EPA Teaches “Green” Backyard Gardening Techniques

PHILADELPHIA (March 3, 2008) – Come visit EPA’s urban backyard at the 2008 Philadelphia Flower Show. You’ll learn the best techniques for having a beautiful, carefree garden that doesn’t need mowing, uses little water and fossil fuels, reduces the need for fertilizers and pesticides, and keeps garden waste out of landfills.

“We want to show people it’s possible to have a beautiful garden without a lot of fuss, and have it do good for the environment,” said EPA Regional Administrator Donald S. Welsh.

No-mow sod, native plants, composting, using a rain barrel to capture rain and using recycled materials such as old wrought iron fencing are just some of the topics demonstrated in this year’s EPA exhibit.

One of the more intriguing methods for backyard gardeners this year is the no-mow sod. It’s an ornamental grass that has long slender blades which grow long and lay over. The sparkling green color remains beautiful year-round. It is fairly wear resistant and works best in areas that don’t get a lot of wear from foot traffic. Gas powered law equipment such as mowers, blowers and trimmers emit 10 to 30 times more air pollution than a typical car for every hour in use. And in the Eastern U.S., 30 percent of residential water consumption goes toward watering lawns. The no-mow sod requires less watering, and less mowing – from once a month to once a year depending on landscape tastes.

EPA’s exhibit stresses the importance of minimizing air emissions from mowing and reducing the use of chemicals on lawns. Structural elements include re-used wrought iron fencing, re-cycled glass mulch, and re-cycled glass and aluminum tiles in fountains and obelisks. Our final elements include the composting of yard waste and capturing water in a rain barrel to assist with garden watering.

EPA’s exhibit won awards of merit for non-academic education from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and the Philadelphia Flower Show.

For more information on green landscaping, go to: http://www.epa.gov/reg3esd1/garden/
tag: EPA, green technologies, urban backyard, fertilizers, pesticides,

gridtech: First Ever Green500 List Released at SC07

It is good to see that even super computers could go green. (These could reach 500KW!).
gridtech: First Ever Green500 List Released at SC07

Tags: super computers, supercomputing, Green500

Ten things to do at home to keep our Earth Alive,

While watching Live Earth,Do your part to ensure a healthy planet by incorporating these ten simple actions into your everyday life.

	1) Replace your incandescent light bulbs with compact florescent lights (CFLs). Look closely at labels when buying light bulbs. Those marked as CFLs last 10 times longer and use 66 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs while delivering the same light levels. As a result, CFLs accrue net savings between $30 and $45 over their lifetimes, depending on your cost of electricity, the wattage size of the CFL, and the lamp's lifespan (manufacturers make CFLs that last 6,000, 8,000, or 10,000 hours). The return on investment is 15 times higher than leaving your money in a bank account or the average return on Dow Jones stock investments. CFLs also reduce the release of greenhouse gas emissions and are safer because they burn at a lower temperature (160° F or less) than incandescent and halogen lights, which can burn at temperatures up to 500° F.
	2) Inflate your car tires. When walking or biking isn't feasible, you can do something to better protect the Earth while driving. Take a step in the right direction by inflating your car tires. Pumping them up can improve your gas mileage by about 3.3 percent – a savings of about 7 cents per gallon. It‘s the right thing to do for your wallet and the right thing to do for the Earth.
	3) Weigh your ecological impact. It’s far easier than stepping on a scale. Take CI's short eco-footprint quiz to find out if you need to tread more lightly on Earth’s biodiversity. Measure how last year’s habits stack up, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a full-fledged eco-warrior in the year ahead.
	4) Turn down the hot water heater. Set your water heater to 130° F. While you’re at it, turn down your house thermostat during the winter to 55° F when you go to bed or leave home. These simple actions can have enormous positive consequences, preventing the emission of more than 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide over the course of the year, while cutting your energy bill by more than 10 percent. And that’s just from you! Get your friends on board, and the benefits will multiply.
	5) Choose your seafood wisely. We can’t afford to wait until 2008. The world’s seafood will be entirely depleted by 2048, according to an early November report in the journal Science. That means the moment to shape up is now. By buying and eating certain types of seafood, you can discourage harmful fishing practices and avoid the more depleted or threatened species. Take a look at Seafood Choices Alliance or Seafood Watch to make smart choices.
	6) Replace your showerheads and faucets with high-efficiency models. Retrofitting just one showerhead and two faucets will reduce water usage by 50 percent to 70 percent, while maintaining the same user experience. The cost savings you’ll see on your water and electricity bills will pay for the retrofit in only three to 12 months.
	7) Offset your carbon footprint. Carbon footprints are soooo last year. Luckily, CI's new carbon calculator guarantees you’ll be on the cutting edge. It empowers you to offset your personal impact on Earth’s rising climate. Donate $10 to offset your cross-country road trip, $20 for the upcoming family reunion, or $7 for a domestic roundtrip flight. Your money will help protect the roughly 832,000-acre Makira Forest in northeast Madagascar and prevent millions of tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
	8) Buy locally produced meats and produce. Sounds like a good idea, but you don’t know where to start? Just type in your zip code on Local Harvest's website to see a list of farms and farmers’ markets close to home, as well as nearby restaurants committed to supporting their neighbors. Buying locally produced food cuts out the middlemen and the vast amounts of energy required to get your products onto store shelves. Most produce in U.S. supermarkets travels an average 1,500 miles before it is sold!
	9) Drink more water from reusable glassware. It’s great for your bank account, your health, and your planet. The average American consumed more than 400 beverage bottles and cans in 2006, leaving behind wasted glass, plastic, steel, and aluminum. That adds up to excessive amounts of fossil fuels and hydropower for mining, processing, refining, shaping, shipping, storing, refrigerating, and disposing of those materials. Of course, changing your drinking habits both at home and at work is applicable to just about every other habit, as well. You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again: Reduce, reuse, and recycle.
	10) Turn down the thermostat just three degrees in the winter and up three degrees in the summer. You can prevent the emission of nearly 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide annually. Straight from Conservation International

