LED lightbulbs will be greener, but right now they're pricey - while CFLs are usually less than $2 each. And it's a field of constant innovation.
Between $15 and $50 per bulb over 5 years.

Red-hot innovation. Remember burning holes in paper with a magnifying glass? These appliances focus the sun's rays onto your food and cook it as thoroughly as a traditional oven - without using a spark of electricity. So simple you can even make them yourself.
These replace the standard convection ovens which use around $0.10 of electricity an hour - and then there's gas.

There are mineral-salt-powered equivalents to washing powder, like the Ecoballs "flying saucers". And yes, they work.
$200-$400 per 1000 washes.

Over half of American homes don't have them: that's a lot of homes being heated when they don't need to be. Install one today (say, a Ventstar Flat Stat) and watch your heating bills plummet.
Calculate your exact saving here (Microsoft Excel spreadsheet).

They're wasteful and polluting - and avoidable. Use one of the newer brand of push reel mower - or, if you have some money to invest, solar-convert!
With a gas-powered lawnmower, an hour's grass-cutting is around 100 miles in your car.

You use the most fuel at low speeds and when you start your car. So short trips really aren't worth it - cycle or walk instead. Give yourself longer to shop (you can cut down on gym time to balance things) - and carry less by shopping more often. 
With rising fuel prices, you can expect any fuel economy savings to grow and grow.

Make sure everyone's in before turning the key. And waiting for someone for more than 60 seconds? Kill the engine. You're more likely to consume more fuel idling than restarting.
It's been estimated that idling Burger King customers waste 16 million gallons of gas a year.

Prepacked sandwiches: all that plastic, and how much money? So make your own: it's vastly cheaper and more fun (you get to choose the fillings).
Personal estimate: Making my own - $15 /wk. Shop-bought - $30-50/wk.

Tumble-drying needs huge amounts of energy (see below). So go for a combination of an eco-friendly spin dryer for when it's raining, and washing lines (standard or fancy) for when the sun's shining.
Tumble dryers use around 2.5 kwH of electricity per hour. Compared with the rest of your appliances, that's huge. Dry naturally, and you'll save $100s a year. Oh, and millions of tons of CO2.

If your room's a bit gloomy, don't just reach for the lightswitch. Think about how to get more daylight into your room - whether simply by moving furniture around, or guiding the light in with sunpipes or mirrors.
Banishing the lights for the night will have a significant impact on your electricity bill. Even turning them on an hour later than before will make a difference.

Catch rainwater in water butts or more sophisticated arrangements, and you have a ready supply of water for anything except drinking (you'd need fairly expensive filtration to make it safe).
Up to half your water bill.

We want to see the return of Victory Gardens, using every neglected square inch of everyone's back yard to grow vegetables. Food miles turn into food inches, and the results taste better than you could have imagined if you're been eating the mass-produced variety. Also, buy locally produced food - it's just other people's Victory Gardens!
Huge savings on grocery bills.

There's a great deal of concern about energy being invisibly wasted, particularly with modern devices that have a "standby" setting. So when you've finished with the electronic marvel of your choice - unplug it.
Anything from $50 a year upwards per household is spent on keeping those little red LEDs glowing.

It's cutting-edge, so it's certainly not cheap - but ground source heat pumps are the next big thing in eco-friendly house design. They run some of your water supply through the ground where it picks up natural geothermal energy. Result: toasty-hot water for free!
Your central heating bill will evaporate.

If you can find an alternative to using your electric A/C unit, use it - but remember that it's much less eco-hostile to cool the house down than it is to heat it up. So when the house gets cold, think layers layers layers.
See it as a challenge - to make your Winter electricity bill lower than the summer one!

As Allison noted a while back, 90% of the energy used to wash clothes goes into heating the water. Wash on a cooler setting, and you save energy...
...and that saves you money on your bill. Couldn't be easier.

Meat is the most expensive item on the average food bill. It's therefore ironic that we eat too much of it - and no, I'm not vegetarian (although that's an excellent argument against meat as well). Meat is a delicacy, not a staple - so don't be afraid of having a few no-meat days during the week.
500g T-bone steak - $20. Just sayin'.

