I finally went for it – I bought raw peanuts at the farmers market. For a few weeks I have been passing them by, watching the folks pick at them, selecting each nut one-by-one. Unsure of how they cooked them and a little afraid the rawness would get me sick. Then I bought some and …
Monthly Archives: October 2012
The post-PC era: smartphones and tablets use (much) less energy than laptop and desktop PCs
The smartphone revolution is spreading to every corner of the globe and, in 2011, an astounding 450 million smartphones were shipped. But what is the environmental cost of all these phones? A piece from OPower looked into this and found some surprising facts. The first is that the iPhone 5 only uses $0.41/year of energy, …
Tortilla chips and cheap food
You could like chips and dip more than me, but it’s not likely. I can eat them everyday for months with an endless variety of dips. I love them…but I have a problem. All chips are made from cheap food – I can eat an entire bag, have an exploding stomach, and still be hungry. …
Getting used to Fall
A beautiful piece on the new season by Gina Dostler – Autumn Alignment: I feel the coolness gently touch my face as it drifts through the window screen, and I know summer is coming to its end. And though Indian summer hides in wait for its call to jump out and play its games with hot …
National Park Service opens the country’s first “Net Zero” visitors center
A 7,000 square foot visitors center in the Santa Monica Mountains – just north of Malibu, CA – can survive off the grid. It has a 94-kilowatt solar roof array to power highly energy-efficient LEDs installed throughout the center. This is the first visitor center from the National Park Service to be “net zero”. The …
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Zero Waste: coffee grinds for your garden
The key to being zero waste is finding all the little ways to avoid throwing things out. And sometimes that means taking things in too. Which is exactly what I do with coffee grinds. The little bit I create at home gets added to the garden, but it’s never enough. Every month I make a …
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The first step towards zero waste – reduce the amount of trash cans in your home
Living a zero waste lifestyle isn’t hard if you start simple. And the first step is to get rid of some of the trash cans in your home. Leave a few in the major areas and make sure to leave one for recycling. Soon you will find the majority of your trash to be recyclables …
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Third Industrial Revolution – led by renewable energy and the internet
Jeremy Rifkin is a renowned economist on the environment, author, and advisor to the European Union. And he has a theory about the next great movement of the world – The Third Industrial Revolution. From Omega: The great economic revolutions in history occur when new communication technologies converge with new energy systems. New energy revolutions …
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IKEA makes the switch to LED bulbs – but Americans still don’t know about them
This week IKEA announced they plan to sell only LED bulbs by 2016, becoming the first furniture retailer in the United States to do so. A round-up of the stories covering this: The total annual cost saving (including purchase price and energy consumption cost) of switching one incandescent 40W bulb to a corresponding LED bulb, …
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Historical World War II air map – Denver as the center of the universe
To understand this map, think of Denver as the center of the universe. Created during World War II when airplanes were becoming common. It was an “air age” that shrunk the world down to flyable chunks, and new maps were created to show distance – in one tank of gas or two. From Mapping the …
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