What’s happening at www.ramsayhome.com

More college kids are concerned about the environment than ever before, studies say. And so are designers of university dorms–at least in some parts of the country.

This year, some co-eds at Pitzer College, in Claremont, Calif., are nestling into new dorms that boast rooftop gardens and photovoltaic panels. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, campus officials say that new LEED-certified housing will soon replace all of the old dorms on campus.

Read more at Building Green TV.com.

In October 2006, Google announced a commitment to solar energy production and launched the largest solar panel installation to date on a corporate campus in the United States. Google has installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise the 1,600 kilowatt project. Panels cover the rooftops of eight buildings and two newly constructed solar carports at the Googleplex.

This installation is projected to produce enough electricity for approximately 1,000 California homes or 30% of Google’s peak electricity demand in our solar powered buildings at our Mountain View, CA headquarters.

We built this page to monitor and share the day to day production of clean, renewable energy from our very own rooftops. Keep checking in to see how we’re doing. We think the future looks bright!

[tags]Google, green, solar, power, energy[/tags]

This is not a green related article – but many people stopping by here are probably interested in building a home office. I am always looking for tips and suggestions on how to work from home while having a family and a life.

The drawbacks? It’s easy to get distracted, especially by household tasks or needy children or even relatives who don’t understand the “home office” concept and don’t get you’re truly working.

And for entrepreneurs who don’t have employees (or children or pets), working out of the home can be a lonely endeavor. Jeff Louderback, a home-based publicist in Orlando, says he gets up every morning, shaves and dresses professionally, and then heads to the office, which is the spare bedroom in his two-bedroom condo. While he’s happy to be free from office politics, he misses the camaraderie of co-workers. So he often takes his laptop to a local café “just to be around people,” he says. “I might not even talk to anyone, but just to hear the stir of human interaction, I just feel better.”

From Smart Money – link

[tags]work from home, small business, work life balance, office, home office[/tags]

Calgary recently decided to distribute blue boxes for curb-side recycling. As a City that is tightly focused on oil and entrepreneurship, the idea was hotly contested in City hall. Those that wanted it felt that the cost should be spread equally around while those that opposed it didn’t see the benefit of charging everyone for a service that they felt would be used by a minority of people.

In the United States, some clever thinking people called RecycleBank have come up with a solution that may satisfy the bottom-line (and perhaps short-term) focused people as well as those who care about leaving an environment and legacy for their offspring.

Creative Economist, Steven Levitt, states that an incentive is simply a means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing, and that the world has not yet invented a situation that cannot be forced given the right incentive scheme. Philadelphia-based company RecycleBank has come up with an innovative recycling incentive that rewards households for the amount of recyclables they collect each week.

Using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips embedded in bins, garbage trucks scan and weight the bins, automatically recording each household’s contribution. This amount is translated into RecycleBank Dollars that can be spent at participating stores, such as Starbucks, Home Depot, HP, Coca Cola, etc. Some of these companies have also established community funds for local non-profit groups, community projects, charities, and environmental organizations.

Read a detailed write-up of the RecycleBank idea. We should try and get this idea across the border!

[tags]banking, money, economy, green, recycle, re-use, waste, recyclebank[/tags]

BENSON, Minn. – The gray, sandy mix of turkey droppings and other bits and pieces flowing through Greg Langmo’s fingers back onto the floor of his barn isn’t just funky dirt, it’s fuel.

With 16,000 hens gobbling around him, Langmo is standing on a 15-inch layer of turkey litter — some 750 tons of the stuff — that represents a new source of energy.

It will help fuel a $200 million power plant due to begin full-scale production next month. The 55-megawatt Fibrominn LLC plant will be the first poultry litter-fired power plant in the United States, tapping a novel source of renewable energy to produce enough power for 50,000 homes. Its developers are planning similar plants in other major poultry states.

Read the rest of the story at MSNB.com

[tags]power, electricity, waste, energy, environment[/tags]

Calgary Dollars is a grassroots currency system that brings together local talents and resources to strengthen our local economy and build community.

A community’s true wealth lies in the skills, talents and capabilities of its members. We believe that every person has something of value to offer to their neighbors.

By encouraging local production and consumption, we are committed to creating a healthy economy that is rooted in a healthy society and a healthy ecosystem.

Why use Calgary Dollars?

• Make money doing things you like to do.
• Meet people with similar interests.
• Increase your loyal and local customer base for your business.
• Develop a business idea.