If you're the average American, you buy four bags of groceries, and you throw one of them straight in the trash. No, really. So learn to make the most of the food you buy: soups, stews, freezing, composting, you name it.
One quarter (or more specifically, 27%) of your food bill, right there.

With technology, everyone loves shiny and new things - particularly us men (a genetic flaw, perhaps). But if there's a second-hand, perfectly functioning alternative, we should go with it. So become a retrophiliac, and always try to buy last year's technology, first- or second-hand.
Regarding full retail price, look at what happened with the iPhone.

There's no cutting corners on quality clothing - except when a professional tailor is doing it for you. If you want to look fabulous on a budget, trawl your city's second-hand options and find items that are near your size - then have them adjusted.
A guy's perspective: in this manner I saved $200 on a suit last year.

The Information Revolution has changed the way we work. Telecommuting is a much cheaper option to spending 3 hours in traffic. Videoconferencing beats the real thing in bucks. So find ways to avoid those costly long hauls to and from work. (Even if the company's paying!).
Or are you saying that your own time isn't valuable to you?

Always support your local traders - they're where you'll most likely to get the best-quality goods. But when it comes to the harder-to-get items...shop online. You save on packaging and (depending on the items) you save on gas, because it's delivered to your door by someone who was on the road anyway.
And yes, shopping online is almost always cheaper - if not quite as tactile and fun!

It prevents urban tumbleweed. It's stylish. And it's tougher than those flimsy supermarket  bags...
...which you're increasingly being asked to pay for (by companies that lack the nerve to ban them altogether).

Household cleaners are expensive. So don't buy them. Go for the natural, non-polluting options that are just as effective, available everywhere and cost next to nothing.
Miracle cleaners miraculously wipe out your budget. Lemons, on the other hand, are cheap.


In the bad old days, you paid extra for an eco-conscious lifestyle. Now, eco-friendliness is the norm - and in more and more cases, not choosing green is the way to overspend.
Choose green, save money, help the planet. There is no catch.

Image

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The less optimistic among us love to point out that “green” is a trend, and, like all trends, that it will fade with time. I proudly say that I’m not green because it’s trendy, but because it’s who I am. I strive for beauty and balance in my life, and that means respecting the people, plants and animals around me. I’ve raised my standards and have come to expect a world where everybody cares about the consequences of their actions.

More than just an accumulation of ecologically-sound actions, being green has to be who you are. It’s an intuitive thing; it means taking into account your neighbors, the trees in your yard, the birds nesting in that tree, and the bugs that sustain those birds. It means being aware of the big web that holds this world together, and then letting your actions come from that awareness. Everything is interconnected.

Respect, self-awareness and future-thinking are at the heart of being green. Nobody can do it all, but all of us can do our best. I don't think green is a trend; I think we're all finally waking up to ask the important question: how will my actions affect the seventh generation?

Image: Mayr

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We accept that, by nature, politics is a slow business. We accept that major environmental initiatives take time to set up. (We'd rather they got it right). However, this is unacceptable.

But it's all change in politics at the moment. Whoever the next president of the United States is, he's faced with the challenges and opportunities arising from the changing world climate. First, he needs to be truly aware of them. The problem (as Ann Pettifor outlined for the BBC last month) is the lack of a single worldwide pressure group.

Here's one that's gathering momentum - 1Sky, created in 2007 and starting to make its mark on key Congressional districts. It's drumming up support in local councils (which understand the power of carrots) and local businesses, it's green-positive, and it wears its goals on its sleeve. Impressive stuff.

Let's hope Congress listens. Because in the debate on climate change, the last thing this planet needs right now...is more hot air.

Image: annia316

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There's a vicious cycle underway, and we need to break out of it for the sake of some close relatives.

You'll have noticed fuel prices rising recently. Here's the reason. And now palm oil production has escalated (in that capitalism-out-of-control way that we're so familiar with in the West), and it's causing grievous ecological damage. As Grist reports, the habitat of the orangutan is being razed in a shocking programme of wholesale deforestation.

