10 Ways to Go Green and Save Green

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step right up… it’s Carnival time! Welcome to the greatest show in the green business blogosphere… the Green Business Blog Carnival!

Hopefully, you made the trip to Green Building Elements last week for edition #12 of the Carnival (and, of course, you still can)… and now’s the time to mark your calendars for next week’s stop at Planetsave.

Got a great round-up of posts this week for ecopreneurs and green corporate titans alike… so sit back, click around, and get into that long weekend groove. Let’s get started (and, as always, some appropriate music to complete the experience…).

This week’s Green Business Blog Carnival

• Even “fast fashion” getting greener: Susanna Schick at Feelgood Style reports on the biannual Magic apparel industry trade show in Vegas… and finds that sustainable practices are (slowly) making their way into an industry based on rampant consumption.
• One-stop info on social enterprise conferences: Looking for opportunities to network with other folks in the social enterprise space? Green Marketing TV published an ultimate guide to social enterprise conferences this week…
• The solar light bulb hits the market: Here at sustainablog, we featured Nokero’s new solar light bulb, which is aimed at bringing artificial lighting to areas of the world without reliable electric power.
• Ten states setting the bar for energy efficiency: Elisa Wood at Cleantechies takes note of the US states making the greatest strides on energy efficiency… and shows why these efforts are critical to increasing employment numbers.
• Web collaboration on the cheap: We ecopreneurs need our collaboration tools… and often need them at reasonable prices. So, another great one from Green Marketing TV — a list of collaboration apps that provide a wide range of functions, and won’t break a small green business person’s bank…
• Green the office, cut the costs: No reason to spend money to waste energy and materials, so Calfinder’s Residential Solar Blog has a full list of suggestions for greening the office that will also save the company money.
• Climate change killing plant productivity: A Very Different Earth’s post on global warming’s effects on plant productivity shows that this isn’t just a biological issue, but also a threat to economies largely dependent on agriculture.

And that’s our Carnival for the week… hopefully you’re not feeling too dizzy! Keep in mind that we’re always looking for great posts on green business every week… so if you’ve got one on your blog, send it to us via the submission form at Triplepundit. And if you’re interested in hosting the Carnival on your blog, check out the schedule, and let us know an open date that works for you.

No fast fashion here… just organic and sustainable clothes from some of the most recognized brands in the space. Ready to add to the wardrobe? Check out our current listings from Project Green Label, Human Wear, Tees for Change, and Prairie Underground.

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This group of friends does exactly that. They gather every Sunday to assemble sack lunches and distribute them to people in need via bike.

Food Not Bombs with a Twist: Burritos and Bike Delivery

The Burrito Project was started in Los Angeles, but chapters have formed in many cities since its inception. The Fullerton, CA chapter meets every Sunday to assemble burritos and distribute them, often to the same people with whom they have developed relationships over the course of weeks or months.

You Can Be the Change

While the sack lunches that are distributed are appreciated and needed, they also serve as a means to offer listening and support to a group of people who direly need it. This small but consistent act has the power to forever alter the outlook of someone who has been all but forsaken by society.

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What do ski risers, ceiling bike storage, goggle fans and solar-powered light bulbs have in common? Stephen Katsaros. He’s an entrepreneur and inventor from Denver, Colorado with a knack for getting things done, as evidenced by the quick conception in January (and birth in July) of the Nokero Solar Light Bulb, with which Katsaros plans to replace the toxic fuel that one-quarter of the world still uses for lighting.

The Nokero is the world’s first solar-powered light bulb and, while it may sound strange to adorn a single light bulb with solar panels, the Nokero is easy and fast to produce and retails at only $15. Purchased in bulk, the bulbs cost only $6 each. Sure, that $6 is a three-days-wages investment for someone living off $2 per day, but it’s easily worthwhile when compared to the monthly cost of kerosene fuel, not to mention the negative health effects and fire risks inherent to burning toxic fuels indoors.

Katsaros’ solar bulb, which is already finding its way into 33 countries, is made from impact-resistant plastic and is also rain-proof. Each contains five LED lights*, as well as a special computer chip designed to prolong battery life. Four small solar panels* charge the bulb, which can provide over four hours of lighting on a full charge.

