Speaking at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, President Obama issued new proposals for issuing tax credits to renewable energy companies as a means of stimulating job creation. The President urged increasing the current funds already approved by the Congress totaling some 2.3 billion dollars.…
If there’s one clear cut hope for the future of energy, its that a completely clean and renewable source of energy, like the sun, could one day come to completely replace our current addiction to fossil fuels.…
Although it’d be easy to dismiss “The Lazy Environmentalist” as a simple product placement vehicle for Brita filters and GE CFLs, it can be an entertaining and informative show1. In this Sundance Channel series media personality Josh Dorfman tries to convince small business owners and hobbyists from all walks of life to adopt alternative products and techniques.…
The light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are becoming more and more common in traffic lights and are moving into streetlights.
LEDs produce three or four times more light per watt of electricity than standard incandescent lamps do, and they are more than 4 times as efficient as Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs, typically lasting up to 50,000 hours.…
A few weeks ago Paul Rogers of the Mercury News wrote that despite the general perception that the current administration having accomplished relatively little Obama has in fact made major strides in national environmental policy. Some examples not included in the article are: the significant tightening of the previously weak regulations surrounding non-conventionally raised livestock, and the FTC’s stepping up efforts to address greenwashing amidst increasing complaints
and problems such as the bogus “bamboo” textiles.
A New Scientist report highlights the dramatic differences between consumers’ perception of a company’s “greenness” and reality.
New Scientist investigated consumer perception via a 2008 Earthsense survey of consumer ratings, and compared those numbers to each company’s Trucost score, the estimated cost of its environmental impact as a percentage of its annual revenue.…
No, we didn’t get a new toilet. We converted our old one with a One2flush kit. Turning the handle one way makes a half flush and turning it the other makes a full flush.…
We had the season’s first real snowstorm this weekend, and we weren’t really prepared for it. I didn’t even know where our shovel was! We also didn’t have any salt for the front steps, so I took this opportunity to find out if we could get something that had less of an impact on the environment.…
New Scientist has an interesting article on the “Five eco-crimes we commit everyday.” Most are not very surprising, but the details are interesting, such as the fact that the western world wastes one third of its food!…
One of the first home improvements Rachel and I made when we purchased our condo here in Cambridge this spring was a solar hot water installation on our rooftop.
The system we had put in uses vacuum tubes, a newer, more efficient type of solar collector than the black box flat panels of old.…
