Times are tough and money is tight for a lot of us. Here are a few tips you can easily implement to reduce your household bills whilst you save energy.

Go Paperless

Companies such as phone/energy providers, credit cards and catalogs have all been known to charge a little per month for printing and sending paper bills. It might take a while to check everything and switch, but all those little bits add up, so with a bit of a time investment you could save a significant amount – and a lot of paper that would have otherwise been wasted.

Cheap Insulation

If you don’t have double glazing, investing in weather stripping or even drought excluders to fill any cracks around windows and doors is a cheap and effective solution, as is installing heavy curtains or Roman Blinds to keep the heat in after dark. Likewise, conservatory blinds can keep heat in a conservatory in the winter months, and have the added bonus of keeping it shady and cool in the summer.  Those of you without loft insulation should consider placing a thick blanket over the loft hatch before closing it, making sure it overlaps the edges. This will create a thick seal which should prevent heat from escaping into the loft and out through the roof, and less lost heat means lower energy bills!

Wasting Water?

The simplest way to save water is to put an unused brick in your toilet cistern. You’ll use half a gallon less per flush, which is great if you’re on a water meter. If you don’t have a spare brick lying around, lots of water providers will give you a “water saver” for free which serves the same purpose, and if they don’t, fill an unused plastic bottle with sand or gravel, and it’ll do the job.

Turn Down The Boiler

We all know that keeping the heating in our homes low can go a long way to saving both energy and money, but did you know that doing the same with the hot-water thermostat on your boiler can do the same? Having the hot water temperature anywhere above 140F is a waste of energy as your boiler has to work harder to keep it hot, and turning it down means your baths and showers will be a far more pleasant temperature.

This post was written by Liberty-Belle Howard, a UK blogger with a keen interest in green issues. She is currently blogging on behalf of Hillary’s Blinds.

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Reduce Your Household Bills By Going Green

Beginning next year, traditional incandescent light bulbs (that’s right, Thomas Edison’s invention from 1879) will start to disappear from store shelves in an effort to save energy, reduce waste and use more environmentally-friendly products. Consumers will have two options moving forward: compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). While both of these applications are starting to catch on, many people are left asking themselves, which do I chose?

CFLs use about one fifth of the energy that incandescent lamps do and last up to five times longer, while LEDs are two to three times more energy-efficient than CFLs and about 10 times more efficient than incandescent bulbs. Furthermore, according to most leading producers of LED lighting products, the 50,000-hour lifespan – which is not referring to when the lamps dies, but when it is at 70 percent of its original light output – of one of its LED lamps is 40- 50 times the life of a typical incandescent bulb and five times the lifetime of an average compact fluorescent lamp – which are rated until dead, not at 70 percent of original output. The manufacturer calculated that if one of its lamps were used for six hours every day, it would last for nearly 23 years! But what does this mean for you as a small business owner?

Not only will you be using less energy, but you’ll cut electrical bills and reduce maintenance and replacement costs for lighting. Just think about how many times you’re replacing lamps each year. Are you hiring an electrician each time? Let’s say you’re currently using the popular Par 38 incandescent lamps throughout your office burning 75-watts each for a normal eight-hour day. If you’re lucky, these will last 2000 hours, which means you’ll replace them on average twice a year. Think about the cost of the lamp itself, energy bills and maintenance fees. When you add everything up, you could be spending approximately $450 annually for just one incandescent lamp. Now, replace the Par 38 75-watt lamp with a 12-watt LED. You’ve immediately cut on energy costs and you won’t even think about replacing that bulb for 15 years.

While small business owners have an important decision to make in the coming years when it comes to their lighting, it’s important for everyone to keep the environment in mind and take proactive steps to make our Earth a cleaner and better functioning place to live. Before taking the plunge, here are five things to keep in mind to ensure you’re taking the right steps:

1. Hire the right team. Working with the right LED experts to help with your retrofit process is key. It pays to go to professionals with a proven track record of success and a vast selection of excellent quality products from various vendors. A history of successfully completed projects is also important.
2. Compare before and after. Ask for a detailed energy audit so you know exactly what you’re putting out in terms of your lighting. This will also help you to compare how much energy and money you’re saving once the LED lamps are in place.
3. Consider all options. LEDs are advancing by leaps and bounds every day. Take the time to work with your LED expert to determine the best color, brightness, design and application for your space. Also available are lamps with dimming capabilities.
4. Do your research. There are significant federal tax incentives and local utility rebates available for qualifying LED retrofit projects – some that can cover anywhere between 30-100 percent of the cost of your project!
5. Be sure the price is right. Remember that cheap is never better, but you can also over pay for a product. With so many on the market right now, seek the advice of an expert who can walk you through all of the different LED products and determine the best fit for your needs.

