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 John DeFore
Conservation minded farmers might naturally assume it’s wise to get the most out of what’s available; if post-harvest waste material can be used in biofuel production, it seems to make financial and ecological use to sell it.
Not necessarily, according to a scientist at Washington State University who is urging farmers in her [...]
Tags: Briefs · Energy & Water · Food · Model People
By Catherine Girardeau
Eleven-year-old Colin Carlson of Coventry, Conn., took his cue from the penguins. The recent winner of the sixth annual Action for Nature International Young Eco-Hero Awards in the 8-to-13 age group was nine when he visited the Galapagos Islands as a member of the National Geographic Kids Expedition Team.
“I was snorkeling near a [...]
Tags: Cities & States · Green Them · Headlines · Healthy Ways · Model People · Model Projects · Uncategorized
By Paula Minahan
Peter Pfeiffer doesn’t mince words. His passion for green building takes an almost proselytizing tone at times. And it’s no wonder. The straight-shooting architect has spent the past 30 years at the forefront of the
Photo: Barley & Pfeiffer Architects
Peter Pfeiffer’s green house in Austin
green building movement. The award-winning work of his Austin-based firm, [...]
Tags: Cut Consumption · Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Home Building · Home Improvements · Model People
By Harriet Blake
In Columbus, Ohio, yesterday Mayor Michael Coleman and his staff biked from their homes to the Ohio Statehouse, jacking up their heart rates and kicking-off the city’s 20-year Bicentennial Bikeways Plan.
Photo: City of Columbus
Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman
In Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino fought a stiff wind cycling a half mile from City [...]
Tags: Cities & States · Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Model People · Other Transport
By John DeFore
Those of us who have had office coworkers hit us up for contributions to walk-a-thons promoting various charities will appreciate the modesty of Jordan Price and Carlie Roberts, who are asking strangers to contribute just a penny per mile on their current outing for Keep America Beautiful. Sure, they’re hiking over two [...]
Tags: Briefs · Model People
By John DeFore
Standing out in the current wave of books about the environment — dire jeremiads, thoughtful analyses, and green-leaning coffee-table books — is a compact but weighty tome that is largely uninterested in conveying to readers any kind of “the time is now!” urgency. Rather, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau released April [...]
Tags: Activists & Authors · Books & Movies · Briefs · Model People
By John DeFore
Last week, students around the nation were busy working on suntans and sleeping off hangovers. Not Martin Schubert, though, who spent Spring Break in the lab — despite having just landed a $30,000 prize that would have bought an awful lot of daiquiris.
Schubert, a doctoral student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was awarded the [...]
Tags: Briefs · Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Model People
With Earth Day coming next month, we want to hear what you’re doing to go green right now. Share success stories, offer tips or just words of encouragement for others. Just click the link below for instructions on how to post your voice comment using your wireless phone. And check back to listen to what [...]
[Read more →]Tags: Battles & Victories · GET INSPIRED · Model People · Model Projects
By Bill Marvel
Once upon a time in American cities, if you didn’t have a car you could still go almost anywhere. A network of steel rails and trolley wires laced together downtowns and neighborhoods, and ran far out into the countryside to connect with suburbs.
Photo by Geoffrey Marvel
DART trains pull into downtown Plano.
Electric interurbans [...]
Tags: Cities & States · Model People · Model Projects · Other Transport
By Shermakaye Bass
So far this winter, things are looking fair-to-middlin’ for David Ellingson’s honeybees, but the Minnesotan is holding his breath until later this month, when he learns how two-thirds of his commercial hives have fared during their wintering season down south.
Ellingson has 1,200 hives in Southeast Texas (normally 20,000 to 30,000 bees inhabit [...]
Tags: Food · Greener Businesses · Model People
By Barbara Kessler
When shopping for stuff for around your house, here’s one great green option: Don’t get anything.
But that’s not always feasible. Even Thoreau needed writing parchment and candles. So let’s review the next best alternative, which is buying old things that have already been in service, preferably for years and years and re-purposing [...]
Tags: Dress, Decor & Beauty · Model People · SHOP GREEN
By Bill Marvel
It’s always been down the road somewhere, just around the corner — the car that doesn’t pollute. The car that doesn’t burn gasoline, that runs on electricity or natural gas or hydrogen or whatever.
But it never quite gets here. There some hybrids out there — the Prius, the Camry and Malibu hybrids, [...]
Tags: Cars · Model People
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 →]
