Green Options

Playing Call of Duty on your PSP is so much fun – but now when you are racking up energy expenses in order to keep things running. The best thing to do to keep enjoying your game play without increasing your electric bill due to numerous charge times is to buy a solar charger for your PSP.

There are many solar chargers out there, and it is recommended that you look up the different features of each one in order to [...]

Do you remember RecycleBank, the Philadelphia-based company that rewarded customers for recycling? I thought that was a great idea, and I’ve got a similar response to Earth Aid’s new rewards program for energy savings. Rolled out earlier this month in Washington, DC, Earth Aid offers a program to track your energy use and savings, and then to “pay” you for those savings through reward points that can be redeemed at partner companies.

In its press release for the launch of the rewards program, the company claims that its program “…creates a virtuous circle of local businesses providing incentives for households to save energy, and households re-circulating their savings on their utility bills into local businesses - benefiting both the local environment and the local economy.” All of this is on top of money actually saved by consumers cutting their energy use…

The European Union is on the cutting-edge of green technology; already ahead of many nations through its introduction a ban of incandescent light bulbs that began on September 1, 2009. The ban of these incandescent light bulbs has a goal of reducing region-wide energy costs through use of the more eco-friendly compact fluorescent light bulbs instead.

Sean Daily, Green Living Ideas’ Editor-in-Chief, talks with Ross Brouse, founder and owner of Solar Virtualization Technology Group (Solar VTG) and Solar VPS, about green web server hosting for [...]

It appears that our “New Economy” has made people take a good look at needs vs. wants.  These days, more people (as much as 1/3) feel that a dryer is no longer a necessity, rather its a luxury and an expensive one at that!

Line drying used to be the standard and we are trending toward that again (We’ve doubled the number of people who say the dryer is a luxury in the last three years).  Here’s how to fire your dryer which will result in lower energy bills (good for you and the planet) and happy clothes (the dryer is hard on clothing).

No matter the climate you live in, you can air dry clothing.  Read on to learn how to fight restrictive CC&R’s for  your right to dry and ways to circumvent such silly ordinances.

Building managers and environmental passers-by always scream when they see office lights on in the middle of the night, illuminating someone’s cubicle for hours when they’re not there. Ledalite’s Ergolight Controls System has been designed to take care of that problem, as well as increase office energy efficiency. It’s such a good solution, that it was recognized by the David Suzuki Foundation as one of their climate change solution case studies. Designed to help building designers and architects achieve LEED certification, depending on the set-up, customers can decrease their energy consumption by up to 80%.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on Friday, May 1, at SolveClimate.

It is time for President Obama to mobilize us all to help build the new energy economy.

He has begun shaping the public policies we need. Now he needs to launch an Apollo project, interstate highway project, war effort and Marshall Plan all rolled into one.

For starters, he should call on us all to pick up our caulking guns and enlist in the war against energy waste – a national clean energy surge.

The potential for savings through efficiency improvements and conservation is enormous.

As Obama noted during the campaign, the United States is only the 22nd most energy-efficient major economy in the world right now. With very few exceptions, every vehicle, home, power plant, factory, community and state is hemorrhaging energy, energy dollars and greenhouse gas emissions.

Consider just a few examples:

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.

We want to start the New Year off with an eco-bang, and so we’re launching a new Green Home Contest. Low Impact Living and Joie de Vivre Hotels challenge you to make your home as green as you can! We’re going to reward the greenest home of all with a luxurious 3-night stay at the very environmentally-friendly Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. More on the [...]

Plasma TVs and LCD TVs account for 10-percent of the power needed to power Southern California. The Golden State hopes to ban inefficient televisions, greatly reducing usage during peak viewing times.

Congress might have finally moved the one-hour “fall back in the fall” time switch past Halloween so young trick-or-treaters don’t have to roam the streets in the dark, but it’s time to chuck the idea of Daylight Saving Time altogether. Why? Because it wastes energy and creates pollution.

The concept has been around since the days of Benjamin Franklin, who saw it as a way to reduce candle tallow consumption for household lighting. But while Daylight Saving Time, or DST, might have made sense purely from a lighting perspective in the 18th Century, it doesn’t work in a 21st Century society that also uses electricity for heating and cooling, according to research by Matthew J. Kotchen and Laura E. Grant of the National Bureau of Economic Research.