“I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box” Ellen Goodman

When I drive through some neighborhoods I am amazed by the amount of items on the curb. TVs and Computer monitors will not be taken by the trash services. The simple reason is that they cost money to dispose of. I have seen these things stay in front of houses for years apparently in hopes the Earth will reclaim it. This is not going to happen. Instead you might as well bring it over to Best Buy and drop it there. Best Buy has a decent recycle program. They say they adhere to strict Consumer Electronics Recycling Standards which means they recycle all of it and do not ship to foreign countries to be disposed of. Now I should say if your computer or monitor works I recommend dropping it off at a thrift center where it can be reused. If is dead bring it on over to Best Buy. It will cost you $10 bucks to get rid of TVs and monitors but you get a $10 dollar gift card in exchange so you break even. Other items like computers and printers can be brought there for free. However you must remove hard drives from them. I am for any recycle program that follows the proper rules and if you end up with a card to buy more stuff in the end I won’t complain. There are more rules to what they will and won’t take so please read through before you head on over. One of the rules is two items per household per day. Below are the links to the info. So to sum up you might as well go green and get something in turn.

Best Buy recycle Program and rules
Best Buy fine print about recycling

"I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues." The Lorax

Quite a ways back I posted about a great site called Freerice. It is a game site that when played earns rice to be donated to others in need. Now TreeWala is almost exactly the same concept but for trees. We all need more trees. All you do is answer questions, mostly vocab and a couple of sciencey ones, to gain leaves. For every correct answer you get one leaf and for every twenty leaves one tree will be planted. It all works through ad revenue and a co-op between the site and the Marion institute. It is one of those simple games that you can play guilt free. I mean first and foremost it is educational and second it is doing something beneficial for the planet. If you are a word buff or just trying to be green, give this a try.

Note: Yesterday I was in the lab and saw a patron using FreeRice. I asked her if she knew about TreeWala and she said she knew nothing about it but her English teacher (ESL) was making her do it to improve her vocabulary. Now I don't want to be geekier than normal but I think that is AWESOME!

“I never saw a Purple Cow; I never hope to See One; But I can Tell you, Anyhow, I'd rather See than Be One” Frank Gelett Burgess

I meant to do a post on this much earlier but I was waiting to use the service before I recommended it. Unfortunately I never got around to it and instead of waiting more I thought I would put it out there and let you decide. The site is called Moo and their tagline is "they love printing."
Many students ask me about business cards and gift cards and whether they should print them at home. The answer is complex. You could use a program like Microsoft Publisher to create paper goods and I can say the program does a decent job. The problem I usually have is that most home printers are not as good as going to a professional place. Now understand if you are doing a small amount of printing at home is fine but 1000 business cards that are double sided can be awful and tedious. The problem I have had with professional printers is they seem to overcharge. Some of them even charge just to open your document and you are limited to the same image all the way through. That is why I was excited about Moo. They allow as many different images as you would like. Let’s say you are making holiday cards and you have ordered 25 but you really only need 20. The other five will be wasted. Instead Moo allows you to put as many images as you would like in one pack. Same thing goes for all their products like business cards and mini business cards. They do gift cards and all sorts of other types of paper goods. This time of the year many people head to parties and people scribble down their information to long lost friends on the nearest napkins. The idea of a nice good looking card with all your basic info like email or website and of course the basics like phone numbers just sounds perfect. Also I like the idea of creating stickers for every photo I have. The green choice of card stock that is environmentally friendly was a nice thing to see. I checked the prices and they seem reasonable but I would like to stress I have not seen a finished product so please keep that in mind. If you need some paper goods take a look at this service and let me know how it goes.

Note:Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley

“I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all.” Ogden Nash

Do you use Yahoo as your search engine and would you like to help the environment? If yes then Ecocho is for you. It is a search engine that uses Yahoo’s search technology and advertising so that they can afford to plant two trees for every 1000 searches. It seems like a fine venture similar to the freerice site. Also if you are the type of person who does all their searches in the search box in upper right part of your browser they offer a plug-in so you can use the service. If you would like to green up your searches then give this one a try.

“Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.” Barbara Jordan

When Microsoft screws up I am one of the first to start throwing things however when they get it right I hope I am among the first to congratulate them. Recently MSN went green. They have made a big push in the right direction for the environment. Their new site is filled with info about how to green up, along with political info of all kinds. They have quizzes and calculators to determine your impact on the planet. Also the pairing up with sites like Grist and Conservation International really help their credibility. Pledges are available so that you can take a stand on all sorts of small things like lowering thermostats and such. You may not agree with the cause of global warming or even if it is happening but when I get into a car I still put on my seatbelt even though I do not believe there is major chance I will get into an accident. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Give it a try.

“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are” Jose Ortega y Gasset

So you can find every bit of info that you could ever want online but do you really pay attention to it? Southern California Edison Energy believes you don’t have any interest in looking at raw data and I agree. They are installing small white orbs in houses to try an experiment that seems to be working well. The idea is this. When power consumption is expensive for you and everyone else the little orb glows red. This means you should start turning off electronics or at least put them on hold. When the power consumption is low it glows green signaling you to power up if necessary. Now why do you care? Well this is showing by just using a little light it gets you to do more than actually giving you numbers to think about. This was originally designed for people paying attention to things like mutual funds and stocks. Since this has been tried it people seem to be responding well to it. To read more here is one article of many that is out there. As usual there is a net component as well. People have started communities to show off how little they use of the power available. Pretty soon we should not be surprised if a new piece of software shows up on a social site that allows us to put our carbon foot print or usage on something like Facebook. No matter what happens if this shows a real effect on us reducing energy then maybe it will be coming to a house near you.

