Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
By Tim Sanders
From SandersSays.com
A recent article in the York Daily Record (The Meaning Of Green) points out how hard it is for consumers to really know they are buying from a ‘green’ company.
Research for my new book (Saving The World At Work, Sept. 16 launch) indicates that many of us want to spend our money [...]
Tags: Blogs · Business · Greener Businesses
By John DeFore
Though it was an odd thing to call a “groundbreaking” — the act involved no shovel stuck in soil, but rather the placement of a panel on a metal stand — a ceremony alongside an Oregon highway this month inaugurated what Governor Ted Kulongoski calls “the nation’s first solar highway project.”
Speaking in [...]
Tags: Briefs · Cities/States · Model Projects · Renewable Power/Solar/Wind
By John DeFore
Joining the existing array of programs addressing school bus pollution this fall (the EPA’s Clean School Bus USA, for example) is a new effort bringing the Texas Parent Teacher Association together with the state’s Commission on Environmental Quality.
The project, announced earlier this month, will supply funds to the PTA for bus pollution-control [...]
Tags: Briefs · Cities/States · Model Projects · Other Transport · Schools/Colleges/Churches
By Nima Kapadia
As college students make their way to campuses across the nation for the fall semester, many are thinking ahead to future careers in business, teaching, technology or sustainability. Sustainability?
Yes, says Arizona State University graduate student Brigitte Bavousett Hill, who hopes to use her Master’s Degree in Sustainability to help other countries lower their [...]
By John DeFore
Certain species of large whales, particularly humpbacks, are less threatened now than they were when whaling bans took effect in the ’80s, according to a new report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The Geneva-based IUCN, which describes itself as “the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network” and counts nearly [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Briefs
By Barbara Kessler
Worried about the stacks of duplicated reports and reprinted Power Points that get passed around at meetings? Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. But as companies assess the carbon impact of their activities, the paper-choked meeting is becoming an issue, and a UK company is in the wings with the solution: an [...]
Tags: At Work · Briefs · Greener Businesses · Model Projects
By John DeFore
Just because a green initiative pops up in the news doesn’t mean it’s new. Take a blurb in this month’s Food & Wine that puts Rhum Clément’s Première Canne Rum at the head of a list of eco-friendly spirits.
The item touted a green-extreme sounding manufacturing process that is powered by its own [...]
Tags: Briefs · Food · Greener Businesses
By John DeFore
More and more corporate emails these days end with text blurbs urging the recipient not to print messages out unless absolutely necessary. Hard copies of documents are a must in some instances, of course, but they’re becoming less and less necessary thanks to some efforts to finally make good on the computer [...]
[Read more →]Tags: At Work · Briefs · Model Projects
By Catherine Girardeau
Let’s face it: Solo car commuters increase both traffic congestion and a city’s carbon footprint.
In San Francisco, those gas-hogging lone drivers soon will be get a clear message to switch to greener forms of transportation, such as buses, train transit and van pools. Earlier this month, the city preliminarily approved a commuter [...]
Tags: At Work · Cities/States · Greener Businesses · Other Transport
By John DeFore
Not long ago, a City of Austin crew spent the day installing new “No Parking” signs along the streets of my neighborhood. Two big Ford F450 trucks sat outside my home-office window for hours while the men dug holes and planted posts — and their engines ran the entire time.
Not wanting to [...]
Tags: Alternative Fuels · Cities/States · Model Projects · Other Transport
By Shermakaye Bass
While some Americans insist on pampering thirsty lawns and water-greedy flora - and engage in other water-siphoning practices - innovative means of conservation are cropping up all over the United States, out of necessity or sheer eco-sense. Some can be easily applied by individuals; others require input, or even a policy change, [...]
Tags: Cities/States · Energy/Water · Model Projects
By John DeFore
An item in the New York Times last week served as a good wrap-up of recent developments on the LED front, finding places (beyond traffic lights) where light emitting diodes are getting a toehold as replacements for less energy-efficient lights.
But does it, in newspaper terms, “bury the lead”?
Tags: Briefs · Energy/Water · Greener Businesses
By John DeFore
For a movie that explicitly addresses the perils of overconsumption, Pixar’s WALL*E is being used to promote an awful lot of consumer products.
One tie-in in particular is rankling Greenpeace. It seems that the lovable robot’s image has popped up on boxes of Kleenex, a product the activist group has criticized with a “Kleercut” campaign that asserts, “it takes 90 years to grow a box of Kleenex” because the product’s manufacturer Kimberly-Clark “all but refuses to use recycled paper in its products.” (Among other things, they’re trying to get parents and teachers to reject the company’s tissues in classrooms.) [Read more →]
By John DeFore
Mitsubishi Electric announced Wednesday that it will quadruple its capability to produce solar cells, jumping from the 150 megawatts it currently produces each year to an annual 600MW capacity by 2012 — a more ambitious goal than its previously stated one to get to 500 MW by 2013. Current production levels are already triple what they were four years ago. [Read more →]
Residents of the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area will again get a chance to trade in their pollution-emitting old clunker for a newer, less polluting car with the help of state money.
The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) reports that it has about $12 million for the second year of the AirCheckTexas Drive a Clean Machine campaign, which began taking applications in mid-August. [Read more →]
