Another tip for keeping your house cool in the summer: run your washing machine, dishwasher, and drier at night. These big appliances throw off a lot of heat, and during the day you’re just going to make your air conditioner work overtime to keep the house cool. Another benefit of using your big appliances at night is that you reduce strain on the electrical grid during peak hours.

This has proved so effective in cutting energy costs, the UK has kicked off a nighttime dishwasher campaign.

Texas is already the largest producer of wind power, with 5,300 installed megawatts — more than double the installed capacity of California, the next closest state. And Texas is fast expanding its capacity.

“This project will almost put Texas ahead of Germany in installed wind,” said Greg Wortham, executive director of the West Texas Wind Energy Consortium.

via The Times.

Excellent stuff, especially the list of websites.

The No Impact Man is not suggesting you drop everything and do them all today, but pick a few and start changing your life. After all, it doesn’t take much to start making the world a better place. Jude and I are actively doing about 90% of the items in Colin’s list below, and it feels great.

No Impact Man’s 42 Ways to Go Trash-Free

1. No soda in cans (which means we’re probably less likely to get cancer from aspartame).
2. No water in plastic bottles (which means we get to keep our endocrines undisrupted).
3. No coffee in disposable cups (which means we don’t suffer from the morning sluggishness that comes from overnight caffeine withdrawal).
4. No throwaway plastic razors and blade cartridges (I’m staging the straightedge razor comeback).
5. Using non-disposable feminine-hygiene products that aren’t bad for women and are good for the planet.
6. No Indian food in throwaway takeout tubs.
7. No Italian food in plastic throwaway tubs.
8. No Chinese food in plastic throwaway tubs.
9. Taking our own reusable containers to takeout joints (except that now we’re eating local so this tip is out for us).
10. Admitting that we sometimes miss Indian, Italian and Chinese takeout.
11. Hopping on the scale and celebrating the loss of
    my 20-pound spare tire since I stopped eating bucketsful of Indian,
    Italian and Chinese takeout.
12. Buying milk in returnable, reusable glass bottles.
13. Shopping for honey and pickled veggies and other goods in jars only from merchants who will take back the jars and reuse them.
14. Returning egg and berry cartons to the vendors at the farmers’ market for reuse.
15. Using neither paper nor plastic bags and bringing our own reusable bags when grocery shopping.
16. Canceling our magazine and newspaper subscriptions and reading online.
17. Putting an end to the junk mail tree killing.
18. Carrying my ultra-cool reusable cup and water bottle (which is a glass jar I diverted from the landfill and got for free).
19. Carrying reusable cloths for everything from blowing my nose to drying my hands to wrapping up a purchased bagel.
20. Wiping my hands on my pants instead of using a paper towel when I forget my cloth.
21. Politely asking restaurant servers to take away
    paper and plastic napkins, placemats, straws, cups and single-serving
    containers.
22. Explaining to servers with a big smile that I am on a make-no-garbage kick.
23. Leaving servers a big tip for dealing with my
    obsessive-compulsive, make-no-garbage nonsense, since they can’t take
    the big smile to the bank.
24. Pretending McDonalds and Burger King and all their paper and plastic wrappers just don’t exist.
25. Buying no candy bars, gum, lollypops or ice cream (not even Ben and Jerry’s peanut butter cup) that is individually packaged.
26. Making my own household cleaners to avoid all the throwaway plastic bottles.
27. Using baking soda from a recyclable container to brush my teeth.
28. Using baking soda for a deodorant to avoid the plastic containers that deodorant typically comes in (cheap and works well).
29. Using baking soda for shampoo to avoid plastic shampoo bottles.
30. Using the plastic bags that other people’s newspapers are delivered in to pick up Frankie the dog’s poop.
31. Keeping a worm bin to compost our food scraps into nourishment that can be returned to the earth instead of toxins that seep from the landfills.
32. Switching to real—meaning cloth—diapers which Isabella, before she was potty-trained, liked much better.
33. Not buying anything disposable.
34. Not buying anything in packaging (and count the
    money we save because that means pretty much buy nothing unless it’s
    second hand).
35. Shopping for food only from the bulk bins and from the local farmer’s market where food is unpackaged and fresh.
36. Forgetting about prepackaged, processed food of any description.
37. Being happy that the result is that we get to eat food instead of chemicals.
38. Giving our second-hand clothes away to Housing Works or other charities.
39. Offering products we no longer need on Freecycle instead of throwing them away.
40. Collecting used paper from other people’s trash and using the other side.
41. Using old clothes for rags around the apartment instead of paper towels.
42. Talking with humor about what we’re doing because
    making a little less trash is a concrete first step everyone can take
    that leads to more and more environmental consciousness.

