Green Options

Zerofootprint has created a new “TalkingPlug” that will help you to better monitor the energy usage of different appliances and electronics. How? By making your electrical sockets smarter.

Zerofootprint already helps corporations and governments in evaluating and reducing their carbon emissions through various methods. It also helps households through innovative technologies such as this one. This new TalkingPlug is for corporations or households (or anyone with electrical sockets) and will have an initial price tag of about $50. The price may go down considerably if it can make the product on a larger scale.

How does it work? What are its advantages compared to Google’s PowerMeter and other similar up and coming technologies?

A new report ranks ten leading world cities on their greenhouse gas emissions. It also examines how and why the emissions differ.

As the report says, over 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Leading cities of the world, global cities, are the places where greenhouse gas emissions really need to be cut. The greenest city from the study is Barcelona and the worst is Denver.

Three days ago, I blogged about the EPA’s Green Power Partners site, which lists the top green power users in the country. That post got more traffic in a day than my posts normally get in a month. That was very exciting for me. People clearly care about this issue. At least for me, when all things are equal a company’s commitment to environmental sustainability can make the difference between one product choice and another. I hope it does for others, too.

Let me build on that by saying that there is even more good news than this. Did you notice that the Green Power Partners site also has Top 20 lists by category? These include college & university, local government, retail, on-site, and printers.

What’s interesting here is printers. This is a highly unglamorous category. Why would the EPA care about commercial printing and packaging companies? For the same reasons that anyone interested in environmental sustainability should care about them.

1. Printing is the third largest manufacturing industry in the country

2. Printing is a very aggressive with environmental sustainability, including its use of green power.

Put these together and you have the third largest manufacturing industry making a major move to sustainability. When not just individual companies but an entire industry embraces green technologies and processes, it makes a real difference. That’s exciting!

Yet, where’s all the buzz? E-media! With its 24-hour-a day, 7-days-a-week power usage, its ubiquitous energy-using devices from desktop computers to laptops to servers to cellphones, PDAs, and every other mobile device that now blanket the planet and drain the power grid. Meanwhile, because printing uses — dare I say the word — paper, it’s the bad guy?

Even after doing this for years, I still get a little flustered with the requisite Earth Day post. No, it’s not a matter of saying “Screw Earth Day” (though I get that…); rather, it’s a recognition that there’s so much content out there that I’m unsure what I can add.  So, rather than taking a feeble stab at something, I’ll make my contribution by sharing some of the good stuff I’ve seen around the web and blogosphere today.

• Green Living Ideas points to a couple of new films that may be worth checking out: Disney’s Earth, and A Sea Change.
• Cleantechnica profiles a family that’s tweeting its energy use today. Triplepundit covers this one, also.
• Speaking of “Screw Earth Day,” Grist wishes all a “Happy F’ing Earth Day!”

Conservationists have long been uncomfortable with the environmental impact of the mountains of catalogs, credit card offers, coupons, and other direct mailings that accumulate daily in their mailbox, or on the floor near the front door.

Sure, we can recycle all that junk mail, but that process creates an additional layer of energy inputs from collection, sorting, processing and repurposing, to say nothing of the energy and resources needed to make the mail in the first place. Fortunately—in the United States at least—there are several new services that allow people to take back their mailboxes by blocking catalogs and other junk mail from being delivered.

But when it comes to junk mail in your email inbox, even the best “spam” filters will let a few slip by on occasion. But not everyone uses a spam filter and the environmental impact of all that virtual junk mail is now rivaling that of its papery cousin, according to a new study by McAfee (pdf).

I’m all for clean energy. I think solar panels are sweet, and wind turbines are über cool. The problem for me is the cost.

While it may make sense for some people to add these to their house, for most of us, they’re simply out of the question. Our budget doesn’t include ten or twenty thousand dollars for future energy costs.

The easiest way to go green with our energy use is to simply reduce our consumption. Instead of adding megawatts, let’s focus on “negawatts” - cutting our usage through conscious energy management. Most houses were not built with energy efficiency in mind, but there are some easy, low-cost hacks for the home that will help you to cut costs and lower your energy footprint. Some municipalities even offer rebates to cover some of the costs.

Printed fabric can be fun for most any projects. But sometimes having a nice solid really helps put your design over the top. Marcus Fabrics offers a small line of organic cotton solids perfect for home decor projects. The line is 100% certified organic cotton and is dyed with eco-friendly dyes.

Oasis Canvas comes in 21 bright colors. Each color bound to be perfect for any quilting or sewing work in progress. The jewel tones seem to really pop.

Understanding that environmental stewardship is not only good for your craft projects, Marcus Fabrics is also turning their sites on they way they do business.

Note: This article is part of EcoWorldly’s series on food and agriculture around the world. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, this week EcoWorldly writers are exploring environmental issues related to bringing food from the farm to your dinner plate.

Sellers of organic products all say the same thing: their products are better for our health and for the environment. So if you’re planning on chowing on organic cranberries, yams and free-range turkeys this Thanksgiving, rest assured that your meal is good for you and Mother Earth on a different level. Organic farming also uses less water than commercial farming methods.

Large quantities of water are used for farming around the world, and some environmentalists argue this has contributed to the global water crisis. According to PeopleandPlanet.net, over two-thirds of the freshwater used by humans annually around the world is used for crop irrigation. In Africa, for example, the Nile River loses 90 percent of its water for irrigation purposes before it reaches the Mediterranean Sea. In Asia, which contains two-thirds of the world’s irrigated land, 85 percent of available water is used for irrigation. And in California, 80 percent of the water withdrawn for state water projects is used for agriculture. The remaining 20 percent is used for residential, commercial, institutional and industrial use, according to a report released by the environmental research and advocacy group Pacific Institute.

At a Tuesday White House press conference that focused mostly on the current economic downturn, President Bush indicated that he has no intention of calling on Americans to conserve gasoline.

A new report from the United States Energy Information Agency predicts significant increases in word wide energy consumption as a result of economic growth.

The accumulation of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere can be a difficult concept to visualize (maybe something to do with the fact that CO2 is invisible). So if you’re a visual learner like me, you’ll want to watch this short from the Energy Saving Campaign [45 seconds].