Tags: green living, green technologies, climate, live earth

Google will go carbon neutral by the end of 2007

To any one concerned about our dear earth, will be happy to hear that a globally known entity like Google tipping the hat will make a major effect. I have earlier written about Google's Solar Energy efforts. But I did not think at that time that Google will reach Carbon Neutrality by this time frame.
I am surprised everyday how much less people know what they are doing to this planet. All innocent family and people loving people, just not enough awareness of things we could do to help conserver a tiny part of this planet.
Google has done super service by joining the many a companies, governments and individuals that further this effort. If you ask 100 people if they knew what is Solar energy is you will be surprised at the answers. But they will surely will know what Google is! So there you go. Thanks Google.
So what is this carbon neutrality? Well it is long way to explain but for now I will tell you how Google is doing it!
Google's plan to neutralize it's carbon footprint includes three basic strategies:
- reduce energy consumption by maximizing efficiency;
- invest in and use renewable energy sources; and
- purchase carbon offsets for the emissions that we can't reduce directly.

To calculate Google's carbon footprint, They have taken into account emissions from purchased electricity, employee commuting, business travel, construction, and server manufacturing. In a partnership with the Environmental Resources Trust (ERT), Google has independently verified this assessment, and will continue to do so every year.

in addition, Google already has several other environmental programs and initiatives in place. Last week Google announced the Climate Savers Computing initiative to greatly improve computing energy-efficiency standards. (Make sure your next computer purchase is a compliant PC!)
Transportation is another major area of focus. Google employee shuttle system provides a commute for more than 1,500 Googlers daily around the San Francisco Bay area, and several hundred more have also taken advantage of the rebate Google offers when an employee bought a fuel-efficient vehicle.

Google is equally committed to finding and developing new green technologies and sources of energy. Google has just completed its solar panel installation in Mountain View, the single-largest corporate solar installation in the U.S. to date.
Google have also joined the World Resources Institute's Green Power Market Development Group. And of course Google.org is working on creative new initiatives, including plug-in hybrid cars. In addition, Google has set itself the ambitious goal of creating 50 megawatts of new renewable generation capacity--enough to power 50,000 typical U.S. homes--by 2012.

Information gathered from Official Google Blog: Carbon neutrality by end of 2007
Google also has a site specifically dedicated to clean energy initiative at Google here.

Tags: green technologies, solar power, google solar, Carbon Neutrality, Solar energy, carbon footprint