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.
Some things are easy for me – I work at home, so I drive a lot less than other people do. Recycling is easy in my area, as we have the single container system – no sorting!

But other things are hard or impossible, as we rent our home. Can’t do home improvements if you don’t own the place, but believe me, if we owned this place there would be some changes, most especially in my son’s room, which is by far the hottest in summer and coldest in winter.

If you take their green pledge, your efforts go toward a competition for the “greenest city,” which will receive a fleet of hybrid taxis. You also get credits for what you do, and a free compact fluorescent bulb. You get one for completing an activity and you can get more for every 500 credits you earn by doing other activities on their site.

All in all, it’s a great way to encourage people to think about the small ways they can go green. It really doesn’t have to involve spending tons of money.

Technorati Tags: yahoo green, environment

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?

Pretty good. I’ve had occasional downtime issues with them, and come close to leaving a few times. But in the end they have always gotten back on track, and the amount of disc space and bandwidth I get, along with being able to host as many sites as I like is quite wonderful, especially for the price.

I host with a couple companies (keeping from having all eggs in one basket), and I’ve been overall satisfied with this company. They’re not perfect, but they have a blog so that you can keep track of known problems, and an interface so that you can report problems you notice on your own, and yes, I’ve used it.

Another great thing – they let me offer you a promo code if you’d like to try them out yourself. Use the code 2GETSTARTED to get a $50 discount.

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.

If this summer gets as hot as it did last year, I may even try taking some of the old cardboard moving boxes out of the garage and putting them in the windows. It looks ugly from the outside, and is a bit of a pain to take down when the day cools off enough to open the windows, but they make another layer to keep the heat outside.

As summer approaches, just try minimizing the use of your air conditioner. If you give your body time you can adapt to hot weather and feel comfortable in it. This may be more difficult if you spend all day in an office with the thermostat set to 72 degrees, but if you can manage it you will enjoy not needing to turn on that AC so much.

And don’t forget to use your ceiling fans.

I love to travel. Most people do. Seeing new people or people you love, travelling to someplace other than home is just a lot of fun.

Unfortunately it’s not all that environmentally friendly. Travel can produce a lot of carbon.

I’m not against all travel. Taking a trip to a new place means seeing new things and maybe learning about a different way of life, if you travel to someplace not like where you live. It helps keep us connected to the rest of the world and to realize why living a more environmentally friendly lifestyle is important.

There are ways to make your traveling plans more environmentally friendly. It won’t work for every trip, but you do what you can. Consider traveling by train. If that won’t work, consider buying carbon offsets. Expedia has partnered with TerraPass to make it easier for you to buy carbon offsets to match your travel. It’s not perfect, as offsetting is still in its infancy, but it’s certainly better than nothing.

You can also use Sustainable Travel as a resource. They help you to choose environmentally responsible travel options. I’ve been wandering through their site. I love the concept. They have some great resources to help you find the trip that will work for you. Their search could use a little work, as it didn’t stick to the region I specified when I tried it, but still a great concept.

Technorati Tags: sustainable travel, eco-travel, carbon offsets, green travel

I’m a big fan of jewelry. I worked my way through college at a jewelry store. But I am well aware that it is not exactly environmentally friendly. In fact, it often isn’t all that good to the people doing the mining; hence all the talk about conflict diamonds.

But I did just run across a rather interesting website called greenKarat. They use recycled gold in their jewelry.

Their store isn’t very big, but the concept is very interesting. They even have a ring you can have made from slices of the pebble of your choosing.

They have the option of adding a voluntary carbon tax to your purchases. It’s an interesting concept but I would have to read more to really understand the impact of choosing to pay it. They use the money to support projects which adhere to The Gold Standard. The project which they are supporting may change, so I won’t list it here.

I do like seeing businesses try to decrease the damage they do to the environment. If jewelry were in the budget now I know where I’d be looking. Had a lot of fun going through their catalog anyhow. They also do custom jewelry, which is very tempting as I’ve had some ideas floating around in my mind for at least 10 years.

Someday, when the budget permits….

Technorati Tags: environmentally responsible, fine jewelry, recycled gold