Awesome Green Gadgets

Starting this week, I will be searching for the best Eco-friendly gadgets and post about a couple of them per week. I will also be searching for more news articles about green living and new products/services that can minimize the strain on the environment. So lets start with this weeks green gadgets.


Image courtesy of USBcell

First off this looks like an amazing product and I'm surprised that it wasn't invented earlier. There are many things that can be powered by the usb port from your computer, but these are the first batteries that I know of that can be charged by your laptop. They cost about $20 for a two pack, but they are rechargeable. At the moment it looks like they only have AA batteries at the moment, but are working on AAA, C, D, 9 volt, and even cell phones and just about any other portable device. Go here to buy them. They even give you a ton of uses for your usbcell batteries. I'm sure other companies will try and make some of these soon, so be on the look out as this company seems to be based of Great Britain.


Image courtesy of Brunton

Solar powered anything is generally a good thing. Sun is pretty much everywhere and is renewable so why not have lots of things solar powered? Well, the technology is still expensive and it is generally inconceivable for the average American to have a large solar panel on their roof. But, smaller gadgets have been receiving the solar technology and here is one of them. It's called SolarRolls. They are waterproof and flexible. It rolls up to store in a storage tube. Depending on the size of the roll you get, it can weigh up to 17 oz. They are a little expensive but can power just about anything and are great for camping.

Graph Of Energy Consumption And Tips To Reduce It

Image courtesy of Kids Energy Page @ DOE.gov

This graph shows how the average American uses energy in their homes. Heating our houses is almost half of all energy consumed in American households. Here are some tips to reduce your heating costs.

• Buy a programmable thermostat to make sure your heat is only one when you want it to be. Here is a guide from the governments energy star website about programmable thermostats. You also might want to check out this consumer guide from the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy division of the Department of Energy.
  


• Use other ways of keeping yourself warm like blankets, socks, slippers, long johns, pants, sweatshirts, hats, gloves, and even a pet. All of these most people already have and can wear multiples of.
  


• Fire places and wood stoves can be a great source of heat, but very expensive to install. If you have one already, chords of wood are not very expensive and can usually last all winter. Or if you have a friend with land, ask to chop down some trees and cut them up during the summer to let them dry out for the winter. If you don't have either, maybe invest in a wood stove. The ones I've seen online are close to $2000, so check around your local stores to see if there is anything cheaper.
  

Get Rid Of Junk Mail And Be Green

I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one that hates getting "preapproved" credit card offers and inserts in your mail? They usually get thrown away, shredded, or recycled. Well if you want to stop this excess mail, go to these two sites, here and here, and follow the steps.

Another thing to reduce your mail intake is to pay your bills online. Most banks, cable, satellite, and phone companies will allow you to pay all your bills online. Some banks will even auto pay your bills for you. Just make sure that you have e-mail notifications sent to you so that you don't forget to pay.

Green Fuel More Powerful Than Petro?

I recently found an article on a new green fuel. You can read it here.

Solar Powered Lanterns

Today I have a home improvement tip to help add a little pizazz to your walkway. A company called Solar Illuminations makes many different solar powered lights for use outside. They have a huge catalog with many different sizes and types of fixtures to choose from. A small pagoda like light that comes with a spike to stick in the ground would be a great addition to any walkway leading up to the front door, or even as a lighted path to a garden or pool in the backyard.

These lights will charge in the daytime and light the way at night with no extra electricity usage. It's a great idea for a house trying to go green.

Six Free Things You Can Do To Make Your Appliances More Effecient And Save You Money

There are some things that you just have to use. Generally they are large appliances and there is just no way around it. So here are six free things you can do to make your appliances more efficient which saves you money.

• Fill your dishwasher completely. As long as the dishes were somewhat clean, your dishwasher should take care of the rest.


• Make sure you clean out your dryers lint trap every time you use it. Another thing to do every week is check the dryer pipe that heads outside of your house. Make sure there isn't a bunch of lunch in there as this doesn't allow the dryer to clean your clothes all the way and can cause a fire.


• When you go to make a sandwich or cook dinner, take everything you need out of the fridge or freezer at once instead of opening and closing the door multiple times.


• Keep an inventory of your fridge and freezer. This will allow you to open the door, grab exactly what you want, and close it.


• Wash your clothes in cold water. It works just the same.


• Reuse your lunch bags from day to day. If you have a nylon insulated lunch bag, use that.

