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 Harriet Blake
Other than the intoxicating smell of new text books and notebooks, the familiar scents of [environmentstdtsclean] back-to-school may be changing. Ammonia-scented hallways, newly sealed and fuming gym floors, odorously painted classrooms as well as lawns with the subtle scents of pesticide treatments, may be a thing of the past.
In today’s more environmentally conscious world, public and private schools are rethinking how they maintain their buildings. Reducing toxic chemicals in schools – as in our homes — is not only good for the environment, but for those who use these buildings.
In Maryland’s Montgomery County outside of Washington D.C., the public schools have long taken a pro-active approach in using non-toxic cleaners.
“We want our buildings to be clean and at the same time healthy for our students, faculty and the person doing the cleaning,” says Larry Hurd, building services trainer for the school district.
Ten years ago, the district, which oversees 200 schools, changed from an oil-based sealer for their wood gym floors to a water-based sealer. It works well, says Mr. Hurd, and toxins are no longer an issue. “The oil-based sealer was bad for the students and other visitors to our schools, but it was real, real bad for the person applying the sealer.” That person was exposed to the sealer fumes for as much as four hours. [More...]
[Read more →]Tags: Community · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Schools/Colleges/Churches
By John DeFore
With the locavore ideal so much in the media these days and produce of vague origin sparking so many health scares, you’d think the last thing a city would go out of its way to do would be discourage local growers. Especially if those growers are adorable little girls.
[Read more →]Tags: Briefs · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers
Hazardous chemicals are on hiatus, bottled water is out and bikes are in at the Democratic Convention in Denver, where organizers are seizing the opportunity to green the festivities this week.
As some 10,000 delegates, volunteers, politicos and media people converge on the Mile High city, they’ll be quenching their thirst at “hydration stations” or water fountains serving Denver tap water (inside and outside the Pepsi Center) instead of grabbing the once ubiquitous and landfill-clogging plastic water bottles that have been the norm at big gatherings.
Yes, what’s old is new again, and conventioneers have already been drinking from the well, so to speak, at weekend events where the non-profit water utility Denver Water provided a truck of chilled agua to refill water bottles. The new approach has been “incredibly well received” by those attending the pre-Convention activities, said Donna Pacetti, the local government conservation coordinator with Denver Water. “They love it. It’s cold water. We keep it chilled so it comes out at about 38-40 degrees.”
Convention goers also will find themselves with another back-to-basics choice, with 1,000 bicycles available free-of-charge for short carbon-free hops around top, courtesy of Humana and the Bikes Belong Coalition.
[Read more →]Tags: Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Healthier Living · Nation
By Barbara Kessler
In the race for top carbon emissions polluter, the United States is still Number One, but China is sprinting forward and could soon edge into the lead. The current Olympics host nation accounted for a “staggering 57 percent of the growth of emissions” worldwide this century, and will likely surpass the U.S. [...]
Tags: Briefs · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Nation
Weather experts are predicting that some 17 Atlantic storms — about seven more than average — will pack enough strength they’ll reach tropical storm strength in 2008, earning the right to be named and carrying the potential to reach hurricane status.
The best guess for the number of hurricanes, according to weather forecasters at the Colorado [...]
Tags: Briefs · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers
By Shermakaye Bass
When legislators cross party lines and governors publicly plead for water reform, you know the country’s water crunch has reached a new degree of direness.
And yet, some conservationists ask, who’s really listening?
In late July an Opinion column appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other California newspapers. In it, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, [...]
Tags: Celebrities/Politicians · Cities/States · Energy/Water · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers
By Harriet Blake
Mainstream, affordable solar power is not just pie (or energy) in the sky. So say MIT researchers who have devised a process to store solar energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.
Photo: Donna Coveney
MIT professor Dan Nocera
Massachusetts Institute of Technology energy professor Dan Nocera and post-doctoral fellow Matthew Kanan have found a [...]
By John DeFore
Here’s a mad-scientist fantasy for those who favor controlling carbon as part of the solution to climate change: Learn to love typhoons (well, one aspect of them).
But researchers from Ohio State University have made discoveries about those storms that, as a university report puts it, “could help scientists make better estimates of how much carbon [...]
Tags: Briefs · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers
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 [...]
[Read more →]Tags: Briefs · Energy/Water · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers
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: Agriculture · Energy/Water · Food · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers
By Harriet Blake
An engineering team at MIT has developed a new solar concentrator that doubles as a window and generates more electricity with fewer solar cells than typical solar panels — moving toward the day when on-site solar power might make fiscal sense for homeowners.
[Read more →]Tags: Briefs · Energy/Water · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Model Projects
The upside of high gas prices is becoming evident as Americans flock to dealers of small and hybrid cars, revealing that we can, if whacked in the wallet, lower our greenhouse gas emissions.
There’s another silver lining not so readily apparent, but quite compelling. According to researchers at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB) when people curb their driving, both by slowing down and driving less, traffic fatalities decline as well.
[Read more →]Tags: Alternative Fuels · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · People/Projects
By John DeFore
It may rank among the “Least Wanted” plants in North America (the state of Washington describes it as noxious for its ability to crowd out all other vegetation), but the Japanese knotweed may be good for something after all.
Dr. Pam Marrone, founder of Marrone Organic Innovations announced at a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society the development of a new biopesticide made from knotweed extract, one that will be appropriate for use by organic farmers who shun conventional pesticides. [Read more →]
Some things 
just make sense, like the Phoenix Suns using the desert sun to help power the US Airways Center where they play.
The basketball team, electricity provider APS and the city of Phoenix announced Thursday that the utility and the team have teamed up to install a 194 kilowatt photo-voltaic system on the fifth level of the US Airways parking garage. The system will cover about 18,000 square feet and produce more than 330,000 kilowatt-hours each year - enough to meet about one-quarter of the Casino Arizona Pavilion’s power needs. The Pavilion encompasses the 50-high glassy grand entrance to the arena; its escalators, ticket windows and the Starbucks. [Read more →]
College-bound hig
h schoolers looking for an environmentally conscientious college should have no shortage of guidance this year. The Sierra Club has joined the Princeton Review in assessing the green creds of U.S. universities.
Actually, the venerable environmental group was first out with the idea, launching a “Cool Schools” rundown in 2007. Their second annual review, in the group’s Sept./Oct.Sierra magazine, settles on list of the top ten campuses — Ten That Get It — that includes colleges of all sizes from the East to the West. [Read more →]
