How To Choose A Safe Reusable Water Bottle

How To Choose A Safe Reusable Water Bottle from The Good Human explains how to select a reusable water bottle and why that choice matters to you and the environment.

Beautiful Wind Turbines

Image by clearbrian via FlickrI previously posted a number of times about implementing wind energy. These Beautiful Wind Turbines illustrate that wind turbines can be attractive as well as productive additions to the environment.

Thanks to topsurf for the heads up on this site.

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Penn & Teller Expose Bottled Water

Penn & Teller reveal the truth about bottled water. (Language Advisory)

Part 1


Part 2


Earlier post: Thirst for Bottled Water

Thanks to Tor Erling for pointing me to this video content.

Thirst for Bottled Water

This is an issue I've been concerned about for some time. I have gotten reusable bottles that I fill at home. I've tried to convince friends to do the same (success limited). After all, most bottled water is just somebody else's tap water, nothing special.

Thirst for bottled water unleashes flood of environmental concerns - USATODAY.com

Recycling Energy

Energy recycling is a relatively new process that recovers energy from heat that previously has just drifted away into the air such as the steam that escapes from the cooling towers at a generating station.

According to Tom Casten, who is chairman of Recycled Energy Development, a company that works to capture waste heat from industrial clients and uses it to produce electricity, two-thirds of the fuel burned to generate electricity is lost in the process, mostly as waste heat.

"Recent EPA and DOE studies suggest U.S. industries waste enough heat to generate an estimated 200,000 megawatts of power — nearly 20 percent of what this nation uses. That's enough electricity to replace up to 400 coal-fired power plants." (1)

At the big European-owned ArcelorMittal steel mill in East Chicago, IN, energy recycling creates about half of the electricity it uses each day.

In northern Europe energy recycling is much more common than it is here in the US with some countries generating 35% or more of their electricity this way. The US generates about 8% of it's power this way according to the DOE.

The EPA established the Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Partnership in 2001 to encourage cost-effective CHP projects in the United States. In the years since, the CHP Partnership has helped install more than 335 CHP projects, representing 4,450 megawatts (MW) of capacity resulting in emissions reductions equivalent to removing 2 million cars from the highways. (2)

Image details: Electrical Wires Stretching In Front Of Polluting Smoke Towers served by picapp.com
Sources:
(1) NPR: 'Recycling' Energy Seen Saving Companies Money
(2) EPA Combined Heat and Power Partnership
(3) US Department of Energy

100 Fuel Economy Tips from EcoModder.com

The spiraling cost of filling your tank busting your budget? EcoModder.com suggests more than a hundred ways to improve your fuel efficiency. Some examples ...

• Clean out your trunk
• Remove roof racks
• Check tire inflation
• Avoid drive-thrus
• Combine errands
• Close sunroof and windows
• Use cruise control appropriately

See more tips...
Hypermiling, Fuel Economy, EcoModding News and Forum - EcoModder.com

Life After People

A fantastic History Channel documentary, Life After People, supposes that all humans suddenly and completely vanish from the planet. Using stunning effects, the program proceeds to theorize the relatively rapid decline and destruction of the world we know and the triumphant(?) return of nature.

Our human habitat is revealed as an extraordinarily fragile system dependent upon constant intervention and maintenance. Left unchecked, the elements of nature will inexorably reclaim the planet. For example, the last likely remaining generator of electricity would be the Hoover Dam power plant. However, a mussel the size of a thumbnail would inhabit the pipes that draw in cooling water for the turbines. With no one to clean them out, they would soon block these pipes causing the generators to fail.

Yale Ranks Countries on Environmental Performance

From Newsweek, Yale's environmental performance index of 149 countries. The US comes in at 39 behind such countries as Russia, Germany, Canada, UK, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, and Brazil. China is number 105.

See the complete ranking ...
The World's Greenest Countries | Newsweek Project Green | Newsweek.com

Spam Filter for Your Postal Mail

Catalog Choice is a free service to reduce mailbox clutter by removing you from the mailing lists of distributors of unwanted catalogs and advertising materials. And, it's good for the environment, too. Each year, 53 billion trees are used to produce the 19 billion catalogs that mailed in this country.

Sign up, find your catalogs, then Catalog Choice will contact the mailers and request you be removed from their mailing lists. Note that it does take possibly 10 weeks or more to take efect.

Freecycle Your Used Stuff

If you're like me, you have a lot of used stuff like computer parts, peripherals, PDAs, cell phones, books, CDs, etc., lying around your house stuffed in closets and cabinets taking up valuable space.

Stuff that's too good to trash, but which you no longer have any use for. What do you do with it?

The Freecycle Network™ is a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Membership is free.

The Freecycle Network

Ahead of its Time?

In 1963, Heineken introduced the World Bottle (WOBO), a more or less rectangular bottle that could be used as a structural component similar to a conventional brick once emptied of its contents.

Read more about the WOBO, 

Inhabitat � HEINEKEN WOBO: The brick that holds beer

Earlier post "Aliens?"