One factory in China is all set to manufacture between 600,000 and 1.2 million Nokero bulbs for sale, primarily in Asia. According to the Denver Post, the average kerosene fuel-burner spends 5 percent of their annual income on fuel. Assuming an income of $2 per day, the Nokero bulb, which should last five years, would only cost about 2 percent of income in the first year, and nothing for the remaining years of operation.

Lighting Up the Developing World through Social  Entrepreneurship… Maybe…

That appears to be a sweet deal, and must be a big reason why Katsaros has been able to turn his invention from idea to reality in such a short time, but don’t doubt for a second his capitalist notions. Not to diminish Katsaros’ good intentions in creating a renewable product to replace a dirty, carbon-emitting tradition, but as he stresses, “This is not a charity. We are using capitalism as a method to improve people’s lives.”

For instance, as helpful as the Nokero might be in many areas of Africa, most notably Ethiopia, it will not be introduced there immediately because consumers there are too poor to afford even a $15 light bulb. Instead places like India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan will be targeted. In these countries, hundreds of millions of people live without electricity but could still afford the Nokero lamp.

Yet it is this model — asking the poor what they need and trying to deliver a product at an affordable price — that will also create revenue for the company catching on to the new era of “social entrepreneurship.” In other words, and to put it matter-of-factly, it’s OK to profit off the poor as long as your product beats out the alternative, especially if your product is itself an alternative to a dangerous and environmentally hazardous fossil-fuel power.

It’s pretty hard to have a problem with that, although I’d give the Nobel Prize to organizations like Solar-Aid and the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) who are out there, without profit in mind, providing light to the world’s poor.

Still, a tentative cheers to Stephen Katsaros, obviously an incredibly clever fellow, and his solar-powered light bulb. That toast is only tentative because we have yet to see whether this product, which was obviously rushed to production, is really worth its salt or whether millions of the world’s poor will be left $15 in the hole with a piece of useless plastic.

Case in point: After the Denver Post piece, the five-year battery life Katsaros apparently reported to the newspaper seems to have been reduced to “two-plus years” on the Nokero website. Just further evidence that the full story on the Nokero light bulb is not yet out.

Dan Harding is a well-versed veteran of solar critique, commentary and reporting. CalFinder’s home solar power site is proud to tout Dan as their solar expert. He has published over 1,000 articles on a wide variety of solar industry topics, ranging from cutting-edge technology and gadgetry to political satire and powerful editorials.

No solar light bulbs yet, but we do have plenty of other solar products… from grid tie solar kits to solar lighting to solar fountains.

Image credits: Nokero

*Links to pages in sustainablog’s Green Choices product comparison engine.

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Author’s Note: A free review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher, Wiley-Blackwell.

Wiley-Blackwell’s series of philosophy books for general readers, Philosophy for Everyone, aims to serve general, non-expert readers without actually treating them as “dummies” or creating watered-down, one-size-fits-all philosophy. The risk such an endeavor always faces is to end up serving nobody while trying to serve everybody, failing to satisfy either the experts or the neophytes.

In the anthology Hunting: In Search of the Wild Life (affiliate link), editor Nathan Kowalsky brings together an impressive list of both heavyweights and lightweights from philosophical academia, as well as writers from other fields, many (okay, most) of them being active hunters. The goal: to present to general readers a philosophical examination of hunting from many angles without the jargon, word-spinning, and castles-in-the-air theorizing that characterizes much of “expert” philosophy.

The Philosophy of Hunting

The anthology opens with a foreword by David Petersen, whose credentials include serving as a Field Director for Trout Unlimited and being named the Conservationist of the Year by the Colorado Wildlife Foundation. Perhaps not surprisingly, Petersen’s foreword sets the tone for most of the anthology as a whole in giving a sort of patient nod to criticisms of hunting–but mostly as a launching pad for unvarnished praise (or at least support) of the practice of hunting. For example, he staunchly claims that hunting’s critics completely miss the “self-evident biological fact…that a complementary instinctive need to be hunted is built into the evolved prey species” (xiii; italics in the original). Even better, the predator-prey “sacred game” is in fact an evolutionary sine qua non, something “without which no living thing would even be” (italics in the original).