Greenpeace is on the case and lobbying the Bali government, amongst others. But in the meantime, the Rainforest Action Network are lobbying us.  The Problem with Palm Oil is a new site that takes a long, hard look at the products on our shelves in the search for unnecessary palm oil (personally, I think it's driveways that deserve the scrutiny) - and they want to make clear that the majority of agrofuels, as they are being produced in the world today, are not eco-friendly. (Saying otherwise is greenwashing of the highest order).

Is this the way to tackle the crisis? Have a read and let us know your thoughts.

Image: ianmichaelthomas

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Sometimes it's easy to choose the greenest way forward. This is one of those other times. Artificial grass: once a novelty affordable only by the wealthiest sports-grounds, it's now set to conquer the domestic markets as a green product. But which grass is greener - the real thing or the Brady Bunch stuff?

Near-Zero Maintenance. Save reservoirs of water (can't get greener than that), doesn't get churned up into ugly bald patches, and has a longer "life" than grass. It doesn't matter how eco-friendly your mower is - ditch it.
Gets rid of unwanted plastics. You're standing on recycled tires. (And no, if it catches fire it won't burn for a decade).
Hygiene-Friendly. SynLawn recently released a version that's porous and anti-bacteriological - music to the ears of pet-owners. Extra chemicals? An estimated 70 million pounds of pesticides and fertilizer dousing U.S. lawns every year? Not on this.
Is that a gasoline-powered mower I see in your garage? Oh dear - and you call yourself green.


Lawns just don't help the environment - they are the environment (pdf). Cleaning the air, sustaining microbial life, providing worms for birds, and so on. Take lawns away, and our suburban ecology falls apart.
It's your garden - it's meant to be tended. That's how you develop a relationship with it, one where you both grow. It's a living thing, not an inanimate appliance. (You work in I.T., right?).
When the sun's out, plastic turf heats up something rotten - up to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, some say. Even if that insufficient to actually melt a plastic tire, surely the fumes will be toxic enough.
Lawns are carbon sinks: admittedly this is offset by their maintenance, but even so, the 40 million acres of American lawns filter in the region of 13 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually (estimates Brendan Koerner for Slate).

Difficult to know where to stand, isn't it?

Image: kevindooley

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Read through all our articles for the week? At a loose end? Curl up with a few of these...
The home of Good Housekeeping over in Harlem, NY, has had an eco-friendly makeover. LEED-certified, the new building opens July 30th and is running tours of the premises shortly after. (Ecorazzi gave us the heads-up).
CFLs: great while they're working, not so much afterwards. That mercury is a problem for consumers and recyclers alike - so let's applaud Home Depot, since as Grist reports, the biggest DIY store in the States now collects CFLs for safe recycling.
Amanda Melodini's article here (great title) tells of the latest innovation in air filtration: it's called a plant. (In fact, the breakthrough is all about aerating the leaves and roots so the plant can filter as much air as possible).
Curling up with a good e-book? However eco-friendly, it's a hard sell - but Sony is amongst the companies trying hard to change our minds. Gabrielle at Daily Tomorrow got hold of the Sony PRS-505 E-book Reader. Have a read of her very thorough review - is it worth the $300 price-tag?
Is this the ultimate faucet? It's touch-free, and when the water comes out, it powers a turbine that generates electricity for the touch-free sensor!
With some people, it's shoes. But the latest chic-to-collect is the tote bag. If you're one of them (and you're not alone by any means), don't miss the Savior bags - decorated with a quote that you may recognize.
Here at Ecosalon we like to keep up with the latest in stylish and practical technology. May we introduce the Solar-Powered Bra. (And also point out that those two sentences have nothing to do with each other. Thank you). As usual, it's Environmental Graffitti keeping us abreast of things.
Being fans of Nigel's Eco Store, we were delighted to see the man himself has given an interview with Adam over at Life Goggles. (You even get to see him juggling flying saucers).
EcoStreet has 10 suggestions for looking swish as you cycle. Unsurprisingly and entirely correctly, "Not Wearing Tasteless Lycra Outfits" is right at the top. Wild applause.
Old wax crayons kicking around, edging nearer the trash? Grab them, read Hippyshopper's article, and get sculpting.

