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.

Think Green for Sports

Now that the Holiday Season is almost here, it's time to perhaps consider some eco-friendly options for the sports enthusiasts on your gift lists. There are a growing number of companies that are providing green sports products, from sports balls made from recycled materials to recycled wood golf tees, making it easier to "think green" when it comes to buying sports equipment. Here are a few green ideas to get you thinkin' :

• Check out Fair Trade Sports website which carries a line of sports balls for soccer, football, basketball, etc. that are certified green and fair trade.
• Beyond the "new" products, there's also companies like PlayItAgainSports which has over 350 locations in the US and Canada, where you can buy and sell used sports equipment (for parents, that can be a pretty budget-friendly way to get a few items from your Christmas list), or 
• LostGolfBalls.com where you can purchase quality used golf balls by the bucket. 
• Even big box stores like Target and Walmart carry eco-friendly gift ideas for the sports enthusiasts. Organic t-shirts, eco-friendly water bottles... just to name a few.
• Looking for an eco-friendly skateboard? Check out BambooSk8.com

For more reading, check out a great article on the eco-impact of professional sports around the world: "Blowing the Green Whistle on Sports" at Grist.org

Eco-friendly Driving - Lessening Our Carbon Footprints

For many of us, walking or using public transportation is not a viable option for getting around on a daily basis, however, there are still plenty of ways we can strive to lessen our carbon footprints.

• Combine errands that are usually spread out over a couple of days into one trip.

• Park and go inside to order food as opposed to using the drive-thru.
  
  
• Carpool with neighbors or co-workers at least once a week.
  
  
• Buy eco-friendly car parts (like oil filters)
  

• Keep your car maintained. Change the oil, check the tire pressure, and regularly replace the oil filter.

• Drive an eco-friendly car. Yes, there are some affordable options - The one pictured is the Alpin Hybrid Concept Car. More info here
  
  
• For more eco-friendly driving tips, check out the EPA's Drive Wise page.
  

How to Be an Eco-Friendly Reader

I'm an avid reader, but I rarely buy new books and magazines for myself. Originally, I was doing this because of my "genetically instilled" thrifty values - my mother was the queen of yard sale bargains when I was a kid, and I'm happy to say that particular trait didn't skip a generation!

Reading enriches our lives and creates lifelong readers and book collectors. Of course, that in itself is the main reason for the number of vast home libraries and collections. However, according to some reports, as many as 30 million trees are cut down in the U.S. alone to be used in the production of new books and magazines.
So how do you continue to enjoy reading, but minimize the effects on the environment? By becoming an eco-friendly reader. Here are a few ideas to get started: Read the full article here

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?

Hope, Medicine & Healing Freebies

With all the controversy swirling around Healthcare reform in the U.S., I decided to post some Healthy "freebies" :

Hope, Medicine & Healing is a *FREE* book that is being offered by the Oasis of Hope Hospital in San Diego, CA. Oasis provides alternative cancer treatments designed to improve the mental, spiritual and physical quality of patients' lives.




The Federal Citizens Information Center has a vast collection of informative brochures on health topics (as well as family, food, small business, housing, etc.). The majority of the publications you can order from the site are FREE. Under Health, here's a few of the interesting topics: Antibiotic Resistance, Sports Injuries, How to Get the Best Pharmacy Benefit, and Drug Interactions. Be informed and go green by opting for the PDF version of each of their publications.

The Oregon Dairy Council has a free downloads section that includes: Fuel for Training & Competition, Weight Management, Whey Protein Info and the MyPyramid mini-poster for kids.

And, lastly : Health Profile Organizer FREE pdf download. It's a 13-pg health history form available from Health InfoSTAT. You can print out and fill in all your pertinent info onto the form, or you can opt to download their software and keep a secure copy on your computer.

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.

Tiny House Plans

Once again, my favorite resource for eco-friendly house plans is offering new selections for download. I recently got an email from FreeGreen.com that announced their new Tiny House Plans. There are three different models to choose from: Tiny Rustic, Tiny Modern and Tiny Traditional. Each house is only 525 sq.ft. Note: You must sign up for either the premier or professional membership to download these house plans, but I guarantee the annual membership fee ($19.95 or $59.95) is worth it!

"Tiny House Plans were developed to offer our users and alternative path to the typical home. Used as an office, in-law suite, or starter home to build off of, these homes are easy and cheap to build. A DIYers dream, each of theses house plans are simple enough for any handyman to become his or her own general contractor. As a great addition to any current lot of land, or as an ultra-economical vacation home solution we hope that all of you will enjoy building and living in FreeGreen’s Tiny Homes. Finally, in true FreeGreen fashion each of these homes have been designed to achieve (or nearly achieve) zero energy performance (depending on your building location)."

How to Recycle Old Electronics | eHow.com

Many of us have old cell phones, calculators, DVD players, or other small electronics that we are no longer using. There are several ways you can recycle old electronics, possibly allowing others to find a good use for them, and saving our landfills at the same time. Read the full article here: How to Recycle Old Electronics | eHow.com

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...