Our community benefits too:

• Calgary Dollars provides loans and grants to community groups.
• We make our community better through our projects like—community clean up, cleaning newspaper boxes, working on environmental projects with Clean Calgary.
• We support community gardens.

[tags]local economy, barter, currency, trade, community, sustainable[/tags]

UK ministers, who claim to promote sustainable development, are part of a push to force developing countries to sign away their environment. Found this morning at The Guardian.

During the course of this month civil society organisations and social movements worldwide are holding actions against unfair trade deals that the European Union is forcing on 76 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, of which 39 are among the least developed in the world.

These so called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) (pdf) are comprehensive free trade instruments that are set to force ACP countries to eliminate trade barriers to almost all EU imports. This will expose family farmers and fledgling industry to direct and unfair competition from powerful European corporations – driving farmers off their land and causing mass unemployment. The EU claims that these deals are pro-development but even the European commission’s own impact assessment (pdf) has highlighted that they could lead to the collapse of West Africa’s manufacturing sector.

Yet it is the agricultural sector that is set to suffer the most as the current proposals will fling open markets – mainly throughout sub-Saharan Africa – and pave the way for the dumping of cheap, subsidised European goods such as cereals, processed meat and canned vegetables. This threatens the livelihoods of millions of farmers who simply cannot compete with cheap imports.

Read the rest of the article on unfair trade.

[tags]green, trade, IMF, africa, environment, unfair trade[/tags]

Originally found via lifehacker.com. Add this to our huge
collection of 10 steps, 10 tricks, etc. More earth-day posts tomorrow!

It all seems so daunting.

Climate change. Carbon credits. Biofuels, hydrogen power, and solar energy. The vocabulary of a new century. There’s a lot to learn.

The news is full of disturbing reports about global warming, threatened species, and the gradual realization that the way we live — particularly in the developed nations — will have to change if we want to enjoy a clean and sustainable future.

But there’s no reason to feel overwhelmed. Every journey begins
with a single step. At Lighter Footstep, we’ve rounded-up the ten
easiest ways for you to start moving toward a lighter lifestyle. Some
cost nothing at all. Others provide a lot bang for your eco-dollar. In
every case, these ideas will save you money, cut energy use, and help
balance your household’s greenhouse gas budget — the amount of carbon
dioxide released into the atmosphere to produce goods or electrical
power.

So pick a few, and give them a try. Before long, you’ll establish
the habits we all need to develop as we face the challenges of a
resource-hungry planet.

Read the 10 steps for lighter living at Lighter Footstep.

[tags]earth day, climate change, sustainable, lifestyle[/tags]

>Received via email.

Dear friend,

Earth Day is coming up this Sunday, April 22nd, and this year the climate debate is finally over. With the recent elections, Washington is waking up to the reality of global warming.

Even the coal and oil industries are coming to the table — they know we’ve got to take action, so now they’re looking for the best deal.

And boy, have they ever spotted one.

It’s obvious that we’ve got to cap our emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon, and then cut them back as quickly as possible. How we’ll allocate pollution permits is an open question. One good option is a government auction. Many economists believe a carbon tax would be even better* — fairer, most efficient, and easily enforced. The point is, polluters must pay.

But here’s a dirty secret: many coal-burning utilities and oil companies are pushing for a gigantic giveaway. They want “grandfathered” permits to pollute at current levels, at no cost. And unless we speak up, they might get away with it.

Don’t let them. Speak up now, at:

http://earthday.net/sky3/

This kind of giveaway is just wrong. It would:

• Reward the companies causing most of the problem;
• Give them permits that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year, for free;
• Penalize companies that have done the right thing by already reducing their pollution.

Virtually all climate experts agree that we’ve got to freeze global warming pollution now and then reduce it at least 80% by 2050, with strong milestones along the way.

It’s a good idea to harness market forces, maybe with an auction, to make sure polluters pay the cost of reducing their impact on our climate. To reduce emissions, we can simply put fewer permits on the market each year than the year before. As a result, the price of polluting will go up, as it should.

It’s also important that we use all the revenue from an auction for public purposes, like speeding up our transition to renewable energy, creating green jobs, and helping people, especially those who are most vulnerable, to cope with the impacts of climate change and to participate in a green economy.

But first, we’ve got to stop the giveaway.

Thank you.

