I drive slower – and try to never go beyond 60 mph. Every 5 mph you drive over 60 is like paying 20 cents more per gallon of gas. I try to drive less – rather than driving my son to a distant park we walk to a local park or to the local college park. Most weekends and afterschool are all walking adventures for us.

CFLs in my house except my few dimmers. I unplug microwave, all electronic appliances, I use passive solar for the most part and rarely turn on my lights even though they are CFLs. I have a front load washing machine. I’m learning to live like it’s winter in the winter and like it;s summer in the summer. Trying not to use cooling or heating too much at all and have been pretty successful with it.

Always concious about the products I buy and the amount of packaging they have and if I really need the product. Try to recycle diligantly – everything.

Also drive a hybrid when I do drive.

On my list of to dos – Hot water heater blanket – low flow shower head – be more diligant with unplugging appliances and electronics – Should compost.

Thanks for the original post and keeping me on my toes!

I do have a question. Most people cannot afford solar. Or really good windows. We can’t. We need better insulation but don’t have the money. What are people of moderately incomes supposed to do to be really GREEN?

My husband and I work at home. We own one car, a ford focus that we drive as little as possible. We don’t use any pesticides except that stuff you put on pets. We are having a tick problem and I found out that garlic is a repellent. I am thinking about spraying garlic water in the yard. We recently installed better but not the best windows. We take the train from Sac to the Bay Area whenever we go. We turn off the lights and have the good kind of bulbs. We recycle. I am shocked at how much crap we must throw out. What are the alternatives to zip lock baggies. We use Shaklee cleaning products that are great and green. (no, we don’t sell them)

All of this doesn’t seem to be a huge effort. There must be more people can do. What is it?

Back in the day Jimmy Carter had a plan for the federal government to cover the cost upgrading homes to be energy efficient, I think it was a combination of tax credits and assistance to lower income families.

If DC gas bags has listened instead of laughed we would not have the energy problems we have today.

THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR SYNTHETIC CHEMICALS THAT POISON THE EARTH

As opposed to natural chemicals, I guess? We’ve been using ‘natural’ chemicals for millennia to do this. Rotenone was noticed because people used the plant that it naturally comes from to kill fish for food. It isn’t the only one.

I don’t believe in using weedkillers and insecticides unnecessarily. It’s just that there’s a time and a place for them. (Try removing buffalo-bur sometime, or one of the thistles that gets spines as soon as it hits sunlight. You’ll be glad to have Roundup around. Try dealing with hull-flies in your walnuts: You have to spray, there’s no ’safe, natural’ way to stop them. Or termites. Everyplace it doesn’t get genuininely cold in the winter, you have termites. There are few reasonably safe methods – and I’d much prefer a safe one.)

Actually there are several beneficial insects that kill the hull flys and termites.

Also, there was a story in yesterday’s LA Times about the bubbles in the tar pits. Someone finally investigated them properly, and discovered there’s 200 to 300 species of bacteria in the tar that were previously unknown, ‘eating’ the oil and producing methane. (They froze the tar sample with liquid nitrogen, then did DNA analysis.)

If you took all the things on top of the earth, man-made and natural and put them on a scale with all the bacteria under the soil, the micro critters would be heavier. Bacteria rules

So many ECO programs lack any real teeth. When we created the Organic Rules we made sure that there were third parties to check Organic claims and there was a system to check the inspection companies, specifically that they follow ISO 65 regulations.

It always makes me a little angry that the ECO crowd cannot set up to the plate and follow Organics which is as green as you can get.

Not to bum everyone out, but CFLs are dangerous; they contain mercury and if they break require special disposal and cleanup. Link to the full article is below, but here’s a relevant excerpt from an article about a woman who had to pay over $2000 for toxic cleanup after breaking a bulb in her kid’s bedroom:
“As each CFL contains 5 milligrams of mercury, at the Maine “safety” standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to “safely” contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal. It’s quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. Given that there are about 4 billion lightbulb sockets in American households, we’re looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous waste sites such as the Bridges’ bedroom.

Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.

As the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFLs, it defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a “highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children” and as “one of the most poisonous forms of pollution.”

Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the U.S., under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.

http://www.junkscience.com/ByT…..70426.html

The question to ask is how much mercury does a coal fired power plant emit per pount of coal. The answer is FAR more than the minimal amount of mercury in the CFLs. Most towns have a hazerdous waste collection site – take them there!

I do have a question. Most people cannot afford solar. Or really good windows. We can’t. We need better insulation but don’t have the money. What are people of moderately incomes supposed to do to be really GREEN?

My husband and I work at home. We own one car, a ford focus that we drive as little as possible. We don’t use any pesticides except that stuff you put on pets. We are having a tick problem and I found out that garlic is a repellent. I am thinking about spraying garlic water in the yard. We recently installed better but not the best windows. We take the train from Sac to the Bay Area whenever we go. We turn off the lights and have the good kind of bulbs. We recycle. I am shocked at how much crap we must throw out. What are the alternatives to zip lock baggies. We use Shaklee cleaning products that are great and green. (no, we don’t sell them)

All of this doesn’t seem to be a huge effort. There must be more people can do. What is it?

I think the very best folks can do in this case would be 1) Conserve (shut off, turn down, do without electronic gadgets with minimal life enhancing qualities) and for the remaining energy use: BUY GREEN energy. It might cost $20 more per month but it is fueling the US alternative energy economy as well as your house. Many states will pay for your energy upgrades if you qualify income wise (e.g. in NY NYSERDA has grants available).

Not to bum everyone out, but CFLs are dangerous; they contain mercury and if they break require special disposal and cleanup. Link to the full article is below, but here’s a relevant excerpt from an article about a woman who had to pay over $2000 for toxic cleanup after breaking a bulb in her kid’s bedroom:
“As each CFL contains 5 milligrams of mercury, at the Maine “safety” standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to “safely” contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal. It’s quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. Given that there are about 4 billion lightbulb sockets in American households, we’re looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous waste sites such as the Bridges’ bedroom.

Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.

As the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFLs, it defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a “highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children” and as “one of the most poisonous forms of pollution.”

Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the U.S., under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.

http://www.junkscience.com/ByT…..70426.html

Hypatia sez:
Consider the source:
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk science expert, and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
“Junkscience” might also be called “Republicanscience,” which is not to say Mr. Milloy would be wrong 100% of the time.
Yes, Hg is nasty, but I’d be double-checking these assertions (can’t now, at work) with some other sources, like some of the folks on Scienceblogs.com.

Organic, organic, organic

local, local, local

garden, garden garden

compost

recycling

Use vinegar, peroxide, lemon juice and water and Oxyclean to clean the house.(cleans just about anything!)

Handwash dishes

Oxyclean replaced Bleach

Bike and walk anywhere within 5 miles.

tankless water heater coming this year!