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In a small town in Germany called Marburg there is a heated debate over a new mandate requiring solar panels.

“The ordinance, the first of its kind in Germany, will require solar panels not only on new buildings, which fewer people oppose, but also on existing homes that undergo renovations or get new heating systems or roof repairs” says the Marburg Journal. There is even a hefty fine of $1500 for violators.

This brings up the question…Can the government require us to become green? Most cities has Municipal Codes that require many things, could those include green issues?

For example in my city, as I found out recently, requires hot water heaters that are in closets to have louvers on the door so the hot water heater can “breathe”. The hot water heater has been just fine in my closet for the past 15 years why now can I not put the regular door back on the closet? I’m sure that they have a good reason for requiring louvers, I’m sure it’s for safety but if they require that could they have required me to install a solar powered hot water heater?

Now I would have loved to install solar power hot water heater, I would not have blinked an eye if I would have been required to install one, but would my neighbors feel the same if they were in the same situation. The issue with installing one at my house would not have been my feelings but the lack of sunlight because of the large trees in my yard. They are great to keep the house cool but interrupt the sunlight enough that solar power cells on my roof would be rendered almost useless, this goes for my neighbors also.

To require solar power would mean the loss of a lot of beautiful old growth trees and not to mention the expense of cutting them down.

Personally I think that the Government needs to step up and fund more alternative power sources but I don’t think that they can require someone to go green. I think that it is a personal choice to decide whether or not they want to join in the fight to save the planet. Now of course I think that it’s terrible if you recognize the signs of global warming and don’t do anything about it, but hey it’s your call and your bad karma.

What do you think?  Can the government require you to be green?  Sound off and let me know what you think.

Most of you already know that I don’t really own a tv.  A year ago my husband and I made the choice to not purchase cable and get rid of our large tv.  We have a small television for playing X-Box but that gets pulled out once in a blue moon.  We really rely on our computers for our entertainment, but we still maybe only watch 3 hours of tv in an entire week.  According to WikiAnswers the average American watches 8 or more hours of television a day.  That’s a lot of tv! The main reason we stopped watching television was we realized that we we didn’t actually watch tv we surfed through all the channels at a pace that screwed with our brains.  There are several studies that have proved that constant channel surfing changes the part of the brain that controls our attention span.  Tv messes with that area of the brain to begin with but the constant changing of the picture makes it worse.

The other reason we stopped was because of all the commercials.  Did you know that a child will watch over a million commercials in their life time?  For every 40 minutes of programing, you see an additional 20 minutes of commercials.  If you watch online you see between 4 to 6 commercials and unfortunitally they are the same commercial over and over.  In your face advertising that is tempting you to forget about common sense and spend your money on things that you don’t need.  Whew…stop me before I get to far on this.

Anyway this post is about radio and not tv, but one of the main reasons why I have switched to publicly funded radio is the commercialism.   In an informal study (I counted as I listened) for every 3 songs that were played 2 commercials were heard, so about 6 times an hour there was a commercial.  Almost as many as on tv and like tv the same songs can be heard over and over again.  In another informal study, I listened to the radio at the same time each day for about an hour at a time.  To my suprise the same songs were played during that hour each day, just at different times.  Are we as Americans that dumb that we are lulled into thinking that it’s ok for programming can just be regurgitated over and over again?

I’ve switched to our Public Radio station and College Jazz station, why don’t you?  Pledge your support to your local stations instead of the large conglomerates that keep making us listen to the same 100 songs each day.  We deserve better then that!

Week 30 of my blog…good lord only 22 weeks left in the year, where does time go?

So I’m back to photographing my plastic and even though there is only a small amount in the picture, I am still ashamed. Six items is nothing compared to the countless pieces of plastic that an average American family throws away each week, but after 30 weeks I should be getting better at this.

I bought or paid for all the plastic in the picture. In fact the balled up plastic wrap I just bought today when I replaced my air filter. I looked for an un/non wrapped air filter but something has to hold the paper that has the bar code on it, so it seemed I was out of luck.

