Black Friday Blues

Did you go shopping on Friday?  If you did, I’m sure the sales were great, but there are also large consequences for climate change that come from Black Friday, according to the EPA and the Product Policy Institute, or PPI.
Production, consumption and disposal of the huge quantity of short-lived products and packaging used in the [...]

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A Buck a Bulb is Back!

Looking to save some money?  Love great deals?  Then you’ll be overjoyed to hear that, once again, Xcel Energy is subsidizing the cost of a variety of compact fluorescent light bulbs across the state.  You can now get high quality energy-saving bulbs for as little as ONE DOLLAR A BULB.  A buck a bulb!  That’s [...]

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(r)e-cycling your e-waste

Do you have a pile of old cellphones on your desk?  Or maybe an old laptop? Well, now is the time to recycle or donate them properly.  Engadget makes this easy by compiling a list of every large manufacturer and their recycling policies and donation programs.
It is extremely important to recycle old electronics properly because [...]

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SIGG Exposed

Many of us, including myself, joined the SIGG bottle trend after learning about harmful chemicals like Bisphenoyl-A that can leach into our water from certain plastic water bottles.  But I was outraged to find out that SIGG bottles contain BPA too!  All bottles that were made before August 2008 have BPA in the liner.  BPA [...]

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Will Power Cycling Hurt My Computer?

I talk to a lot of people about phantom load, or the constant electricity leak caused by leaving electronics plugged in.  Phantom load costs our country an estimated $4 billion a year in wasted electricity, but luckily the solution is simple – use power strips to stop the leaks! Turning off a power strip stops [...]

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Will eReaders save the environment?

I’ll admit, I have a big chip on my shoulder when it comes to e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle.  I grew up in a household that was covered in books, worked in libraries as a teenager and college student and have always enjoyed the physical sensations of books.  Mmmm, the smell of a new book.  When [...]

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Gottahaveit? Lotsaenergy!

If you ran out and got a Kindle the first day it was available or stood in line for the new iPhone,  you may be a Gottahavist – and your costs don’t end with the next new cool gadget.  Treehugger added up the energy use (including phantom load) of common and popular household gadgets for [...]

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Cash for Old Electronics

If you’re unsure what to do with that old beat up first generation iPod, you could get some money for it! NextWorth is a gadget buy-back service that offers both in-store and online trade-ins for Apple products like iPods and iPhones, as well as video games and consoles, digital cameras, BlackBerry phones and GPS systems.  [...]

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Recyle your cell phone for a good cause

Electronics recycling can be a tricky beast, especially when a lot of it happens overseas without the benefit of strict environmental standards and workers rights to protect the earth and people from the harmful byproducts.  But the average lifespan for a cell phone is a pitiful 18 months and 1% are properly recycled – which [...]

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A new hot video game – Driving!

Creative Commons photo by geognerd on Flickr

It’s probably good that I don’t own a Prius at the moment because I become completely transfixed by the dashboard display!  It’s very cool to be able to see real-time what kind of mileage one’s car is getting.  Studies have shown that this kind of feedback can help modify [...]

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