Tips for a Green Vacation

Vacation in today’s modern society means a respite from our everyday concerns and anxieties. However, just because you’re on vacation, doesn’t mean you have to take a vacation from being environmentally conscious. You can still take a much-needed break, while continuing to perform various sustainable practices.

More and more hotels are beginning to provide opportunities for occupants to stay eco-friendly while away from home. Here are a few ways in which you can ensure a relaxing and green stay on your next trip:

Towels and Linens – Most hotels now have reuse programs. They ask that if you don’t want your towels washed, to hang them up and if you don’t want your sheets washed, to lay a small card on your pillowcase that indicates so.

Lighting - Choose natural lighting over artificial lighting. Hotel rooms generally have big windows, which provide a well-lit hotel room during the day.

Air Conditioning – If you are in the right climate, allow the natural breeze to cool off the room. Otherwise, ensure that all windows are closed when using air conditioning.

Recycling - Some hotels now have recycling bins in each room. If they do not, ask the hotel staff about their recycling policy. Sometimes the maids separate out the recyclables after they have removed the trash from the room.

Transportation - Use hotel and public transportation when available. Also take advantage of other offers, such as bike rentals. Not only are they eco-friendly, but they are also a fun and fit way of traveling!

By performing these and other, everyday sustainable practices, having a green vacation should be both rewarding and peaceful. In addition, don’t hesitate to provide feedback to the hotel. If they know their occupants care about the environment, they will too! Now go forth and… relax.

Summer Tips for Staying Cool and Saving Money

With the summer season in full swing, it’s a perfect time to think about ways to reduce your home’s cooling costs. A typical household spends almost 20% of its utility bill on cooling, and by taking steps this summer to improve energy efficiency, you can save energy, save money and help fight climate change. Here are a few simple tips from the Energy Star program that can help you to start saving today:

Program your thermostat to work around your family’s summer schedule—set it a few degrees higher (such as 78 degrees) when no one is home, so your cooling system isn’t cooling an empty house. With proper use, programmable thermostats can save you about $180 a year in energy costs.

Check your HVAC system’s air filter every month. If the filter looks dirty, clean or change it (though disposable filters should be changed at least every three months). A dirty filter will slow air flow and make the system work harder to keep you cool, wasting energy. Green Irene carries several permanent filter options, including permanent rigid and permanent flexible HVAC air filters, and a pleated MERV 13 filter.

Run your ceiling fan to create a cool breeze. If you raise your thermostat by only two degrees and use your ceiling fan, you can lower cooling costs by up to 14 percent. Remember that ceiling fans cool you, not the room, so when you leave the room make sure to turn off the fan.

For those with central air conditioning, a Cool-n-Save can help to save you up to 30% on your cooling bill. The device keeps the air surrounding your AC unit cooler, allowing it to work less and to work more efficiently.

Swap out incandescent bulbs with more energy-efficient lighting choices. Energy Star qualified lighting not only uses less energy, it also produces about 75 percent less heat than incandescent lighting, so cooling bills will be reduced, too. Green Irene carries a full line of energy efficient lighting, including LED lighting options for chandeliers, where the larger number of bulbs can give off a lot of heat.

Your local Green Irene Eco-Consultant can provide you with many more tips for energy conservation in the summer months as part of a Green Home Makeover. They can also introduce you to many of the other products that Green Irene carries to help you and your family save money through energy conservation. With just a few steps, you can make a big difference in your utility bill and for the environment while keeping your home comfortable all summer long.

Staying Warm For Less

As we head quickly into colder weather, now is a perfect time to make sure your home is ready for winter. The drafts we feel on cold days can add up: a leaky home wastes up to 25% of the energy that is used to heat it! Here are a few great tips to prepare your home for the season:

- Fireplaces can be a huge energy drain on your home. Make sure to close the fireplace damper when not in use, and consider using a Chimney Balloon (a removable, inflatable way to seal your chimney’s flue) to stop drafts and heat loss.

- As the weather gets colder and windows stay closed, there’ll be a lot less fresh air circulating into the house. Replace the air filters for your HVAC system with a permanent filter or with a MERV 13-rated filter. An air cleaner machine can also help in making sure your home’s air is pollutant free.

- Also, remember that with less home air circulation in winter, it is even more important to be mindful of the carbon monoxide emitted by furnaces, gas stoves, and other appliances. A CO detector is important for every home.

