by Andrew Micheler

When it comes to the green marketplace there is a lot of sexy stuff: clothing, creams, computers, cars, and of course building products. Just about everything you can buy seems to have a green variation.

Marketers and designers have pounced on our want to do less damage to the planet by having us buy more stuff. That’s their job, but our job is to make sure we are not making purchases for the wrong reason. Green Bling is the environmental badge hanging on a product when that product, at best, takes a baby step to reducing its environmental footprint but shouts out its environmentalism. You have to cringe at a full sized GM SUV rolling past you with hybrid stickers and little green leaves all over it. All for two lousy gallons of saved gas per mile. The $400 set of organic cotton bed sheets look pretty odd in a bedroom full of nylon carpet (a VOC emitter and sponge). That tote bag isn’t going to make that much difference relative to how you are taking your groceries home.

Looking good isn’t enough. An external hard drive clad in bamboo isn’t green unless it uses a lot less energy too. Your super non-VOC paint does little good if your furniture is new, cheap, and full of urea formaldehyde glues. Your new LCD TV that just replaced your 20 year old one is not nearly as energy efficient as replacing your 20 year old refrigerator.

Then there is the home itself. A house with super expensive countertops made from recycled paper is fine, unless you go to the mechanical room and find the furnace to be a cheap minimally efficient affair. Solar panels on the roof are really Green Bling when the insulation in the walls is inadequate. It’s that natural, green certified, architecturally envisioned home that has lots of glass all in the wrong places. The ultimate Green Bling to me is the green built trophy vacation house. Ouch.

I am not saying that buying all these things is the wrong thing to do, only that you should buy the sexy stuff only after you invested in the basics. When you do that you have every reason to brag when you are looking so good.

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About the Author: Andrew Michler, LEED AP has lived “off-the-grid” in Colorado since 1995. He started Baosol Sustainable Building Consulting in 2007 to cultivate the low entropy revolution. He is also the co-founder of the BeLocal Northern Colorado Green Builder’s Guild.

You’ve probably never heard of “trucker bombs.” I hadn’t until just recently, and although I was surprised by what they are, I wasn’t entirely shocked that they exist. The term refers to a common practice within the trucking industry of urinating into cups and bottles and then tossing them on the side of the road.

Although a little gross- this practice saves the truck drivers from having to locate facilities that are convenient and can accommodate their rigs, not to mention saving them enormous amounts of precious time during long cross-country trips.

The only problem is that this practice results in millions of paper and plastic “bombs” left to litter our roadways and give heart attacks to those saints who volunteer to clean them up.

Thankfully, a new company has emerged with a clever product designed to deal with this problem in a sanitary and biodegradable way! Introducing iPee™, a division of the SuperSlab 100® Corporation.

According to the company’s official website, “The iPee™ is a single-use, disposable, biodegradable, urine collection device, each designed for either male or female use. It converts the urine into a solid in seconds utilizing a new, patent-pending, organic absorbent.”

Touted as the new portable restroom for men, women and children, the uses and benefits of the iPee could potentially extend far beyond the trucking industry, although it has already met with great acceptance and accolades there. The iPee can also be used at public events like festivals and fairs, air shows, motor speedways, golf courses and entertainment centers, and during emergency situations arising during natural disasters or military combat, not only eliminating often unpleasant public restroom and port-a-potty encounters, but also the toxic chemicals that are used to keep them “sanitary.”

iPee™ was selected as the “Best New Product in Show” this past week at the Green California Summit and Exposition and has already been accepted into the USDA Bio-Preferred catalog and California’s Integrated Waste Management Recycled-Content Directory.

- The Team at GenGreen

I’ll be the first to admit I never thought a game of Texas Hold’em could ever have anything to do with increasing your knowledge about sustainability…but I have been proven wrong.

The folks at Green Foot Forward, were thinking way outside the green box when they came up with Eco Deck, a deck of 52 playing cards, each one featuring original art work and an eco-tip, fact, or solution to help educate and improve everyone’s green life.

At first the idea seemed trivial, but then I stopped to thinkabout it… who among us doesn’t have a resistant friend or two? Those friends that love to play devil’s advocate, trash soda cans in front of you, and leave their car idling in the street when they come to pick you up, just to get your green hackles up?!

This is the way you squeeze the green in. You invite anti-eco friend to your house for a friendly game of cards, and then you bust out- THE ECO DECK. Instead of the usual hearts and spades, you deal out a hand of DYKs about water, solar energy, environmental disasters and environmental solutions! So whilst anti-eco friend is contemplating his potential gin rummy, he’ll also be improving his environmental I.Q. and just might learn a thing or two about saving the earth that he never knew before…talk about a conversation starter!