In a comment by belin104 to an earlier post, he suggested they might be purple martin houses. I did a little Googling and found this picture of purple martin houses at BestNest.com ...
I think belin104 nailed it. This looks pretty much like the picture from Glendale Lake.

Purple martins are a bird species that migrate from Brazil to North America and Canada. They are colony dwellers, which means they live as a group in one dwelling or house with many nest compartments. While traveling north in the spring they establish new colonies and also return to old housing to breed, raise their young and eventually migrate back to Brazil for the winter season. (from Purple Martin Central)

However, I'm not totally giving up on aliens just yet :)

How to Get Rid of Ants with Baby Powder

Apparently the baby powder disrupts the ants' scent trail which they use to navigate to and from the colony. So, ants already in your house can't find their way home and those on the outside have no trail to follow in.

How to Get Rid of Ants ~ Lockergnome’s Doing It

Once again, I have not personally verified the effectiveness of this method, but it interesting.

The new GM electric car

GM seeks a green jolt with a green Volt - MSNBC.com

"General Motors already has five hybrid vehicles on the road, but it is banking its future on a radical departure onto the green road: By 2010, the automaker hopes to have a plug-in electric passenger car in customers’ driveways."

See my earlier post about the film Who Killed the Electric Car?

We have the technology ...

I just watched a powerful, important movie, Who Killed the Electric Car?, which I would vigorously recommend seeing.

At one time, General Motors, Ford, Honda, and Toyota were manufacturing and leasing all-electric plug-in cars, primarily in response to California's 1990 Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate. This film tells the history of the electric car in America.

Somewhat in the manner of a murder mystery, this informative, entertaining, and easily watchable film investigates the inception and demise of the electric car almost entirely through interviews with people from the auto industry, the oil industry, environmental organizations, government, and owners of electric vehicles.

For more information about electric plug-in vehicles visit PlugInAmerica.com.

Ah, That New Car Smell!

Like that new car smell? Well, it might be a by-product of one of the most hazardous parts of your new car according to Toxic At Any Speed: Chemicals in Cars and the Need for Safe Alternatives, a report from the Ecology Center, a nonprofit environmental organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Air bags, seat belts, crumple zones, and so forth make cars obviously safer than ever, but the toxins released by the interior materials used in nearly all cars could be posing significant health risks.

The report went on to say that not only are vehicle drivers and passengers breathing toxic air, but are also in constant physical contact with dangerous chemicals leaching from just about every interior surface of a new vehicle. The report says these chemicals give off gases that not only contaminate the air, but also coat interior surfaces with toxic "fog," generally seen as that new car film common to new car interior windshields and windows. These are the same type of chemicals that are, "linked to birth defects, impaired learning, liver toxicity, premature births and early puberty in laboratory animals amongst other serious health problems," according to EC. "... autos are chemical reactors, releasing toxins before we even turn on the ignition."

New Car Smell - AOL Autos

Americans and Energy

A recent Gallup Poll showed energy as the fourth most-important priority for Americans , below Iraq, terrorism and national security, and the economy.

Americans prefer energy conservation over increased production, and a majority also favors tougher emissions standards and developing alternative energy sources.

I don't think anything clarifies the attitude of many Americans as much as the following statement --

"It's not that Americans don't want to be environmentally friendly, it's just that we don't have much of a choice," Cristian Crespo wrote. "As an SUV driver, telling me that my only alternative is a Toyota Prius or a Honda Civic is like telling me to eat beef jerky when I'm used to filet mignon."

Have we reached the energy tipping point? - CNN.com

Dutch city to implement geothermal heat

As long ago as 10,000 years, Native Americans used hot springs for cooking. However. it was in July 1904, that Italian Prince Piero Ginori Conti tested the first geothermal power plant using the earth's internal heat to generate electricity.

Hague to warm 4,000 homes with geothermal heat - USATODAY.com

More than 70 countries presently use geothermal energy commercially, accounting for about 0.42% of the world's energy supply. Over half of Iceland's energy is from geothermal sources, however the US produces the most geothermal energy from more than 40 power plants.

Learn more about geothermal energy ...
Wikipedia
RenewableEnergyAccess.com
Energy Kid's Page

Tips on How to be Mosquito Unfriendly

10 Thrifty Ways to Deal with Mosquitoes including ...

• Spray garlic powder and water all over the yard.
• Plant mosquito deterring plants around your yard such as citronella, marigolds, basil, lavender, and catnip.
• Try hiding your scent. Some people are sold on the effects of using Bounce dryer sheets, Vicks VapoRub and Avon’s Skin So Soft. Some prefer eating garlic or lemons or taking B1 Vitamins.

World's Largest Tidal Turbine

1.2 MegaWatts: World's Largest Tidal Turbine To Be Installed (TreeHugger)

This is an intriguing source of green energy. Maybe they could put wind turbines on top them and multiply the energy output.

The impact on sea life may be an issue that needs more investigation.

Note: The fabrication of these turbines is being done at the same facility that built the Titanic.