Despite this trumpeting (I would almost say bombast) for the essentiality of hunting–to humans and to nature as a whole–Hunting seeks to present fairly and in informative detail both sides of the debate. To do so, the essays are split up into four parts, covering the larger categories under discussion:

1. “The Good, the Bad, and the Hunter”: the morality of hunting;
2. “The Hunter’s View of the World”: what hunting is really like, from the horse’s mouth;
3. “Eating Nature Naturally”: hunting and the environment/conservation;
4. “The Antler Chandelier: Hunting in Culture, Politics, and Tradition”: the interrelationship of hunting and various social factors.

At first glance, an exploration of hunting including these topics would be very informative, both to supporters and critics, offering key insights and perhaps revolutionary arguments. Petersen is thus rightly confident when he predicts that readers will be “gently jolted into having to rethink what you thought you knew about hunting all along” (xv).

In Intellectual Battle There Is Law

The best part of Hunting is its balance of breadth with tightness, its manageably sized essays focusing on a wide variety of arguments for and against hunting. At the same time, recurring themes clearly come out and provide threads that weave the whole together. These include:

• “fair chase,” or the idea that hunters should not give themselves undue advantage but instead actually limit their likelihood of making a kill;
• the instinctual need for hunting in humans;
• the connections and relationship that hunting allows for people to build with nature and the prey animals;
• whether or not killing is morally justifiable;
• “true” hunting (for subsistence/need, without technological advantages, conservationally minded, reverent, traditional) vs. “false” hunting (for sport, tricked out with gizmos, destructive of the environment);
• how hunting is superior to factory farming as a way of getting animal protein;
• why vegetarianism is not only less eco-friendly but also less justifiable from moral, evolutionary/biological, and even political/cultural perspectives.

While I would love to argue down every one of these points from a vegan perspective, I will let my previous posts on the topic of hunting serve this function instead (see below). For now, let me only say that Hunting definitely had me red-faced and fuming in moral indignation at some, to me, true boners of logical reasoning and arguing from an accepted “fact” as if its truthfulness were self-evident. Too often, the anthology’s articles come across as either preaching to the choir or dismissing as sentimental bunk the criticisms of hunting.

For example, life inescapably involves death at all levels, from breathing air, to the body fighting viruses and other invaders, and beyond. So, since life cannot avoid death, there is nothing at all wrong or even questionable when a human hunter actively hunts down other living beings with the consciously chosen intent to kill them, actually kills them, and thus provides sustenance (at a bare minimum) to self and family and others. Such a stance completely misses the intentionality behind hunting, the uniquely human ability to choose whether or not to hunt and kill in order to survive.

Similarly, to seek some profound connection with nature through hunting is certainly one way to return to humanity’s roots and learn many things about nature in all of its splendor. But one can do this with non-killing methods as well, from intensive nature-based gardening (e.g., permaculture) to research. None of the insights described by the hunters and writers in this book surprised me, and I have never once gone hunting; all of them were and are insights that can be gained by close, interested attention to nature, deep curiosity, and a willingness to go broad in terms of exploration and research. You do not have to kill to understand death or predation.

The argument about returning to human ancestral “roots” is also like arguing that, because we had to go to grade school to learn basic skills and concepts, we should stay or return there for our entire lives because it is more “natural” and at the foundation of our development. This misses the fact that we evolve both physically and mentally–and morally. That is, we develop to different states of being, with different abilities and different perceptions of the world. Just because we started out as hunter-gatherers does not, by default, mean that that is our “best” state or that we should return there. The argument for this has to be carried out from different angles, not one invoking a “golden age” of humanity. This is as abstracted, ahistorical, and unrealistic as any philosophical building of air-castles.

Now, Hunting does not close the door for contribution to all anti-hunters. We get entirely critical essays, such as Lisa Kretz’s “A Shot in the Dark: The Dubious Prospects of Environmental Hunting.” And there are also those that treat both sides very fairly, such as Tovar Cerulli’s “Hunting Like a Vegetarian: Same Ethics, Different Flavors.” This essay, from a vegan turned hunter (yes, my heart aches at writing that), is in fact the strongest, most compelling discussion about hunting, as well as for hunting, that I have ever read, and it stretched my vegan brain quite thoroughly to find rebuttals to his reasoning.