Do you remember life before bar codes? Can you imagine that we used to have to go through a checkout line with a real person that had to look at the item and read the price off of a sticker? How archaic!

I also bought a halogen lightbulb and in the picture is the wrapping for it. Halogen bulbs are supposed to last as long a cfl’s but we have replaced this particular one 3 times in the year that we have lived in our house, go figure!

Along with the bulb and filter wrapping there are the drinks that we took to the movies. GASP! She sneeks in food at the movies…at $4.00 for a small drink wouldn’t you? Then there is the wrapping for the mayonnaise. I can’t find mayo in glass jars anymore, all the jars are made of plastic and the one that my husband bought the other day had an outside layer of plastic for it’s label. I didn’t mean to take it completely off but it wouldn’t stop tearing , so off it came.

Is your plastic usage dwindling? Are you down to less then me? Keep it up and see what I bring home next week.

In one weekend Apple sold 1 million iPhone 3G’s.  The first iPhone, introduced only 1 year ago sold approximately 5 million.  Sources say they could sell upwards of 10 million of the newest 3G phones, since they opened up their overseas market.

So my question to you is…where are all the broken, discarded or replaced cell phones going?  Apple doesn’t offer a take back program or at least I can’t find mention of one.  Are the people that spent $500 a year ago to buy the original, just tossing that one in the trash or are they being responsible and taking the old one to a recycler?

All electronics have trace amounts of toxic chemicals like lead or phthalates, a chemical known to have hormone disrupting qualities, even the energy efficient CFL lightbulb contains trace amounts of mercury. The problem is not the chemicals…the issue is that most consumers don’t know that they are there and what to do with the electronics once they have lived their usefull life.

Now let me say this, I think that the buying of cell phones is out of hand.  In my opinion there is no reason to spend $500 on a cell phone and less then a year later need to buy another one.  Now I know there are more bells and whistles on the newer phone, but why can’t the old phone just be upgraded?  This is not the consumer’s fault, it’s the developer’s fault.  We as consumers are pulled in by the new shiny things.  The fact that you can pin point your location on your phone is a pretty nifty or serf the web with lightening fast speed while you are sitting on the train waiting for your stop.  I am not suggesting that electronics are not useful and needed, I am suggesting that we need to make sure consumers are better informed of what’s inside those electronics and what happens to them when you just throw them away.

I talk about being better informed consumers a lot in this blog, but if we are not informed producers will walk all over us and we will buy just for the sake of buying.

If we were to just throw away all of our electronics, we would slowly poison the surrounding ground and water.  We would eventually have so much heavy metals in the soil that we would be unable to plant and grow crops.  Our children would not be able to play outside because of the risk of lead poisoning.  Our children are already getting fat, if they were unable to go outside and get some exercise think of what would happen.

It’s not going to happen overnight, plastics take years to decompose but the pressure of the landfill will eventually put breaks in the plastic or glass and once the rain gets in the metals will leach out.  We need to stop the throwing away of electronics not for our children but their children and generations to come.

Write to your electronics producer, encourage them to start a take back program or better yet an upgrade program that takes those old electronics and makes them new again!

While you are waiting for that to happen, don’t forget to recycle.  Most municipalities have a electronic recycling program, if not go to E-Cycling Central search for your state and get the name of a local recycler. Just don’t throw things away, you never know what they might do to the earth.

I’ve had a couple of people email me and ask when the plastic usage pictures and posts will be back.

Well let me give it to you straight…I am ashamed of my plastic usage so I don’t really wanna show you guys anymore.  But don’t fret, I will start back this weekend.

When I shopped at the granola store it was very easy for me to not buy plastic but now that I am shopping at my local big box grocery store, I can hardly find plastic free/less replacements for the things that I normally buy.

For example…when I shopped at Wild Oats they had great organic juices in glass bottles.  At Schnucks they have one or two types of juice in glass bottles but no one in my family would drink it and paying $4.50 for a pint seems a bit unreasonable.  So to not buy large quantities of plastic, we started buying canned juice from Juicy Juice.  It’s still expensive, not as expensive as the organic juice from Wild Oats but for concentrate it’s a bit pricey. But here is the problem…aluminum cans contain a layer of plastic on the inside so the contents don’t eat through the side of the can during their long journey to your table.  So whereas it’s better to buy less plastic there is still plastic involved.

