divine green: Sustainable Home, Beauty, & Lifestyle

Consumer electronics are the fastest growing hog of electricity in U.S. homes. That’s according to Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the National Resources Defense Council, who said at a recent event that all those plasma TVs and Playstations now suck up as much as 15 percent of the household energy bill.

For example, Horowitz said, a 50 inch plasma TV uses 500 kilowatts of energy annually (if “on” an average of two to three hours daily), or about 4 percent of the household electricity bill. That’s the equivalent of adding another refrigerator to the house, he said.

Horowitz blamed the problem on designers of consumer electronics, who aren’t thinking about energy efficiency at the outset. Consider the DVR. Many of the digital recording devices don’t include an on/off switch.

“It’s on 24 hours at full power even if you’re not using it,” Horowitz said. “With the uptake of DVRs in homes, you could eliminate the need for new power plants if the box was designed better.”

One solution is to unplug (more…)

A few years ago while still in college, James Dudra spent a summer detailing cars in Australia, where he found that people don’t use water to wash their trucks and family sedans. Rather, they wipe cars clean with a bottle-spray formula.

And it’s no wonder. The average car wash can suck up between 80 gallons and 140 gallons of water. Drought-ridden Australia certainly can’t afford that extravagance, and neither can places like Georgia.

So last year, Dudra founded the New Hampshire-based company Eco Touch to adapt the idea for the United States. Unlike other waterless cleaners–which can use harsh chemicals like silicones and kerosene that can run into water systems unchecked–Eco Touch is a water-based formula with organic soaps and plant-based surfactants that wick away grime, Dudra said.

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