Articles tagged “Consumption”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Measure Your Food's Water Footprint By Collin Dunn IN Food & Health Apr 23 2008 Okay, so you know that the average American guzzles about 100 gallons of water every day, but do you know how much water was needed to grow that apple you'll have for lunch, or that glass of milk you had with breakfast? The answer might surprise you. + READ MORE

Pledge to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Work & Connect Apr 21 2008 Make a pledge to reduce your carbon footprint by taking specific actions at home and in the office. You can pledge to go on a completely vegetarian diet this week, for instance, and save 14 pounds of carbon dioxide. + READ MORE

Shut Down Your PC on Earth Day By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Tech & Transport Apr 17 2008 Systems-management firm 1E is urging U.S. desk workers to shut down their PCs completely before leaving work on Earth Day, April 22. If every American worker remembers to turn off their computers on that single day alone... + READ MORE

Learn How to Find Eco-Friendly Wood Furniture By Collin Dunn IN Home & Garden Apr 17 2008 Wood furniture is a beautiful way to bring the natural world inside, and, when managed correctly, wood is a wonderfully renewable resource that can live on in your family, as furniture, for generations to come.By purchasing products made with secondary species, you take pressure off of overused species of wood and help... + READ MORE

The Perfect Eco Footprint By Team Planet Green IN Travel & Outdoors Apr 8 2008 A 4.5 might seem like a small shoe size but it's actually the perfect size in acres for your Ecological Footprint, a branded term (like Kleenex and Xerox) for measuring the natural resources we consume compared to the Earth's capacity to regenerate them. + READ MORE

Kickstart Your Morning with Cider instead of OJ By Lloyd Alter IN Food & Health Mar 26 2008 Meryl Streep checking out cider; Arnaldo Magnani/Contributor/Getty Images Whenever I am talking about making appropriate choices about sustainability, my favourite example is a comparison between the energy and effort involved in making and delivering organic apple cider, pressed less than a hundred miles from my house, + READ MORE

Find Happiness Without Buying It By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Home & Garden Mar 25 2008 We live in a world of conspicuous consumption and material excess, where we're constantly bombarded by advertisements that tell us we are what we consume, and that if we increase our consumption, we will increase our happiness. Instead of focusing on material accumulation, consider spending quality time with people you + READ MORE

Save Fuel Without Buying A New Car By Lloyd Alter IN Tech & Transport Mar 25 2008 We have done a few of these lists before, including "Get Better Gas Mileage When You Drive" and "Minimize Fuel Consumption in Wintry Weather," but one can never have enough tips, especially since there always seem to be new and different ones. Time lights: Many traffic lights are timed so that if you drive at or below... + READ MORE

Green Your Electricity: Switch to a Greener Source By Michael Graham Richard IN Tech & Transport Mar 21 2008 This is the third article in a four-part series on how to green your electricity. This means that, for example, if 20 percent of a utility's customers switch to green power, the clean power plants will now produce enough electricity to meet demand from these people, and the dirty power plants will see reduced demand by + READ MORE

Garden, Eat Salad to Reduce Lung Cancer Risk By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Food & Health Mar 21 2008 Score another one for good old-fashioned diet and exercise: Eating four or more servings of green salad a week, and working in the garden once or twice a week, can substantially reduce your risk of developing lung cancer, whether you're a smoker or a nonsmoker, according to researchers at the University of Texas M.D.... + READ MORE

Be Green, Be an Unclutterer By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Home & Garden Mar 20 2008 Last week, Unclutterer came to Planet Green. At the risk of sounding shamelessly self-indulgent, here's a sneak peek: A person who abhors clutter-and knows that it saps energy and detracts from the more important things in life-already has the first and most important of the three "R"s down pat. + READ MORE

Guest Post: Find a Greener Alternative to Sticky Notes By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Home & Garden Mar 17 2008 In this guest post, Erin Doland, editor-in-chief of the home and office organization blog Unclutterer.com, shows us how we can use Post-it-style reminders, without creating unnecessary waste. If you use a back door to your house as your main entrance and it has a storm door on it, keep a dry erase marker nearby to put... + READ MORE

Green Your Electricity: Take Steps to Reduce Your Energy Use By Michael Graham Richard IN Tech & Transport Mar 14 2008 This is the second article in a four-part series on how to green your electricity. Finally, you can reduce your electricity consumption by reducing the number of electronic gadgets that keep drawing "phantom power" even when not in use (follow the previous link for more information on that topic), and you can cut down... + READ MORE

Calculate Your Carbon Emissions Using Localized Data By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Work & Connect Mar 11 2008 Another day, another carbon calculator. The CoolClimate Calculator, on the other hand, factors where you live, since local and regional climate can have an impact on how much heating and cooling you do in your home, in addition to how many miles you fly each year, how much you drive, and what foods you eat. + READ MORE

Detox Your Home: Get Rid of Products With Bisphenol A By Lloyd Alter IN Home & Garden Mar 5 2008 Andy Warhol: Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962; MoMa We have mentioned the dangers of gender-bender chemical bisphenol A from polycarbonate bottles, baby bottles, as well as in our Detox Your Home series in the kitchen and the nursery. + READ MORE

Meet Change Maker Caroline Priebe of Uluru By Team Planet Green IN Work & Connect Mar 5 2008 Today, we're going to meet Caroline Priebe, the fashion designer behind the glamorous sustainable label Uluru.Change Makers is series of interviews with people famous and obscure, who answer questions about how they are creating a more sustainable world through their work and personal lives. + READ MORE

Know When to Water Your Plants and How Much By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Home & Garden Feb 21 2008 While plants can certainly die of thirst, we can also send them to an early grave by overwatering them. Several minutes later, depending on the flow rate of your system, turn off the irrigation and dig down to the target depth.If your soil is saturated at this point, then this is the amount (or less) you'll need to... + READ MORE

Learn More About U.S. Waste and Consumption By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Work & Connect Feb 19 2008 Landfull from Le Arsenal AV on Vimeo When my friend Liz-forgive the semi-nepotistic plug here-debuted her line of recycled (and recyclable) bags at a gallery in Jersey City last year, she also screened an amazing video, shot by her now-fiancé, on consumption and waste in the United States. + READ MORE

Repair or Replace (and Recycle): Your Hot Water Heater By Collin Dunn IN Home & Garden Feb 14 2008 This is the fifth in a series of posts about determining if you should replace or repair a broken appliance. If you already have a gas heater, it gets a little more complex.Gas water heaters can last for 25 years or more (all right!) but the caveat is that they can operate for years at greatly reduced efficiency (oh,... + READ MORE

Reduce Your Company's Carbon Footprint By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Work & Connect Feb 11 2008 As part of its goal to operate as an environmentally aware and carbon-neutral company by 2009, Guidance, which designs and supports business applications and technology solutions, has developed a guide you can download to help you evaluate your own company's carbon footprint. Offset your remaining carbon footprint:... + READ MORE