We are happy to share with you an article in The New York Times that features Green Irene and one of our New York City Eco-Consultants. The New York Times article, “Make Me Greener, Please,” discusses how an Eco-Consultant can help homeowners understand environmental savings, benefits and costs, which are often elusive and confusing.

The New York Times reporter pointed out that there are no industry standards for “eco-consultants”. Green Irene is proud to have established a national training program and comprehensive checklists and reports backed by a research team to provide ongoing support to our clients and Eco-Consultants with local knowledge supplied by the independent, local Eco-Consultant. The daily feedback we get from our 400 Eco-Consultants in the field and the many Green Home Makeovers we perform helps make our $99 Green Home Makeover a great value.

Rosamaria Caballero
Co-Founder and the original “Green Irene”

Below is an excerpt from The New York Times article:

Sal Scamardo, a 46-year-old independent film producer in New York, had hired a consultant even though he began with many environmental advantages – only 650 square feet of living space to heat or cool, no lawn or daily automobile use. But he wanted to reduce his electric usage and improve indoor air quality, he said, adding, “I liked the idea of someone coming in and analyzing your lifestyle and taking a look under the covers.”

In April, he guided Stephanie Gregerman of Green Irene, a company with about 300 consultants in 45 states who get online training and offer $99 “green-home makeovers” (along with the company’s products), around his one-bedroom condo.

After a 90-minute inspection of the apartment, Ms. Gregerman discovered several green-home no-no’s: nine incandescent light bulbs, a cabinet full of chemical-laden cleaning products and seven pieces of electronic equipment sucking power while not in use.

“Don’t take my lava lamp,” Mr. Scamardo pleaded, only half-joking.

Ms. Gregerman, who has had a long-term interest in environmental issues and formerly worked in marketing for a record label, gave him a long list of recommendations: use compact fluorescent bulbs, get a power strip with an on-off button, pay extra for wind power from the local utility and set a five-minute egg timer while taking a shower.

The lava lamp was spared, but Ms. Gregerman also suggested using cloth instead of paper towels, giving up plastic bags and plastic water containers, replacing $40 worth of cleaning products with nontoxic alternatives and composting food scraps.

Mr. Scamardo did not buy any products during the visit, and he rejected composting, which would entail saving leftovers until they could be dropped off at the nearest composting collection site.

“I don’t see that working with my lifestyle,” he said. He has, however, applied most of the energy-saving recommendations, including no longer shaving in the shower to try to keep his showers under five minutes.

“If you’re serious about, it is worth it,” he said of the consultation. “It was customized to my way of living and I could ask questions.”

Learn more about the Green Home Makeover at the Green Irene website.

You can read the whole article at The New York Time’s website http://tinyurl.com/GreenIrene-NYT

Green Irene Eco-Consultant featured:

Among other things, Stephanie Gregerman suggested that Sal Scamardo pay extra for wind power, take shorter showers and switch to compact fluorescent bulbs.

Dale (our Director of Operations) and I walked around the floor of Lightfair International (the lighting industry’s annual trade show at the Javits Center in New York) and you would think that lamps based on light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, had already filled our homes and workplaces. LED bulbs and fixtures dominated nearly every booth on the show floor.

In reality, there are few good options for homeowners YET. Most of the options are a 40 Watt equiv, which is too dark for many applications. Many are not out and those will retail at $50+ per bulb! Green Irene is keeping a close eye on what is available and will be selling thru our Eco-Consultants as soon as we are happy with a product. Some LEDs are dimmable and some are not.

The New York Times had a good summary of LEDs at the show:

“In the U.S., 78 percent of the public is completely unaware that traditional light bulbs will be phased out in 2012,” said Charles F. Jerabek, president and chief executive of Osram Sylvania, a unit of Siemens. By law, bulbs must be 30 percent more efficient than current incandescent versions beginning that year. While the current crop of compact fluorescents could do the job, the industry is rallying around LED lamps for many applications. They say LEDs last longer than current bulbs and their energy consumption could eventually be less than fluorescent lights’. They can also be made in many shapes and sizes, which was evident at the trade show. Unlike compact fluorescents bulbs, they contain no mercury and they work well in cold weather. They provide a more pleasing light than fluorescents.

Manufacturers displayed LEDs incorporated into large warehouse, garage and street-lighting fixtures, flexible light ribbons, and replacements for the halogen reflector lamps used in kitchens and offices. Strips of flexible LEDs from Osram Sylvania put light in places where it could not otherwise fit. Later this year, the company will market tiny LED chandelier lights that use 6 watts instead of the 15 watts typical of an incandescent version. It says they will last 25,000 hours instead of 1,500 for an incandescent bulb. Also this fall, Osram, Lighting Science and Philips will introduce 25,000-hour LED lamps that look like traditional bulbs but use just 8 watts of electricity to produce the same amount of light as a 40-watt bulb.

Much of the industry’s effort is aimed at making LED lamps that emit as much light as a 60- or 75-watt incandescent bulb. Cree, a leading maker of LEDs, showed a new version of its LED ceiling fixture that uses 6.5 watts, compared with 11 watts for last year’s model, to create the light of a standard 65-watt lamp.

