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.

Right, let’s “cut to the chase”, as “they” say. There’s a stray cat that roams our neighborhood (not Gimpy the stray cat, a different one), and me and Tiff have been feeding him/trying to adopt him for a while. So far he’s not ready to stay in our house, and since the weather is ’bout to start getting chilly, I decided it was high time to build him his very own homemade cat house from reused materials. Luckily I still had a bunch o’ materials left over from our kitchen remodeling, even after making a kitchen cart from reused materials.

First, I cut the floor and walls from some old wood I had from our kitchen remodeling. After some screws n’ glue, this is what I had:

I had some carpet left over from mi casa, so I cut out a lil’ chunk and oh-so-carefully fitted it to Charlie’s cat house.

READ MORE »

Maybe you already heard, but Alan Weisman wrote a book called The World Without Us about what would happen to the Earth if everybody just disappeared. I heard him on the radio today, talking about the research he did, such as visiting the subway in New York to talk to maintenance works. Anyhoo, it sounds like a pretty cool book, I might get it fo’ FREE from my library.

Without further ado, I present a graphical summary of The World Without Us.

Here’s another summary of what would happen to mankind’s creations if we disappeared. Weird that within two days, New York City’s subways would be flooded. Dang, it sort of makes you think…

This here tip will reduce food waste AND save you literally pennies each time you use it! I had to use this here tip last weekend on a plastic barbecue sauce bottle. I squoze the bottle with my gnarled and calloused hands ’til nothing else came out, then good ol’ Tiff told me this helpful lil’ green hint:

1. Take bottle (lotion, ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, etc.)
2. Cut bottle in half using scissors (please wear goggles, gloves, elbow pads, and a mouth guard, and have your parents supervise you)
3. Use a spatula to get out the rest of the sauce, salad dressing, or what have you.

Simple. A tip that reduces waste while saving you money. Now that’s an EcoJoes© kind of green tip.

I’m EcoJoe and I approve of this message.

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.

Last week I came home to find a large cardboard box from Papa Spud’s. What is Papa Spud’s, you might ask? Welp, Papa Spud’s is a company that delivers mainly local, mainly organic fruit and vegetables to Raleigh and its surrounding towns. Almost all their produce comes from inside North Carolina, which means that you’re supporting local farmers plus cutting down on the transportation pollution.

Here’s the plethora of nutritious vittles that greeted me when I tore open the box. Please note the insulating lining that keeps the produce nice n’ cold.

• 3 big yellow peaches from NC
• Pint of grape tomatoes (NC)
• 2 slicing cucumbers (NC)
• 2 big eggplants (NC)
• 6 red dale potatoes (NC)
• and from California, a ginormous bag of red seedless grapes

Since I opened the box, I’ve tried all of the foods and have only an eggplant and some grape tomatoes left. It was dang good, with no messed up fruit or vegetables. The grapes and peaches were especially good. I’m about to finish up the eggplant and tomaters tomorrow.

Oh yeah, they reuse their insulated boxes. Each week, you put them outside on your doorstep, and they pick them up when they bring your new vegetables. A simple, efficient, non-wasteful system.

Anyhoo, if you live close to Raleigh, you should go check them out. Their website explains how you can start getting local, organic food delivered to your house this week. The best thing about it is that it encourages you to try some new healthy foods, plus support yo’ local farmers, all without leaving the comforting womb of your own home.

To see the video and read more about the Zephyr-6, head on over to BBC News, and tell them EcoJoes sent you.

A solar-powered plane flew for a little over 82 hours, shattering its old record. The lightweight plane, known as the Zephyr-6, was flown as a demonstration for U.S. military, which is looking for new ways to provide air support for its ground troops.

Dang, 3 days in the air just from solar power. This might be even better than the solar powered bra. Pretty amazing. If they could somehow make solar-powered passenger planes, we could cut down on air pollution while also reducing our dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels. It’s a win-win situation.