CLUBS cover eco facts from how burning coal and bad car mileage link to air pollution.

DIAMONDS give water tips and facts, and remind us that over 2 billion of our brothers and sisters are in need of clean drinking water.

HEARTS relate to electricity and energy derived from solar and wind.

SPADES remind us about past man-made ecological disasters and the very real problems we face from
Global Warming problems we face as humans.

Eco Decks are crafted from sustainable forest paper, starch based laminating glue, vegetable based printing inks, and made in the U.S.A. As the environment changes (hopefully for the better), so will Eco Decks tips, facts, and solutions.   Join the GFF mailing list and receive annual updated cards for FREE.

Learn more about Green Food Forward at www.greenfootforward.com

- The Team at GenGreen

Our computers are big, fast, noisy, hot, high energy consumers, cluttered and jumbled with wires. But these inefficiencies are helping to change the future of desktop and laptops; shying away from the flash of 3D video cards, 30 inch LCD monitors, 4 gigahertz processers and a terabytes of storage.  Thankfully, the industry is shifting to more compact, energy efficient work stations as few users need a 3D graphics workstation to shop on Amazon, purchase airplane tickets, or even listen to music.

Parallel to the automotive industry and real estate businesses, the computer industry now acknowledges that bigger and cheaper is not always best. Many of the leading computer manufactures are making the leap to go green this year with a line-up of compact, efficient work stations. Smart Phones (Blackberry, Iphone, ect), Ipod Touch, Mini Mac, Sony Vaio P, Pi, Z, JS Series, HP mini enano Computers, Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Laptop and Studio Hybrid are just a few examples of the new shift.

How Much Energy Does Your Computer System Use?

A typical desktop PC system is comprised of the computer itself and a monitor. Your CPU may require up to 100 watts of electrical power. Add 50-150 watts for a 15-17 inch monitor, and even more for larger monitors.

The industry leader in energy conservation is the enano computer company. The enano desktop runs at about 20-25 Watts for average computing. The maximum power drain for the enano only goes up to 45W, which is well below most desktop computers. enano computers are also Epeat Certified and are 95% recyclable.

“We have actually taken our energy consumption to a lower level as well. They are currently at 15 watts sitting idle and 28 watts at full power,” said Joey Crowell, an enano representative.

Macbooks, also leading the way in energy efficiency runs at a maximum of 48 Watts under heavy use. In 2009 most major computer manufacturers will probably be producing a model similar to these, making it easier to go green in your daily online life.

For your green electronic shopping needs visit www.gengreenlife.com to find a comprehensive directory of retailers in your area.

By Matt Olson, GenGreen Content Intern

I already feel like electronics are taking over in their quest to make life “easier.” Every day humans become more dependent, more attached to these devices that organize, communicate, and almost, think for us. But, if they can help the average consumer conserve energy without having to think about, is it really a bad thing? Sony’s on a quest to find out.

This summer the entertainment giant will release the BRAVIA VE5-series models which will offer offer substantial power savings thanks to a zero-watt standby power switch, along with motion and light sensors that minimize energy usage without compromising performance.

That’s right folks, the TV will sense a lack of movement in the room and turn itself off to save energy.

We’ve all done it, wandered into the kitchen to make a snack, taken a phone call or, heaven forbid, gone outside and left the box on, blaring its technicolor waves to an empty room. The BRAVIA VE5 aims to put an end to that forever.

According to a January 7 press release, “the VE5 models are also Sony’s first LCD televisions to offer a zero-watt standby Energy Saving Switch. When not in use, the standby switch can also be manually turned off, cutting power to nearly zero watts. Simply flip the switch back on and the TV is fully operational.”

Fabulous! Now, at least for one appliance, it seems that the horrifying phantom emissions (electricity used even when an appliance is switched off, but still plugged in) will be eliminated along with the guilt of not unplugging everything every time you leave the house.

Of course, some questions remain to be answered. Like, how long does it wait to turn off? How sensitive is the sensor? Will it turn off if you’re just sitting very still? (And the big one…) How much will it cost?

Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

- The Team at GenGreen

Most people are familiar with hydroponics, a method for growing plants in nutrient rich water instead of soil. It’s the technique behind those upside down herb gardens they advertise on late-night TV and the big, red tomatoes available in the dead of winter at conventional grocery stores.