Is This Really Philosophy for Everyone?

Overall, the anthology has similar glimpses of such challenging philosophical arguments for the justifiableness, if not the need and essentiality, of hunting. It is thus most useful for hunting critics, I think, since it will challenge them to rethink their assumptions and their arguments…and strengthen their argumentative muscles. More importantly, it will give them a glimpse into the opposing camp via the articulate discussion of philosopher-hunters. Those who already hunt or even just think it is not ethically wrong could surely benefit from reading as well, in that it would give them more insight into the discussion about hunting as a philosophy and a way of life.

Luckily, then, Petersen’s rather inflammatory chest beating at the start does not characterize all of Hunting: In Search of the Wild Life, though we do hear echoes throughout. While hunting critics will be challenged and prodded out of their comfort zones, such a philosophical obstacle course can be helpful, a way to keep in shape and never let one’s assumptions become a Procrustean bed upon which to fit the world.

General readers may not have as easy a time with the anthology as readers with some experience in the qualities and conventions of academic, philosophical argument. But Hunting: In Search of the Wild Life is not about syllogisms or elitism or obscurity. It is practical, about philosophy in practice and not philosophy in abstract, and thus it can in fact serve as “philosophy for everyone” who cares to undertake the task of reading and thinking.

As a result, it is a valuable anthology on an important contemporary topic and touches on some of the most important ethical, cultural, and environmental issues of our time. While it may not actually convert anti-hunters or enlighten hunters, it will (helpfully, I think) challenge convictions, raise questions, and provoke serious thought. And that alone, in an age of Google-mind and short attention spans, is always something to be thankful for.

For my previous posts on hunting, please see the following:

• Taking Aim at Litterbug Hunters
• Hunters and Helpers: The Conservation Efforts of Hunting and Fishing Organizations
• Review of David Carpenter’s A Hunter’s Confession

Enjoy the outdoors (whether you hunt or not)? Check out our current listings for the gear you’ll need, including tents, sleeping bags, canteens, and flashlights.

Photo credit: boboroshi at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

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By Lester R. Brown

The heat in the upper six miles of the earth’s crust contains 50,000 times as much energy as found in all the world’s oil and gas reserves combined. Despite this abundance, only 10,700 megawatts of geothermal electricity generating capacity have been harnessed worldwide.

Partly because of the dominance of the oil, gas, and coal industries, which have been providing cheap fuel by omitting the costs of climate change and air pollution from fuel prices, relatively little has been invested in developing the earth’s geothermal heat resources. Over the last decade, geothermal energy has been growing at scarcely 3 percent a year.

Worldwide Geothermal Power Generation Capacity

Roughly half the world’s existing generating capacity is in the United States and the Philippines. Indonesia, Mexico, Italy, and Japan account for most of the remainder. Altogether some 24 countries now convert geothermal energy into electricity. El Salvador, Iceland, and the Philippines respectively get 26, 25, and 18 percent of their electricity from geothermal power plants.

The potential of geothermal energy to provide electricity, to heat homes, and to supply process heat for industry is vast. Among the countries rich in geothermal energy are those bordering the Pacific in the so-called Ring of Fire, including Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, Canada, Russia, China, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Australia. Other geothermally rich countries include those along the Great Rift Valley of Africa, such as Kenya and Ethiopia, and those around the Eastern Mediterranean.

Beyond geothermal electrical generation, an estimated 100,000 thermal megawatts of geothermal energy are used directly—without conversion into electricity—to heat homes and greenhouses and as process heat in industry. This includes, for example, the energy used in hot baths in Japan and to heat homes in Iceland and greenhouses in Russia.

An interdisciplinary team of 13 scientists and engineers assembled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2006 assessed U.S. geothermal electrical generating potential. Drawing on the latest technologies, including those used by oil and gas companies in drilling and in enhanced oil recovery, the team estimated that enhanced geothermal systems could be used to massively develop geothermal energy. This technology involves drilling down to the hot rock layer, fracturing the rock and pumping water into the cracked rock, then extracting the superheated water to drive a steam turbine. The MIT team notes that with this technology the United States has enough geothermal energy to meet its energy needs 2,000 times over.

