Eco-Friendly New Year's Resolutions

I don't know about you guys but I really need to be more green. I mean sure, I take advantage of my neighborhood curb recycling program but I know there's more I can do. So for my New Year's resolution I'm making a list of all the things I can do to be more Eco-friendly in 2009.

Being green for the new year. Here are my ideas:

• Stop buying bottled water and use a water filter syster that attaches to my faucet.
• Look into using clean energy for my home.
• Purchase some renewable energy credits (RECs) to offset my carbon footprint.
• Start using a power strip for my electronics so I can turn the power switch off and avoid wasting energy.
• Buy cotton grocery bags so I can reuse them instead of the paper or plastic bags at the market.
• Learn to ride the bus or carpool to work at least 3 days a week.

Do you guys have any other green ideas I can incoorporate into my 2009 plan? Please leave me a comment.

Throwing a Green New Year's Party

It's time once again to gather with friends and family, pop open the bubbly and toast the coming year! If you're going to have a celebration at your house, make it as green as you can. Trust me, throwing a green New Year's party is easier than it sounds.

It all really depends on how Eco-friendly you want to go, but really, every little bit you do will help the environment. I've laid out some tips below, so do your part and have a Happy New Year!

• Use invitations made from recycled products, or even better, go online and use Evite.com, the paperless way to invite folks to your gatherings.
• Try to minimize the use of paper cups, plates and napkins. If it is a must, then use products that can be recycled.
• Bypass the tissue paper decorations and get crafty by decorating with plants and fruits.
• As party favors give seeds so your guests get a gift that will bloom in later months and bring back memories of your party.
• Check out this cool site for more green party tips.

More Holiday Cents Saving Tips From TXU

In addition to providing great holiday lighting tips, electricity provider TXU also has the dish on creating a tasty holiday feast without busting your energy budget!

• Cook outdoors—If you live where the climate is mild enough to use an outdoor grill, cooking outside is a great way to save electricity and natural gas.
• Choose glass or ceramic pans for the oven—Glass or ceramic pans heat faster than metal pans and allow you to set the temperature 25 degrees lower. Plus, meals will cook just as quickly.
  
• Use microwaves as much as possible—Microwave ovens use much less electricity than a stove or oven and take less time to cook meals.
  
• Use slow cookers—Slow cookers can cook a whole meal for about 17 cents worth of electricity!
  
• Clean burners and reflectors—Clean burners and reflectors will provide better heating, while saving energy

These are just a few of the simple things you can do to conserve. What sort of things are you and your family doing to save energy this holiday season?

Busting Myths about Green

As the awareness begins to raise about going green in today's society, there becomes a need for people to find more information about how to help the environment and become more energy efficient as well. Even in my home, we try to find the best way to recycle certain kinds of material or to get rid of it in a safe, clean manner, and we can't always find the options we need. As a result, it's always nice to find more resources in order to stay informed for when those questions pop up.

A new article up at The Ithacan Online goes through a few popular myths about going green, and dishes out the facts. For instance, did you know that several of your appliances continue to use power even when turned off? Is a hybrid always better than a gas powered vehicle? Is organic always better?

To find out more about green myths, read more at The Ithacan Online. What are some of your favorite resources for green information?

Whole Foods Introduces Canola Power

43 stores in the Whole Foods family currently supplied by a facility in the Northeast, will soon become primary benefactors of canola power—as in the same canola oil used for cooking products sold at Whole Foods locations. It is estimated that by next year a generator will be up and operational to power the facility with used cooking oil at a whopping 2 million kilowatt hours per year. The used canola oil is currently being stored in 55-gallon drums.

To get the full lowdown on the Whole Foods canola revolution, visit the Boston Globe and it's recent article on this new energy alternative.

Reliant Puts the Cost of Electricity in the Palm of Your Hands

Have you ever been slapped with a $300 electric bill and wondered how you could have possibly used that much electricity? What if you could tell how much electricity you were using at any given time of the day? Would you change your habits to lower your bill?

Reliant has recently set up a house in Houston, Texas to test their new communication device called Insight. It is a new handheld product that communicates wirelessly to the utility meter and updates information every 10 seconds.

Insight will display the dollar amount of what you're spending per hour and how much the bill is so far. From there you can calculate how much your bill will be if you keep spending the same amount. This can truly help you manage your usage. I mean if I knew it would cost me $8 an hour to use the dishwasher at 2 pm as opposed to $1 an hour at 8 pm, well I would certainly be doing the dishes after dinner.

To read more about Reliant and their new Insight device, you have to read the article A House That Thinks.

Have a Green Thanksgiving Holiday

Yea! Turkey, family, friends and pie — oh my! I do hope all of you are having a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, but just because it's a holiday doesn't mean I don't have some green tips for you.

I know that energy conservation and being green is hard to keep in mind when your house is filled with relatives, there's food to prepare, kids to corral and merriment to be had, but it has to be done, for the sake of our planet. Um.. yeah, no pressure.

Don't worry it's easy. You can do simple things like carpooling with relatives or friends when going to Thanksgiving dinner, bring your own re-usable plastic containers for leftovers instead of using foil or making no bake dishes so the only energy being used is the whirling power of the spatula in your hand.

For more easy green holiday tips read Don't Let Thanksgiving Ruin Your Carbon Diet.

Green Mountain Energy Wins National Green Power Award

Green Mountain Energy - 2008 Market Development “Green Power Pilot Award – Honorable Mention” from the Center for Resource Solutions (CRS) for its first-ever Hispanic Marketing campaign in Texas. The award recognizes companies and organizations for their efforts to spread awareness of renewable energy, and marks the culmination of Green Mountain's implementation of an integrated marketing and sales campaign targeting the Hispanic market in Houston and South Texas, using bi-lingual advertising, a Spanish-language microsite and other efforts to expand it's market.

For further details on the Green Power Leadership Awards:

EPA
The Green Power Network - About the Awards
National Renewable Energy Marketing Conferenece 2008

TXU Wants to Help You Brighten the Holidays Without Emptying Your Wallet

For those of us that enjoy decorating for the holidays, finding the right balance between fun and festive decorations and watching our spending and energy consumption can be tricky. Do I dare fill my front yard with a full Santa scene? Or should I just go with a string of small blinking lights draped across the window?

This year, TXU has offered their help in solving this dilemma. Before you string up your holiday wares, check out their Light Calculator. Just enter the number of bulbs your tribute to Frosty the Snowman requires and TXU will tell you the approximate kilowatt-hour (kWh) usage per day as well as your approximate cost per day and per month!

In addition to this handy calculator, TXU also offers a guide to choosing your lights and other holiday decorating tips. Check out their Holiday Guide to Lights for more.

Repowering America

Now that the election is over, the folks that brought us www.wecansolveit.org have created a new site called Repower America that focuses on the goal of 100% clean electricity within 10 years.

Their plan to Repower America outlines immediate investments in three areas: energy efficiency, renewable generation and transmission.

• Energy Efficiency: A national upgrade to eliminate waste, save money, and improve comfort. Make every bit of energy we produce work harder for us.
• Renewable Generation: Accelerate the ramp-up of clean, renewable electricity sources through policies that support increased private and public investment in technologies that work, like wind, solar, and geothermal.
• Unified National Smart Grid: Modernize transmission infrastructure so that clean electricity generated anywhere in America can power homes and businesses across the nation. National electricity ‘interstates’ that move power quickly and cheaply to where it needs to be; local smart grids that buy and sell power from households and support clean plug-in cars.

For more information and to learn how you can take action, check out www.repoweramerica.org.