The following is a guest post by Neil, who attended Debbie Durkin’s 4th Annual Eco-Emmys Celebrity Chateau, where he met with a representative from Hybrid Solar Lite.  Hybrid Solar Lite provided flashlights for Neil’s review, but his opinions are his own.

I bought my first car last week.  I recently moved to Los Angeles from New York City, for though the mass transit in New York proved to be more than adequate, their West Coast equivalent…isn’t.  However, I was eager to purchase this car for it would help me realize a childhood dream.  Growing up, my sole impression of cars driven in California during the 2010’s was from the 1989 film Back to the Future II.  In this world, not only are there light-up Nike sneakers with power laces and hologram sharks coming out of movie theaters advertising the latest sequel to Jaws, there are…flying cars.

Seriously.  Moving to LA had to be the best idea I’d ever had, for in moving there I would be able to drive on the Skyway and fill up at a talking Texaco station.  This was going to be the coolest experience ever, and I was grateful to Robert Zemeckis for directing a film that so thoroughly prepared me for this brave new world.

When I arrived in LA, I made a horrible discovery.  There were no power laces.  There were no hologram sharks.

There were no flying cars. ANYWHERE. Read more…

Please welcome today’s guest poster, Louise Baker.

The importance of continual, proactive recycling cannot be over-emphasized: humans produce many pounds of waste every day through thoughtless consumerism, while not limiting their consumption or making any attempt to re-use their possessions. However, a little effort put toward recycling can prevent functional products from filling up landfills; they can begin to save the planet, one recycling act at a time. What follows is a list of 5 great recycling websites that promote recycling, and thus a sustainable future. Read more…

If you have access to fresh food and freezer/refrigeration, making fresh, homemade baby food is a green, economical, DELICIOUS, and incredibly satisfying way to ensure that your child is receiving the highest quality food that you can provide. I decided to make homemade baby food after I opened a jar of organic peas and began gagging because of the horrid smell! I did not want to feed my children anything that I was not willing to taste (or sniff) myself. Read more…

I’m a somewhat outdoorsy kind of gal, and despite the sweltering heat this summer, I’ve done a lot of bicycling, kayaking, river tubing and hiking. All this is great fun, but for one thing: I have a watch with a metal band, and metal watch + sunscreen + my sweaty wrist = no fun. And since I’m also the kind of gal who constantly wants to know what time it is, I soon found myself in the market for a durable watch with a cloth band that I could wear while I’m enjoying the outdoors.

So I went watch shopping online, and it wasn’t long before I found Sprout. In addition to the wide selection of colors and the cute design, I was pleasantly surprised to read that Sprout watches are supremely eco-friendly. The band is made of organic cotton, the watch face and buckle are made of corn resin and bamboo, the glass over the watch face is made of mineral crystal, and even the battery is mercury-free. There’s nary a petroleum-based product in it! I was quite impressed, and between the eco-friendliness and the fact that it’s only $24 on Amazon, I bought it. Read more…

I haven’t put up links in a week or two, so I thought I’d give you two posts in one. Above is my cat’s video review of the Adopt A Cat Organic Catnip Toy from GoodThingsGreenThings.com.

And now, links!

OnlineDegrees.org listed The Greenists as #26 on their top 100 list of Green Blogs for Students!!!!

Hudson Valley Green Festival tickets are on sale for the September 4th event!  We’ll be posting more about this event next week.

The Good Human gives helpful hints to finding a car sharing service near you.

Asthma Mom has health tips for the school year.

Crunchy Chicken is going pioneer!

Retro Housewife Goes Green wants you to vote for ethical jewelry.

Goat meat from a vendor at the Gateway Market and veggies from our CSA. Pickle I made from my garden last year

Wolf and I celebrate our anniversary and get away to the ocean each year in York, Maine. Since we’ve been vacationing there as a couple for 8 years (I’ve been vacationing there with my family for 38 years) we are well acquainted with many of the local wares available to the the traveler. Local food availability is one of the things we’re taking the time to learn about.

The CSA we purchase from allows shareholders to double up on their order if the shareholder is unavailable for whatever reason. This is what we chose to do. It required a small amount of pre-planning by calling the organizer of the CSA and letting her know we’d be away and wanted to double up. This allowed us to create a meal plan based on what we already had on hand. The cottage we rent has a kitchen which allows us to save on food costs because we didn’t have to eat out every meal like we would if we stayed in motels or hotels. Read more…

How do you save energy around your house? Hopefully you at least turn off the lights when you leave a room and throw on a sweater instead of cranking up the heat when it’s cold outside. But what do we really know about energy consumption? Results from a study conducted by researchers at Columbia University, Ohio State University, and Carnegie Mellon University have appeared in several media outlets recently, and the data suggest that people, even green-minded people like us, may not know as much about energy conservation as we think.

Why? Well, in the study, participants were asked an open-ended question worded thusly: “In your opinion, what is the most effective thing that you could do to conserve energy in your life?” According to the results, a significant number of people responded that they turn off the lights and unplug appliances. In other words, they’d rather reduce usage than buy new bulbs or invest in energy-efficient appliances, both of which would use far less energy than continuing to use older bulbs or appliances, even if you cut down on use. In the media, these results are often framed to suggest that Americans don’t have any concept of what energy efficiency is, and clearly we’ve been misinformed about the best ways to cut down on our consumption.

I have a few issues with this study, though, the most pressing being the question itself. I have a master’s degree in communication, and in the many, many surveys I conducted while I was in grad school, I learned that the wording of the question is vital. “In your opinion, what is the most effective thing that you could do to conserve energy in your life?” How would you answer that question? I’m thrown off by the use of the word “could.” There are a lot of things I could do around my home to make it more efficient, but that doesn’t mean I will, because I can’t afford a wind turbine or a complete solar power system. But then the question includes the phrase “in your life,” which seems to implore a personal response, as in the day-to-day things I do around my home. My point is this: In my home, I turn off lights rather than running out to buy an Energy Star refrigerator. That doesn’t mean I don’t understand the energy savings that come along with said refrigerator. I believe the question is ambiguous, and since it’s open-ended, the responses probably varied wildly. It’s no wonder we appear to be confused. Read more…

Image credit: http://www.himachal.us/

You may have heard about Sustainable Dave, the man who saved all his garbage for a year. Imagine it! Piles of plastic wrappers and take-out containers stacked all over the house.  It surely got stinky along the way, but Sustainable Dave’s experiment with trash gave him a clear idea of just how much we consume and how little we think about what we’re consuming.

Inspired by this adventurous man, I decided to tackle a smaller challenge.  Whenever I put a new liner bag in the trash can, I write the date on the bag. Everything that can’t be reused or recycled goes into the trash, and the date (written in big black permanent-marker numbers) reminds me that I’ve come home from a shopping trip with more unnecessary packaging or one-use items that can’t be recycled.

Read more…

Primed and ready for paint

The Modern Fiance and I a few months ago bought a 100-year-old house that, despite being in pretty good shape, has needed a little updating a lot of greening. One of the first big things on our to-do list was painting. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve lived in a place that needed some painting. In fact, the last time I painted anything there was no place I knew of locally that sold low- or zero-VOC paint — it was only available to me if I ordered it online. I like to test paint out before committing, so that really wasn’t an option.

Boy how things have changed. The Home Depot sells Freshaire Choice VOC-free paint. Lowe’s sells VOC-free Olympic paint — really every paint store I’ve been to lately had VOC-free options. It’s great to have choices. But like most green home products, my concern was whether the quality would hold up compared to the VOC-heavy paint options.

Read more…