It’s always good to have a paper shredder, to get rid of all that “sensitive” information on bills and credit card offers. But how to do it without using precious electricity?

This hand-powered paper shredder takes care of that. I got it for free from BCBS, and it’s been useful for shredding paper, which can then be used to make some homemade paper. It works really easily too, and shreds CDs and credit cards.

So if you’re thinking about getting a paper shredder and don’t want to use electricity for it, go for the hand-powered kind. They work good, save money, and help conserve energy AND your identification. Truly a win-win situation.

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I’ll keep this short and sweet… you can get a FREE Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb this week. How, you might ask?

I might answer, the GE Energy-saving light bulbs are on sale at Target for $1. Use this $1 off coupon and ka-chow, you can be saving electricity with your new free CFL bulb.

No money down, no excuses. Just do it and start saving energy and money today.

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You may have heard about these new-fangled CFL bulbs. They last up to ten times longer than incandescent light bulbs, use only about 25% the energy (so they cost one-fourth the amount of money to run), and they produce 90% less heat (waste) than an incandescent bulb, so you get more light per watt!

But I digress. When these CFL bulbs eventually die, you can’t just throw them away, since they have some mercury in them. You have to take them to special CFL bulb collection places. I had to do this recently, and found these easy places to safely get rid o’ CFLs.

* Call your garbage service and ask them
* IKEA
* Home Depot
* If all those fail, check out Earth911, they should be able to help.

Good luck recycling them CFLs. Truly, you are on the path to being an eco-hero.

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This morning outside my work it was about 70 degrees and sunny. The weather was quite literally TOO good. So we turned off our air conditioning and opened the windows to air out the office. As the cool outside air came rushing in, my brain gears started turning, and I wondered to myself, “Self, if every house in the U.S. of A. turned off their A/C and opened their windows whenever the weather was nice outside, how much money and electricity would that save?”

Welp, let’s see. The average price in the U.S. for energy is 9.49 cents per kilowatthour. And the average home air conditioner uses “more than 2000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, causing power plants to emit about 3500 pounds of carbon dioxide and 31 pounds of sulfur dioxide.”

Okay, stay with me. According to the OFFICIAL ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION, in 2005 there were about 93.3 million American houses with air conditioning. So let’s figure that those houses are in places that have nice weather (65-80 degrees) about 20% of the time, or 70 days each year.

That means that if all those houses turned off their air conditioning on those days and opened their windows to let in the fresh air, then:
400 kwh per house * 93.3 million houses = 37.2 billion kilowatthours saved!! That equals out to savings of over $3.5 billion each year! Ay chi wa wa.

Of course, the actual amount of nice days could vary, but still, if everyone did this whenever the temperature was nice outside, we’d be saving billions of kilowatthours. Dang, crazy.

So next time you’re at work or at home, and the weather is nice, instead of cranking on the ol’ air conditioning and wasting energy and money, why not just open the windows and let some fresh air in? You’ll be saving money and electricity while getting some fresh air in your cave.

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Last Tuesday, good ol’ TMQ had some stuff to say about how the huge increase in oil price can be partially attributed to the reluctance that the U.S. showed with raising fuel standards.  Let’s take a look at what he had to say, shall we?

You Don’t Need to Speculate in Futures Contracts for Members of Congress, Since They Are So Easy to Buy: As the price of a barrel of oil nearly doubled in the first half of 2008, members of Congress ominously blamed petroleum speculators who, it was said, were ominously buying up futures contracts. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called a news conference to introduce his grandly titled Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008. If “excessive” speculation, whatever that means, really is influencing oil markets, then those ominous speculators are now being punished by the same markets, as barrel prices fall. But how convenient for the United States Congress to blame unnamed, shadowy speculators instead of blaming … the United States Congress.

It is Congress, after all, that from 1988 to 2007 repeatedly refused to raise fuel economy standards for cars, trucks and SUVs, thus guaranteeing U.S. oil imports would rise, and helping push up global oil demand, increase the price of oil and channel more dollars, euros and yen to the Persian Gulf dictatorships that support anti-Western and anti-Israel terrorism. Under Republican and Democratic leadership alike, for 20 years Congress was warned and warned and warned again regarding trends in U.S. petroleum use, and for 20 years did nothing. With an election coming, how about we throw these unctuous rascals out, and to play on a suggestion by the late William F. Buckley, replace them with 535 names chosen at random from the nation’s telephone books?
 

If you want to read the whole column (which is 90% about football, and which I recommend), you can read TMQ rooootttcccch… HERE.

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Dag, I haven’t updated this site in TOO long. I’ve been busy as heck at work, plus at home. Anyhoo, let’s get down to business.

Econo-Chem makes a very cheap (pennies a bottle), all-purpose, eco-friendly cleaning product. Part of their secret is that they sell you the cleaner in concentrated form, so it weighs less (lower transportation costs and less air pollution) and so you can dilute it to the strength you need. Let’s hear what Econo-Chem has to say about Econo-Clean, shall we?

Econo-Clean contains no phosphates, bleaching agents, acids or solvents. It works on a sodium-based lifting agent, which gets into the pores of a material, to lift and remove anything which is not permanently bonded.

To get the free sample, SIMPLY CLICK YOUR MOUSE BUTTON ROTCH HUR and answer some quick questions. Make sure you say that you’ll consider buying their product, and that you already have an empty spray bottle.

When you’re done, you’ll be the proud owner of some good ol’ Econo-Clean.

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UPS has 93,637 vehicles (cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, and tractor-trailers) that drive over 2 billion miles a year, so they have had a lot of practice in finding ways to save gas, save money, and reduce air pollution.  Here are three of Brown’s gas saving tips for any of y’all driving this holiday weekend.

1.  Avoid left turns – UPS plans its routes to minimize left turns.  This reduces gas usage because left turns generally mean you car has to sit and idle while waiting to turn.  This helped UPS save $12 million last year!
2. Reduce idling – I did not know this, but UPS has a “no idling” policy, so no matter how short of a stop a UPS driver makes, they turn off their engine.  This reduces idling time by 24 minutes per driver a day, which saves them $188 per driver per year!
3. Plan your route – UPS plans out its routes to be as efficient and direct as possible.  Remember, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail!

If you can’t read that good, here are some gas saving tips from UPS… IN VIDEO FORM. 

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