At the granola store they would wrap my deli meats and cheeses in paper and at the grocery store they will not for any reason put the deli items into anything but their own plastic baggies.  I protested but after the look that I got from the deli manager, my protest did not go any further.  I can bring my own bags (oh! I have a story to tell about a BYOB convert!) but I can’t bring a plastic container of my own to put food into?  What’s up with that?  I’m sure that there is a Health Code or something but gesh, if I’m gonna spend $6 a pound for turkey I should get to have some say as to what I take it home in.  Anyway…I’ve tried to get away from eating luncheon meats totally but it seems that my 6 year old is on a PB&J protest (that I can buy in glass) and is refusing to eat peanut butter totally.  So at least for the rest of the summer I will have to buy the luncheon meat so that the poor child doesn’t starve. I do have one nice thing to say about the butchers at the meat counter at my local Schnucks, they have stopped using the plastic baggies to wrap the chicken and are only using butcher paper.  I guess my persistence with that department has won them over to the green side!

The one thing I can’t get away from is block or shredded cheese.  I know that even Beth at Fake Plastic Fish struggled with this issue too.  Since I don’t drink milk and most of my kids don’t either, we have to get our calcium from somewhere and cheese is it.  We have cheese on our baked spaghetti, tacos, enchiladas, chili dogs, turkey burgers and especially on our pizzas.  I can’t give it up but the worst part is I have no idea if the cows that produce this cheese are happy or not.  It’s definitely not organic like the milk and eggs that I buy so it’s even worse to buy it then I originally thought!  I’m going to the Farmer’s Market this weekend .  Yeah right, I keep saying that!  Pray that they have some happy cow cheese that I can start to substitute, at least then I would only be breaking one green rule.

Of course there is always the plastic wrapping from the turkey that I buy, but I don’t really count that as bad since I buy the turkey instead of beef since we all know what cattle does to our environment…don’t we?

There is a fine line that we walk between being green and living the way a normal consumer does.  I say it’s always worth doing!

Back at the beginning of the year we discussed how to keep energy costs down and now that we are in the thick of the summer season (and the fact that my bill had a significant increase last month) means that it’s time to talk about it again.

The fact that my bill went up by $45 unnerves me. My LGW has an awesome website that has a tracker that compares the previous year’s and June/July had an increase of 100 kwHrs, which brings my total KwHrs to 1507. This upsets me because I have been making sure that the thermostat stays higher then last year, so I am not sure what the increase is all about.

So here are 5 things you can do to decrease your energy usage during the summer months:

1. Clean your air filter…this you need to do about once a month for most filters but others are rated for up to 3 months. I know I have said this before but your air conditioner needs to breathe and with a dirty filter it can’t breathe properly. Most air filters are a couple bucks a piece, unless you use the more expensive allergen filters, so there should be nothing keeping you from doing changing the filter on a regular basis.

2. Turn on your fans…you can lower the temperature of a room several degrees just by turning on the fan and it costs far less to run a fan all day then it does to have your a/c running. Also make sure that your fan is running in the right direction. According to Bob Vila your fan should be rotating counter clock-wise in the summer to provide a breeze and correct movement of the air in the room. He agrees with the fact that using the fans is beneficial and even says that you can save up to 40% on your cooling bills just by turning on the fan.

3. Use the grill…who would have thought that the old grill would save on a/c costs, well it does cause it keeps you from heating up the inside of your house. The simple fact of leaving off the oven or stove not only saves your KwHrs but keeps the house cooler and keeps the a/c from compensating and over cooling the house. Now I am sure that some people will disagree with me on the use of a grill because of the charcoal or the cancer causing grill marks, but if that’s the case just use the microwave.