– Kathleen Rogers, President, Earth Day Network

* The Wall Street Journal recently reported that many economists, surprisingly, favor a tax: “Is it Time for a New Tax on Energy? Economists Say Government Should Foster Alternatives — But Not How Bush Proposes”, February 9th, 2007, Page A6.

[tags]earth day 2007, coal, taxes, bush[/tags]

This story about Australia was posted this morning. Wikipedia describes the Murray-Darling basin as the most important Agricultural area in all of Australia.

Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent’s food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought – heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.

The Murray-Darling basin in south-eastern Australia yields 40 per cent of the country’s agricultural produce. But the two rivers that feed the region are so pitifully low that there will soon be only enough water for drinking supplies. Australia is in the grip of its worst drought on record, the victim of changing weather patterns attributed to global warming and a government that is only just starting to wake up to the severity of the position.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, a hardened climate-change sceptic, delivered dire tidings to the nation’s farmers yesterday. Unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock.

Read the rest of the story about Australia’s environmental disaster at The Independent.

[tags]Australia, drought, famine, farming, weather, climate-change, global warming, earth day 2007, crops[/tags]

This was emailed to me earlier today – everyone loves to save money!

If you’ve taken the Ecological Footprint Quiz, the number of planets that you’ve destroyed with your carbon footprint is probably burned into your brain. But in your search for ways to reduce your impact on the planet, you learn that many suggestions turn out to be sales pitches for items that are well beyond your budget. Plus, some ideas about how to green up your life are almost impossible to comprehend, let alone implement. (Do you really need a solar-powered windmill?)

The following list provides you with 57 ways to go green and save a boatload of money at little to no cost. If you begin to share a ride to work with one person, for instance, you can save up to $780 per year. Other suggestions are negligible since they depend upon your current habits; however, in each instance you can learn more about subjects that will help you create your own formulas for saving the green in more ways than one.

Read the list on 57 ways to go green and save a boatload of money.

[tags]green, environment, money, savings, eco-friendly, recycle, walk, bike, public transit[/tags]

List created by Katie Lambert and posted on How Stuff Works.

Going green is easier than you think. There are little things you can do every day to help reduce greenhouse gases and make a less harmful impact on the environment. Taking care of the Earth is not just a responsibility — it’s a privilege. In the spirit of Earth Day, HowStuffWorks came up with 10 things you can do to help save the Earth.

1. Pay attention to how you use water. The little things can make a big difference. Every time you turn off the water while you’re brushing your teeth, you’re doing something good. Got a leaky toilet? You might be wasting 200 gallons of water a day [Source: EPA]. Try drinking tap water instead of bottled water, so you aren’t wasting all that packaging as well. Wash your clothes in cold water when you can. Empty water bottles in a trash can. If you must drink bottled water, recycle the bottle instead of throwing it away.

2. Leave your car at home. If you can stay off the road just two days a week, you’ll reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 1,590 pounds per year [Source: EPA]. Combine your errands — hit the post office, grocery store and shoe repair place in one trip. It will save you gas and time.

3. Walk or ride your bike to work, school and anywhere you can. You can reduce greenhouse gases while burning some calories and improving your health. If you can’t walk or bike, use mass transit or carpool. Every car not on the road makes a difference.

4. Recycle.You can help reduce pollution just by putting that soda can in a different bin. If you’re trying to choose between two products, pick the one with the least packaging. If an office building of 7,000 workers recycled all of its office paper waste for a year, it would be the equivalent of taking almost 400 cars off the road [Source: EPA].

Read the rest of the ways you can help save the earth at How Things Work.

[tags]earth day, calgary, environment, clean calgary, recycle, re-use[/tags]

I’m away for a week in New York City on business. Megan has begun researching more ways we can eat local and plans on publishing her findings shortly. Here is a great starting place for everyone in the Calgary area interested in eating locally grown food on a regular basis.

Slow Food began as a grassroots response to the expanding ‘fast food’ industry in Europe. In 1989, delegates from fifteen countries signed the manifesto that created the Slow Food movement. In 1998, The Wall Street Journal called the Slow Food movement the ‘Greenpeace of Gastronomy’. Slow Food seeks to protect cuisines, regional dishes, ingredients, and small purveyors from the deluge of industrialization and to restore pleasures to our fast-paced and hectic lives.

For further information about Slow Food Calgary and/or to reserve tickets for any of our upcoming events, please call The Cookbook Co. at (403) 265-6066 or Janice Beaton Fine Cheese at (403) 229-0900. Alternatively, please contact us via the Slow Food Calgary web site.

