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 Lynette Holloway
The other day, at the swank Blue Water Grill in downtown Chicago, chef Eric Kendrick held a treasure trove of
Photo by Terri O’Hara
Chef Eric Kendrick and a bumper crop of locally grown food.
vegetables in a huge incandescent amber bowl. The haul, plucked fresh from a local farmer’s market, included deep purple torpedo onions, [...]
Tags: GET INSPIRED · Greener Businesses
First branch banking, then online banking, now for act three: Keeping your green in a vault known for its green.
Two Philadelphia bankers with notable environmental experience have announced the formation of e3bank, believed to be the first green “triple bottom line” bank on the East Coast. Everything from the organization’s infrastructure to its product and [...]
Tags: Briefs · Cut Consumption · Greener Businesses
By John DeFore
The collection of world leaders known as G8 may be taking baby steps on cutting greenhouse emissions (the Union of Concerned Scientists called their recent meeting a “sideshow”) with its goal of a 50 percent reduction by 2050 instead of the 80 percent most scientists agreed is needed.
This week Exelon, an electric-energy [...]
Tags: Briefs · Energy & Water · Greener Businesses
By Barbara Kessler
Wal-Mart Stores is joining the Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN), World Wildlife Fund’s initiative to save the world’s most valuable and threatened forests. The giant retailer also announced this week that it is moving toward making some of the jewelry it sells meet standards for sustainability and social responsibility.
Tags: Briefs · Dress, Decor & Beauty · Greener Businesses · SHOP GREEN
By Barbara Kessler
Green pest control might sound like an oxymoron to some green devotees who believe in the “live and let live” mantra, or organic gardeners who appreciate that good pests and bad pests balance each other in nature.
Still, there’s the pest you can live with and the one you can’t. Some pests, like weeds, [...]
Tags: Clean & Maintain · Greener Businesses · SHOP GREEN
By Catherine Colbert
Photo: Veruska 1960 | Dreamstime.com
Backyard barbecues and Shakespeare in the Park picnics are the perfect opportunities to whet one’s whistle. But before you pack your cooler or portable wine or tea party, consider ways you can enjoy your favorite beverages – during the holidays and yearlong – while also caring for the [...]
Tags: Food · Greener Businesses · SHOP GREEN
By Catherine Colbert
You sent out your Evite and now you’re working hard to make sure your house is ready for the crowd. Before you put pen to paper to create the menu for your next get-together, pour yourself a tall one, sip some Syrah, or have a spot of tea and relax. Beverage manufacturers [...]
Tags: Food · Greener Businesses · SHOP GREEN
By Nima Kapadia
Creating an alternative to the conventional, gasoline-powered lawn mower is “work of art” that has gotten the Neuton recognition at museums this summer.
Tags: Briefs · Greener Businesses · Lawn Maintenance · Media & Entertainment · Uncategorized
By Barbara Kessler
It’s not often you get a warm and fuzzy feeling about your utility provider – unless perhaps a brown out zaps your air conditioning and the summer sweat blurs your vision. But New Mexico residents can think happy thoughts about their power companies.
Tags: Briefs · Energy & Water · Greener Businesses
By John DeFore
Solid-wood furniture is pricey and obviously involves harvesting trees, but the alternatives aren’t necessarily much more appealing: Particle board, while transforming waste materials into something useful, is usually glued together with resin containing the carcinogen formaldehyde. A newer innovation, the “zBoard,” hopes to supplant particle board and MDF in a wholly eco-friendly [...]
Tags: Briefs · Dress, Decor & Beauty · Greener Businesses
By John DeFore
Migrating from coal- or gas-produced electricity to solar power is a dream for most of us, but we’ve always been told that equipment costs make it an option only in the distant future. That’s about to change, according to some solar boosters who think with the right steps the United States could [...]
Tags: Briefs · Greener Businesses
By Shermakaye Bass
Not terribly long ago, the idea of “telecommuting” conjured a Jetsonian image of people traveling at warp-speed to and from the office. It was the future; the exception, not the norm.
But now, according to statistics from private industry, federal agencies and states like Connecticut, telecommuting is an idea whose time has finally, and [...]
Tags: At Work · Greener Businesses
By John DeFore
Over the last few years, moviegoers may have come to expect that any documentary pairing scientists and ice caps will be a scare-fest or a sermon — a big-screen effort to hammer home the urgent need to take action countering climate change.
Not so with Encounters at the End of the World, a film that’s drawing glowing reviews as it expands into theaters across the country. Yes, the movie has things to say about the environment — in at least one instance, it even suggests that humankind’s days here are numbered — but it is far from strident, superficially issue-driven, or even political. [Read more →]
By Nima Kapadia
Jobs in renewable energy are increasing worldwide and causing the coal industry to distribute pink slips, according to a Worldwatch Institute study.
The report, written by Worldwatch senior researcher Michael Renner, estimates that 2.3 million people are working in renewable energy jobs - either directly or indirectly. From that number:
By John DeFore
Proposals to solve the planet’s CO2 woes through sequestering the problematic emissions — pumping them into some hole in the ground where they can’t affect the atmosphere — raise numerous concerns for skeptics. Won’t the stuff leak out, wasting the fortune we spent on sequestering, and leaving us worse off than we would have been by cutting CO2 production in the first place?
Researchers led by Columbia University geophysicist David Goldberg think they’re closer to resolving some of those concerns, with a proposal that would address the possibility of leakage on two fronts. [Read more →]