4. Close the blinds…what a strange thing to do in the beautiful summer time but it helps to again not heat the house. If you are really gun-ho use some tin foil on the windows that face the east. If the blinds are closed and those windows are in the back of the house, no one will ever know and your a/c will thank you.  The less sun that comes in your windows the cooler the house will stay and the less the a/c will be on which in turn lowers your bill.

5. Raise the thermostat…no brainer right?  Well it’s easy to make it a no brainer especially if you install a programmable one.  Keep it warmer in the house when you are away at work or school and at night and have it a little cooler when you are home in the evening.  Of course the best thing to do is open the windows at night but in more humid climates that might not be an option.  I know around here the humid nights make it more miserable to sleep then sleeping with the windows closed and the thermostat a little higher.  If you are going to make it warmer in the house during the day, just make sure not to make it to warm or you will lose all your savings while the a/c runs for and hour to cool the house back down again.  Remember that a few degrees can make all the difference.

Take and use these tips and report back to what your savings are…I know I will.

Yesterday, Al Gore spoke to a group in Washington in which he calls for the United States to be generating all electricity from carbon free sources within 10 years.

I applaud his thinking but is it something that we can really do?

He believes that if we put for the effort that put us on the Moon only 8 years after Kennedy set that goal, we can also have all our homes powered by carbon free fuel.

He also points out that we are having to borrow money from China to feed our oil habit, a dangerous thing to do especially when it comes to issues of the planet.

Is it really possible to change our collective thinking in that short of time?  Can we go from oil hungry to carbon neutral before my youngest child graduates from High School?  Are the citizens of the US ready for a change that abrupt?  I believe with the current status of our economy and the glooming oil crisis, the answer is Yes.

Now it’s not just because I’m a tree hugging, Earth Day celebrating, green power buying eco-geek.  It’s because I believe that if we were to pull together on this we could change the economic and environmental crisis of this country. I also believe in this Country’s ability to effect change on the worlds stage, what a precedent this would set!

It’s not ok that we are having to borrow money from other countries so that we can buy oil to keep up with the demand.  It’s really not ok that we depend so much on OPEC that they can yank us around, mess with our livelihoods and help in the downturn of our economy.

We must come together and have our collective voices heard.  Take the time to really consider what your Public Official’s policies on the Environment and research if they actually vote that way.  It will take a Congress and President that see eye to eye on this issue to enact this kind of change.  Are you helping or hindering the process by voting for people that don’t have the same values as you?  Let your voice be heard now…don’t wait until November.  Speak to your neighbors and co-workers about issues like these.  It’s only in coming together in one voice that change this big will happen.

We owe it to our children.  Let’s not make them clean up the mess that we created.

With gas prices on the rise, I have been doing everything I can to keep my tank above empty for as long as possible.  But I don’t know that I can go as far as some of the “Hyper-Milers” are going.  Keep you windows rolled up and no AC when its 98 degrees outside.  Umm no, I don’t have a death wish.

I do have it quite easy when it comes to how far things are away from my home.  Like my commute is 8 minutes long.  For all of you that spend hours in rush hour traffic, my heart goes out to you.  I did that for 3 weeks, it took me 45 minutes to get from home to work and longer on the way home, and boy did that suck!  The best part about living so close to work is the additional time to sleep and that on most days I can go home for lunch and not spend $10 to eat out.

Not only do I work with in 5 miles but the grocery store, elementary and junior high are all within a mile of my home.  Who said urban sprawl was all that terrible?  The burb that I live in has everything that I could ever need, a Starbucks included, withing a couple miles of my front door.

But back to the 32 mpg’s…since I only spend 8 minutes in the car, I don’t believe it necessary to turn the car’s a/c on but I do roll down the windows (all the way).  The hype-milers suggest that you only crack your windows because anymore and the amount of drag increases, to hell with that!  What I know is when I run my a/c, I get the listed mpg’s about 25 to 27 miles to the gallon, but when I turn off the a/c and roll down the windows I get 30 to 32 miles a gallon.  I’ve done the math and that’s an additional 12 or so percent more miles every time I fill up.  All I can say is that I am amazed!

