Kill the electric vampires!

New York Times: "According to the Energy Department, vampire gadgets account for about 25 percent of total residential electricity consumption in the U.S." There is a great gadget. Check out the original article in the New York Times here

Basically, whenever you standby or turn off your computer, it turns off everything else connected to this power strip. Almost like magic! Anyway, I want one, and for $28, it will pay for itself in just over a year in energy savings (not even counting the benefits to Mother Earth).

It's gadgets like these that make me think there's really hope for a responsible marriage of technology and sustainable living.

Women's Earth Alliance

My good friend Kelly Blaser is giving a day-long Mother's Day benefit for this organization so I wanted to mention it here.

CF bulbs with dimmers and Facbook "leaves"

As you may know, fluorescent lights don't work with dimmer switches. For those of you who have resisted switching to CF lighting because you just have to have "mood lighting", there's hope! My friend Jim just emailed me a link to a site that sells compact fluorescent bulbs that actually work with dimmers, and go all the way down to 10% of their normal brightness. The pricing for a 60-watt equivalent is under $10 if you buy more than six. If you're interested, click here. You might also want to check out greenelectricalsupply.com.

Also, my friend Kelly emailed me a facebook app (yes, I signed up, with great trepidation) called "leaves". It is a kind of scorecard for eco-action each of us has taken. You can collect points and give gifts, or something to that affect. At any rate, I like the idea of exchanging information on things we're each doing "differently", so I signed up. My facebook page is here.

Solar on the road

How hard and/or expensive would it be to make a car out of passive solar material and use the current to charge a battery for accelerating from 0-3 mph? Or 0-10 mph? Just think of all the cars in CA. I did some digging in the US Census site quickfacts.census.gov and estimate there were around 24,000,000 cars in CA in 2006. If we put cheap passive solar on the roof and hood of each car (forget the trunk) and assume 30 sq ft of surface area for each car, we get a whopping 720,000,000 sq ft (about 16,000 acres) of "free" solar collectors! Adding cheap passive solar to all cars in California would probably generate enough power to offset the CO2 emissions of 1 or 2 percent of that state's cars. Anyone want to do the analysis and post it here?

Some simple ideas to try

At times these actions seem so simple they feel dumb, but here is a list of ideas:

• Unplug your phone and DSL router if you're going away for a long weekend (we just did this).
• Make sure your car's tires are properly inflated. Better still, use Nitrogen rather than aire, as it will last longer before needing to be topped off.
• Seek out non-stop flights. Most of the fuel is burned during take-off, so avoid stopovers (for a bunch of reasons!). Tip: JetBlue now has a non-stop from San Jose to Boston.
• When you're too busy at work to eat at the cafeteria, why use a cardboard takeout box? Consider taking your lunch back to your desk on a plate and returning it the following day. Ask for some tin foil if you think you'll want to keep some leftovers for later. Re-use the tin foil. I did this last week, though admittedly I felt rather strange driving around with a ketchup-covered plate on my passenger's seat!
• Buy biodegradable bags e.g. Biobags Thanks to Corinna for this tip. They make everything from kitchen and bathroom bags to poop bags for your dog. Arf!
  
• Check craigslist.com for free stuff before going out and buying something.
• Also, consider shopping at Salvation Army, etc, for generic things like kitchen odds and ends.
  

Practicing less stuff

Since my last post, I've had many an opportunity to use less stuff in my day-to-day life. The most obvious being the casual use of paper cups when buying a cup of coffee (will I ever give that up?). I've taken to keeping a single paper cup in my car so that, in the event I want to grab a cup on the go, and don't have my travel mug, I can bring it in with me. When I'm done, I rinse it out and put it back in the car. Should last at least a month or so.

Lisa and I got on a plane to LA and I told them I'd love a cup of coffee, but only if they could bring it in a ceramic mug. Believe it or not, they did! The flight attendant grabbed one from first class and brought it back to my seat. And you just know it tastes better when it's in ceramic mug.

If you are local to Santa Cruz and are reading this, stop by our house and we'll give you a copy of that book I recommended, The Better World Shopping Guide.

My friend Joe Johnston, who has been working with Pachamama since October of last year, sent me in invite to a very cool new website: change.org. Check it out! It is a comprehensive set of web-based tools for connecting individuals and groups working on global change. I have yet to dig in deeply, but they clearly have a good team working there, so I expect good things.

Get this book. Use it.

The best resource we received at this workshop was a book about responsible shopping. Face it, we're Americans and we shop. But we don't have to shop at stores that have mastered the concept of externalized costs. Go out and get a copy of The Better World Shopping Guide: Every Dollar Makes a Difference. It's a pocket-size reference based on the credo "every dollar makes a difference". Quickly look up which companies are operating in the green, and which ones really stink, before you go out and buy a pint of ice cream, dog food, cosmetics, or a new car. It ranks them on the following factors: Environment, Human Rights, Community Involvement, Animal Protection, Corporate Crime, Discrimination, Employee Treatment, and Philanthropy. Be sure to read the beginning: it is filled with vital information and inspires you to use it.