Roofs Go Green – Literally

When people think of green spaces, they generally think of lawns and gardens. But roofs are proving to be the newest frontier for thinking green. Vegetated roof covers, eco-roofs, or green roofs—it doesn't matter what you call them—they're more than just a pretty face. Along with protecting conventional roof waterproofing systems, they also offer a myriad of ecological benefits.
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Environmental Impact of Beef Production

EARTH TALK
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Vegetarians and vegans are so self-righteous about not eating meat and how meat eating is so bad for the environment. How true are these claims?    Read more...

Electric Baseboard Heaters: Pay Now and Pay Later

Electric baseboard heaters are fairly cheap to buy and install, but they keep costing you with their heavy use of energy. Although they convert nearly 100% of energy into heat, when you add in the cost of electricity generation and transmission losses, these heaters becomes expensive and inefficient. Read more...

Washing Machines: Front-Loaders are the Clear Winners

Want to save $550? Buy an Energy Star rated front-loader washing machine. You won't save the money when you buy it. In fact, you'll probably pay more. But factor in reduced costs of energy and water, and the savings will add up. Read more...

Energy Use of Your Computer

from the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: As an online gamer, I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. What’s the environmental impact? And are “greener” PCs available?     Read more...

Stoves —What's Cooking?

When buying a stove, look past the sticker price into the future – the future energy costs of operating it. Gas or electric? Conventional or convection? Self-cleaning or regular? The choices you make today will affect your energy bill for years to come. Read more...

Home Offices – Is Your Printer or Copier Making You Sick?

Today's home office probably has as much equipment as regular offices had ten years ago. As the prices of equipment went down, our consumption went up. All that printing is bad for the environment. It's also turning out to be bad for our lungs. Read more...

Fireplace + Insert = Efficiency

Fireplaces add warmth and coziness to a room, but unless you have a fireplace insert, most of that warmth is going straight up the chimney. Why? Because open hearths are inefficient. Their poor heating capabilities mean they use more fuel, burn incompletely, and create more pollution. Read more...

Compact Fluorescents: Good Things Come in Small Watts

Think energy-efficient lighting and the words "compact fluorescent light (CFL)" probably come to mind. In fact, if every American home replaced just one light bulb with a CFL, we'd save over $600 million in annual energy costs and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of 800,000 cars. Read more...

Hot Water: Less is More
(savings that is)

You're tired after a hard day. Wouldn't a nice hot shower feel good? Before turning on the water, think about where that hot water comes from. Read more...

Phantom Load: Who's Stealing Your Electricity?

If someone tapped into your electrical line without permission, you'd call him a thief. But you may have as many as 25 electrical thieves in your home—thieves you've invited in. Read more...

While a roaring flame in an open fireplace seems romantic, it's actually inefficient and potentially dangerous. Open fireplaces can add to indoor smoke pollution, send more heat up the chimney than into the house, and be a source of carbon monoxide.

While the Environmental Protection Agency strongly recommends using fireplace inserts, you can do some things to make your open fireplace work better and decrease indoor air pollution and energy loss. Read more...

Vinegar:  It's Not Just For Salads

One of nature's best cleaning aids is right in your pantry: distilled white vinegar. A natural powerhouse, it can do many cleaning jobs without adding toxic chemicals to your house.

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Flush your toilet twice. You've now used as much water as people in some developing nations use in one day—for all of their needs.

Toilets account for about 30% of residential indoor water consumption—the main source of water use in your home. Old, leaky, and inefficient toilets are a major cause of wasted water.


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Think of your thermostat as your heating system's brain. The smarter the brain, the more efficiently it uses energy. Programmable thermostats, also called setback thermostats, are a simple, inexpensive way to increase your furnace's IQ.

Because these thermostats decrease energy consumption, they also decrease greenhouse gas emissions associated with energy production to meet that need. Their increased convenience and accuracy over manual thermostats provides improved heating comfort. Read more...