Visit Slow Food Calgary and join the slow-food movement.

[tags]slow food, fresh, eat local, western canada, not frozen, not shipped, no packaging[/tags]

Sorry for the break in posts – we had to move again. While our house is not finished yet, things are getting closer. This was our 5th move in 2 years. Pictures to come this week. Hopefully, after the snow here in Calgary has melted again. Please read this special announcement about a bike ride I (Ryan) am training for in June.

Dear Family and Friends,

During the weekend of June 22-24, 2007, I will be participating in an amazing new event the Alberta Cancer Foundation’s Tour of Courage!

I will be part of a peloton with other cyclists, riding and raising funds for the Alberta Cancer Foundation. The money we raise will support leading-edge research, province-wide prevention initiatives and programs that will benefit cancer patients and families at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre and throughout Alberta.

This year alone, 13,000 Albertans will be diagnosed with cancer and over 5,000 will die from it. The Alberta Cancer Board and Foundation are committed to the search for new therapies and ways to prevent and cure this devastating disease. I want to help and have set a personal Tour of Courage fundraising goal of $1,000. Please join me in the fight against cancer by sponsoring my participation in this exciting ride. If you’d like to find out more about the event, you can drop by http://www.tourofcourage.ca/

If you decide to sponsor my participation, you can do so by making your donation online using the link to my personal webpage below. Or you can print off a donation form and send your contribution in the mail. A tax receipt for the full amount of your gift will be issued by the Alberta Cancer Foundation.

Whatever you can give will make a difference – it all adds up! The Tour of Courage is more than just a ride its part of the journey to a Cancer Free Future and with your help we will reach our destination. I greatly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress.

Sincerely,

Ryan Johnston

My Personal Page for donations,

http://www.tourofcourage.ca/site/TR?px=1005301&pg=personal&fr_id=1000

[tags]tour,courage,lance armstrong, cancer, calgary, alberta, sponsor, donation[/tags]

Via www.autobloggreen.com

How can one argue with that? Well, Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time can. As he told NPR that the idea that more daylight equals energy savings is a crock.

“I’m certainly not a fan of the idea that it save energy,” he said. “It turns out that every time Congress has studied it, it’s been told that we haven’t saved anything. In fact, the best study we have is from the Nixon era when he went on a desperate attempt of year-round daylight saving as a result of the OPEC oil embargo and he came up with nothing by way of saving except the potential again. Here’s the problem with daylight saving as an energy saver: we tend to want our computers and our televisions and our radios when we want them. More important, daylight saving really pushed Americans out of the house at the end of the day. And when Americans go out of the house, they may go to the ballpark, they may go to the mall, but they don’t walk there. They get into their cars. Daylight saving increased gasoline consumption, something the petroleum industry has known since 1930. … This has been [a] tremendously effective spending policy. Retail stores love daylight saving. Because when we have an hour of sunlight after work, Americans tend to go shopping. The first and most persistent lobby for daylight saving in this country was the Chamber of Commerce, because they understood that if their department stores were lit up, people would be tempted by them.

In 1986, Congress gave us an extra month of daylight saving time. That’s when we went from six to seven months, which is the period we’ve been living with recently. In that Congressional hearing, [the] golf industry alone, these are industry estimates, told Congress one additional month of daylight saving was worth 200 million dollars in sales of golf clubs and greens fees. The BBQ industry said it was worth 100 million dollars in additional sales of grills and charcoal briquettes. … For 25 years, the candy industry has wanted to get Halloween covered by daylight saving, figuring that if children have an extra hour of daylight, they’ll collect more candy. In fact, they went so far during the 1985 hearings on daylight saving as to put candy pumpkins on the seat of every Senator hoping to get a little favor. They didn’t get it then, but they got it this time.” (Note this is my own transcription, not NPR’s. I think I got everything right, but, you know…)

Read the rest of the story.

[tags]energy, daylight savings, time, hour change, savings, environment[/tags]

Via ExtremeTech

For all the tech minded readers – ExtremeTech has a how-to on building an eco-friendly PC.

read more | digg story

[tags]tech, green, eco-friendly, build, DIY, PC, environment, energy, conservation]

Via email

Lonny from http://www.appropedia.org wrote us an email telling us about the project he is involved in.

http://www.appropedia.org is a wiki for sustainability, appropriate technology and poverty reduction projects, how-to’s, organizations and collaborations.

