilets. High efficiency faucet heads can also deliver highly positive results as well.

 Is there another important resource that lends itself well to conservation? Yes and it comes in the form of food. When you cook the right amount of food and freeze the rest for a later date, you are cutting back on waste. It is possible to store fresh fruits and vegetables according to the best temperatures so as to prevent rotting and subsequent waste.

Recycle, Reduce and Reuse

 The possibility to reduce your carbon footprint increases significantly when you learn the proper way to recycle, reduce, and reuse things. You can also save a little money and even earn it, too. To reduce your consumption of Earth’s resources through purchasing less at the supermarket is one method and it is also a cost saver, too.

A quality means of reusing something can be found in the venture of donating the item. This delivers a great many different benefits that not only help someone in need, but it reverses the trend of overfilling landfills with items that still have value and use. Yes, it is true when people say there is gold in trash and that becomes doubly true as it is more eco-friendly.

 In summation, green living forever remains a possibility regardless of your situation in life. Careful thought may be involved and it will lead to great rewards that generations to come will experience.

Nov 12, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Ethanol Info

I confess that I didn’t know much about ethanol until today, when I decided to actually make the effort to do some research on the subject.

What had I known previously? That for several years, gasoline had been mandated to be mixed with 10% ethanol, because it was better for the environment. However, because of the law of unintended consequences, the use of ethanol was driving up the cost of corn (from which it was made), and causing the poorer people of the world even more misery as they were now unable to purchase it as their staple food.

So, today, as I said, I began doing some research.

To begin with, ethanol can be made from several substances. In Brazil – the world’s largest ethanol producing country, they make ethanol out of sugar cane rather than corn. Sugar cane has a 30% greater concentration of sucrose than corn, and is also much easier to extract. In addition, the “bagasse” (the fibrous residue remaining after the stalks are crushed to extract their juice) is then used for a variety of purposes – nothing is wasted or dumped into landfills.

So why does the United States make its ethanol out of corn, I wondered. (One doesn’t really need to research that. Farmers already had corn crops in place, probably, and want to make money out of that, and our politicians want to keep our farmers happy. That’s why the US adds a tariff to ethanol produced outside the United States. Brazil ethanol is much cheaper than that produced in the US, because it does not need to be converted into sucrose – it already is sucrose. (In addition, Brazilian producers don’t have to pay their workers near as much as American farmers have to pay theirs.)

CNN Money reported on August 7, 2007: “The reason we use corn and grains in this country to make ethanol is that’s what we produce best. It’s the easier thing for us to do at the moment,” said Matt Hartwig, spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association. “The likelihood that cane will become a huge ethanol foodstock isn’t high, though you may see it in the future.”

This despite the fact that ethanol made from sugar cane is: “about six times more economical to produce than corn ethanol and has the potential to help the environment because it requires few chemicals to grow.”

It’s the Corn Lobby in the US government that is producing a shift over to sugar cane…the government simply has too much invested in its corn-into-ethanol programs.

Sep 19, 2009 | 1 comment View Post

Make Your Computer Use Earth Friendly

Computers have changed the very world we live in. In fact, can you even imagine life anymore without the benefit of the internet and computers? In many ways, the computer is helping to preserve the environment by allowing more people to work from home and allowing many industries to manage outside equipment from a computer instead of driving to the field to do it by hand. Yet with all this, there is stillroom for improvement.
In addition to the amount of energy a computer and its peripheral devices consume there is also a matter of the immense amount of plastic and metal used to create the millions of computers that hit the shelves every year.

To lessen the amount of energy your computer is consuming try some of the following tips:

• Power Down- Whenever your computer is not in use turn the power off. This will prevent something called phantom power load consumption.

• Energy Settings- Built into Microsoft are power savings, these come into play when your computer is temporarily not in use.

• Monitor- When you are using the pc only have your monitor as bright as you absolutely need. Turning the brightness levels down can save lots of energy.

• New Computer- The next time you are in the market for a new computer considers purchasing a laptop instead. These smaller computers use about half the energy of a desktop.

• Replace- After a couple of years of use a computer will slow down considerably. This is the time many people choose to purchase a new machine, however a simple reinstall of windows will perk up your system by doing away with unnecessary files and
Not all of the energy consumption and environmental impact attributed computers comes from actual use. There is a fair amount of energy consumed to create the devices in the first place and once they have served their purpose too many of them wind up in landfills. When computers end up in landfill they not only take up precious space, they can also leak toxic substances into the ground polluting it and many of our waterways. For this reason, several companies have cropped up offering to recycle computers and protect the environment.

These companies do what is called E-Cycle, a cute term for electronic recycling. The problem is often the number of computers they receive overwhelms these companies and the units end up going to the landfill anyway. Some more unscrupulous individuals go a step further and ship these units overseas where low paid workers are expected to strip the devices down in order to mine the profitable metals from them. Not only does this contribute to greenhouse emissions due to the shipping methods, the conditions under which these people work are horrible and dangerous.

When it is time to upgrade to a better model be sure you check with the company you are using to recycle electronic debris. Better yet, try upgrading some of the internal parts such as hard drive and memory and end up with a computer that is comparable to many of the new models on the market. You will save the environment and potentially save yourself some hard-earned money in the process.

Sep 19, 2009 | 0 comments View Post
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