Since most of us spend around seven hours in bed, keeping warm through a cold winter's night is important. Don't turn up the thermostat, consider these options instead.

Warming Yourself
Wear warm pajamas or thermal underwear. If it's really cold, wear both. A pair of socks and/or a hat keeps your body heat where it belongs – in your body.

Eat protein or have a hot drink before bedtime. If you tend to wake up cold in the middle of the night, keep a thermos of hot chocolate, tea, or coffee nearby. But no alcohol – it dilates blood vessels causing heat loss.

A relaxing warm shower might help you sleep better and not notice the cold.
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A fridge is not only the largest appliance in your kitchen, it's also the biggest energy guzzler in your house. A typical self-defrosting refrigerator can use 1,200 kilowatts of electricity per year. That's enough electricity to light a typical house. Read more...

by Harriet Cooper

Keeping your home warm in winter without spending a fortune on heating comes down to two things: keeping the cold out and the warmth in. Your windows can help you do that.

Making Your Current Windows More Energy Efficient

If your windows are old and draughty, you're losing heat and money constantly. At the very least, put caulking and weather stripping around them to stop the worst of the draughts.

Buy an insulating shrink wrap kit at your hardware store. These kits include lightweight film and double-sided tape. Tape the film over the window and use a hair blower to shrink it, providing a weather-tight seal.

Or, use interior or exterior storm windows. You can buy them or make them using heavy plastic or plexiglass and framing them to the size of your windows. Attach them during fall and store them away during spring and summer.

You can also buy insulated shade kits, such as those made by Warm Windows,  online and at large fabric retailers.

Buying New, Energy-Efficient Windows

If you have more money to spend, invest in energy-efficient windows. While replacing windows does have a fairly long payback period, they will make your home more comfortable in the meantime. Today's energy-efficient windows are twice as efficient as the average ones manufactured only 10 years ago. Among their benefits are decreased heat loss, air leakage, and condensation. Read more...

By Harriet Cooper

While ice is lovely in a drink on a hot summer afternoon, it can be downright dangerous in the middle of winter. If visions of broken bones and bruised tailbones dance in your head, you might be tempted to reach for the salt – it's cheap, convenient and effective.

Problems with Salt

Wait! Although rock salt (sodium chloride) is effective in melting ice, it's environmentally unfriendly. Melted ice combines with salt to produce a salty run-off which ends up in sewers, streams, rivers and lakes. It also seeps into the ground, permeating underground aquifers which supply much of our drinking water. While water purification plants can remove the salt, it's a complex and costly process.

Once in the ground, excess salt can destroy the soil's natural structure, damage and kill vegetation, and decrease fish and wildlife populations by acidifying their fresh water source.

Salt's corrosive properties also damage exposed rebar, bridges and cars. Its de-icing ability leads to faster freeze and thaw cycles, prematurely aging cement and asphalt, and affecting roads, driveways and cement stairs.

Does this mean you have to go on a salt-free diet? Not entirely. Read more...

By Alexis James

Fashion conscious and environmentally-conscious trendsetters rejoice!  If you're a little beyond getting used clothes from a thrift store, have we got the answer for you: Clothing Swap – an opportunity to get glamorous clothes on the cheap, along with a night of mingling, drinking and pampering.

If you've ever gone through your closet and bemoaned the idea of getting rid of well-loved clothes that had once fetched a fair price, lament no longer. Sure, there are other options out there for getting rid of — and buying — used and recycled clothes, as opposed to purchasing new items. There are places like higher-end consignment boutiques, hip clothing exchange stores and a few other possibilities. What sets the idea of Clothing Swap apart is that you can get something for next to nothing. (And we're not just talking about cheap clothes.)

