greenHo.ws

I recently came across a article about something I had never heard about before, green burials. The idea is amazingly simple, saves cost and is the environmentally responsible thing to do.

The basics are pretty straight forward, there is no embalming fluid used in the body, a biodegradable casket is used and there is no concrete vault used. This takes us back to the way burials were preformed prior to the Civil War, kind of the way nature intended. It’s sort of the ultimate form of recycling.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution had the original article that sparked my interest, you can read it here - AJC Green Burial.

There are a couple of reference sites that are worth a look.

Greenburials.org

Greenburialcouncil.org

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The EPA’s recently issued their Lead: Renovation, Repair and Painting rule which will take effect in April 2010. The main impact of the rule is that remodeling activities that occur in houses built before 1978 that have pregnant women or children less than 6 years old will have to follow a strict set of requirements. They mainly include keeping dust to a minimum and cleaning up thoroughly after the work. Contractors will also need to take a training course to obtain the required certification. For details you can check the EPA site. You can also get educational pamphlets by calling the EPA’s National Lead Information Center at 800-424-LEAD (5323).

After the item yesterday about the rising price of food and the potential for shortages this site popped to mind.  This isn’t really a “green” related site but the principle and result is great.  FreeRice.com was created in late 2007 by John Breen, a computer programmer from Bloomington Indiana to help his son study for the SAT.  The site is a online word game where the player is presented with a word and four possible definitions, if they pick the correct definition FreeRice.com donates 20 grains of rice the United Nations World Food Program.  The rice (actually, the money for it) is provided by sponsors who advertise on the site.  The site generates enough traffic that enough rice is donated each day to feed over 7,000 people.  As of early April over 25 billion grains of rice had been donated!

It’s fun, a great way for kids (and adults) to improve their vocabulary and help a very worthwhile cause - reducing world hunger.  Go give it a shot.

I haven’t had my morning caffeine yet and already a half dozen green articles or ads have jumped out at me.  I am gain surprised at how quickly interest in the topic has grown.

Here’s a sample of what I’ve seen so far today, with some comments:

• Costco advertisement for "Go Green with Costco.com" - an eclectic mix of solar, recycled, organic, and energystar products; all seem expensive; many are frivolous; Costco could do better if trying to advertise to this market
• Articles in the Wall Street Journal including "The Problem with ‘Eco-Fur’? . . " - a description of the fur industries effort to incorporate "eco" into their marketing; not much conclusion other than "it will be interesting to see what happens"
• and an ad on the front page for Dell energy efficient data centers - pretty much all technology providers are now offering and hyping energy efficient products and services; the good news is that most will reduce energy consumption compared to older technology; two questions are still open - whose is best? and how far do they need to go?

The U.S. Green Building Council and the American Society of Interior Designers Foundation have partnered to create the nation’s first green residential remodeling guidelines. The guidelines cover the 10 areas most often updated in a remodel. They are: Kitchen, Bathroom, Bedroom, Living & Working, Finished Basement, Home Performance, Major Addition, Gut Rehab, Deep Energy Retrofit, and Outdoor Living.

The Guidelines are designed to provide people with the information and tools to green their home remodeling projects. With the continued increases in the cost of energy more and more people will be looking for information on how to save energy.

For more information please check out the REGREEN site.

If you have ever been in a grocery store, I’m sure you have heard the question, “Paper or plastic?” Which one is the right choice? Well the short answer is neither! A better choice is a reusable bag. But that is not always possible or practical so if you have to choose, it appears that most evaluations prefer plastic over paper. To that end, there was a very good overview of the “bag war” on the MSNBC website today.  There covered, pretty fairly, both sides of the issue - paper or plastic. 

It’s worth a look, but remember – a reusable bag is the best choice!

There is a new website set to launch on March 17, PlanetReuse.com. Planet Reuse is a website that connects buyers and seller of reused and reclaimed construction materials and equipment. Kind of a eBay for recycling and reuse.
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In January, I wrote about online tools you can use to calculate and even reduce your impact on the environment. Since then, we’ve been using two of the tools and it’s been interesting to see the results.

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Would you believe that businesses overstate the green-ness of what they sell?  And that many of those overstated claims are on products you and I pick up every time we go to the grocery or big box store?  What if you found out that 99.9% of products labeled “green” were not?

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It’s hard to put into a single picture all the ways that we impact the Earth. I found a neat site that tries to do that, without encouraging odd ideas or going to extremes.

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Not only is greenHo.ws is a great place to find tips, projects, and general green info, but it’s also closely related to GreenProductsNews. Greenman has been pulling double duty and writing on GreenProductsNews about products that improve the greenliness of your house.

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This week we’ve told you about three easy home projects and some quick hit actions to increase your green-ness. All of these are very much in line with our philosophy of “being green doesn’t have to be hard.” Keeping with the theme of the week, here’s another area to consider: don’t buy software in a physical package.

Most software is sold to corporations, who get software electronically. In other words, they download it directly from the source and distribute to employees over their local networks. Consumers buy less software, but most software sold to consumers comes off the shelf in a box wrapped in plastic and delivered in a truck.

Basically, this is one area where big corporations are doing a better job at being green than the average person. Not that big business is perfect in this area, but they are ahead of the typical home user. Let’s change that.

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After eliminating credit card applications and financial come-ons, the second biggest paper waste in the mailbox is catalogs.

Many catalogs are from companies we have never done business with and never will. More are from companies we bought something from just once, while fewer still are from companies we do business with occasionally. Most important though, all of these companies have websites or sell their products through other companies’ websites like Amazon.

The question becomes: how can we reduce the number of catalogs we receive in the mail? The answer is that there are several ways to do this.

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There is a sudden rush on the intertubes to green websites. It’s great to see so much interest in our topic! Recently I’ve seen tools for calculating carbon reduction, big magazines starting blog and green marketing sites, and some interesting animation.

One that caught my eye today is carbonrally.com. It’s a team driven, competitive approach to reducing pollution and waste, with opportunity for a little smack.

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