Day 1 Of The Garbage Reduction Challenge

Today is the first day of the challenge to myself to reduce my garbage output. The main way I'm going to do this is start a compost bin. I've talked about compost a few times in the last week and I think it's one of the best ways average Americans can reduce their waste and overall costs.

Instead of just making a pile in my backyard I will be going to the hardware store today to buy a cheap rubber garbage can. The one we bought for garbage was only $15. I would just use that one but we are still going to have some garbage including bags of cat waste and meat and dairy products that are not good for a compost pile.

After the purchase of this I will be throwing just about all organic materials into it and basically letting it sit in the garage. Although the decomposition will happen with out any interaction at all it's best to keep the compost insulated.

The other reason I'm going to be using a garbage can is that I do not mow our lawn and therefore do not have a lot of grass clippings. Our rental house basically sits on a park with four other houses. This park is a couple acres and is mowed by somebody just about every week. If I leave my gate open she mows it for us. The ride on mower does leave some grass clippings and I will scoop them up as they decompose well in a compost pile.

Since compost piles can become great fertilizer without any intervention, the end result is based on the products that are dumped in.

So here is a list of things you should add to your compost...

• Animal manure


• Cardboard - Small amounts cut up into small pieces (add toilet and paper towel rolls)


• Newspaper


• Coffee grounds and filters


• Dryer and vacuum cleaner lint


• Egg shells (the shells only as the yolks lure vermin and flies)


• Fire place ashes (as long as it's just fire wood)


• Fruits and vegetables


• Hair and fur (make sure to layer these thinly and cover with other material)


• Grass clippings


• Hay and straw


• Houseplants (make sure they are not diseased or insect-ridden)


• Leaves


• Shells from nuts


• Sawdust


• Tea bags


• Wood chips


• Yard trimmings


• Natural charcoal ash (Greenlink Charcoal uses all natural plant charcoal and a natural vegetable binder that will work in compost)

The list is long yes, but there are also things you should avoid depositing in your compost...

• Coal or unnatural charcoal ash (these could contain substances that might be harmful to plants)


• Pet waste (dog and cat waste may contain parasites, pathogens, and other things that can be harmful to humans)


• Disease or insect ridden plants (diseases or insects may survive and harm other plants)


• Dairy products including milk, yogurt, cheese, egg yolks, etc. (cause odor problems and attract vermin and flies)


• Meat or fish bones and scraps (cause odor problems and attract vermin and flies)


• Fats, grease, lards, and oils (cause odor problems and attract vermin and flies)


• Yard trimmings treated with pesticides (these pesticides could kill the bacteria needed for composting)

The Garbage Reduction Challenge

Garbage trucks don't exactly scream environmental although some cities are trying to improve that. We get our garbage picked up on Thursday mornings every week. It only costs about $14 a month, which isn't much but the large garbage trucks that drive all around the city are using a ton of diesel and pouring pollutants into the air.

My challenge to myself is to reduce the amount of garbage my girlfriend and I throw away and eventually stop the garbage pick-up to our house. After all, it's only $5 to drop off your own bucket of garbage at the waste site. There are a few ways I am going to go about doing this.

Reuse packaging like tubs and jars.
Throw food wastes, paper, and cardboard into a compost pile.
Buy more bulk foods as these require less packaging.
Using the bulk foods to cook lunches and dinners for the week and freeze them.
Instead of paper towels, use a regular towel or sponge to wipe messes.
Use actual plates instead of paper plates and wipe them down with a sponge or towel if all that's left is crumbs.

These things should help immensely with our trash waste. I will be putting the garbage out tonight and will be dealing with a clean palette or rather an empty trash can. I will be detailing everything I throw away each day and give some more specific information about the things I've done.

Reduce Your Water Bill To Almost Nothing

I am always on the search for ways to save money and the environment. Some of the things I find about being green cost just too much money for me to try or recommend. Today I may have found something from Sustainablog. Alex mentions a news story about a Texan woman reducing her water bill to $15.

Reducing the water bill to that much is pretty impressive, especially in Texas. For me, I live in one of the rainiest places in the country, Forks, WA. This city receives over 100 inches of rainfall a year. So having a rooftop rainfall catching system would seem like a good idea. I have just one little problem, I rent. Now although our water bill is usually pretty low, there is always something to do to make it lower.

There a few sites about rainwater harvesting though and they both have quite a bit of information about how to concoct a system of your own. I do not suggest buying a system as going to the hardware store will most likely be cheaper. Here are the two sites...