Happy reading!

Image: gripspix

It's summer!

Now, I'm not sure England is actually going to have a summer (we didn't have one last year), but the rest of you can safely stash away the heavy-weather gear, unfurl your limbs and head out into a fresh, spring-cleaned world waiting to be explored.

Carrying what? You'll need your water bottle (and we can recommend a Steripen to accompany it), a map - or GPS, if that's your thing - and a waterproof coat, just in case the weather turns English. And why not carry all these things in a rucksack that's as eco-friendly as the rest of your lifestyle?

The Hempmania H20 mini-backpack (essentially a "daysac") is produced by a Mayan family in the Guatamalan highlands using sustainable fair-trade practices, and is tough, back-hugging, has an adjustable water-bottle pocket and comes in a variety of colours including terra cotta (a delicious hint of sun-baked brick against your back, there). I like it because it's not too granola for hemp - in fact it looks rather high-tech. It's a perfect gift for a guy, as well.


All set? Go!

Hempmania backpack is available from DailyGreenProject for $30 + $5 shipping.

Image: code poet

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You hear cynics say that bringing your own grocery bags to the store isn't going to make a difference. That we need to get industry to stop polluting and government to commit to renewable energy. And then they say, with none-too-little smugness: "But hey...go ahead and do it if it makes you feel better."

Why, thank you, I will!

However much we do need more government and industry commitment, I find this attitude not only infuriating and condescending but also dangerous. Yes, dangerous. This is just the kind of talk that makes people throw up their hands and say, "Screw it, I'm not going to compost. It's messy and a lot of trouble and it doesn't do any good anyway. I'm going to buy bottled water and throw away the bottles while I'm at it. And I'm going to drive the biggest car I can find and eat an 8-oz. steak every day."

Smug: we could use less of it.

The fact is, this attitude that it's somehow "not our job" or futile to "do our part" is relatively new. Americans used roll up their sleeves to do the hard work. Do World War II, rationing, and Victory Gardens ring a bell? In that case, the government did inspire the people. In our current situation I think the people need to inspire the government. But however it happens, this stuff worked and can work now. (At one point, Victory Gardens supplied 41% of the produce consumed in the United States.) Now that's collective action at work. Isn't the survival of the planet at least as important as winning a war?

I didn't know until I started writing this, but Michael Pollan recently covered some of the same ground. Here's what he says. What do you think? How much do individual environmental choices matter? Or are they only really good for making us feel better?

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Image: Thiru Mirugan

You don’t have to start from scratch to give your home a contemporary appeal. One easy trick that I recommend to help modernize the appearance of your living space is to incorporate geometric shapes into a few visible elements - pillows, throws, even a painted stripe or block of color on a wall.

This simple yet effective method can apply to anything from wall art to bookshelves, and the Tivoli True Green pillow is a fabulous accent to effortlessly begin this transformation. Its maze-like design is printed on natural linen, making this piece an eco-friendly choice. Variations of this trendy pattern can be found at Dermond Peterson to spice up the couch in your living room.

For more tips, check out 3 Essentials for an Eco-Modern Home. (Available at Dermond Peterson for $185.)

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Since early last century, modern architecture has struggled for a distinctive middle ground, somewhere between the staunch angular rationalism of Le Corbusier and the nature-directed style made famous by Frank Lloyd Wright. The latest arena is the eco-house. So what architectural style would you feel comfortable living in?

The 12Wide miniHome?
Simon Dale's homemade house-in-a-hill?

The prefab delights of the DWR Kithaus?


Earthship Brighton? (What's an Earthship? It's one of these).


Michael Jantzen's work (this is his "Wind Shaped Pavilion")?


Illy's Quick House? (Let's presume they'd throw in four walls and a proper roof as well).


The Orchid House?