We’ve added it to the search engine and look forward to reading the wiki.

–ryan and megan

[tags]wiki, sustainability, poverty, environment, search, appropedia[/tags]

It supposedly creates 90% more energy than it uses, which is damned impressive. Alright, when can this be ready for consumer use?

read more | digg story

[tags]energy, conservation, environment, generator, eco-friendly, green, power[/tags]

Via Coshocton Tribune Coshocton, OH

We found this encouraging story this morning in our inbox. While most kids are probably more excited about Disney’s new Pirates of the Caribbean Role Playing Game, those kids lucky enough to visit Disneyland in person this summer will get a lesson in conservation and the natural environment. Another example of how important conservation has become for children and the future.

“This is a great opportunity,” said Paula Seward, Katie’s mother. “With a professional internship, a lot of kids are offered other opportunities with the Walt Disney Company. It’s a great opportunity for her to get experience, and we’re excited and happy for her.”

The six-month internship began Jan. 12 and ends June 15. Seward’s title is Education Presenter at the Animal Kingdom. “I work with kids and families,” she said. “I do a lot of work with the Kids Discovery Clubs where kids get to play and learn about animals, the environment and conservation. I’m trying to improve animal visibility, and teach about animals and their habitats and what we can do to help.”

Seward said this experience may help with her chosen career fields, especially with trying to convey conservation messages and helping animal and environmental well-being.

“It’s fun. I enjoy teaching guests about animals on a daily basis and interacting with kids,” she said. “They’re so eager to learn, and it’s easy to get the conservation messages across. They’re excited to see everything, and that’s cool.”

Seward said there are numerous conservation messages she tries to teach children, such as turning off the water when brushing their teeth. “In Dinoland, we show them fossils and talk about extinctions,” she said. “We also talk about recycling and picking up trash. The most important thing is when they go home, that they go to the library to learn more and teach others about animals and how to help individual habitats.”

Read the rest of the story on Disney and conservation.

[tags]disney, environment, conservation, natural, habitats, Pirates role playing game[/tags]

Superuse is a online community of designers, architects and everybody else who is interested in inventive ways of recycling.

read more | digg story

[tags]recycle, architects, designers, design, environment, superuse.org[/tags]

The extra price you pay for ethical products goes straight to the retailer and not to the poor

read more | digg story

[tags]fair-trade, ethical, products, consumers, shopping, goods, environment, wages, minimum wage, first-world, third-world, developing, coffee[/tags]

Raleigh, N.C., is in the center of the state’s tech hub, conducting experiments to see if it can cut energy consumption and maintenance costs by replacing conventional public light fixtures with ones based around light-emitting diodes.

read more | digg story

[tags]raleigh, north carolina, energy, conservation, LED, lights, consumption, power[/tags]

We started our blog to share our story and help others find online information about building green homes and buying eco-friendly products. We joined a growing number of bloggers who share common views and a desire to help others. In a way, every green blogger’s mission is similar to Google’s – to connect people to important information, no matter how specialized, as quickly as possible. The best feature of the web is it’s ability to encourage people to help others – or to help the earth in this case.

In the spirit of helping the earth in any way we can, we have created The Eco-Friendly Search Engine using Google’s search technology. The Eco-Friendly Search Engine combines Google’s search algorithm with our own expertise and growing list of online green-resources, thus making access to trusted eco-friendly information across the web even easier. You can access the Eco-Friendly Search Engine at any time by visiting:

http://www.ramsayhome.com/search

But it gets better! We are looking for more green related blogs, eco-friendly businesses and other sites to add to the Eco-Friendly Search Engine’s resources. Send us an email if you would like your site reviewed.

Want to help us? Are you an expert on eco-friendly products or building green homes? Would you like to be an official contributor/resource for the Eco-Friendly Search Engine? Send us an email at ramsay@ramsayhome.com and we will send you an invite.

–Ryan and Megan

[tags]eco-friendly, search, google, green, climate change, recycled, energy, conservation, environment, warming[/tags]

“BlueMotion represents the most efficient and economical vehicle in each of Volkswagen’s car ranges. Set to make its debut on the Polo, the BlueMotion brand will soon expand with the announcement that the Passat BlueMotion is to be unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in March.” Will it make a debut across the pond? Here’s hoping.

read more | digg story

[tags]volkswagen, polo, hybrid, bluemotion, geneva motor show, efficient, fuel, climate change[/tags]