Geothermal Power Technology and Development

Though it is still costly, this technology can be used almost anywhere to convert geothermal heat into electricity. Australia is currently the leader in developing pilot plants using this technology, followed by Germany and France. To fully realize this potential for the United States, the MIT team estimated that the government would need to invest $1 billion in geothermal research and development in the years immediately ahead, roughly the cost of one coal-fired power plant.

Even before this exciting new technology is widely deployed, investors are moving ahead with existing technologies. For many years, U.S. geothermal energy was confined largely to the Geysers project north of San Francisco, easily the world’s largest geothermal generating complex, with 850 megawatts of generating capacity. Now the United States, which has more than 3,000 megawatts of geothermal generation, is experiencing a geothermal renaissance. Some 152 power plants under development in 13 states are expected to nearly triple U.S. geothermal generating capacity. With California, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah leading the way, and with many new companies in the field, the stage is set for massive U.S. geothermal development.

Indonesia, richly endowed with geothermal energy, stole the spotlight in 2008 when it announced a plan to develop 6,900 megawatts of geothermal generating capacity. The Philippines is also planning a number of new projects.

Among the Great Rift countries in Africa—including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti—Kenya is the early leader. It now has over 100 megawatts of geothermal generating capacity and is planning 1,200 more megawatts by 2015. This would nearly double its current electrical generating capacity of 1,300 megawatts from all sources.

Japan, which has a total of 535 megawatts of generating capacity, was an early leader in this field. Now, following nearly two decades of inactivity, this geothermally rich country—long known for its thousands of hot baths-is again beginning to build geothermal power plants.

In Europe, Germany has 5 small geothermal power plants in operation and some 150 plants in the pipeline. Werner Bussmann, head of the German Geothermal Association, says, “Geothermal sources could supply Germany’s electricity needs 600 times over.”

Beyond geothermal power plants, geothermal (ground source) heat pumps are now being widely used for both heating and cooling. These take advantage of the remarkable stability of the earth’s temperature near the surface and then use that as a source of heat in the winter when the air temperature is low and a source of cooling in the summer when the temperature is high. The great attraction of this technology is that it can provide both heating and cooling and do so with 25-50 percent less electricity than would be needed with conventional systems. In Germany, for example, there are now 178,000 geothermal heat pumps operating in residential or commercial buildings. This base is growing steadily, as at least 25,000 new pumps are installed each year.

In the direct use of geothermal heat, Iceland and France are among the leaders. Iceland’s use of geothermal energy to heat almost 90 percent of its homes has largely eliminated coal for this use. Geothermal energy accounts for more than one third of Iceland’s total energy use. Following the two oil price hikes in the 1970s, some 70 geothermal heating facilities were constructed in France, providing both heat and hot water for an estimated 200,000 residences. Other countries that have extensive geothermally based district-heating systems include China, Japan, and Turkey.

Geothermal heat is ideal for greenhouses in northern countries. Russia, Hungary, Iceland, and the United States are among the many countries that use it to produce fresh vegetables in the winter. With rising oil prices boosting fresh produce transport costs, this practice will likely become far more common in the years ahead.

Among the 22 countries using geothermal energy for aquaculture are China, Israel, and the United States. In California, for example, 15 fish farms annually produce some 10 million pounds of tilapia, striped bass, and catfish using warm water from underground.

Hot underground water is widely used for both bathing and swimming. Japan has 2,800 spas, 5,500 public bathhouses, and 15,600 hotels and inns that use geothermal hot water. Iceland uses geothermal energy to heat 135 public swimming pools, most of them year-round open-air pools. Hungary heats 1,200 swimming pools with geothermal energy.

If the four most populous countries located on the Pacific Ring of Fire—the United States, Japan, China, and Indonesia—were to seriously invest in developing their geothermal resources, they could easily make this a leading world energy source. With a conservatively estimated potential in the United States and Japan alone of 240,000 megawatts of generation, it is easy to envisage a world with thousands of geothermal power plants generating some 200,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020. For direct use of geothermal heat, the 2020 Plan B goal is 500,000 thermal megawatts. All together, the geothermal potential is enormous.

