Green Options

Puff (a car exhaust monitoring device) is attached near the exhaust pipe of your vehicle. Its color changes dynamically, visualizing the amount of pollution your car is producing. Green indicates the lowest rate of pollution, red the highest. Karolina Sobecka, the artist/designer of Puff, explains: In this project, design is used as a strategy to explore the overlap between the material and immaterial worlds and spur discussion on the hidden social and psychological mechanisms behind the cultural use of accessories [...]

A website recently delineated a simple list of 10 ways that you can reduce your environmental footprint through changes in your food choices.

The list is fairly straightforward and involves changes that any person in any country can make to reduce their carbon footprint.  Substantive facts for each item are also laid out and explained along with a brief description of how the change can affect the environment in a positive manner.

Here the list of changes you can make to your food choices to reduce your environmental footprint:

Being a Missourian, it is particularly nice to see this Midwestern, conservative state step up to the green plate at times. Recently, a Missouri tax holiday was announced for the purchase of energy-efficient home appliances.</

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported:

From April 19-25, the state is waving its 4.225 percent sales tax on washing machines, refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers, water heaters, furnaces and air conditioners if the new appliance is Energy Star-certified. Nine counties and just over 50 cities also are waving their sales taxes for the week.

North Carolina church goes green and holds to their traditions of cherishing the Earth. How’d they do it?

Blackberry Storm and Apple iPhone move aside there is a new touch-screen cell phone coming out that is looking to reduce energy and material waste, the Samsung Blue Earth.  Samsung has been working on its image as an eco-friendly company under their campaign “The Blue Earth Dream: Eco-living with SAMSUNG Mobile” and now they definitely have up the anty.  In a press release from the 16th of February, Samsung introduced their new cell phone, Blue Earth.  As a geeky mom who loves the idea of eco-friendly technology, the Blue Earth definitely has caught my eye.

Dubai has plans to build the world’s first rotating building with independently moving floors. What’s more, plans call for it to be completely energy independent. The self-powered Dynamic Tower will have revolving floors, with each one powered by wind turbines located in between the floor. This will lead to the building looking radically different every time you look at it (sort of like a constantly evolving Dali architecture).

Cree Inc. will be fitting Wedge 5 of the Pentagon with over 4,000 LED light fixtures.The U.S. Department of Energy said that LED lighting saved the country about 8.7 trillion watt hours in 2007. This is out of the 765 trillion watt hours used for lighting in the United States.

Imagine a PC unit that costs only $70 and uses as little as 1 watt of power. Sound too good to be true? Not anymore, thanks to the innovation of a California-based company called NComputing. The company creates access devices that have no CPU, memory, or moving parts. Instead, the devices connect to a central shared computer that uses NComputing’s virtualization software to share its excess processing power.

The Kanguru Eco Drive ($80) is one of the longest lasting, inexpensive to operate external hard drives currently available according to the company.

It’s also more environmentally friendly than most. Using it’s patented Power Saving mode that has three settings - Power Down, Standby and Idle, it automatically gauges drive usage to reduce energy consumption and prolong the life of hard drive. In addition to the power saving modes, it also [...]

One of the hardest things about camping is leaving everything the way you found it. Well, Bushnell is trying to make one part of that as simple as possible with the Bushnell BackTrack GPS Navigation System that lets you digitally mark your starting location and find your way back without leaving a trail of bread crumbs to follow.

In Solvang, California nestled among old oaks and the sycamore grove, is the Alisal Guest Ranch, a working dude ranch opened to the public in 1946 for a little outdoor R&R. This historic property has played host to celebrities, presidents and local fans for decades. John F. Kennedy and Jackie Onassis even spent their honeymoon at the ranch, which backs up to the well-known Reagan property.