- Installing Energy Star programmable thermostats are an easy upgrade that can save your family up to $200 per year on energy bills. These devices have many more options than your manual thermostat, such as allowing you to set different target temperatures by day when you leave the house, at night when you’re sleeping, over the weekend, or when you’re traveling for the holidays.

- Turn on your ceiling fan when you’re in the room. Winter fan use can save you 10% on your heating costs. Reversing the direction of a ceiling fan helps redistribute warm air by pushing it back down from the ceiling, hence conserving energy. Fans only work as temperature regulators when you are in the room; otherwise they are wasting energy, and cool/warm no one.

Taking these initial steps can help to keep you warm all winter while also keeping your utility bill as low as possible. Your local Eco-Consultant offers many energy-saving products, and they can provide you with even more ideas for energy conservation, so you can make sure that your home is well prepared for the winter months.

Do you have other steps that you take to winterize your home? Share them with us in the comments below!

Discreet rooftop wind turbines for homes

RidgeBlade is a wind-power system that can be fitted to buildings with minimum visual impact and maximum energy conversion potential. This micro-generation system employs discreetly housed cylindrical turbines positioned horizontally along the apex of a sloping roof. The slope of the roof naturally channels wind into the turbine chamber, meaning RidgeBlade can “produce electricity under low or variable wind conditions.” This high efficiency means that the system could pay for itself within a few years.

Designed by a former Rolls Royce turbine engineer under the wing of UK-based The Power Collective.

Website: www.thepowercollective.com

To be clear this is just in concept stage now, but it is moving ahead and can bring some wind power to dense urban areas which will not work for wind turbines.  Goes to show that once people start thinking about how to innovate around this crisis, good ideas start to emerge.  I can see local Green Irene Eco-Consultants helping homeowners with all of these innovations as they arise, since no one needs to become an expert in wind power just because they want to use renewable energy for their home.

Mercury in CFLs: Should I be concerned?

I often get questions about the safety of mercury in CFLs. We know that mercury is bad for us – pregnant women are told to avoid eating fish high in mercury and we’re supposed to take extra care around mercury thermometers. Given these warnings, it makes sense that people have some concerns about using a mercury-containing light bulb around their family. I want to address those concerns briefly, and share with you why I’m so confident that CFLs are a great choice all around.

First off, CFLs do contain a small amount of mercury. Mercury has special properties that help make CFLs so efficient. Generating light is a function of vapor pressure. Too little vapor, and most of the energy goes to heat the lamp; too much vapor and the light gets trapped and degenerates into heat. Mercury is still the only substance that yields just enough vapor pressure to shed light efficiently without having to heat the lamp.

You should know that, according to EPA and many other sources, no mercury is released while the bulbs are intact. The amount of mercury in the average CFL is very small – usually around 4-5 milligrams. The premium light bulbs offered by Green Irene contain even less mercury than average – around 1 milligram for our mini spiral bulbs. By comparison, older thermometers contain about 500 milligrams of mercury, and many manual thermostats contain up to 3,000 milligrams. It would take 3,500 Green Irene light bulbs to match the amount of mercury in a house that had just one older thermometer and manual thermostat.

Since the amount of mercury in the bulb is so low to begin with, the risk posed by a broken bulb is minimal. Moreover, airborne mercury poses a very low risk of exposure.  Mercury becomes much more problematic when it enters the soil and water, transforming into a highly toxic chemical as it builds up in fish and other animals. If a CFL bulb does break, there are special clean up instructions you should follow. See AGI entry #317 and #716 for more information about options for disposal and recycling.

The majority of your mercury exposure is likely due to our continued reliance on coal-fired power plants. According to EPA, power plants account for 40% of all human-caused mercury emissions – by far the largest source. Once released, mercury bio-accumulates in animals and plants, entering our food system and posing a significant danger to everyone, particularly children. We still rely on coal more than any other source to meet our power needs. In 2006, nearly half of all electricity generated in the United States came from coal power plants. CFLs, which use 75% less energy than incandescents and last up to 13 times longer, can dramatically reduce the overall demand for power. That means less demand for coal, and less mercury in your environment.  When you add the money savings from CFLs, it becomes clear that switching to CFLs makes sense for your health, your environment, and your wallet.

Check out our full range of CFLs and our new LEDs (which contain no mercury).

Rosamaria Caballero
The Original Green Irene Eco-Consultant

Town Resists Resident’s Effort to Go Green

“When Mrs. Howland tried to take the next step in green living — installing a 132-foot windmill in her backyard that would generate enough electricity to power her home — she hit a wall. The planning board in this pastoral Cape Cod town twice rejected the project citing safety concerns and predicting “an adverse effect on the character of the neighborhood.”

