If you spent any time as a child in the 80’s, you probably spent a more than a few afternoons longing for your own flying DeLorean, hover-board, and Marty McFly Nikes.
Unfortunately, you still can’t have any of those things (although the Nikes did appear on eBay, briefly, and sold for $1300 US), but maybe you can have something better: a real, honest-to-goodness Mr. Fusion!
The “Mr. Fusion” reactor mounted to the back of Back to the Future’s famous DeLorean hovercar produced the car’s fuel by extracting chemical energy from common household garbage. While the 1985 movie version of Mr. Fusion put out enough power to juice the good Doctor Brown’s flux capacitor all the way to the year 2015, the 2008 version will probably only get a few miles down the road.
Between the barbecues, national holidays and beach vacations, cold beers become a necessity in many households over the summer months. As we pay more attention to the way our food is grown, harvested and transported, perhaps we owe it to the environment to be as vigilant with our beer. But how easy is it to find environmentally-conscientious breweries?
Beer brewing is not the most environmentally-friendly of activities, particularly regarding water usage. On average, six gallons of water are required to brew one gallon of beer - a ratio that must be drastically reduced in dry areas. Wastewater, carbon emissions and huge energy generators also contribute to the environmental sins of the industry.
But more breweries are taking notice of the eating public’s environmental awakening. While the biggest multinational breweries are beginning to make structural changes that promote sustainability, most of the greenest beers are (unsurprisingly) local and regional ones. Microbreweries are great agents of change because they interact with the communities that surround them. Their smaller size and community feeling make them more amenable to change, so it is easier to petition them and request more sustainable practices. Below are the top five eco-minded, North American mid-sized breweries:
Homemade ethanol guru Floyd S. Butterfield and Silicon Valley entrepreneur and innovator Thomas J. Quinn want to see you making ethanol in your backyard. Their creation, called the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler, is a stacked washer-dryer sized reactor that can convert sugar into ethanol for (they claim) $1.00 per gallon.
Before you get too excited, please note that the unit is probably too expensive for your next block party, unless you’ve got an extra $9,995 lying around somewhere. Fortunately, state and Federal tax credits can halve this, but that still keeps it out of the price range of the average American.
Most of us are at least vaguely familiar with biodiesel, but how much do we really know?
While biodiesel is easily the most popular alternative fuel available, it’s commonly misunderstood or misrepresented by inaccurate information. Since the most frequent question I get is, “So what exactly is biodiesel, anyway?“, I decided to write a tome covering all the basics—a one stop shop for all your biodiesel- related questions.
It’s been exactly one year since I published the first Biodiesel Mythbuster on GreenOptions.com, and its popularity made a sequel inevitable. By way of a short introduction, here’s what I wrote last year:
Trying to learn how to make biodiesel, or interested in seeing how it’s done? It always helps to get a visual, and you may not be aware that there are currently enough biodiesel videos on YouTube to develop an entire college course on the subject. I’ve thrown out a representative sample, just to give you an idea of what’s available.
You’ll notice a lot of these videos utilize a homemade biodiesel reactor called the “appleseed” reactor. This is the simplest and cheapest way to build a biodiesel processing facility in your garage. The plans for it can be found here.
I can’t believe his mother lets him do this in the kitchen, and where are his gloves?! (I have a particular affiliation for the video, though, since I had the same old truck.)
Hands up, all who enjoy a good beer from time to time! But what about the energy consumed making and transporting all of those glass bottles and (for the rest of us—who are we kidding?) aluminum cans? Mining the aluminum used for cans is an even more environmentally-dubious endeavor. Sure, everyone who’s anyone recycles. But you can do one better than recycling your beer bottles and cans: reduce the bottles you need and reuse
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 [...]
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.
Last week, in an effort to simplify my alcohol supply chain, a friend and I decided to try our hands at homebrewing beer. Given that there are very few (read: one) microbreweries out here in the California desert, most of my beer has to travel quite a long ways to reach me. Cutting down on carbon output from transportation is one of my motivating factors in homebrewing. In addition, it allows me
If you spent any time as a child in the 80’s, you probably spent a more than a few afternoons longing for your own flying DeLorean, hover-board, and Marty McFly Nikes.
Homemade 
Trying to learn how to make 
Hands up, all who enjoy a good beer from time to time! But what about the energy consumed making and transporting all of those glass bottles and (for the rest of us—who are we kidding?) aluminum cans? Mining the aluminum used for cans is an even more environmentally-dubious endeavor. Sure, everyone who’s anyone recycles. But you can do one better than recycling your beer bottles and cans: reduce the bottles you need and reuse 
Photo: Utah 
Readers may remember my first 
Last week, in an effort to simplify my alcohol supply chain, a friend and I decided to try our hands at homebrewing beer. Given that there are very few (read: one) microbreweries out here in the California desert, most of my beer has to travel quite a long ways to reach me. Cutting down on carbon output from transportation is one of my motivating factors in homebrewing. In addition, it allows me 
