I try to live an environmentally friendly lifestyle. There are lots of “green” things I do regularly, such as recycling anything I can, growing my own vegetables and using my bike instead of the car for many journeys. However, when it comes to things I do only occasionally, such as buying new stuff for my house, I’ve found it’s often hard to know where to look for eco friendly products. I’ve recently done some research into eco friendly furniture manufacturers, in particular companies that make bar stools, so I thought I’d spread the word and share my findings here.

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I just returned from a late winter mountaineering trip to Durango, Colorado where snow abounds and the locale’s high-desert-arid ways were seasonally hidden from sight.  And though my main focus was simply to make it off of the high peaks in one piece, I couldn’t help but aim my attention to the sheer amount of snow on the ground and, thus, the flowing rivers and creeks all around us.  What a stark contrast to the thirsty low deserts of Arizona.  And though we are regional neighbors, I suddenly felt what could only be described as an age-old territorial rivalry – that for the single most precious resource on earth –water.  Read the rest of this entry »

I have to admit that I’m not sure I’d want fake grass in my own backyard.  But, in a recent twist of reason, I’ve started to warm up to the notion.  Though I couldn’t imagine taking a midday nap in a meadow of green plastic fibers, there are applications that warrant its use.  And, no, I’m not talking about a sports field (though that is a worthy usage).  If we are serious about cutting our resource consumption…then maybe synthetic lawns deserve a closer, and less disapproving, look. Read the rest of this entry »

Ask ten different landscapers how they would install a single irrigation system and you would get ten different answers.  So how is anyone supposed to know how to set up what is essentially, in the desert Southwest, the lifeblood of a landscape?  Though it is probably easier to explain what not to do, the following is my number one tip to get you on your way to irrigation mastery. Read the rest of this entry »

Can we all just agree that less material putrefying in landfills across this country would be a good thing?  Great.  So now that we’ve gotten over that hurdle, we can tackle the big, ugly and almost completely closeted fact that we are essentially being buried in a dearth of debris.  There are over thirty-five hundred landfills in this country which, I’ve heard, handle somewhere in the range of two hundred fourteen million tons of solid waste each year.  And though some of that is just what you’d think – sullied diapers, gleaming gift wrapping, spent product packaging and the like – quite a bit of the load is green waste – recyclable, compostable and usable material.  But what to do with it? Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago, I slept at a campsite next to a trailer running an obnoxiously loud diesel-powered generators all night long. If AMP’s silent, solar-powered portable generator had been around, I may have gotten a full night’s sleep. The silent, all-weather generator is installed in a trailer with photovoltaic solar panels on its roof.

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Fear not, unemployed masses: you may have a career in the wind energy industry ahead of you. According to a recent prediction from the Global Wind Energy Council, 1 million people will be employed in the wind industry by 2010, and up to 3 million people could have wind energy jobs by 2050. 400,000 people currently work in the wind industry.

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Yesterday, IST Energy released the world’s first compact, mobile waste-to energy system: the GEM (Green Energy Machine). The slick-looking device converts trash into pellets that are in turn converted into electricity and gas heat. 95 percent of daily consumer waste can be dumped into the machine, including paper, plastic, wood, food, and agricultural materials.

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Believe it or not, even though the desert Southwest is best known for its intense heat and parching aridity, the cold is always in the back of my mind.  When I consider plant material, I try to choose plants that won’t need to be babied.  That’s easier said than done, of course, when even some of the burliest varieties can get hit during an extremely hard frost.  But shooting for sturdiness in the plant selection process can save you quite a bit of effort and money in the long run.  The cost of heavy-handed maintenance and the inevitable expense of replacement plants really begins to add up.  So I suggest developing a healthy dose of respect for cold in a region not known for it.  And the time to start thinking about it is way before it ever rears its frosty head. Read the rest of this entry »

A new year, a new solar cell efficiency record is broken. German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems have built a solar cell with 41.1% efficiency, besting the previous record of 40.8% efficiency set by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The three-layer gallium-indium-phosphide, gallium-indium-arsenide, and germanium cell broke the record when researchers concentrated sunlight onto it 454 times.

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