Instead of printing this list, save it as a bookmark and return often to try something new.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the environment, blah, blah, blah, melting ice caps. To judge from all the gas-guzzlers still fouling the air and the plastic bottles clogging the dumps, it appears that the news that we are killing ourselves and the world with our greed and garbage hasn’t sunk in. That’s one reason “The 11th Hour,�? an unnerving, surprisingly affecting documentary about our environmental calamity, is such essential viewing. It may not change your life, but it may inspire you to recycle that old slogan-button your folks pinned on their dashikis back in the day: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

…

If your head isn’t lodged in the sand, much of what’s said in the movie will be agonizing and familiar. Gasping children, disappearing animals, gushing oil, billowing smoke, dying lakes, emptying forests, warming weather — the list of ills is numbingly familiar. In the movie’s eye-catching opener, the directors riffle through a veritable catalog of timely snapshots, some obvious (a smoggy skyline), others less so (a human fetus).

The full review at The Times.

These houses are completely “off the grid�?—they’re not connected to the utility companies. Yet the teams have to live like normal Americans. Using only power from the sun, they have to keep the TV on six hours a day, run the computer five hours a day, cook meals, wash dishes, do two loads of laundry a week, take four 15-minute hot showers a week, keep the temperature between 70 and 78 degrees, maintain 40 to 60 percent humidity, and recharge an electric two-seater car.

My three favorite things:

In short, they have to prove that living on solar power does not involve sacrifice.

…

The University of Maryland team installed a wide, bookcase-sized, indoor waterfall—not just to soothe the soul, but to pull humidity out of the air. It was a desiccant solution—like the “Do not eat�? packets that come in your electronics, but in liquid form—that absorbs moisture. Drier air inside means that you don’t need to run the air conditioner as much. The saturated waterfall flows out the bottom to an outdoor evaporator; the re-concentrated solution is pumped back in to the waterfall, and the cycle begins again.

The sheetrock of this home’s walls was infused with paraffin (candle wax). Why? To absorb heat and liquefy during the day, and then release the heat and re-solidify at night.

The full report to be broadcast 9 a.m. EST, “CBS News Sunday Morning.�?

My iPhone bill from AT&T was 51 pages long. It listed every single time it automatically checked for new email messages, the amount of data transferred, the exact time of the connection, etc… Only the nerdiest of the nerds would find this information important and necessary. This type of report should only be available online or by the request of the customer. Especially since the argument of “what if they don’t have a computer and Internet access?�? is moot with iPhone owners — all of which must own a computer with Internet access just to activate the phone.

More from Nashville.

Via DaringFireball.

These photos just released by the U.S. Geological Survey Landsat Project show the glacier covering Greenland has receeded enough to reveal the world’s newest land mass, Warming Island.

CNET News.com reports “Scientists are concerned because the glacier on Greenland contains enough water to raise global sea levels by about 23 feet.”

I say you are wrong.

“Yahoo! going carbon neutral is equivalent to shutting off the electricity in all San Francisco homes for a month.”

Filo’s full post at yodel.yahoo.com.

Skipping back a couple of years when my wife (then fiance) was living in London, each trip to the Safeway or Sainsburys was an adventure. See, stores across the pond charge for plastic bags. Yes, customes actually pay for them. So it becomes somewhat of a game at the checkout counter: how many items can I fit a single plastic bag so I don’t have to buy another one? At 10p per bag, the costs add up. We beat the system and still are today by using canvas boat totes — perfect for lugging around all the groceries you can carry.

