Archive for June, 2009

Obama is Greening the Whitehouse

They have planted a garden and now they are on to changing the light bulbs in the Whitehouse isn’t that just a little cliche?  Not when you hire a Nobel Loreat  to do it.    I guess they won’t running down to Home Depot and stocking up on Compact Florescent ’s eh?   Below is a really great article about Obama’s commitment to helping Americans green their homes.  Considering that buildings make up at least 40% of the American carbon footprint and lighting makes up a good 10% of that statistic, hiring a physicist to examine better cleaner lighting technologies is good policy.   I think beyond the obvious environmental impact of upgrading and purchasing cleaner technologies, there is certainly reason to be optimistic that there could be financial incentives even greater then your projected savings in energy costs. 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/06/obama_unveils_new_lighting_eff.html?ft=1&f=103943429

Water again…

I find it serendipitous and therefor necessary for me to post a link to the TN article about rain barrels and rain gardens because I just talked about this a day or so ago.  The articles talks about ways you can reduce your need for summer watering and there is a link in there to where you can get the barrels locally.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090625/COLUMNIST0128/906250344/1053/OPINION02

Mayors Environmental Pledge

In case you weren’t at the Sounds game and didn’t see the TN article, the Mayor has asked us to take the environmental pledge.  These are all pretty attainable and easy to do.

www.nashville.gov/green/

Ahhh - and then there was water…

It’s no secret that Nashville is on a river  so water running out isn’t probably at the top of our concerns.  I personally have been trying to do better about turning my water off when I brush my teeth, not letting the sink run while I catch my toddler for a much needed hand wash but I’m not sure if I totally knew why I was doing this except everybody green says we need to be conserving water so I’m going with it.

The icky part of it is this.  Our sewage system is well not so good.  This is due in part that it’s tied in with our storm drainage systems in parts of the city.  Soooo, when we get a big bunch of rain, the whole system including raw sewage (ewwwwwww!!!) backs up and can end up in the Cumberland (the aforementioned river of which we get our drinking water) by way of little creeks called water sheds contaminating wildlife as it goes.   This is why there has been some increase in our water bills recently to address these issues.  

The other big reason is this.  I visited one of the two Water treatment plants in Nashville last week.  The engineer conducting the tour off handedly mentioned that this one plant spends 195K a month( not a year) in electricity to simply pump the water out of the Cumberland, treat it, and pump it in to the city.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!! That is some serious carbon foot print.   

My point is that water is relatively inexpensive to us which is great but it doesn’t mean that having unlimited affordable access doesn’t come at a cost to the environment and certainly cutting our usage with minimal impact on our daily quality of life is pretty easy if we just start thinking a little bit more about it.  

Buying Local Foods why it helps