I was invited to take a look at a website on saving energy. Being interested in that topic, what could I do but agree?
I went ahead and signed up with NeutralExistence.com. The idea is to stop global warming by helping people to decrease their carbon emissions. Registration was easy, and there are both free and paid options. Probably the hardest part about registration was thinking about what I pay in electrical and natural gas bills. Those have been on autopay for a long time, and while I take care of bills that need check sent in, my husband tracks the autopay ones, so I hadn’t the foggiest notion off the top of my head.
One of the first places I went was the forum. This is a new site, so these aren’t swamped with people, but not dead either. Registration for this was separate from registration for the rest of the site. I hope they can integrate these soon, since that would make a lot more sense, but I know getting databases to work together can be difficult.
The basic idea of the site, however, is that of a social site, rather like other popular social sites. You have a profile page, you can blog on your site, and so forth.
They have a lot of plans for this site, and it should be interesting to watch them grow. One plan is to have a rating system for how much people have reduced their emissions.
The site is quite new, and there aren’t a lot of members. On the other hand, that means if you want to say hello to me over there, I’m not that hard to find.
I love seeing companies make an effort towards going green. Yahoo has been impressing me lately, starting with their commitment towards being carbon neutral, and now their new Yahoo! Green site.
The new site emphasizes how easy it is to go green just a little bit. They aren’t asking for huge things right away. They have a walk through of a green home to give you ideas as to how you can save energy at home. They encourage people to make a plan to commit to using less energy. (more…)
This carbon neutral thing is really taking off with online companies. DreamHost, who hosts some of my websites, including this one, has gone carbon neutral.
They started this as of April 20, and they took a lot into consideration. In figuring their carbon production, they considered a great deal:
It means we’ve calculated our carbon footprint. Our footprint represents the impact of everything that DreamHost uses and leaves behind in the course of our daily work. All of the resources that we use - paper in the office, electricity for our 1300+ servers, even the gas in our cars that bring us to the office
Pretty good thinking. I like that they didn’t skip that employees have to get there.
So how are they as a website host? (more…)
I find the idea of going carbon neutral quite interesting. It’s certainly gaining in popularity. I just hope it’s doing as much as its proponents say.
Webcity Web Hosting Australia has just gone carbon neutral, going through the Greenfleet program. Essentially, that means they’re having trees planted to completely offset the carbon production related to their carbon emissions.
This is a big company in Australia, so I’m quite pleased to see this happen. Be nice to watch more companies choose to think about the mark they leave on this world.
As you probably know, air conditioners are real energy hogs when it comes to cooling your home. And with summer coming up fast, now is a good time to get some ceiling fans installed if you don’t have enough of them yet.
Farreys.com asked me to come over and take a look at their ceiling fan offers. That’s an easy thing to do, because I love ceiling fans. Farreys has a nice selection of ceiling fan specials for those who want a nice looking ceiling fan, something better than the base model from Home Depot, yet not break the bank.
I find my ceiling fan effective enough that even where I live, in a part of San Diego county that regularly gets over 100 degrees during the summer, I hardly ever need to turn on the air conditioner. And it’s only in one room. I’d love to have more, but we rent and so the one is it. Keeping the blinds closed and as many lights off as possible during the day, combined with just allowing myself to adapt to warmer temperatures, does the rest. (more…)
