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Wear Business Casual, Stop Climate Change
Tweet Share on Facebook July 31, 2008 CommentTo slash energy costs, the United Nations building will be setting its thermostat at a maximum of 77 degrees, which will save the organization an estimated $100,000. Reuters reports that the employees in the New York headquarters will be encouraged to switch from wool suits to business casual in order to be more comfortable.
Perhaps other businesses will take note. In warmer climes, many companies air-condition their offices to excess, leaving some workers chilly. Freezing offices and scorching outside temperatures also mean that office employees need to dress in layers, all of which are peeled off immediately upon exiting the building. Business casual in warmer offices isn't just good for the environment—both warmer room temperatures and casual clothing have been found to increase productivity. At the same time, some might argue the importance of proper office decorum in dress, especially in an organization as important as the United Nations.
So, is business casual the way to go? Or does the idea of a warmer office make you sweat?
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4 Ways to Earn Cash for Recycling
Tweet Share on Facebook July 30, 2008 Comment (34)Recycling may be getting easier each year, but let's face it: People are lazy. That's why bottles get thrown into trash bins when recycling bins are a foot away. It's also why technology ends up in landfills, when it could be deconstructed for its perfectly good parts. Four programs are trying to change that by offering armchair environmentalists cold, hard cash to recycle their stuff.
Cell for Cash offers money for an infrequently recycled gadget—your cellphone. Many people get a new cellphone each year. Some leave the old one sitting around their house, and 7 percent just throw it away. Cellphones are full of chemicals that leach into groundwater from landfills. In California, they're considered hazardous waste. Cell for Cash lists hundreds of makes and models of phones. When you find yours, you can request a postage-paid box. Send it back with your phone and charger, and once the company verifies the contents, you'll receive a check. Cell for Cash refurbishes the phones and sells them in developing countries. Not all phones are worth cash, though; many older models are listed on the site as "Free Recycling," which means they have no resale value. My four-year-old Nokia phone, despite being in perfect working condition, will earn me zilch.
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I'm Not a Plastic Bag
Tweet Share on Facebook July 29, 2008 Comment (6)Paper versus plastic versus canvas has become another one of those ecobattles that call both sides to the site of the latest green battleground: the grocery store. (You can also look at bottled water.)
We've heard that plastic bags are evil, because they don't biodegrade. Therefore, many cities have taken steps to ban them, and grocery stores charge customers to use them. Not so fast, says John Tierney of the New York Times. The fifth item in his list of "10 Things to Scratch From Your Worry List" today states that plastic bags require less energy to produce, and less pollution goes into the air and the water during their manufacturing. They also take up less space in landfills. At the same time, they take up more space in the floating island of trash gathering in the Pacific.
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4 Easy Ways to Be a Freegan
Tweet Share on Facebook July 28, 2008 Comment (34)Conventional wisdom states that dumpster-diving is for the homeless. Freegans, however, are a small anticonsumerist group who won't allow anything useful to go to waste—to the point where middle-class environmentalists can be found scavenging the trash bins of grocery stores for the still-good food thrown out every day. Some of them even chronicle their finds on the Web, boasting of spending only a few dollars on food each month and furnishing their homes for free, often to the dismay of store owners who see them as scavengers.
Thankfully, you don't have to dumpster-dive to subscribe to the freegan philosophy and reap the cost-saving benefits. Here are a few tips for accessible—and considerably less smelly—freeganism:
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Blow Up Your SUV for the Environment? Yeah, Right
Tweet Share on Facebook July 25, 2008 Comment (1)Meet Ryan Mickle. He's a management consultant who recently moved to San Francisco, where he realized he'd no longer be needing his gas-guzzling Range Rover (San Francisco is, after all, the most walkable city in America.). But Mickle concluded that selling his car wouldn't do any good—though his own carbon footprint would decrease, someone else would still be polluting. He wants to get his SUV off the road for good, and he wants your help.
Mickle started a website, One Fewer, soliciting ideas for the best way to eliminate his SUV. In a video, he lounges in a Ghostbusters T-shirt and tells us, to the tune of Radiohead, that he will fling his SUV into the Pacific Ocean "like a fat kid into a swimming pool," or he will do whatever the "crowdsourcing" masses recommend as the best solution.
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Global Warming Begets Adorable Kittens
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2008 Comment (3)We blame global warming for a lot of things, but making our planet cuter is not one of them. That could change with the recent news from the Environmental Protection Agency that small mammals are going into heat earlier and for longer periods of time because of earlier springs. So, even though global warming depletes our ozone layer, look on the bright side! At least we'll have more adorable kittens running around.
According to this article in the Chicago Sun-Times, cat populations are booming. "The brain receives instructions to produce a hormone that basically initiates the heat cycle in a cat," said Nancy Peterson, feral cat program manager of the Humane Society of the United States, "and those instructions are affected by the length of day and usually the rising temperatures of spring."
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Google Maps Adds Walking Directions
Tweet Share on Facebook July 23, 2008 CommentJust in time for the recent announcement of America's most and least walkable cities, Google has added a tool for finding walking directions to its maps. The Google Lat Long Blog (as reported by Grist) details the latest improvements: Walking directions ignore whether or not streets are one-way, offering the fastest point from point A to point B.
However, the walking directions are still under development, so off-road features like pedestrian paths won't show up yet. Neither will shortcuts through traffic circles or parks. For cities where Google has mapped public transit directions, you'll now find walking directions automatically from the point where you'd exit the subway or bus stop.
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Locavores Let the Hired Help Do the Harvesting
Tweet Share on Facebook July 22, 2008 CommentWould you pay someone to tend your vegetable garden so that you can eat greener? This New York Times article details the trend of becoming a locavore (someone who eats only food that has been grown locally, cutting out the environmental effects of transportation) by proxy. This means that you'd pay someone to plant your vegetable garden, go to the farmers' market for you, and even cook your organic meals, free of "food miles." Becoming a locavore is an expensive trend, since farmers' market food can be pricier than supermarket fare, and some doubt that food miles have as bad of an impact as we fear. But it's as trendy as a shiny new iPhone.
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It's Getting Hot in Here: Energy-Saving Air Conditioner Tips
Tweet Share on Facebook July 21, 2008 Comment (15)Today is scorching hot. It's oppressively humid. It's a day to spend all of my nonworking hours in a swimming pool. It's a day to give in and crank up the AC. But air conditioning, as we learned years ago, fuels global warming. Here are a few eco-friendly ways to beat the heat and keep your energy bills low.
- Turn the air conditioner off when you're at work if you don't have any pets. See if your company offers time-of-use pricing, where you pay only for the hours you're in the house with the AC on, for even more savings.
- If you're buying an air conditioner, make sure it's Energy Star rated.
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The Recycling Bin: A Roundup of Green News, Al Gore Edition
Tweet Share on Facebook July 18, 2008 Comment (102)What are ecobloggers talking about as we ease into the weekend? Our president of global warming, Al Gore.
- After yesterday's Gore speech, conservative bloggers like the team at Americans for Prosperity are gleefully pointing out that Gore arrived at the event in a car, despite asking supporters to take bikes or public transportation.
- Wired Magazine says of Gore's 10-year plan: "Absent a huge run-up in coal prices, a fusion power breakthrough, or some unforeseen technology, it seems impossible."
