Forget about Eco-Consumerism!

I’ve written in the past about this eco-consumerism fad we’ve foundourselves in lately.  The message is good, but the practice is bad.  YES we should be making responsible planet-wise choices as consumers, but NO we should not go out of our way to purchase more useless crap because it’s green.

And as I write this, gas prices continue to rise, we continue to pump more crap into our precious atmosphere, and we continue to demolish valuable resources, such as rainforests, that help to clean up after us.

Gas prices will aid in increasing inflation which will in turn raise interest rates.  And it’s not all George W.’s fault.  It’s my fault, and yours, too.  What is your carbon footprint?  Reducing your carbon footprint and spreading education about the true signs of global warming and world economies in trouble is the way to help this problem.  Not slapping a “Not my President” or “I Buy Green” bumper sticker on your 19 MPG internal combustion car so that those who sit in traffic behind you can take in messages hand-fed to you by the mass-media in addition to your exhaust fumes.

How we can really save the world and the economy after we admit that a new president cannot do it alone:

• Stop buying so much crap.  Try minimalist living.  You’ll be more organized and I bet you won’t miss the clutter.  You don’t need to save everything just in case you need it later.  Chances are, it will be available later as well.
• Skip the trip to IKEA and try buying used furniture off craigslist or from thrift stores.  Be creative and you can have a project that creates a totally unique piece of furniture for your home.
• Skip the toy in the happy meal and the impulse purchases.
• Better yet, cut back on the beef all-together.  You’ll be healthier and we’ll need fewer methane-producing cows in the world.  It’s a serious problem; cows put more pollutants into the atmosphere than any 3rd-world country and more than all of the SUVs in the US.
• Walk or bike to the grocery store, work, or other erands.  You’ll be healthier and happier with exercise.  Exercise makes a healthier body and mind AND increased energy levels.
• Move closer to work or work from home.  The great American highway system has created suburbs everywhere.  You buy a cheap house and fill it with crap, then drive in traffic for an hour or more each morning and evening.  Save yourself the gas and crap money but investing in a home near work.  This is why Austin and other cities are urbanizing now.  You’ll fit in that 200 square foot urban home after you follow tip #1 (dumping all the useless crap).
• Are you getting the idea?  Make smart decisions, not “green” purchases.

Are you getting it yet?  Improving the environment should also improve the economy.  Frankly, it bothers me less that it should that gas prices are high.  I think this is finally the motivation we (as lazy “someone else will take care of it” Americans) need to create real, practical sustainable energy sources.

Tags: carbon footprint, economy, environment, green, green energy, health by Aria
No Comments »

How much power is your computer at home using?  The site’s costs are based on $0.15 which is much lower than Austin’s low rates of $0.355 to $0.782 / kWh.

Click to enlarge (from choice.com.au)

Many companies such as Dell are now making a big movement to provide energy efficient elecronics.

Tags: economy, energy star, environment, green, green energy, technology by Aria
No Comments »

I’m going to deviate from my norm of Austin real estate topics to hit on another environmental topic that I’ve been pondering lately. It’s HOT here in Austin. Not just warm but seriously HOT. Is it global warming? If so, what is the cause and how can we deal with it?

The findings of a recent survey surprised me. It seems that fewer Americans believe that global warming is an actual phenomenon now than several years ago.

Source: PEW Research Center

For me, it was the opposite. I was skeptical from the beginning talks of global warming but it now makes a great deal of sense to me. I just needed time to gather facts and make my own educated judgment. What I have yet to pass judgment on is whether it is caused by human or environmental factors. For now, I suspect it is a mix of both. With a history of cycles of ice ages and hot ages, it seems that we are entering a hot age. Yet it seems that this change has actually been noticeable in the past 5-10 years which leads me to believe than human factors are interfering with the natural cycle by speeding things up

Source: PEW Research Center

Do you accept global warming as a problem?
What steps do you believe in to fix it?

Source: PEW Research Center

I’m sure that there is no quick fix, however, making sustainable decisions to reduce landfills and emissions is an obvious start. Planting trees still sounds like a great idea to me. After all of the forests around the world that have been seized in order to create our great civilization, it certainly seems like replanting trees to clean the air and produce oxygen is an obvious and relatively easy decision. There’s talk, and then there’s action…

So what do you do to save the world?
How can we save the world in Austin?

Tags: carbon footprint, development, economy, environment, green, green energy, recycling, renewable energy, responsibility by Aria
No Comments »

This Memorial Day will be a sales tax Holiday for energy efficient products. Think of the back-to-school tax free weekend only for your home.

Austin real estate is going to keep getting better with green choices.  “Going Green” means making environmentally conscious purchases when you need to purchase something.  Buying something because it’s green is counter-productive.

