Eco-friendly Homes for Greensburg - Check out the Winners

As you may have heard, in May of 2007 a tornado leveled the town of Greensburg, KY. In the aftermath, the town, along with several architects and other green-minded businesses embarked on a quest to rebuild Greensburg as a model green town. Check out the winners of the eco-home challenge held by FreeGreen.com. There are some truly inspiring home designs in this group! Who knows, you may be inspired to build your own green home (or neighborhood). FreeGreen.com has plenty of free and affordable house plans to get you started.

Solar Energy - Can We Make a Difference?

SolarAid thinks so too.

"SolarAid aims to enable the world's poorest people to have clean, renewable power. Solar power leads to better education, health, safety and income by allowing poor communities to cook, pump water, run fridges, store vaccines, light homes, schools, clinics and businesses, power computers and homes, farm more effectively, and much more.

SolarAid carries out DIY solar projects - training local communities how to build small scale solar devices such as solar powered radios and lanterns - and installs small solar systems for community centres, medical clinics, schools and other such communal infrastructure."

Source: solar-aid.org

What do you think?

Alternative Stoves & Solar Ovens

An Alternative Stove Worth It's Weight in Gold:
Last Christmas I opted to support a variety of charities in lieu of buying gifts for friends and families. In the process of searching for organizations, I came across the Darfur Stove Project - a program that brought together a group of UC Berkeley engineers and the women of Darfur, who have endured not only poverty and displacement, but the constant threat of rape every time they leave a camp to gather wood for cooking.
Check out the project story, donate if you can, and please pass it on to others.

The Berkeley Darfur Stove® is four times more efficient than traditional 3-stone fires and two times more efficient than clay stoves. The efficiency and design of the stove has many benefits including:

• less time outside of the camps collecting fuel wood, reducing the risk of exposure to rape.
• fully enclosed flames reducing the danger of the dense straw and stick shelters from burning down.
• reduction of smoke production compared to other stoves, reducing smoke inhalation and lung disease.
• saving time by cutting down fuel wood treks, allowing women to pursue income generating opportunities.
  
  Source: darfurstoves.org
  

The website also has instructions for building your own Berkeley Darfur stove. What a great project this would be for a science class, a scouting adventure, or even a family project for your next camping trip.

Eco-friendly Solar Ovens

Solar Cookers or Sun Ovens harness the energy of the sun to bake, boil and steam a wide variety of foods. They're eco-friendly, relatively portable (depending on size), and uses a free fuel source. Even if you're not ready to cook full-time on a solar oven, it's a worthy investment for part-time use.

There are a variety of types of solar cookers: over 65 major designs and hundreds of variations of them. The basic principles of all solar cookers are:

• Concentrating sunlight: Some device, usually a mirror or some type of reflective metal, is used to concentrate light and heat from the sun into a small cooking area, making the energy more concentrated and therefore more potent.
• Converting light to heat: Any black on the inside of a solar cooker, as well as certain materials for pots, will improve the effectiveness of turning light into heat. A black pan will absorb almost all of the sun's light and turn it into heat, substantially improving the effectiveness of the cooker. Also, the better a pan conducts heat, the faster the oven will work.
• Trapping heat: Isolating the air inside the cooker from the air outside the cooker makes an important difference. Using a clear solid, like a plastic bag or a glass cover, will allow light to enter, but once the light is absorbed and converted to heat, a plastic bag or glass cover will trap the heat inside. This makes it possible to reach similar temperatures on cold and windy days as on hot days.

Alone, each of these strategies for heating something with the sun is fairly ineffective, but most solar cookers use two or all three of these strategies in combination to get temperatures sufficient for cooking. -- Source: Wikipedia.org

Prices for solar ovens can vary from $40 to a small model for camping or fishing, to more than $350 for a large model designed for use as a primary stove. Solar Cookers International has a great "Solar Cooking Archive Wiki with lots of information and recent news. The wiki covers a variety of topics from the basics of solar cooking to water pasteurization and global usage.

Vertical Green Walls

These vertical green bio-walls are adding value to the urban neighborhoods they are created in, as well as the air quality in the area. Exterior green walls can reduce the overall temperature of the building they're attached to, and can purify grey water by absorbing nutrients. Indoor living walls are now being credited with curing sick building syndrome in some cases, using the sciences of biofiltration and phytoremediation.

Botanist and inventor Patrick Blanc is a visionary in the world of vertical gardens, creating some of the most awe-inspiring walls, like his Le Mur Vegetal (Vertical Garden System) at the Musee du quai Banly in Paris. (pictured above). Patrick Blanc's work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, House & Garden and many others. To learn more about Blanc's green wall systems, visit his website: www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com

Nature and buildings in harmony- not only is it a green thing, it's a good thing...

Yet Another Free & Green Houseplan

This time the folks at FreeGreen.com have come up with a nicely designed cabin for their latest in eco-friendly FREE houseplans that can be downloaded from their site.  It's a simple 1-bedroom floorplan that is perfect for a summer retreat with 704 sq. ft., cedar siding and a metal roof that supports several solar panels.  Of course, if you need additional bedrooms or other customization done, FreeGreen is happy to work with you on the additional specs.

From Soda Cans To Solar Heating

Free Solar e-book offer

For a limited time, RealGoodsSolar.com is offering a 37-pg FREE e-book called From Sunshine to Electricity (an excerpt from their book for purchase: Solar Living Source Book).  Get your copy while you can!  Click here for free e-book 

Check out Sunchips Solar Billboard

The Gorgeously Green Girls Club

Check out The Gorgeously Green Girls Club.  Gorgeously Green is a lifestyle choice that is simple, easy and fun. Going Green doesn't mean you have to go without. On the contrary, it's the most exciting, fulfilling and wondrous way of life imaginable. Sign the pledge and join the club... I did!

Another Free & Green House Plan!

Freegreen.com has done it again! I am a big fan of this site and their commitment to offering eco-friendly houseplans that are available free of charge to the masses.  Their latest is the Modern Cube, a 3 bedroom, multi-story house with a sub-terrain 2-car garage.  Check out the virtual tour on their site.

How To Reduce Energy Usage

We're all in this together, and adopting even a few energy saving strategies is good for every individual, not to mention the planet in general. Here are a few ideas on ways you can reduce your energy usage at home, at work, and in your community.  Read more: