I had heard of 'green roofs'—roofs that are designed to grow vegetation—on homes, but I had never before seen them on doghouses. Sustainable Pet Design's custom-built doghouses have green roofs which provide insulation, filter runoff water and dust while looking and smelling great. The doghouses are built to order to properly fit your dog and include the buyer's choice of style, color and plant type. Construction is done by hand using non-toxic materials. Sustainable Pet's online ordering system is being updated but interested parties are encouraged to contact the company directly.
I am sick and tired of people telling me they are going green. Buying green products and throwing away perfectly good, albeit slightly used, products in the trash and buying new ones is not green. NEWS FLASH! If you already have a “not so green” product in your home, throwing it away does not make you green. One of the key concepts in being green is not wasting. So, if you have a cotton T-shirt that was not produced in an eco-friendly manner, then throwing it away and buying a new one that was produced without bleach and with organic locally grown cotton and by people who were paid fair wages is not green. The shirt that is in your drawer is not hurting the environment now. Don’t waste resources. It is one of the key tenets in being green. When that shirt wears out and you need to buy a new one, then it makes sense to buy the greener product. This can be adapted to just about every product in your home. The bottom line is to do what makes sense economically and environmentally. Producing new homes that meet Energy Star and LEED standards is great. When upgrading, remodeling or repairing a home, buy the most environmentally friendly. But, and this is a big but, don’t do things that don’t make sense, for instance adding a new reduced flow showerhead makes sense as you save in the short- and long-term (saving water, reducing the use of energy to produce hot water). Throwing away your working five-year-old refrigerator is a waste of resources as a lot of resources went into producing and transporting that appliance but throwing into the trash a working appliance is a waste. (Don’t get me wrong: If the fridge stopped working then converting to the new environmentally friendly coolant, Energy Star-rated appliance would be a good thing.)
I have three key tenets on my Being Green Mantra: 1. Though shall not waste (this includes the three “R”s, reduce, reuse and recycle). 2. Though shall not harm (this includes creating eco-friendly products by destroying another area's ecosystem, and if transporting a products produces more waste than will ever be saved by using it). 3. Thou shall be positive (every incremental step helps the planet).
There are homeowners who make a sustainable home by putting in energy-efficient light bulbs and there are those who take it to the next level. DivineCaroline.com has a list of 10 innovative homes that are pushing the boundaries of sustainable construction and living. Some of the homes look quite conventional while others look like they belong on the Moon. My favorite is the home pictured here; the walls are constructed of misprinted rice bags filled with natural material and the outside layer is made of papercrete, recycled paper mixed with cement. Use of these recycled materials reduces the use of wood, concrete and steel. These homeowners want to live off the grid entirely; they grow their own food in a greenhouse and the heating system is solar powered. Read more about this home and others in the Divine Caroline article.
Every Monday morning I put out my recycling and grit my teeth. I hate it. I am all for the saving of the planet and its natural resources. It is the little industrious man in the brand new Toyota Sienna Minivan taking the aluminum from my and all of my neighbors' recycling bins a block ahead of the city’s recycling truck. The way I see it, if I had put my cans in with my trash because I was lazy or didn’t care about the environment then he would have every right to take the cans from my garbage container. But since I sort the recyclables and put them in a bin specifically for the recycling truck, I believe he is stealing as well as harming the environment. Here is why: The aluminum(arguably the most expensive item in the recycling bins) is used to offset the cost of my refuse bill. Without the aluminum, it may cost more to pick up the recycling than the materials themselves. If the city loses money, my bills go up. Second, by having both his minivan and the city truck stopping at every recycle bin in my neighborhood, he is putting more carbon in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
I am sure every neighborhood in America has one of these “canners” and if they picked up the cans that were in the ditches or even in the garbage cans themselves I have no issue with it as they are helping recover more cans. But taking cans that would have been recycled from the recycling bins is just plain wrong. Now, would you call the police to report this crime? Individually, my cans are only small change every week. But if I estimated that everyone in my neighborhood recycled as many cans as I did, this recycler makes more on Monday than I make all week. And there are other pickup days in other parts of the city. If I wasn’t morally opposed to stealing, I’d be rich. So, give me some ideas on what we can do to stop these thieves.
For Earth Day as an American, I have decided to celebrate, by thanking it. Thank you for all you have given me, including:
The Mesozoic jungles that have given me the gas for my car and the coal to fuel the electric generating plant that propels my air conditioner. Thanks to the ancient forests of Canada, today being pulverized so I can read my morning paper. Thanks to the people of Third World countries that grow my fruit that is flown in fresh so I can eat it for breakfast. Thanks to giant retailers that can buy globally so my clothing does not need to be made anywhere near my home. Thanks to China for their lax environmental codes so that my solar panels and other “green” goods can be produced in a place where the wastes from the making of these products does not tax my local ecosystem. Thanks to eons of fresh snowfall in the Alps so I can have a bottle of clean water shipped from Europe. Thanks to rainforests producing the oxygen I need to burn off the massive caloric intake I consume eating my fast food diet. Thanks to the oceans for consuming much of the fertilizer runoff from my lush green lawn. And thanks to the U.S. government that lets me do this to my planet, my Earth, my home.
Seriously. Let’s not forget the real heroes of Earth Day, the plants and animals that make our existence possible.
What better way to celebrate Earth Day today than by taking the Energy Star pledge. If every American household took part in the new pledge, it would save more than 110 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, over $18 billion in annual energy costs and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 18 million cars. Read how to take the pledge and more at the Energy Star Change The World web page.
Every home will soon have a laptop. So, where do the recycled laptop batteries go? I am on my fourth laptop in eight years. I have changed companies so the turnover has not all gone to the landfill. However, on the two IBMs, the Dell and my new ASUS model the thing that seems to go first is the battery. While the current one I'm using is not out completely, the cycle times have decreased. There are only so many times a battery can be recharged (300 to 500, depending on type). New batteries seem to be the most expensive thing to replace on my laptop. Well, maybe not, but it seems to be what I am spending the money on. It seems we get nothing back on the recycling of the battery except to “feel good” that I did not put it in the trash. Where is that battery going and is it just being crushed and thrown in a landfill in another country? I want to decrease my footprint, not just move it to another country.
I did find an interesting article on refurbishing a laptop battery yourself, though I have yet to try it. There is also a company mentioned in this article that will take out the dead cells and replace them. And here is an article on simply what happens to the battery when you send it to be recycled.