So my suggestion…roll down the windows, turn up your Public Radio station (I’m convinced that NPR helps save on gas too) and take off to work.  I’m not going to try to do the math on what kinds of cost savings that would be for the country if everyone got 12% more miles to the gallon, but think of what it could do for your bottom line as well as our dependency on foreign oil.  So grab your stainless steel bottle of tap water and head out into the wide open spaces!

Over the past few weeks, I have been contemplating over what to say next.  I have been very concerned about the economy, the state of America and what it is doing to my family and others that I know.

But it all came to me yesterday morning…

My husband and a band that he belongs to ( The New Memphis Hepcats) were scheduled to perform on a local daily news program, so I had the tv at work tuned to something besides the Golf Channel.  Well the President preempted the program, but I left it on since I was curious as to what he had to say.  Now let me “preempt” this by saying I voted for George Bush…2 times.  I am ashamed by this. You know what they say…”Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.” I haven’t decided whom I am voting for in the next election but I assure you, my decision will be well researched and thought out. 

So, I believe that I have the right to complain, I put my trust in him and he let me down.

As I listened I was appalled as to what he had to say.  What I heard was a bunch of, “I told you so’s” and “its all congress’s fault”. 

I started a project where I would compare prices and the cost of gas between my local grocery store and the granola store.  Well I haven’t been able to finish the project because every drop of my gas is precious and I can’t (even for science sake) to use any more then what is needed.  Now I know that I could offset that travel by riding my bike to work, but when it’s 95 degrees with a 85% relative humidity, riding is a tad bit uncomfortable. 

But I say all this to get to my point…with the rising costs of gas and food, it’s not time to play the blame game, it’s time to fix the problem before middle-class families like mine can’t afford to by the simplest necessities. Not to say that the problems of the poor are not important, but 9 times out of 10 they can apply for some type of governmental assistance (that’s not the answer either), families like mine don’t qualify for programs like that and we are starting to suffer. 

I don’t mean to sound ugly, but now is the time to forget politics, forget about suffering in other countries and focus on America’s recovery and may I say that offshore oil drilling is not the answer.  I agree wholeheartedly that buying 70% of our oil from foreign companies is ridiculas and we need to do something about it, I don’t think that potentially ruining more of the ocean is the right thing to do.  The President doesn’t agree with me on this.  However, I agree with the principle of why he wants to do it.  The less we need, the lower the price.  But what about spending that same money on more eco-friendly or earth friendly fuel production.  I say that then say “No more corn ethanol” that is not what we need, save the corn for the growing food crisis.  Now other forms of ethanol are good to research but NO MORE CORN. 

Speaking of which, my favorite gas station that is connected to my grocery store, that consequently gives me a discount on my gas when I buy their groceries, has gone to putting corn ethanol in their gas.  That makes me sad, especially when they are not cheaper then any of the surrounding gas stations.

Now especially is the time to write to your Congress person and voice your concern.  Don’t sit idly by as things get worse.  Take a stand and let them know that what is going on is not ok and you won’t stand for it.  Give them reasons to support eco-friendly research like wind, and solar power.  you voted for them, make them hear you.

I went to the grocery store this past weekend to begin an experiment on the differences on pricing and products between the large chain grocery store and the granola store (which I realize is a chain too but there is only one here in the city).

I bought what most of what we needed and tired not to pay attention to prices because if I did the granola store would automatically lose the competition. I bought brand names and tried to stay away from plastic, but that was all but impossible. I want this experiment to show the pros and cons of both stores but especially the environmental costs.

What I do know is that I spent $155 on about weeks worth of groceries. I tried to only shop the outside isles where the best food is (fresh produce and the meat and fish counters) but I had to buy breakfast food and a couple other household staples. I actually spent $185 but about $30 of that total were non-food items that I will not count in my actual totals because those kinds of items are not bought on a weekly basis.

Next week I am going to shop at the chain store and at the Farmers Market to see what kind of difference that makes. The week after that will be at the granola store only and then the following week will be the granola store and Farmer’s Market. At the end I will compare all the pros and cons and ask you to make the decision as to where I should shop.

How is the increase in food and gas costs effecting you?