Here's how it works:

Clothing Swap started in San Francisco and is working on expanding in other cities – but there's no reason you couldn't start your own as well. It offers a barter/swap environment where people clean out their closets, and bring it to the swap destination. Their website advises those taking part to bring "CLEAN, new (and gently worn) shoes, clothing and accessories," in all manner of sizes and styles. They are all brought in bagged, and sorted before the mad dash for the sensational swap begins.

And here's a little bonus – most of these events are hosted in hip nightspots, restaurants, bars and clubs.  What's better than drinking, dancing, gal pals and free clothes? Many functions even offer spa-treatments like chair massage, makeup application, manis/pedis, and facials.

But men – fear not! Clothing Swap recently added events for the closet-space-challenged male. Which creates a similar environment for guys to get free, hip clothes as well.
The cover charge is usually minimal (often only between $10-$30) – considering all the great digs you'll walk away with. Once the swapping begins, it's an organized free-for-all, with people roaming tables and racks, trying things on, and free to take what they please.

Overall, it is a terrific new way to recycle, refresh your wardrobe and meet some new, like-minded buddies. What could be better?

You hear of your “carbon footprint” constantly these days—so what is it exactly? And what does it mean to you, your business, and your efforts to create a greener lifestyle?

Your carbon footprint is the amount of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emitted as measured in tons per year. Thought of another way—it is the annual contribution to global climate change that a business, building, or person makes through its daily activities.

The daily activities that create carbon dioxide are:

•    the energy used to create all the good and services you use throughout the day
•    the transportation of people, raw materials and supplies,
•    the energy required to keep the lights, heat, A/C and machinery on,
•    the disposal or recycling of wastes
•    for businesses, the transport of the finished product to its intended customer, and;
•    the disposal of the packaging waste and the product at the end of its useful life.

Calculating a business or institution’s Carbon Footprint is complex, but calculating an individual’s Carbon Footprint is relatively simple. The first step to take to reduce your carbon footprint is to know just how big it is.  There are lots of great tools on the web to help.  You can visit www.carbonfund.org (under “Individuals”, look for “Carbon Calculator”)  or go to carbonneutral.org .

HOW TO REDUCE YOUR OWN CARBON FOOTPRINT
Now that you know the size of your carbon footprint, you can start to reduce it. Here is a quick list of some basic measures we all can take to make our footprint a little lighter on the planet. The numbers are approximate because everyone’s lifestyle is different. The list starts with smaller impacts and moves onto larger ones.

Read more...

By Mitch Kennedy, ND, LEED-AP

You hear of your “carbon footprint” constantly these days—so what is it exactly? And what does it mean to you, your business, and your efforts to create a greener lifestyle?

Your carbon footprint is the amount of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emitted as measured in tons per year. Thought of another way—it is the annual contribution to global climate change that a business, building, or person makes through its daily activities.

The daily activities that create carbon dioxide are:

•    the energy used to create all the good and services you use throughout the day
•    the transportation of people, raw materials and supplies,
•    the energy required to keep the lights, heat, A/C and machinery on,
•    the disposal or recycling of wastes
•    for businesses, the transport of the finished product to its intended customer, and;
•    the disposal of the packaging waste and the product at the end of its useful life.

Calculating a business or institution’s Carbon Footprint is complex, but calculating an individual’s Carbon Footprint is relatively simple. The first step to take to reduce your carbon footprint is to know just how big it is.  There are lots of great tools on the web to help.  You can visit www.carbonfund.org (under “Individuals”, look for “Carbon Calculator”)  or go to carbonneutral.org .

HOW TO REDUCE YOUR OWN CARBON FOOTPRINT
Now that you know the size of your carbon footprint, you can start to reduce it. Here is a quick list of some basic measures we all can take to make our footprint a little lighter on the planet. The numbers are approximate because everyone’s lifestyle is different. The list starts with smaller impacts and moves onto larger ones.

Read more...

 

By Heather Burns-DeMelo 

The exposure of pregnant women to air pollution can increase their risk of having low-birth-weight infants, according to a Yale study.