Even with the wide range of LED products now available, compact fluorescent bulbs will be the technology of choice for most consumers for years to come. That is a result of LEDs’ high prices — more than $20 for a 40-watt-equivalent bulb — and the difficulty in creating bright bulbs. “The C.F.L. market still has a lot of growth,” said Michael B. Petras Jr., president of GE Lighting, a unit of General Electric. Even so, the company is devoting 50 percent of its research and development money to LED-related technologies.

The advent of long-lasting bulbs means light bulb companies have to shift away from making most of their money selling replacement bulbs. Over the last several years, Philips has remade itself by acquiring several companies that sell lamp fixtures for homes and businesses. The company expects its LED sales in the United States to increase to $200 million this year from $120 million in 2008, according to Kaj den Daas, president of Philips’s lighting group for the United States.

The industry expects to sell more bulbs at a higher price. “Instead of $1.25 light bulbs, we’ll be selling $10 to $20 systems,” said Mr. Jerabek of Osram Sylvania. He also said today’s larger homes have many more lights than homes 20 years ago. And, as LED energy efficiency improves, he thinks consumers will upgrade their LED fixtures with lower watt versions. Mr. Jerabek remembers the recent debacle with the introduction of low-price compact fluorescent lamps. Their poor reliability and unnatural light caused widespread dissatisfaction among consumers. “It will be a huge injustice and setback if we allow the same thing to happen to LEDs,” he said.

http://www.GreenIrene.com/

PJ Stafford

Co-Founder

Green Irene LLC

New York, NY

Commentary: This is great news. Reduced idling will improve the city’s air quality by reducing car and truck pollution. This will lead to an improvement in air quality and reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Improved air quality will reduce health costs and increase quality of life in the City. We hope that typical idlers will follow the new law and that it will in fact be enforced.

With temperatures plummeting, drivers in New York City are more likely to leave their car engines idling for a few minutes before getting on the road. The City Council has a message for such drivers: Don’t do it.

City law generally prohibits letting the engine of a motor vehicle (other than emergency vehicles) idle for longer than three minutes while parking, standing or stopping. Construction vehicles are also prohibited from idling. As an an air-pollution control measure, state regulations restrict the idling of buses on school grounds and ban the idling for more than five minutes of on-road heavy-duty and nondiesel vehicles that transport people or property.

Engine idling has serious health consequences, experts say. Air pollution contributes to ozone depletion, increases rates of asthma and heart disease and contributes to the greenhouse gases that are associated with climate change.

A Council report on the matter noted that drivers often leave engines idling because of misconceptions.

Cars with electronic engines, now the standard, do not have to be warmed up before they are drive; simply driving is the best way to bring the engine to its optimum performance level. Also, leaving a car engine idling for more than 10 seconds actually uses more fuel than stopping and restarting the engine, and idling causes more engine wear than stopping and restarting, officials said. Although more restarts cause a minimal reduction in battery life, “the cost to drivers of this decrease in battery life is far less than the cost of the fuel wasted while a vehicle is idling,” the Council found.

Although the city has restricted engine idling since 1971, there is in fact little enforcement of the law, according to council members. In 2003, only 325 idling violations were issued by the city’s Police, Transportation and Environmental Protection Departments, although the number rose somewhat, to 526, in 2007. And most of the violations were issued to diesel-fueled vehicles, suggesting that there was little enforcement for passenger cars that idle.

On Wednesday morning, the Council’s Committee on Environmental Protection approved two measures to curb idling.

One measure, sponsored by Councilman John C. Liu, a Queens Democrat, would prohibit engine idling next to schools for longer than a minute. Exceptions would be made for school buses to perform mechanical work on them, “to maintain an appropriate temperature for passenger comfort,” or in emergency evacuations when it is necessary to operate wheelchair lifts.

The second bill, sponsored by Councilman David Yassky, a Brooklyn Democrat, would specifically empower the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Sanitation, along with the Police and Transportation Departments, to issue summonses, appearance tickets and violation notices for engine idling. That bill also would give civilians the ability to report truck violations, including idling, under the Air Pollution Control Code; currently, citizens may bring complaints only about noncompliant buses under the code.

Mr. Liu was joined at City Hall today for a rally in favor of the legislation by numerous advocacy groups and unions, including Asthma Free School Zone, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, Livable Streets Initiative, New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, We Act for Environmental Justice, Environmental Defense Fund, the New York City chapter of the Sierra Club, Make the Road New York, and Sustainable South Bronx.

“As a city, our asthma rate is through the roof,” Mr. Yassky said in a statement about his bill. “We’ve got idling laws on the books, but there’s no one around to enforce them. Drivers keep their engines going because they know they’ll get away with it. This bill will significantly increase enforcement so that these laws do what they were designed to do.”

Excerpted from the NY Times.

Rosamaria Caballero Stafford
Co-Founder and the Original Green Irene