Harvest H2O
Rainwater Harvesting Guide

This rainwater collection gets me thinking about another way to reuse water. Except this system will take the water you use in your faucets, shower, and appliances (excluding the toilet), filtering the water, and watering your garden and plants through an irrigation system. This called Greywater (grey water, graywater, or gray water). There are a few sites you can do research on including this site and the infamous Greywater.com.

I will posting about greywater irrigation systems in the future as there is a lot of information to digest and comprehend. I took a geosciences class in college and we talked about these systems, the professor actually built one in his yard, and it isn't hard, but it takes a lot of work and planning. There are also some legal problems with it so you might want to check out this Gray Water Policy Center. Check in the next week or so for a post about gray water and the benefits for you.

6 Simple And Cheap Ways To Reduce Your Waste and Save Money

Everyone is looking for certain ways to save money and reduce their use and waste. There are some that help reduce your waste but require a large investment. So the best ways to reduce waste also put money back in your pocket. So here are 6 simple and cheap ways to reduce your waste and save money.

Buy tote bags
- Everyone has seen the bags are their favorite supermarket. They are strong and have handles and reduce the large amount of plastic bags that a lot of us use. I personally reuse the plastic bags I get to scoop the compacted cat waste in. Plastic bags take forever to decompose, but that is changing. The cloth tote bags are also cheap, usually with a cost of less than two dollars a piece.

Plant a garden
- Vegetables prices are always on the rise, it just happens. So why not plant a garden in your backyard? Packets of different seeds are usually less than two dollars a packet. It can be very rewarding eating something that you took care of and grew and some people use gardening to help relieve stress. And if you have a surplus of vegetables after harvesting, you can either sell them to make a little bit of extra money, give them to friends, or even better, take them to your local homeless shelter.

Make a compost pile
- The basics of composting are very easy. Throw some left over food, leaves, grass clippings, cardboard, hair, and just about any other organic thing into a pile. Let it sit and decompose. In a year or two you can have a great organic healthy soil additive for your garden. Now there is a lot more you can do to make the composting process faster, but it's basically a passive process. Check out this website about composting and start your own today. **A little warning though, not everything can nor should be composted. Meat and dairy products can attract vermin and are not good for your compost pile. Make sure you look at the site in this paragraph about composting as it gives you a good idea on what you can put in and what you shouldn't.**

Seal up those drafty windows
- Double pane glass windows are the best as they insulate the house better than single pane ones. New windows take a large amount of money so why not go to your favorite hardware store and buy some caulking. It's cheap, about $5, and it usually lasts for a while. Buy a few tubes and get to caulking your drafting windows. This can drastically improve the overall insulation of your house and keep the warm air in and the cold air out during the winter and ultimately save on energy costs.

Use a clothesline to dry your clothes in the summer
- It's usually nice and sunny during the summer, so why not hang up your clothes and let them air dry? They smell nice and you don't have to worry about leaving them in the dryer to wrinkle. The extra energy saved can help either pay for some air conditioning or a trip to water park.

Reuse, reuse, reuse
- There are lots of things that you can reuse to keep them out of the garbage. Instead of buying Tupperware, use those empty sour cream containers and spaghetti sauce jars to hold left overs. Just make sure to label them what's inside and the date the contents were made.

More Gas Saving Tips...

Well, I didn't get to adding the rest of my tips yesterday so I will add some more today.

Less weight = more MPG
Along with tuning up your car, taking out unnecessary clutter in your car can help with gas mileage. Back in high school and college I was involved in drag racing and the import scene (I'm still interested but don't have the money to stay involved), and one of the things I learned was for every 100 lbs you lose from the weight of the car, thats a 1/10th of a second dropped from your 1/4 mile time. Now I'm not talking about super weight reduction like what is done on professional drag racing cars, but removing the random junk that remains in your trunk can help with gas mileage.

Properly inflated tires
This for some reason has been a hot tip for the media and the presidential nominees. The truth is that inflating your tires to the recommended PSI located on the actual tire will help with gas mileage. Inflating the tires will reduce the amount of tire touching the asphault and this will reduce the friction that slows the car down. The tip "inflate your tires when you go on long trips" doesn't have to apply on only for long trips. Try it.

Gas mileage gauge's
Buying a gas mileage gauge can help give you an estimate on your mileage. There are a few for sale but I have not tried them. There are some sites that like the ScanGauge.

Fuel Saving Tips

There are numerous ways to get better gas mileage and most of them have been all over the news. Some people go to the extreme to save gas and money but this is completely unnecessary and extremely dangerous. Here are a few of my tips...