Jump back to me at the manager’s counter at the local Pig. When I told her of my adventures in England, and asked her if her bosses would entertain the thought of reducing plastic bag usage or even consider charging customers for them, she stared back in amazement. I am of the belief The Pig would benefit in three glorious ways:

1. They’d reduce the amount of waste they’re responsible for every day
2. They’d save money by reducing the amount they spend on plastic bags
3. They’d be doing the world a favor

But instead of listening to my seemlingly brilliant business model for The Pig, she actually laughed at me and said, “no way, my boss would never go for that. Have a good mornin’, sir.” I think she was still trying to figure out what “England” is.

So, here we are today with news that the city of San Francisco has voted to ban plastic bags. A month ago, Ikea said it’s going to charge $0.05 per bag at their stores.

No, I can’t take the credit for giving these two the idea, but what will it take for other stores to get on board? And more importantly, how long will it take?

We’ve all heard much in the past weeks surrounding the human impact on this planet. Really, it’s been constantly in the news since late last year when Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth was released on DVD. Then it was the NCDC’s report in January announcing that 2006 was in fact the warmest year on record. And then President Bush’s call for a sharp cutback in petrol consumption during his 7th State of the Union speech. Then Parisians shut off the lights on their Eiffel Tower last week on the eve of the release of a U.N. report on climate change. A day later, Exxon Mobil revealed they earned $75,000 per second in 2006 on oil revenues. And today, new report predicting rising seas makes it just below-the-fold at nytimes.com. Even the folks at a traditionally business-focused Economist magazine featured “The Greening of America�? in their latest issue.

Clearly, the word is spreading. People are getting it. The news is finally off page two, and above-the-fold in mainstream media. But now it’s more important than ever to strike while the iron is hot, and for humans worldwide – not just us Americans – to take action.

The New York Times referenced two websites in an article on Eco-Tourism where visitors can measure their carbon emissions and become “carbon neutral�? – a brand-new entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for 2007 – by purchasing passes to offset their negative impact through investment in alternative energy sources. A brilliant concept. (The Times published an earlier article on the subject last fall.) In today’s world, no one can totally escape carbon emissions, but we can take steps to reduce them.

One of the websites referred to, TerraPass.com, is part of the solution. I just bought two TerraPasses for each of my Subaru’s, and I’ll be scooping up some more for my house and again before we fly to Africa in May. (How do TerraPasses work?) In all, my wife and I are responsible for an estimated 41,000 pounds (includes home, two autos, and numerous domestic and international flights) of carbon dioxide emissions in 2007. This is down from close to 55,000 in 2006 since we switched out our thermostat and lightbulbs, started unplugging not-in-use electronics, and turned down the heat/aircon a few degrees. We already wash clothes using cold water, use a clothesline, recycle, walk when we can, and more. Carbon neutral we are.

It’s easier than you think to be green, and with companies like TerraPass, it’s even easier to be carbon neutral.

CNN.com: Bush officials misled public on global warming

This news, of course, is actually nothing new. In Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, a few minutes is dedicated to this very topic — and the now famous “recommendations” of a certain senior White House adviser.

Bush to Seek Cutback in Gas Consumption

“People should be concerned about what we are doing to the climate”
—Jay Lawrimore, NOAA

The report said: “The unusually warm start to this winter reflected the rarity of Arctic outbreaks across the country as an El Niño episode continued in the equatorial Pacific. A contributing factor to the unusually warm temperatures throughout 2006 also is the long-term warming trend, which has been linked to increases in greenhouse gases. This has made warmer-than-average conditions more common in the U.S. and other parts of the world.”

The center said there are indications that the rate at which global temperatures are rising is speeding up.

A Connecticut newspaper quotes Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, as saying, “no one should be surprised that 2006 is the hottest year on record for the U.S. When you look at temperatures across the globe, every single year since 1993 has been in the top 20 warmest years on record.”

We’ve all got the responsibility. Wondering how can you help?