“It’s mostly that they will make the rules so prohibitive that they essentially ban installations,” said Ron Stimmel, the association’s small wind advocate. “There are humongous hurdles that no other type of installation has been faced with.”

Mrs. Howland’s defeat was sealed by a Superior Court ruling in July that backed the planning board’s decision, underscoring the steep odds that residential windmill plans face nationwide. After investing some $40,000 in a 10-kilowatt turbine and legal fees, Mrs. Howland and her husband, Francis, are giving up their two-year fight.

“It’s ludicrous,” said Mrs. Howland, 58, a health care consultant. “We were trying to make our bills smaller as we got older, in a clean and responsible fashion, and it boggles my mind that ordinary people like us aren’t allowed to do that.”

The decision is likely to be scrutinized by towns across the region and even the nation as they grapple with how to regulate windmills on residential property. In wind-rich regions, clashes like Mrs. Howland’s are increasingly common as conservation-minded people seek to install small wind turbines on their property.

Battles over the height and noise level of residential windmills, and even over the shadows cast by their blades, are springing up from Maine to California, even as the Obama administration promotes renewable energy and the federal stimulus package provides 30 percent tax credits for homeowners who install wind turbines.

Many towns still enforce old laws that prohibit anything taller than 30 feet or 40 feet on residential land — a height too low for sufficient wind power generation, experts say. Wind turbines need to be at least 30 feet higher than anything within 500 feet, including trees, which often means a tower of 80 feet or more. The Howlands’ windmill would have been more than three times the height of an average utility pole, to ensure that the surrounding white pines did not interfere.

“Everyone recoils at that,” said Jonathan D. Fitch, the Howlands’ lawyer. “It reminds me of the litigation involving cell towers in the beginning — a lot of neighborhood hostility back then, but today you hardly notice them.”

While residential turbines remain a tiny fraction of the wind energy market, they are popping up often enough for many communities, especially in New England, the Midwest and the West, to start regulating them. Nearly 2,700 wind units with capacities of 10 kilowatts or less, the size used for residences, were sold nationwide last year, up from 1,167 in 2007, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group.

But challenges persist even in communities that have passed ordinances on windmills, like Bourne, where residents overwhelmingly approved a bylaw regulating windmills at a town meeting in 2007. The wind energy association estimates that one-third of small wind projects are thwarted by vague or overly strict local laws, or by outdated zoning rules that preclude them.”

Have you faced resistance to going green? Let us know your story in the comments below!

Upgrade to White Roof to Save $1,000s in Warmer Climates

If you live in a warmer climate (or even as far north as Chicago and NYC),  the next time you need to replace your roof (usually every 20 years), please go with a white color to save 20% on your A/C costs and reduce your carbon emissions as a result. White roofs can cost as little as 15% more and may be eligible for Federal and State tax incentives as well.

Your local Green Irene Eco Consultant will point this out to you as well as many other ways to save energy and go green. Your local eco consultant may even have a white roof expert in their Sustainable Contractors Network they can refer you to.

Please enter your zip code here to find a local Green Irene Eco Consultant who can perform a $99 Green Home Makeover.

Rosamaria Caballero
Co-Founder and the Original Green Irene

Excerpts from New York Times article:

Returning to their ranch-style house in Sacramento after a long summer workday, Jon and Kim Waldrep were routinely met by a wall of heat.

“We’d come home in the summer, and the house would be 115 degrees, stifling,” said Mr. Waldrep, a regional manager for a national company.

He or his wife would race to the thermostat and turn on the air-conditioning as their four small children, just picked up from day care, awaited relief.

All that changed last month. “Now we come home on days when it’s over 100 degrees outside, and the house is at 80 degrees,” Mr. Waldrep said.

Their solution was a new roof: a shiny plasticized white covering that experts say is not only an energy saver but also a way to help cool the planet.

Relying on the centuries-old principle that white objects absorb less heat than dark ones, homeowners like the Waldreps are in the vanguard of a movement embracing “cool roofs” as one of the most affordable weapons against climate change.

Studies show that white roofs reduce air-conditioning costs by 20 percent or more in hot, sunny weather. Lower energy consumption also means fewer of the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

What is more, a white roof can cost as little as 15 percent more than its dark counterpart, depending on the materials used, while slashing electricity bills.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, has proselytized for cool roofs at home and abroad. “Make it white,” he advised a television audience on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” last week.