About the author: Marcel Fairbairn, a veteran in the automated lighting business, is the president and CEO of LED Source®, a franchised provider of LED lighting that specializes in full scale evaluations and retrofits in residential, commercial and entertainment venues. For more information, please visit www.ledsource.com.

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5 Things to Consider Before Transitioning to Green Lighting in the Office

Going green is in and looking for ways to keep our bodies healthy and the planet healthy at the same time is revitalizing and every little bit will help preserve the Earth for future generations. There are several ways to reduce our carbon footprint while sweating through a cardio session or pumping iron at home or in a gym. Let’s take a look at six ways you can go green with your workout.

Grab A Workout Partner
Teaming up with a workout partner is one of the best ways to stay motivated and accountable with your workouts. When lifting heavy weights, a partner can spot you to ensure that you avoid getting injured. In terms of going green, having a workout partner is a great way to help the environment when it comes to carpooling to the gym. By carpooling, you can cut emissions by only driving one vehicle. Better yet, a workout partner may be the motivation you both need to bike or jog to and from the gym together and keep the trip emission free.

Get Outside
If your aerobic workouts consist of using a treadmill or cycling machine, get outside for a change of pace. Using workout machines that use electricity can be a huge electrical energy drain. By getting outside to jog, walk or bike, you’ll be a big help to the planet. If you own a treadmill at home, you can save wear and tear on it by going outside instead. It will also reduce your energy costs.

Use Bodyweight Exercises
Bodyweight exercises are a great way to get a complete workout. They are versatile in that they can be performed just about anywhere and at anytime and they don’t require expensive equipment. Also, they keep your workout green by releasing you from the requirement of working out at a gym. Your gym becomes anywhere you choose to workout with bodyweight exercises. Some great bodyweight exercises include push-ups, crunches, reverse grip pull-ups, bodyweight squats, and planks.

Join a Green Gym
If you live in a larger city, you might be lucky enough to find one in it. A green gym basically modifies their cardio equipment so that the energy that exercisers generate when using a machine like a treadmill or stair-stepper is returned to the facility to power things like ceiling fans, lights, and televisions. As a bonus, since a gym will have reduced energy bills, they might pass along the  savings to members with lower membership fees.

Use Your Own Towel
Laundry machines use a significant amount of energy and can really increase a gym’s carbon footprint. Instead of using the towels at the gym, bring your own hand towel for wiping your hands or wiping down machines. Also bring your own towel for showering. For further energy savings, hang the hand and shower towels up to air dry and use them more than one time. By using your own towels, you will be doing your part to save the environment. If everyone started using their own towels, it would mean a huge carbon footprint reduction for the gym and less energy costs as well. The gym might pass these cost reductions to you in the form of reduced membership fees.

Refill That Water Bottle
Instead of buying bottled water or energy drinks and tossing the bottles away, hydrate through your workouts with a water bottle you can wash and refill. By buying fewer plastic bottles, you can keep landfills from filling up with the empties. It will also mean less energy is spent by companies producing the plastic bottles and less energy spent transporting them to grocery stores.

This post has been written by Carson from Building Body Muscles.com. Buildingbodymuscles is all about gaining muscle. If you are looking for tips to gain muscle naturally then subscribe to their RSS.

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Guest Post: Six Ways You Can Green Your Gym and Workout Routines

EarthTalk®

From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: What does it mean when one uses the phrase, “building a green economy?” I’ve heard it repeated a few times lately and would like to have a better understanding of the concept.
– Rosie Chang, Islip, NY

The phrase “building a green economy” means different things to different people, but in general it refers to encouraging economic development that prioritizes sustainability—that is, working with nature and not against it in the quest to meet peoples’ needs and wants—instead of disregarding environmental concerns in the process of growing the economy. The primary way governments around the world are trying to “green” their own economies today is by increasing investment in—and, by extension, creating jobs in—industries on the cutting edge of non-polluting renewable forms of energy, such as solar and wind power.