Adapted from Chapter 5, “Stabilizing Climate: Shifting to Renewable Energy,” in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), available on-line at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4

Additional data and information sources at www.earthpolicy.org

Geothermal power is one of many renewable energy options out there… also check out our current listings of solar products, including grid tie kits, solar panels, and inverters.

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Another week, another Green Business Blog Carnival. Our friends at Green Building Elements did a very nice job of wrapping up the news you can use from the green business blogosphere…

Quite a variety of stories this week… from the business of sustainable wine making (and whether it actually results in better wine), to US energy flows, to some green businesses you’ve never heard of (yet)…

And my favorite post this week? You may argue that it’s not strictly business-related, but Jonathan Mariano’s guest post at Triplepundit asking if we need a green Tea Party definitely has business ramifications. Mariano argues that a “fiscally conservative, socially liberal, and ecologically conscious” version of the Tea Party could address issues not raised by the current crop of conservative and libertarian activists… in a manner that aligns with a focus on limited government intrusion into the market.

The Carnival will be back here at sustainablog this coming Friday, and we’d love to consider posts from your blog for inclusion. Send them to us through the submission form at Triplepundit, and we’ll be happy to take a look. If you’re interested in hosting the Carnival, we’d love to hear from you… check the schedule, pick an open date, and let us know…

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People often characterize the proliferation of self storage in the United States as a sign of consumerism or a materialist culture. To me, consumerism means consuming products. Buying a bunch of stuff and then throwing it away when you get bored with it — or buying items that are designed for just once use before being thrown away, such as disposable plates and tableware, or disposable sippy cups for babies and toddlers — is consumerism at its worst.

However, countless people using self storage are the last you would give this label. In fact, in many ways self storage is a return to old-fashioned, almost Depression-era values — the value of saving things to be reused, or using space efficiently, heating and air conditioning what needs to be climate-controlled, and not providing a climate-controlled environment for belonging that don’t need it.

Green Your Storage: Ten Ideas

Every day, I see average Americans using self storage units to make a greener, more environmentally-friendly world. Here are ten suggestion to try if you want to do the same:

