Need More Juice for Your AA Battery? Shake, Shake, Shake!

If you’re off grid but still needing to use AA-style batteries, wouldn’t it be great to be able to add more juice just by shaking them up a bit? That’s what the Mint Energy Rechargeable Battery concept would allow us to do…just use a little “shakenergy.” Essentially, the idea takes the recharging component of a [...]

GE Introduces Green Gizmo Home

They call it the Net-Zero Energy home. It has ground source heat pumps (promising a 30% reduction in energy use), photovoltaic arrays, supplementary wind power, high efficiency appliances and battery storage, all talking to each other through a Home Energy Manager. That’s a lot of impressive technology. But are green gizmos the best way to [...]

Google Data Center Uses No Chillers – Will It Soon Follow the Moon?

A Google data center in Belgium is taking a cool, new approach to keeping from over-heating on hot days. The facility has no electricity-sucking chillers to support its cooling systems, relying instead on air from outside. Google anticipates this so-called “free cooling” for all but about seven days per year, but what’s really fascinating is [...]

Tiny Rain Garden Fights Runoff and Promotes Electric Vehicles

Award-Winning Design Demonstrates Responsible Small Gardens TreeHugger has long argued against the ridiculous notion that every house needs a paved, impermeable driveway. From urban heat islands to storm water runoff, the problems with paving are becoming ever more apparent. But often folks with small front gardens, and congested neighborhoods, feel they have little choice but [...]

Are Antiques Green? Not a Simple Answer

What’s the Carbon Footprint of the Antique Industry? I’ve been told I think too much. (Though I’ve also been told the opposite is true!) From musing over whether carrots are vegan to wondering about the true cost of my rural green living, it could be fair to say that I take this sustainability stuff a [...]

100% Renewable Energy by 2020:Tuvalu’s Bold New Green Power Goal

Tuvalu may be among those Pacific island nations first affected by climate change, but that hasn’t stopped it from setting a bold new renewable energy target of 100% clean power by 2020. Kickstarting that effort is a (relatively) new solar power system, which supplies 5% of Funafuti’s, the nation’s capital, electricity: The 40 kilowatt system [...]

Taking the Miner Out Of Coal Mining

Proponents of the mountain top removal (MTR) method of coal mining argue that it is more cost efficient. In 1998, Arch Coal Inc. defended MTR in advertisements, calling it “good for West Virginia, and it’s the right thing to do.” However, opponents of MTR call it destructive. MTR is a type of coal mining in [...]

Green Flushes? Which Brands are Doing it Right?

A Delicate Undertaking I picked up a copy of Time Magazine while visiting my parents and noticed A Delicate Undertaking, an article in their Going Green section comparing different brands of toilet paper with recycled content. I have been using Seventh Generation 100% recycled toilet paper for years and just don’t get all the hype [...]

HOK Tops Annual Ranking as “Greenest Design Firm”

We first highlighted the global architectural and design firm HOK with our post last December covering the opening late last year of the new “sustainable” Indianapolis airport (pictured above), for which HOK was principal designer. Earlier this year we talked with Mary Ann Lazarus, HOK’s Sustainable Design Director, about the growing buzz over building efficiency [...]

Greening the Fast Food Industry

The world is becoming a greener place. I see hybrids on the road more than any other car. Fortune 500 companies are totally rethinking their corporate operations in an attempt to be more sustainable. The movement is spreading! It’s exciting, undeniably. But with the increased awareness come manipulative marketing crusades, questionable motives and high-profile smear [...]