Bats are wonderful creatures, though they are often misunderstood. Bats are especially good at helping to control insects. Some bats eat as many as 500 to 1000 insects in a single hour. So having a few flitting around can be a wonderful way to reduce the nuisance of insects in your yard without resorting to chemicals and poisons.
To encourage bats to settle near your house and bring their insect
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Refurbish fits in nicely with the three 'R's (reduce, reuse, recycle) and can bring new life to an otherwise useless item. Before buying new, see if you can revamp something you already have. Or turn someone else's trash into your treasure.
Want some inspiration?
Refurbish fits in nicely with the three 'R's (reduce, reuse, recycle) and can bring new life to an otherwise useless item. Before buying new, see if you can revamp something you already have. Or turn someone else's trash into your treasure.
Want some inspiration?
From the feedback we've received and the numbers we've seen, Weekly DIY has turned out to be a really popular series on the Green Options blog. While the series' coordinator Ryan and the writers are always on the hunt for new green DIY projects to feature here, we're pretty sure that you've got a DIY that you'd like to share with the Green Options community. Now you can!
We've created a submission
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Photo: Utah Biodiesel SupplyEven with the retail price of biodiesel hovering close to the price of regular diesel ("dino-diesel" to us bio-enthusiasts) in many areas, a growing group of DIYers are making the fuel from scratch in their own garages and back yards.
Homebrewing biodiesel has many advantages: it usually costs well under $1 a gallon to produce, it eliminates trips to the gas station, and it makes a hell [...]
Gary Reysa and his wife cut their energy use in half with their self-designed “Half Plan.” A retired airplane product development engineer from Boeing, Gary continues to satisfy his mechanical and creative curiosity with an array of efficiency and renewable energy projects at his home near Bozeman, MT.
I spoke with Gary by phone on April 5th.
Green Options: Why did you decide to cut your energy use in
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Started by two former Detroiters living in North Carolina, The Stanley Family Lodge is the brainchild of husband-and-wife team Jeremie and Melissa Stajda. Inspired by the abundance of wilderness around their new home, the duo was strongly influenced to change their lifestyle for the better.
“We both finally committed to practicing healthy and ethical habits through vegetarianism and veganism. We began recycling, limiting our consumption of new materials, and making a strong effort to be
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This weekend we got the first tantalizing taste of spring as the weather was clear and bright and temperatures rose well above freezing for the first time in months. Snow melted (though not entirely yet), and started the thoughts of summer gardens in mind. But nighttime temperatures are still falling below freezing, and it's far too early to put plants in the ground, unless you provide a little assistance.
If your
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When most people hear the word "solar," they automatically think "expensive." Gary Reysa, the publisher of BuildItSolar.com, has demonstrated again and again that this doesn't have to be the case; with the right (easily-available) materials and a little time and elbow grease, almost anyone can add useful, valuable solar features to their home or other building.
Gary's $350 Solar Heater plan has gotten quite a bit of play both on- and off-line
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Each day, millions of Americans sit down to a meal, and coat it with a variety of condiments that have their origins in the Southwest of North America. Salsa and hot sauce are two of the favorites, and are a mainstay at dinner tables and restaurants across the country and the world. However the traditional salsa or hot sauce is a mass-produced mess, loaded with preservatives, “natural” and artificial flavors, and other chemicals
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Readers may remember my first Adventures in Homebrew, of several weeks ago. Then, in a somewhat bumbling and hapless fashion, a friend and I cooked up some homebrewed beer, and set it to ferment in a large glass jug. Now it's time to bottle the fermented concoction, and set it on its final path to being real beer.
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