Category Archives: Environmentally Friendly

Recycling Myths

Recycling is one of the things people think of first when they think about being environmentally friendly. In some ways that’s a pity, as reduce and reuse really should come first, but recycling is nonetheless important, and one of the easiest for the government to encourage both individuals and businesses to do.

Recycling has improved greatly these past several years, but it’s still not great. Far more could be recycled, especially when it comes to paper. It is still easier in many areas to throw paper in the regular trash, whether you’re at home, work or out and about.

Myths about recycling abound, as many people don’t really think carefully about it.

One is that recycling is hard. This one really depends on where you live. Where I live it is ridiculously easy for the materials that are accepted. One bin, no sorting required. Other places require sorting, but do provide the bins. It’s not that common anymore for recycling to be difficult.

Some also claim that recycling takes up just as much energy as using new materials. Continue reading →

Greener and Greener with Yahoo!

yahoo green plan

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. Continue reading →

The Trouble with Biofuels

These past few weeks have been hectic, and I haven’t been blogging much. But I think I’m going to start doing better with any luck. Being a stay at home mom isn’t all soap operas and bon bons, after all. Sometimes it’s running around and wondering where the day went.

Ok, now I’ll get serious about this post. I read an interesting post over on Tree Hugger about the dangers of biofuels. This is a topic I’ve been reading more and more about. It’s always a pity to see what had been such a promising technology turn out to be not so green after all.

So what’s the problem?

Mostly the trouble is how biofuels are grown. They’re pretty popular in countries with few resources, and virgin land is often stripped for farmland to grow crops for biofuels. Sometimes the land is cleared by burning, releasing more carbon than the biofuels will save for a long time. Then there are food crops being made into biofuels as well, raising prices. Continue reading →

Now That’s a Cool Refrigerator!

It’s not often you can get me excited about an appliance. They’re nice and useful, generally speaking, but not exciting. But when I saw the Sub-Zero PRO-48 over on Hippyshopper, I had to take a look. Any refrigerator that is rated as using less electricity than a 100 watt lightbulb is pretty interesting in my book.

I must say I like many of the design features. LEDs make a lot of sense for lighting. And it manages to have those little luxuries like a built in water filter, ice maker, two compressors and three evaporators. And I like how they have the produce drawers separate from the rest of the refrigerator. That actually makes sense to me that you can have different foods stored separately like that. I wonder how much that does for efficiency?

It’s also quite simply huge. 884 liters capacity.

I will admit I’m not a big fan of the stainless steel look, though. It just looks cold and commercial to me. I like my appliances to look like they’re a part of my kitchen, not something that belongs in a professional kitchen.

We won’t discuss the price of this beast, of course. Suffice it to say that it goes far beyond most people’s budget… more than some cars, in fact.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Disposal of Fluourescent Bulbs

I’ve been considering going to compact fluorescent bulbs for a while, but the disposal issue has bothered me for a while. They have mercury in them, so they are more hazardous to just throw out. But I didn’t know how to handle it.

But there’s a story on one of my local news station’s website about how we’re supposed to handle them. I actually hadn’t been aware that in San Diego it is against the law to throw out fluorescent bulbs. For city residents, the landfill has a hazardous material disposal site where you can make a Saturday appointment to get rid of your bulbs.

But I’m not within San Diego limits. Fortunately, it turns out that Ikea does fluorescent bulb recycling too. Now this is not exactly convenient to me, as they’re at least a half hour drive away if traffic is good. But I certainly like that they offer this service.

I’d love to see other retail stores offer this kind of service. Walmart, Target and Home Depot immediately come to mind as places that sell the bulbs. Be very handy if they helped with the disposal too. Continue reading →