The scientist Mr. Chu calls his hero, Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission who has been campaigning for cool roofs since the 1980s, argues that turning all of the world’s roofs “light” over the next 20 years could save the equivalent of 24 billion metric tons in carbon dioxide emissions.

“That is what the whole world emitted last year,” Mr. Rosenfeld said. “So, in a sense, it’s like turning off the world for a year.”
This month the Waldreps’ three-bedroom house is consuming 10 percent less electricity than it did a year ago. (The savings would be greater if the family ran its central air during the workday.)

California, Florida and Georgia have adopted building codes that encourage white-roof installations for commercial buildings.

In cooler climates, they say, reflective roofs can mean higher heating bills.

Scientists acknowledge that the extra heating costs may outweigh the air-conditioning savings in cities like Detroit or Minneapolis.

But for most types of construction, they say, light roofs yield significant net benefits as far north as New York or Chicago. Although those cities have cold winters, they are heat islands in the summer, with hundreds of thousands of square feet of roof surface absorbing energy.

The physics behind cool roofs is simple. Solar energy delivers both light and heat, and the heat from sunlight is readily absorbed by dark colors. (An asphalt roof in New York can rise to 180 degrees on a hot summer day.) Lighter colors, however, reflect back a sizable fraction of the radiation, helping to keep a building — and, more broadly, the city and Earth — cooler. They also re-emit some of the heat they absorb.

Houses in hot climates have been whitewashed for centuries.

Before the advent of central air-conditioning in the mid-20th-century, white- and cream-colored houses with reflective tin roofs were the norm in South Florida, for example. Then central air-conditioning arrived, along with dark roofs whose basic ingredients were often asphalt, tar and bitumen, or asphalt-based shingles. These materials absorb as much as 90 percent of the sun’s heat energy — often useful in New England, but less so in Texas. By contrast, a white roof can absorb as little as 10 percent or 15 percent.

“Relative newcomers to the West and South brought a lot of habits and products from the Northeast,” said Joe Reilly, the president of American Rooftile Coatings, a supplier. “What you see happening now is common sense.”

White is not always a buyer’s first choice of color. So suppliers like American Rooftile Coatings have used federal color charts to create “cool” but traditional colors, like cream, sienna and gray that yield savings, though less than dazzling white roofs do.

But he points out that most roofs, whether tile or asphalt-shingle, have a life span of 20 to 25 years.

Read Full Article at New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/science/earth/30degrees.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=white%20roof&st=cse

5 Reasons to Conserve Energy

Energy has become one of our biggest challenges because of our dependence on foreign sources and the environmental consequences existing sources have. Our dependence on foreign oil means that we have to send dollars abroad that could instead stay domestically to create jobs and fuel growth. Our use of fossil fuels as our main source of energy is causing the planet to warm rapidly as a result of a growing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Clearly, energy is a big issue, and the first thing we need to do is learn how to avoid having to use energy without giving up quality of life (conservation). So here are five reasons why you should conserve energy.

1) Save Money. The best reason why you should conserve energy is because it will save you money. This is money that you can instead spend on paying for green products or purchasing clean energy. When you conserve energy, you save money on your energy bill. In general, energy efficiency upgrades can be paid back relatively quickly, so these are smart investments to make. Conserving energy by changing behaviors can have no monetary costs while accruing big savings.

2) Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions. As mentioned already, fossil fuels unfortunately release carbon dioxide when burned. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas causing the planet to warm rapidly, and so this requires us to dramatically reduce its emissions. When you conserve energy, you reduce the burning of fossil fuels and therefore cut on carbon dioxide emissions, helping slow down global warming.

3) Reduce Air Pollution. In the same way that carbon dioxide is released when we burn fossil fuels, air pollution is a result of fossil fuel combustion. For example, the burning of coal releases sulfur dioxide and soot, pollutants that lead to acid rain and respiratory illnesses. Gasoline combustion releases nitrogen compounds that, when hot enough, lead to ozone formation and smog. Air pollution is responsible for thousands of deaths annually, so it is in our interest to reduce air pollution by conserving energy at home and on the road.