Less people are familiar with aquaponics, a bio-integrated system that links recirculating aquaculture with hydroponic vegetable, flower, and/or herb production. In case I’ve already lost you, here’s a better description from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service:

“In aquaponics, nutrient-rich effluent from fish tanks is used to fertigate hydroponic production beds. This is good for the fish because plant roots and rhizobacteria remove nutrients from the water. These nutrients – generated from fish manure, algae, and decomposing fish feed – are contaminants that would otherwise build up to toxic levels in the fish tanks, but instead serve as liquid fertilizer to hydroponically grown plants. In turn, the hydroponic beds function as a biofilter – stripping off ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, and phosphorus – so the freshly cleansed water can then be recirculated back into the fish tanks. The nitrifying bacteria living in the gravel and in association with the plant roots play a critical role in nutrient cycling; without these microorganisms the whole system would stop functioning.”

Whew! So basically, an aquaponic farmer sets up a sort of symbiotic relationship between plants and fishes, with each taking at turn filtering out contaminants and bacteria from the one common ingredient- water.

According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (formerly known as ATTRA), the concept of aquaponics is catching the attention of fish farmers, hydroponic farmers and greenhouse growers alike. The reason?

-Hydroponic growers view fish-manured irrigation water as a source of organic fertilizer that enables plants to grow well.

-Fish farmers view hydroponics as a biofiltration method to facilitate intensive recirculating aquaculture.

-Greenhouse growers view aquaponics as a way to introduce organic hydroponic produce into the marketplace, since the only fertility input is fish feed and all of the nutrients pass through a biological process.

Beyond these practical applications, some have taken the functional requirements of aquaponic systems and used them to inspire an experiment in local, sustainable agriculture, recycling and art called the “Farm Fountain.”

Farm Fountain is a system for growing edible and ornamental fish and plants in a constructed, indoor ecosystem. Based on the concept of aquaponics, this hanging garden fountain uses a simple pond pump to circulate vwater through 2-liter plastic soda bottles that serve as planters and continuously recycles the water in the system to create a symbiotic relationship between edible plants, fish and humans.

Click here to watch a video of the Farm Fountain 4 in action at Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum of New Zealand.

Wanna know more? Check out these cool sites:

http://www.farmfountain.com

Aquaponics– Integration of Hydroponics with Aquaculture

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com

- The Team at GenGreen

(Images from www.farmfountain.com and www.backyardaquaponics.com)

I am from the South. In East Tennessee, Winter means two months of rain and school cancellations when the forcast calls for “a chance of flurries.” Now I find myself in the Northern Colorado…the Mountain West..where something called “wind chill” is becoming a terrifying member of my vocabulary. Though I may be lamenting its skin-peeling qualities, I admire the wind for it’s energy generating ones, and had to share this cool company that is turning the wind energy industry on its frozen ear.

The concept of wind generated power seems so simple, but then you throw in a monstrous turbine, converting technology and geographical needs, and the concept springs out of reach of the common man…or so you thought.

Quiet Revolution Ltd. is a British company that believes that “Within fifty years we will be living in a world which is powered predominantly by renewable energy, with no sacrifice to quality of life.” Quiet Revolution develops and supplies elegant renewable energy solutions, especially small wind products optimised for use at the point of energy demand. Their goal is to promote and enable wind energy as a key technology to renewable and distributed energy generation and microgeneration.

After seeing a need for a less conspicuous turbine that would work well in the urban environment, where wind speeds are lower and wind directions change frequently, the company developed the QuietRevolution (QR) with an elegant helical (twisted) design that ensures a robust performance even in turbulent winds. It is also responsible for virtually eliminating noise and vibration. “At five metres high and three metres in diameter, it is compact and easy to integrate, and with just one moving part, maintenance can be limited to an annual inspection.” QuietRevolution turbines can be ground or roof mounted and come in two different mast sizes for each.

Watch a Video of the qr5 Turbine in Action

But the company’s plans for the wind turbine don’t stop there. The QR will soon be available in a unique model capable of creating a striking visual display that is part artwork, part renewable energy device, part communications medium. Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) embedded in each of its three S-shaped blades will fire in sequence as the blades rotate, painting a video screen that appears to hang in the air. This full color and motion image will be clearly visible day and night. The quietrevolution display can be used either as a temporary installation at a high profile event or as a permanent feature. Early customers for quietrevolution display have included mostly city councils across the UK attracted to this unique means of communicating with the local community on climate change and its solutions.

Learn more at http://www.quietrevolution.co.uk

- The Team at GenGreen