President Obama has repeatedly invoked his vision of a green economy as a tool for helping the U.S. lift itself out of recession and position itself as an economic powerhouse in a carbon-constrained future.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the $787.2 billion stimulus package that Congress signed into law in 2009, was chock full of provisions to boost renewable energy, energy efficiency and environmental restoration initiatives. Examples include $4.5 billion to convert government buildings into high-performance green buildings, $8.4 billion for investments in public transportation, and tens of billions of dollars more for research into new technologies to amplify existing efforts. ARRA also earmark $11 billion for the implementation of the “smart grid,” a new approach to power distribution that will bring more clean energy sources into the mix and promote energy efficiency.

Infusing such huge amounts of cash into sustainability-oriented projects is one way the Obama administration hopes to “green” the U.S. economy while simultaneously pulling the country out of recession. “To truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy,” Obama told Congress a few months ago.

Of course, Americans aren’t the only ones bent on building a green economy. During the 1980s and 1990s, while the American government was largely asleep at the wheel on environmental issues, countries such as Denmark, Germany, Spain and Japan were already busy investing in wind and solar research and implementation. And while these nations’ ongoing efforts are nothing to sneeze at, economists point out that what is most needed is action on the part of the world’s fastest growing economies—China and India.

A recent report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that China—which surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest generator of greenhouse gases three years ago—has great potential for building a green economy over the coming decades. According to McKinsey, by 2030 China could reduce its oil and coal imports by up to 40 percent and its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by investing upwards of 1.5 trillion yuan ($220 billion in U.S. dollars) per year in both existing and new green technologies. China has begun to see the light with regard to reducing emissions, increasing energy efficiency and embracing renewable alternative energy, but it has yet to make significant financial commitments, which will be key to both warding off catastrophic climate change and building a truly global green economy.

CONTACTS: ARRA, www.recovery.gov; McKinsey & Company, www.McKinsey.com.
SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication.
Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

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Earth Talk: Building a Green Economy

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Guest Post: Businesses Making the Solar Choice

EarthTalk®

From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine
Dear EarthTalk I recently heard the term “living building.” Can you explain?

– Rebecca Gordon, Seattle, WA
Over the past couple of decades, architects and builders looking to green their projects turned to the addition of various piecemeal elements to save water here or cut down on electricity there. Those who added more than a few green touches could apply for and get certified by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) under its Leadership in Energy and Efficient Design (LEED) program. While these efforts have been laudable—essentially launching the green building industry as we know it today—they represent merely the infancy of what green building might someday become.
The concept of the “living building” has now emerged as a new ideal for design and construction. The Cascadia Region Green Building Council (CRGBC)—thePacific Northwest chapter of the USGBC—defines a living building as a structure that “generates all of its own energy with renewable non-toxic resources, captures and treats all of its water, and operates efficiently and for maximum beauty.” The group has been pushing for adoption of the concept by construction industries here at home, and also helped to launch the International Living Building Institute to promote the concept internationally.
“We view our role as the organization that is meant to ask the really tough questions, to push the boundaries as far as possible,” says Jason McLennan, CEO of CRGBC. To this end, in 2006 the group launched its Living Building Challenge (LBC), a “call to the design and construction community to pursue true sustainability in the built environment.” So far 60 different projects around North America are vying to meet the high standards of the LBC, which exceed even the highest status of LEED certification.
The first building to be completed for consideration under the LBC program is the Omega Center for Sustainable Living, in Rhinebeck, NY. The 6,200 square-foot, one-level building, which serves as headquarters for the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, features a geothermal heating and cooling system, solar panels, rain gardens that direct water run-off to irrigate plantings, a 4,500-square-foot greenhouse that helps filter wastewater for reuse, “daylighting” design that brings natural light indoor to minimize electric light usage, and eco-friendly building materials all around. It was designed—per LBC criteria—to be “net-zero,” meaning it uses no more energy than it generates itself. Once the building has been in operation for a full year next summer, CRGBC will audit it to see if its performance lives up to the green hype. Dozens of other LBC contenders around North America will be audited as well.
Of course, the costs of creating a living building today are very high. Achieving net-zero can be especially, and stands out as one of the biggest obstacles to greater interest in the living building concept. Another challenge is finding materials that meet LBC standards, since many common building materials such as PVC piping for wastewater transport—off-gas chemicals and have other hazardous attributes. LBC also expects builders to source locally as many materials as possible to boost local economies and make efficient use of nearby natural resources. McLennan remains confident that costs will come down as green materials, technologies and methods become more commonplace within the general building industry.
CONTACTS: USGBC, www.usgbc.org; CRGBC, www.cascadiagbc.org; International Living Building Institute, www.ilbi.org; Omega Institute, www.eomega.org.
SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk® is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

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EarthTalk®: Living Buidings

EarthTalk^®
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: I recently saw a reference to “Enertia houses” that require little in the way of external sources for heating or cooling.  Do you have any information on this housing design?