Researchers at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and School of Medicine found that the higher the level of exposure to nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), the greater the risk of having lower-weight infants.

The researchers investigated the exposure of pregnant women for 358,504 births from 1999 to 2002 in 15 Connecticut and Massachusetts counties.

Read on if you like, but before you get too depressed...do OneThing and feel good about taking a step toward a solution.

By Heather Burns-DeMelo

According to the Connecticut Climate Change website, "Your carbon footprint is a representation of the effect you, or your organization, have on the climate in terms of the total amount of greenhouse gases you produce (measured in units of carbon dioxide). Many of your actions generate carbon emissions, which contribute to accelerating global warming and climate change. By measuring your carbon footprint through such tools as the Safe Climate Carbon Calculator, you can get a better sense of what your individual impact is and which parts of your lifestyle deserve the greatest attention. Armed with such information you can more readily take effective action to shrink your carbon footprint, thereby minimizing your personal impact on the climate."

Students from around the world are making positive change at their schools by heading up school-wide recycling programs. Want to start one of your own?
Check out these tips from Treehugger.com

1. Find out who else in your school is passionate about recycling and is willing to help!

2. Decide what can be recycled in your school district. Items such as paper, plastic, printer cartridges, batteries or clothing are all fair game.

3. Form a recycling club to be responsible for the program.

4. Determine who will get the recyclables to the transfer station. Some potential candidates include custodians, parents, volunteers or in many areas the trash company or town itself.

5. Decide where to store your schools recyclables until transport.

6. Find out how many classroom, lounge and cafeteria recycling containers will be needed, and then raise money for their purchase.

7. Have committee or club members make presentations to each classroom about the importance of recycling.

8. Weigh and measure recyclables and post this information for the entire school to see to encourage more recycling.

9. Hold contests and competitions between grade levels or classrooms to see who can recycle the most.

10. Find fun things to do with the funds raised by collecting bottle-return money!

EARTH TALK
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: I have been alarmed at recent news about dangerous substances in kids’ toys shipped to the U.S. from China, though I doubt that such concerns are limited to Chinese products. What are the major issues associated with chemicals in child toys?     -- Carla M., Chicago, IL

Recent concerns surrounding toxic chemicals in children’s toys have focused on “phthalates” (pronounced THA-lates), a group of chemical compounds typically added to plastics to increase their softness and flexibility, and bisphenol A (BPA), a building block for polycarbonate plastic that is used primarily in shatter-resistant baby bottles. Phthalates are found in numerous industrial and consumer products, including plastic intravenous (IV) bags used in hospitals, fishing lures and nail polishes. One phthalate, diisononyl phthalate (DINP), is commonly used in the manufacture of soft vinyl products made for babies, such as bath books, rubber ducks and teething rings.

Studies have linked BPA to the disruption of hormone function in rats, and to increased breast and prostate cancer cell growth, early puberty and obesity in humans. Other studies have linked phthalates like DINP to rodent cancers and genital abnormalities, especially in males.

The city of San Francisco would have been the first U.S. jurisdiction to ban phthalates and BPA from children’s toys and feeding products under a “Stop Toxic Toys” bill signed by mayor Gavin Newsom in June 2006, but lawsuits backed by chemical and toy manufacturers (and filed by a coalition including the California Retailers Association, the California Grocers Association and the American Chemistry Council) stalled the initiative, which had been set to take effect December 1, 2006.

Then on October 15, 2007, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law AB 1108 (also known as the California Toxic Toys Bill), making California the first state in the country to ban the use of phthalates from children’s products. “We are thrilled that California is taking action to protect our kids from dangerous chemicals,” said Dan Jacobson, Legislative Director for Environment California, which co-sponsored the legislation along with the Breast Cancer Fund. “This bill is so important because as children’s minds and bodies go through the delicate processes of growing and developing, they are particularly vulnerable to chemicals that could affect proper development.” Read more...