1. A Holding Place For Items With Life Remaining: Store things you do not currently use, but want to save for family or friends, or to donate to charity.For example, store children’s outgrown, but gently used clothing, books, and toys, until their siblings, cousins, or neighbors have a chance to grow into those things.
2. Use Resourceful Alternatives To Cardboard: Reuse containers, such as food containers, that you would normally throw away, such as glass jars, baby food containers, and sturdy plastic take-out food containers. Baby food containers are the perfect size to store nails and screws. You may want to use them to store all the hardware that goes with a piece of furniture that you are storing disassembled. Use a permanent marker to write on the glass or plastic so that you can remember what piece of furniture the hardware belongs to. Store old egg cartons, drink trays, and the like, and use them as packing materials when you are packing something fragile, or use them as craft materials for children’s art projects. Save plastic grocery bags and use them to line small garbage cans, or tie them together to make them into a recyclable textile fiber. Some women knit recycled bags and purses out of grocery bags that have been recycled in this way.
3. Give A New Use To An Old Piece: This is truly a Depression-era idea, but I’ve seen women doing it — storing old clothing and other textiles that are not in good condition, in order to take good scraps from them and use them in memory quilts, or simply take those textiles to a textile recycling center. If you recycle the textiles, you may even earn a little money. If the clothing that has been cast off is a sweater or something else made of yarn, you may want to unravel the sweater and roll the yarn into balls, to knit or crochet with again.
4. A Community Sharing Center: Store things in order to share them with your neighbors, using a storage unit as a collective or community resource, such as a neighborhood library, homeschooling curriculum collection, or rotating toy library.
5. House a Garage Sale: Use a self storage unit as a location to hold a garage sale, to encourage other people who are interested in your cast off items to reuse and recycle them. This is especially useful when neighborhood covenants prohibit yard sales.
6. Store e-waste: When you have filled a unit with the e-waste, rent a truck and take it all to an e-waste recycling center (if your self storage center does not already serve as a drop-off center for e-waste.)
7. Donation Center: As a community group, rent a storage unit in order to collect donations for people who are in need, or to hold the possessions of a family that has suddenly been made homeless by a flood, fire, earthquake, or other natural disaster.
8. Find a Storage Facility Built With Eco-Friendly Materials: New self storage facilities are being built, or converted from old warehouses and old retail buildings, all the time. Many of these new facilities are being built by owners who are quite concerned about the environment and about occupational hazards in the workplace. Consequently, it is now possible to find self storage facilities that have been built using green materials and green construction techniques. Many such facilities meet LEED certification requirements — the construction industry standard for an eco-friendly building. For example, Safe & Secure Automated Self Storage of Coconut Creek, Florida, just won Mini-Storage Messenger’s award for being the 2010 Outstanding Green Facility of the Year. Safe & Secure uses very little electric power. Its grounds are landscaped to conserve water, and the facility was designed to produce as little waste as possible. In addition, the facility uses green cleaning and all-natural pest control methods. If you look around, you may find a similar facility in your community — going green has become a real trend in self storage construction.
9. Store Items in an Energy Efficient Storage Facility: It is becoming common for self storage facility owners to add solar panels to the roofs of storage units to generate electricity. Many facilities are now able to generate their own electricity, along with excess power that they then sell back to the utility company. If you have a choice between an energy efficient, green facility and a facility that isn’t, storing with the greener facility seems like a no-brainer for the environment, even if the rent is a little bit higher — and as often as not, the rent at an energy-efficient facility is no higher than it is at any other self storage facility.
10. Support a Downsize: The most dramatic ecofriendly change you can make for the environment, is probably to downsize into a tiny house. When I say a “tiny house,” I mean a really tiny house, one of those houses that is the size of a large walk-in closet. Many people who live in such homes use self storage units to house what they do not need in their homes every day, but want to save for the future, such as financial and health records, seasonal clothing, and a few cherished possessions that may not fit in a tiny home.

Art Decker is a division manager with Self Storage Company, which operates a group of websites, including a Texas self-storage locator. Art leads a busy life, but enjoys meeting new people and interacting with customers when traveling between sites, like from Austin to the San Antonio self-storage center.

Need storage for things you want to keep nearby? Check out our current listings for storage and shelving units, bookshelves, and chests and drawers.

Image credit: jarrodlombardo at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

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While I’m not at all surprised to see that environmental politics, climate change, and the BP oil spill still dominate the rankings on Regator’s Environmentalism page this week, I am a bit perplexed by one of the issues that doesn’t appear at all: the massive recall of eggs potentially contaminated with salmonella. Of course, Regator’s a snapshot — not all “green” blogs are indexed there — but it makes me wonder: have we green bloggers viewed this primarily as a health issue, and thus outside our purview? Love to hear your thoughts on this…

The egg recall’s not totally absent from the green blogosphere, though, and many issues beyond environmental politics and the oil spill showed up this week… as always. Here’s our weekly list of the posts that made us look…

This week’s Five for Friday Roundup of Eye-Catching Green Blog Posts

1. A bike for beginners: The Fun Times Guide to Living Green’s overview of the Trek Lime caught my attention for one particular reason — automatic gear shifting.
2. DIY building blocks: Kids love blocks… they can let their imaginations run wild. But those toys don’t have to come from the store: Julie Finn at Crafting a Green World shows how to make your own blocks from fallen tree branches.
3. Chicago Cubs pitch in for the oil spill: As a Cardinals fan, it pains me to write anything about the Cubs, but this is just fantastic… NWF’s Wildlife Promise blog highlights the Cubbies’ “Mystery Ball” fundraiser for ecosystem restoration in Louisiana.
4. Plastic waste as a building material: Jeffrey Davis at Greenwala takes a look at Affresol’s Thermo Poly Rock, a building material made from recycled plastic that can be poured like concrete… but is supposedly much stronger.
5. EV infrastructure… Southern style: Turns out Tennessee’s trying to take the lead on developing solar-powered car charging… Dan Harding at Calfinder’s Residential Solar blog has the details.