– Alan Marshfield, via e-mail

Enertia is a brand name for homes designed and sold in kits by North Carolina-based Enertia Building Systems (EBS). The idea essentially marries the concepts of geothermal and passive solar heating/cooling into what amounts to a highly energy efficient hybrid system. Architectural inventor Michael Sykes coined the term “Enertia” in the 1980s to describe the innovative homes he was designing that would store solar and geothermal energy and make use of it for most if not all heating and cooling needs.

Under such a system, solid wood walls replace siding, framing, insulation and paneling, while an air flow channel—or “envelope”—runs around the building inside the walls, creating what Sykes terms a miniature biosphere. Inside the envelope, solar heated air circulates, pumping and boosting geothermal energy from beneath the house and storing it within the wood mass of the walls, where it is doled out gradually.

By harnessing the properties of thermal inertia—the ability of materials to store heat and give it off slowly—an “Enertia” house maintains a relatively fixed and comfortable temperature throughout the warmer day (when solar heat is collected and stored) and cooler night (when the wood walls give off heat to keep things toasty as the mercury dips).

The heart of the system is a south-facing sun space within the envelope that is dominated by windows and which therefore soaks up lots of solar energy, filling the house’s wood walls with thermal energy that in turn radiates into the primary living space. The entire house functions like an electric heat pump—moving warm and cool air around to accommodate the comfort needs of the occupants. It works even throughout the seasonal changes of the year—with minimal to no fossil fuels consumed or pollution generated.

In one Enertia house in North Carolina, the only power bill the owners typically pay is $35/month for electricity. They also have a back-up in-floor radiant heating system powered by natural gas for long cloudy stretches or unusually cold weather. Gas bills for heat typically total $150 for the year, meaning the owners’ total annual outlay for heating, cooling and electricity is less than $600—some $1,000 less than traditional homes in the same zip code are paying, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy.

EBS markets several different designs for its Enertia houses, but all share the basic premise of primary interior living space heated and cooled by air channeled in from a south-facing “buffer zone” envelope and from below grade. Smaller houses in the line top out at about 2,000 square feet over two floors of living space, while larger ones encompass some 4,000 square feet of living space over three floors. Depending on the model, you could spend anywhere from $66,000 to $292,000 for a complete plan and building materials kit. The rest—including the selection and cost of the land and the labor to build the house—is up to you.

CONTACTS: Enertia Building Systems, www.enertia.com.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk^®, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk^® is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

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EarthTalk: Enertia Homes

Labor Day, the symbolic end of Summer. For me it’s good riddance. This has been one Summer I will be happy to forget!  Between Abby’s toe, the construction field continuing to struggle, and way too much more to burden my readers with. All in all, it is best to be forgotten.

As a result I have seen my green efforts slack.  In an attempt to annihilate the staph infection that plagued my baby girl, I brought many harsh chemical back into the house. My recycling efforts diminished, maybe not 100%, but it’s not where it was.  Composting, eating organic… forget about it! Eco-Office Gals has suffered, posts have been less frequent, Flaunt It Monday… sporadic at best.

This past couple of weeks all of the lack of discipline and misfortune of Summer finally took it’s toll on me. I couldn’t get off the couch for days.  Call it a mix of stress, depression, allergies, poor eating habits, too much soda & sweet tea, not enough water, and every other thing I can inflict on myself.  I was just plain miserable!

Now let me say, I’m not a push over by any means. I have taken every obstacle thrown at me this Summer and I came out standing, I never gave up.  However, I didn’t take care of me and my surroundings.  So, moving out of Summer changes are a must. Here are my goals for Fall:

• Eat healthier, more organic and fresh
• Less soda & tea, more water
• Phase chemical cleaners back out of the house
• Pick up my recycling and composting efforts
• Manage my time better, reduce waste of my own energy
• Renew life into Eco-Office Gals Posts
• Stop letting those reusable bags collect dust in the laundry room!

So, why confess to my readers, clients, family, friends & the spammer just trying to sneak his link into my posts? Accountability, how can I sit here encourage you to green up your act when I am not practicing what I preach? I can’t. Period. I started Eco-Office Gals with the desire to have my readers take my green steps with me. I’m not an expert and I’m far from perfect.  However, I can look around and see what I can change and do something about it. So, that’s where I am today… you with me?

photo credit: John Loo

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Labor Day: Confessions of a Non-Green Summer