Drive less aggressive
Seems easy enough but most people with automatics drive hard and fast. There is no need to drive aggressive every day. Just driving slower will save gas. Accelerating at a slower pace and not braking so suddenly can add a mile or two per gallon. When I didn't speed up to the car in front of me and gave a decent sized cushion between me and the next car, my mileage jumped from 25 to just over 30 MPG.

Drive slower
Just lowering your speed a few MPH can help with gas mileage. There have been numerous studies that show that MPG drop significantly after 55 MPH.

Tune it up
If your car isn't driving like it should or getting as good of gas mileage as the EPA say's it should there could be a few reasons. If you have started driving slower and less aggressive and it still isn't high enough, make sure you check your filter and spark plugs. Regular tune-ups are not only essential to keep your car running for a long time, but it will help considerably with gas mileage.

More gas saving tips later on today...

Large Families Rejoice, Hybrid SUV's!

It is quickly becoming much easier to own a hybrid vehicle that isn't unbelievably small and incredibly ugly. Although to be fair about the small Honda Insight, their model looks to be much bigger. The Prius is still ugly but that's besides the point.

When the hybrids came out I thought it was weird that they decided to just make small compact cars. During the late 90's it was all about the big gas guzzling soccer mom SUV's and gigantic trucks that didn't just guzzle gas, but absolutely inhaled it like a football at an all you can eat buffet restaurant. It would have made sense to me if they started making these single digit MPG behemoths the first vehicles to receive this hybrid technology.

Well, the time has come. The large car companies have finally figured it out and the large vehicles have received a MPG boost. Instead of single digit MPG, the large SUV's can get up to 22 miles per gallon of gasoline. It's quite a boost in gas mileage and actually is worth considering if you have a large family. Up until now there were no options for those with more than three kids.

Tomorrow, I will be posting about the best ways to get the best gas mileage.

Saving Water and Energy...and Money

Today I'm going to talk about some of the ways to help reduce your use of resources while helping to save money. The problem is that most people plan on doing these things but never follow through. They are easy and basically about using less. I will first say what they are and then how to do it.

Use less water - This one seems easy enough. Use less water, but how exactly are you able to accomplish this.
- First, take a shorter shower. One way to make sure the shower is shorter is to use colder water than you are used to. For most people, cold showers aren't fun and they hurry to clean themselves so they can get out quickly.
- Next, don't brush your teeth and leave the water on. I have an electric toothbrush that counts down two minutes once I turn it on. That would be a lot water wasted for no reason if I kept the faucet on. Just do what I do, turn it for a few seconds to water the bristles, turn it off, and then turn it back on again to rinse and spit.
- When you are cleaning your dishes, don't just leave the water on. If you don't have a dishwasher, just get the dish and sponge wet, turn off the faucet, soap the dish and sponge, and then turn the water back on to rinse the dish. It's a lot of turning off and turning on but ultimately you will be saving water and money.
- Check for leaks. Checking your pipes and appliances for leaks can save up to five gallons a day depending how much they leak. This will take a bit of dirty and sweaty work, but it will be worth it.
- This last one actually costs money but can eventually save you money on the long run, buy water efficient fixtures. If you take a look at the statistics of installing a more efficient toilet, you can save over 10 gallons a day. Just think about that number when you go to install more efficient faucets and think about the money you can save.

Use less electricity - This also seems easy but once again people do not follow through. Here are few easy things to save money by using less electricity.
- Turn off the lights. If you aren't in the room there is no need for the lights to be on. During the day just open the windows and wait until it's dark to start turning on lights.
- Turning off electronics can be tough. If you are like me, the computer usually stays on all day and it use to stay on all night. There is no reason for this. If you aren't using something turn it off. This includes TVs, radios, fans, and even coffee makers. There are some things that need to stay on and plugged in like clocks, but take a look around your house and I'm sure you can find a few things can be either turned off or unplugged.
- Now I put this one up with some hesitation. Changing your light bulbs to the small compact fluorescent bulbs can save you money as they use less energy and have the ability to last much longer. But there is a problem with them. They aren't easy to dispose of and can be a hazard if they break. These compact fluorescent bulbs contain a small but still dangerous amount of mercury. If they break in a room they can cause you to become sick and if you just throw them away in the trash they can cause harm to the workers working in he sanitation business. Check out this article on how to dispose of them and clean up after a broken one.

Most of these are ways you can save money by reducing your use of resources. They are easy and for the most part all you need to is pay attention to what you are doing.