That’s our five… let us know what caught your eye in the green blogosphere this week.

Yep, we’ve got bikes… from Trek, as well as Fuji, Jamis, and Raleigh

Image credit: markhillary at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

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Green cleaning* has emerged as the new wave in household cleaning services. “Green” methods of cleaning have become extremely popular due to the safety and effectiveness of products and techniques used that minimize health risk and maximize cleanliness.

There are currently hundreds of thousands of chemicals present in household cleaning products that can compromise the health of families and pets. These chemicals, such as neurotoxins, carcinogens, and endocrine disruptors are found in even the most common of products such as air freshener, glass cleaner, disinfectants, and even nail polish. Ridding the home of these chemicals can have a significant impact on the health and cleanliness of your family and home. Cleaning service providers are an easy way to rid your home of chemicals while ensuring your home is clean. These services typically use only Green Seal certified products, re-usable cloths, and eco-friendly methods.

Do-it-Yourself Green Cleaning

Green cleaning doesn’t have to be done exclusively by cleaning service providers. Though it may be easier to simply hire a service, doing some green cleaning yourself is easy if you learn a few tricks and tips. First, enjoy the simplicity of green cleaning. Non-toxic green cleaning products can be made from natural ingredients you may already have in your home, such as lemons and hot water. A few simple DIY green tips below:

• To clean the microwave, heat a bowl of water and lemon slices and then wipe down the microwave. Doing this will neutralize old food odors and any stuck food will be easier to remove.
• Add a teaspoon of lemon juice to dishwashing detergent to help you further eliminate grease.
• Because lemon juice is a natural bleach, pouring diluted lemon juice on clothes will help whiten them.
• Cut a lemon in half and dip it into table salt, then use the salt-coated lemon to scrub copper pots. The acidity from the lemon will remove stains and polish away oxidation.

Lemons are just one of the many natural cleaning ingredients that can help you keep your home dirt-free and toxin-free. Other natural green cleaning products include distilled white vinegar, baking soda, borax, castile soap, and hydrogen peroxide.

Making your own cleaning products is the best way to ensure a green clean home. Start green cleaning today to improve your health and your home.

Willow Tolbert is an Account Services Manager with a B.A. in Psychology, and a M.B.A. in Management. Willow has a passion for the green lifestyle and works to educate and help others attain a green home through a position with MaidBrigade and her own green cleaning blog.

Want something in between making your own cleaners and hiring a service? Check out our current listings of green cleaning products for the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry.

Image credit: eyeliam at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

*Link to a page in sustainablog’s Green Choices product comparison engine

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I love milk. Raw milk, anyway. I never buy milk from the grocery store, even if it is organic. Raw is really the only way to drink it. You can read up on the so-called raw milk “debate” if you really want to, but just take my word: raw is better and it’s the healthiest way to enjoy milk. If it ain’t raw, it’s dead – devoid of nutrition and all the good things that make drinking milk actually healthy. (For more information on this subject, also consider Sandor Katz’s book, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved.)

But perhaps you are not sure how to actually obtain raw milk. It is difficult, after all, considering every state has its own laws surrounding sales of the stuff. In many states, it’s downright illegal to sell. In others, you can get it only if you promise it’s for pet food (ha!), or if you go directly to the farm and purchase it. Thankfully, I live in a state where it is legal to buy directly from the farm. Even better, I can bike the 1.5 mile trip to my local dairy to get my raw milk fix whenever I want. (Did I mention that raw milk is especially superior for making cheese? It’s actually impossible to make many cheeses with pasteurized milk.)

Thankfully, there exists A Campaign For Real Milk, a website devoted to helping people find local, raw milk sources. Soon you may discover that it is not impossible to find quality raw, organic milk. Additionally, the website details what the benefits to drinking raw milk are, in case you need more evidence.

To understand why raw milk is so superior and has been so demonized is also extremely crucial in understanding our industrial food production system. May that milk mustache be a raw one!

Nope, we don’t sell raw milk (and that wouldn’t be the best way to buy it anyway, regardless of legality), but we do have plenty of listings for organic dairy products, including milk, cheese, and Greek yogurt.

Image credit: kthread at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

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