November 28th, 2007
After the kids grow up (or grow out of whatever fit last month), parents are left with a glut of stuff—Baby Bjorns, cradle swings, snuglis. Some parents hand down the bounty to friends or family, while others store the goods in the basement (just in case). But a growing group of parents are turning to grassroots Web sites to unload unwanted items and alleviate their consumer guilt.
Zwaggle.com, which I wrote about here, is a social network designed to let parents donate baby goods to others in need. In exchange for charity, that member will earn points to pick up something else from another parent. Members pay only for shipping for their desired item.
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Posted in baby, home, recycling | 1 Comment »
November 27th, 2007
Metropolitan cities are setting the example this year on decorating with eco-Christmas lights. San Francisco this weekend, followed by Paris on Monday, lit massive holiday trees with mini light-emitting diode bulbs, which burn brighter than typical bulbs and emit no heat. The LEDs consume about 90 percent less electricity than typical lights and can last as many as 20 holiday seasons.
Paris’s tree on the Champs-Elysees was donned with close to 1 million new LED bulbs, according to a story from the Associated Press. A joint project by General Electric and French gas company Gaz de France, the energy efficient lights are expected to cut the city’s electricity bill by 70 percent for the holiday tree over previous years.
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Posted in design, environment, home | 2 Comments »
November 26th, 2007
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 Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in research, environment, home, recycling | 1 Comment »
November 20th, 2007
If there’s any good reason to rethink your carbon footprint, it’s the worrisome findings from a six-year study on global climate change from Nobel Prize-winning experts. The authority–the U.N Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2,000 scientists from 140 countries–released the culmination of its research on the effects of global warming last weekend. Here are some of the findings, but you can read the full report here.
Global greenhouse gases have risen by 70 percent since 1970, largely because of carbon dioxide emissions from factories, power plants and cars. The growth of atmospheric gases is responsible for global warming, or the rise of planetary temperatures by 1.3 degrees over the last century, according to the report. In fact, 11 of the last 12 years have been the warmest on record over the last century.
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Posted in research, environment | 2 Comments »
November 14th, 2007
If you’ve been reluctant to ride a bike to work because of the fear of breaking a sweat in office clothes, then this electric two-wheeler could be the answer. HighTekBikes, a Petaluma, Calif.-based startup, is one of several companies selling bikes with electric motors to help push you up that hill. The company displayed its products last weekend at the Green Festival in San Francisco.
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November 13th, 2007
One of the more inspiring companies I visited with at the Green Festival in San Francisco last weekend was Green to Grow, a Los Angeles-based maker of bisphenol A-free baby bottles.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical unknown to most shoppers, but it’s a component of a polycarbonate plastic that comprises most clear baby bottles on the market today. Environmental studies have shown that BPA can disrupt neurological and reproductive hormones in children, causing illnesses such as attention deficit disorder and early onset puberty. Separately, researchers have shown that the toxicant, under pressure from heat and kitchen cleaning brushes, can leach out from the plastic into the bottle.
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Posted in baby, food and drink | No Comments »
November 12th, 2007
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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Posted in home, transportation | 2 Comments »
November 1st, 2007
What happens to all those Goodwill throwaways when they don’t sell in a local thrift store? As much as 75 percent ends up in landfill. Or equally bad, those too-tight Nike shorts and low-slung Gap jeans are shipped to third-world nations, where they clothe the poor.
That last part sounds noble, but the resulting glut of last-year’s baby-doll blouses and cargo pants from the U.S. ends up squelching demand for locally made clothing in underdeveloped countries desperate for their own self-sustaining economies. (That clothing might also layer landfills in places like India and Africa.)
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Posted in recycling, fashion | 1 Comment »
October 31st, 2007
Organic alcohol seems like an oxymoron. But organic is so popular nowadays that the makers of wine, beer and vodka are coming out with chemical-free concoctions on a seemingly regular basis. Whether the products are about social consciousness or pure marketing is a question for another time. (Square One calls its certified organic rye vodka “social and socially conscious.”)
But if you’re going to drink, why not make it a cleaner cocktail?
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Posted in food and drink | 2 Comments »
October 30th, 2007
This site is my pet project. I’m a long-time journalist and part-time treehugger who admittedly doesn’t do enough to help the environment. Like most people, I could do much more. The best way I know how to change my behavior is to get informed. So the purpose of this site is for me to investigate the ideas, practices and trends behind the new environmental movement (you know, the one after Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”) and share them with you. So please join me.
Posted in welcome | 3 Comments »