“If you’ve been thinking about finally buying those energy efficient light
bulbs, purchasing a programmable thermostat, or actually replacing the
refrigerator, dishwasher or air conditioner with a cleaner more efficient
one, memorial day weekend is the time to do it. You’ll save money, while helping to reduce energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions,” noted Lone Star Chapter Conservation Director Cyrus Reed.

But are there any downfalls? For instance, what happens to all of the old appliances when they are replaced? This ECO-Consumerism drives me nuts sometimes. While I appreciate what this piece of legislation is trying to do, I can’t see throwing out so many appliances that work for shiny new ones. How is this in the spirit of “going green”?

I say if you have an appliance that you were thinking of replacing anyway, use this tax holiday to save yourself some money while supporting the environment by making an eco-conscious choice on something you were going to purchase anyway. Don’t throw that 4-year-old dishwasher in the landfill for the upgraded model, but do replace that 30-year-old A/C unit that’s on the fritz.

Stock up on light bulbs for when your current ones burn out. If you’re going to replace working bulbs, do it only in rooms you have lit very often, perhaps your family room or study. Why toss out all of those perfectly good bulbs from the bathroom that you zip in and out of?

If you don’t have a programmable thermostat, I say go for one. I’ll make an exception here because they save so much energy!

Take advantage of this city incentive if you have been waiting to stock up on bulbs or replace a dying appliance, but remember to recycle your old appliances whenever possible and don’t bother with upgrades that don’t make sense!

And check out this link on eco-consumerism. Monbiot has expressed my concerns beautifully!

Tags: austin, carbon footprint, economy, energy star, environment, green, green energy, hot market, housing, nature conservancy, real estate by Aria
No Comments »

I was surprised when I found this resource showing where all of the know abandoned landfills are in Austin. The City of Austin has a map showing the locations of known landfills. Is there one close to you?

The complete map is available here.

Tags: austin, austin real estate, development, environment by Aria
No Comments »

I happened by one of my Chris Brogan’s blog and noticed a pretty little “ECO-SAFE” badge in his side bar. I had the options to “Send the page to email,” “email a PDF,” or “save as a PDF.” What a brilliant idea! So of course, you will not find this option on my side bar!

I keep my own documents stored on my hard drive in PDF format as much as possible. One of my most proud undertakings this year was to set up my office with an electronic document server to cut down on both the waste my office produces and the stacks, boxes, and cabinets filled to the brim with paper. The more minimalistic way of life that seems to be increasing in popularity leads to environmental benefits in more ways than we have yet realized. Don’t want to have that big, ugly file cabinet in the corner of your office? Scan everything to PDF and use a document management system! I’m using the uber-powerful Microsoft Sharepoint at my office but recommend Paperport to home users.

Cutting down on the paper you consume is the next step to recycling. First, we’ve learned how to recycle, now we learn now to produce fewer materials that need recycling.

And if you have a website, try out one of ECO-Safe’s Merit Badges. They come in three graphically pleasing designs. The one in my sidebar is likely to be their most popular option. There is also a horizontal-type…

And this beautiful fully-graphical one.

Why is this such a big deal? You can read all about it on Eco-Safe’s website. Here are some quick figures from Eco-Safe, but be sure to visit them to read all of their great reasons to go electronic PDF!

“American’s throw away 85% of office paper, which means out of everything you print, more than 4 out of 5 pages, will go right into the trash. By not printing things that you will eventually throw away, you simply save trees. Each year the average American uses 2 trees worth of paper products (one tree makes roughly 8,400 sheets of copy paper). So if you were to only use copy paper and no other paper products, out of the 16,800 sheets of paper that you print on, you will throw away 13,440 of them. When you multiply that by the number of internet users worldwide the numbers are absolutely staggering. ”

Wishing you the best of luck, Eco-Safe!

And please…

• print as little as possible,
• use the back side of un-needed prints as scratch paper (especially when printing for your eyes only)
• recycle all paper, including junk mail
• use electronic documents, like PDFs, whenever possible.

Tags: environment, green, recycling, web 2.0 by Aria
No Comments »

So you finally purchased a glorious flat-panel, big-screen TV so you can watch HD Television in mammoth proportions. But at this point, where to get your HD hook-up should be the least of your concerns. What do you do with that old standard definition TV?

If craigslist fails you, you still have options. Don’t leave the old TV to rot in a landfill when you have so many recycling options available to you. Check out Earth 911’s website at http://earth911.org. There, you can type in what you want to recycle and where you are to find a recycling center near you to recycle the old TV.

To have your TV completely recycled from the plastic to the lead to the gold components, take it to your nearest Goodwill, Salvation Army, or specialty recycling center like ERT, Inc. or M&K Recovery Group.

Use Earth 911 to find out where to recycle other materials and electronics such as cell phones and fluorescent bulbs as well!

If you missed them, here are links to previous posts about Austin’s new recycling program, recycling phone books, recycling cell phones, fluorescent bulb recycling, and recycling in Austin.

Tags: environment, green, recycling by Aria
No Comments »