Is The Smart Car Really A Smart Buy?

The Smart Car's have been praised as being a good economical car which get's great gas mileage. Their signature car is the ForTwo. I've seen quite a few of these on the roads in the last few years, but is this so called smart car really that smart of a buy?

Simple answer is no. The Smart Car ForTwo has a small one-liter, three cylinder engine with a mind blasting 71 bhp. Now this ultimately sounds like a motorcycle engine, but they fit into a very small car that does get very good mileage, 40 mpg. Now this car doesn't sound bad except for the small engine, but now comes the real shocker. The price is $13,590. At first this doesn't like a big deal as many other vehicles are going for over $20k. But if you have seen the car you know how small it is and how much room there is for luggage, basically there isn't.

The Fit is a small car from Honda. The Honda Fit is a four door sporty looking car that has a lot of extras, but the most important aspect of the Fit is that it has a four cylinder engine with 117 bhp and still gets over 30 mpg. So whats the price of a car with four doors, a bigger engine, more horsepower, six airbags, and built by a major car company with a reputation for building great cars? $14,550. The Fit gets a little less gas mileage but has much more room and ability to even take your kids along for the ride.

Google In The Water

The people that look outside the box are generally successful. Google is a prime example. They have hired numerous people that think differently then the general population. I mean they have quite a few business ventures including Google Chrome (a web browser that I have been using since it was released) and even the Google phone (a phone which is supposed to compete with the Iphone). But the thing most people use every day is their search engine.

Google's search engine will be taking a ride out to sea. They have planned to put shipping containers full of data centers on a barge and anchor them out in the water. The part of this that makes it green is the fact that these data center barge's will be powered by the moving water and/or waves, at least this is the plan. As of right now it's just a plan but will hopefully happen soon.

Extra Income

Currently I am unemployed. Since I have no source of income except for my generous girlfriend, I have been searching for alternatives to make a few dollars. There are a lot of sites that offer advice on this. I will post about a few of them here and will continue to update on the success of these ventures.

The first thing is the advertising on blogs. I have a few of them that are still not receiving traffic, but I have yet to market them. I have been waiting to get some content on them first. There are a lot of sites that are free to register for and will give you the code to put on your site. The advertisements are usually geared toward your audience and usually pay per click or purchase. The one I use is Google Adsense and have seen some bloggers make a lot of money.

One thing I have started is something new to me. It's from Amazon and is called Amazon Mechanical Turk. Basically people post certain things that they need people to do, things called HIT or human intelligence tasks. These tasks are usually relatively easy and take very little time. There are thousands of them at any given time. The problem is that you get paid with pennies. Most tasks are between $.01 and $.05. So depending on how many you do, you can make a little bit of income.

Being unemployed isn't fun and I have been looking for work, but I think I may have found a business I can start in this small town. A pet sitting service. A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend and I went to Hawaii with her dad's family and needed someone to watch her four cats. It took up until the night before we left to find someone. This person graciously accepted after meeting us for five minutes. Her young daughters who were excited to play with the "kitties" helped persuade their mother and so we left for a week knowing our cats would be taken care of.

A lot of people go on trips and are not always able to take their pet with them. If their pets are anything like my cats, you can't just leave a bunch of food out for the time you are gone. They will eat it all the first couple days and be hungry for the rest of the time, so someone to feed them reasonable amounts of food a couple of times a day is necessary. So what I'm planning on doing is advertising on craigslist and in the newspaper to start building up some clientele. I will update on what happens.

A Cool Site

I'm always on the lookout for free things or ways to save money and I found this site called Hey, It’s Free!. They post free things daily. Plus, the owner of the site claims that he spends his "...days looking for 100% legit, non-spammy freebies." For the most part you can be sure that these freebies are safe.

I have discovered that if you check through their archives or through their categories, a lot of the older freebies are no longer available. So bookmark Hey, It's Free! and check back daily for the free things.

About Me, About This Blog

About Me
I am a twenty-three year old unemployed college drop out living with my girlfriend in a small isolated town. She is a high school FaCS teacher and makes decent money, enough for the both of us to survive comfortably. I'm not satisfied with this and have been trying to find a job, but in the meantime I have been cutting costs anywhere I can.

About This Blog
This blog will basically be my findings on saving as much money as possible. In addition, I will be looking and talking about specific ways to reduce the waste that everyone produces. So when reading this site, you will see posts on both subjects. I will be searching for things that can specifically save you money (green) and reduce waste (be green).