“Don't take the wrong side of an argument just because your opponent has taken the right side.” Baltasar Gracian

Sometimes you are right and sometimes you are wrong. The information below is from Google’s blog and talks about the Google search that is supposed to be saving energy.

“Is black the new green?

from Official Google Blog by Karen

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Reducing climate change by saving energy is an important effort we should all join, and that's why we're very glad to see the innovative thinking going into a variety of solutions. One idea, suggested by the site called "Blackle" (which is not related to Google, by the way, though the site does use our custom search engine), is to reduce energy used by monitors by providing search with a black background. We applaud the spirit of the idea, but our own analysis as well as that of others shows that making the Google homepage black will not reduce energy consumption. To the contrary, on flat-panel monitors (already estimated to be 75% of the market), displaying black may actually increase energy usage. Detailed results from a new study confirm this.

As computers become a bigger part of more people's lives, they will consume an increasing amount of energy, which is why we've invested so much in making our data centers efficient and we've joined with others to launch Climate Savers Computing, which has a goal of reducing total power consumption by more than 50% for all computers by 2010.

There are some things you can do now to reduce the energy used by your computer, such as:

turn on the power management features. Virtually all computers today have the ability to switch into low-power modes automatically when they're idle; very few computers have this capability enabled! Here's how to do it on computers running Windows XP.

• turn off your monitor and computer when you're not using them
• turn down the brightness on your monitor
• make sure your next computer meets the efficiency standards of Climate Savers Computing (an efficient computer uses up to 50% less energy than a conventional one)
• To find the most efficient PCs available today, look for the words "EnergyStar 4.0 compliant."

“The crow wished everything was black, the owl, that every thing was white.” William Blake

Last week, I wrote about Blackle. That was a version of Google that was all black to save energy. I said it was OK but it lacked all of the features that the original Google page has. However the other day I stumbled across gBlack. It is just as black as the other but it has everything you might want to play with in front of you. Also my favorite part is that they have a convenient link to all of the programs that Google has under its’ belt. Google cut the link it had called even more. Why is this important? Google has so many features that it is hard to keep track so being able to choose from a list is a nice option. To access it click on the button “All of Google” just under the button “Google Search”. Oh it seems they also want to do a bunch of other colors as well. So if you cannot stand a white screen making you blink give this one a try.

“With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.” Henri Matisse

So you have decided to start doing your part to save energy and to help improve the environment. Yes, you can plant trees and take quicker showers but there is an even easier way. How many times do you go to Google in an average day? If it is more than twice then Blackle is for you. Blackle is a version of Google but with a black screen instead of a white one. So what is the difference? Well, it takes more energy to show a white screen then it does to show a black one. If you would like to start changing your energy usage they suggest changing your homepage from Google to Blackle. The only problem I have with it is it is a stripped down version. So if you want images and news and the rest you will have to go back to Google but if you do just basic web searches this may be for you. Read up on what it does here otherwise just give it a try.

“No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.”

To finish off this Eco-friendly week I can only recommend a page that has tons of information on becoming a conscious consumer.That is a person who buys sustainable or recycled items and is usually concerned with the employee treatment and the greenness of a company and not just in purchasing an item. Now to live this way means that you as a consumer must do more research for the items you buy but more and more want to know what other costs make up the price of the product. Using computers as an example, not only the price to buy it and maintain it but to eventually get rid of it and what effect will it have on the environment. This site is simple and straight forward and is named, unsurprisingly, responsible consumption. Give it a try.

Note: The Photo is of downtown Providence dealing with the aftermath of the hurricane of 1938.

“Food is an important part of a balanced diet.” Fran Lebowitz

Many environmentalist recommend buying local produce and other food stuff to not only support agriculture in your area but because it reduces the need to fly in foods from around the world increasing pollution. I believe these are all sound reasons but I buy locally for one main greedy reason, the taste is usually better. Now where to find these local farms? There are two great sites. One is Farm Fresh Rhode Island. There are a lot of features like the maps showing all the Farmers' Markets in RI. Also the categorization here is very nice. There is a lot to explore on this here so take your time. Massachusetts has a similar site but not as user friendly. I would still check it out though.I figure you might as well eat better tasting foods while you save the environment.

“The environment is everything that isn't me.” Albert Einstein

It is one thing to be well informed about eco-news going on around you but it is another thing entirely to understand your impact on the planet. This has come to be known as your carbon footprint. I was originally just going to give one site that did this but I want to give a few so that you can decide who measures this best and which one is easier for you. The first is the site associated with Al Gore's Movies called climatecrisis. I like this one because the focus is what can you do to change and help. The others are the carbon footprint calculator and the carbonfund. Some of these sites offer packages to offset your carbon production. I personally would rather reduce the production than offset it but they do offer the option. Find out your effect on the planet and give it a try.

“It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.” Dan Quayle

Keeping with the environmental theme I give you a podcast and a site I am fond of. The Grist website is full of news and commentary. Now if you want eco-info that is dry avoid this site. I find Grist brings a sometimes dull subject to life and give some real perspective. Also their podcast is consistently well done and with some humor. You can download it or listen on the site. Give it a try.