4) Reduce Mercury Pollution. Our heavy reliance on coal means that we also emit a lot of mercury, which is found in significant amounts in coal. When coal is burned to produce electricity, mercury is released into the atmosphere and quickly deposits into water bodies and soils, eventually making it to fish populations. When they reach fish, mercury is already in the form of methylmercury, a toxic form that is a known carcinogen. Conserving energy, as a result, would directly impact our health as we would be less exposed to mercury in the food we eat and in the environment.

5) Save Water. Finally, you may not have thought of this. Just like when you reduce water use you save energy because that water does not have to be heated nor treated at the wastewater treatment plant, when you reduce energy use you also help save water. This is because power plants, particularly those that are fired by fossil fuels, require copious amounts of water in order to keep them cool. In fact, power plants represent the second largest consumer of water in the country, gobbling up 39% of all water withdrawals. Moreover, since the water is used to cool power plants, the end product is thermal water, which is much warmer than normal and affects local aquatic ecosystems.

There are very good reasons why we should be conserving energy other than the typical worries given out. Interested in learning all you can do to conserve energy? Sign up for a Green Home Makeover today. Look up your local Eco-Consultant and get on the path of conserving energy.

Google PowerMeter: The Path to Smarter Power

How much does it cost to keep your bathroom light on all day?
Which uses more energy, your washing machine or your dryer?
How in the world can you find out?

Thanks to Google, this information may soon be close at hand. Google is providing a free web service called PowerMeter that consumers can use to track energy use in their house or business as it is consumed. Google PowerMeter receives information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provides customers with access to their home electricity consumption right on their personal iGoogle homepage. To get access to a home’s electricity information, the home either needs an advanced electricity meter (a “smart meter”) or a consumer-owned electricity management device. But smart meters need to be coupled with a strategy to provide customers with easy access to detailed information on their energy usage. Google PowerMeter, combined with your utilities company, will be able to provide you with your home’s electrical information in the form of a secure Google gadget.

Knowing my home’s electrical information and power usage is great, but how can this help lower my energy bills? Google claims that their studies show that access to your household’s personal energy information is likely to save you 5-15% on your monthly bill.

Google PowerMeter features functions such as an analysis that will provide better information about how your home uses energy. It will suggest ways for you to be more energy efficient and will propose ways that you can lower your energy bill. The application even has a sharing function to see how your energy consumption compares to that of your friends and neighbors.

For now, Google PowerMeter is only available to a limited group of customers because it is still in beta testing mode, but it will be free to both utilities and customers.

Google hopes to work with as many utility companies as possible to deliver this data to anyone with a smart meter. Their current utilities partners include Glasgow EPB, JEA, Reliance Energy, San Diego Gas & Electric, Toronto Hydro-Electric System Limited, TXU Energy, White River Valley Electric Cooperative, and Wisconsin Public Service. Google has also joined forces as an integration partner with Itron, which serves over 8,000 utilities clients.

For more information, please visit the Google PowerMeter FAQ page by clicking here.

Article and image excerpted from Google.org.

Energy Efficiency Funding Available!

Commentary: You can begin capitalizing on these funds immediately by first getting a Green Home Makeover (GHM). A GHM will help you identify what kinds of improvements you can make in your home. Green Irene will provide specific recommendations that you can implement with the help of government funds and save money while reducing your footprint. This is the time to GO GREEN. Get a Green Home Makeover today! Contact your Local Green Irene Eco-Consultant for more information.

The Obama Administration is dolling out $3.2 billion for energy efficiency and energy conservation projects in states and cities across the U.S., moving that portion of the economic stimulus money a bit closer to your home.

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program will fund new and existing programs in states to promote home energy audits, weatherization, energy efficiency upgrades, replacement of outdated appliances and other similar initiatives. The Department of Energy had previously estimated that the average qualifying home could benefit from $6,500 in improvements. Each program differs by state and city, so look to your local agencies or energy.gov/recovery for details. While home improvement initiatives are likely to help individuals most directly, the grants cover a broad array of potential initiatives:

“The funding will support energy audits and energy efficiency retrofits in residential and commercial buildings, the development and implementation of advanced building codes and inspections, and the creation of financial incentive programs for energy efficiency improvements. Other activities eligible for use of grant funds include transportation programs that conserve energy, projects to reduce and capture methane and other greenhouse gas emissions from landfills, renewable energy installations on government buildings, energy efficient traffic signals and street lights, deployment of Combined Heat and Power and district heating and cooling systems, and others.”

Don’t wait for the money to find you. Check out existing Home Energy Tax Credits available this year.

Rosamaria Caballero Stafford
Co-Founder and the Original Green Irene

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