We talk a lot about our eco-friendly shoes here on the Planet Blog. We often talk about brands like Simple Shoes or Rafters sandals that are incorporating eco-friendly and recycled materials, but what makes these materials eco-friendly?

I just saw this great video about eco-fashion which explains why organic cotton is so superior and why bamboo is often used in eco-fashion as well. Check it out and learn about some of the materials being used by our favorite eco-friendly brands!

We’re kicking of a series all about the eco-friendly materials used by some of our favorite brands, so be prepared to learn everything you ever wanted to know about EVA, Jute, Hemp, organic cotton an more in the coming weeks!

We love it when celebrities wear the shoes we sell but we love it even more when celebrities make a commitment to the environment beyond eco-fashion. It’s all over the web right now that Jennifer Aniston is building an eco-friendly house in Malibu! This kind of example is exactly what celebrities need to be modeling and putting out there.

Regardless of where people stand on the state of global warming, people who have the money to invest in renewable energy should make the leap. After all, the larger the house, the higher the utility bills! So the word on the street is that Jennifer Aniston is building a new home near Julia Roberts that will use green building materials, residential solar panels, solar hot water heating and drought resistant plants in the landscaping.

So kudos to Jennifer Aniston for making a great decision! Let’s hope we’ll see more celebrities follow suit and either retrofit or build sustainable housing that successfully incorporates alternative energy!

I read a really interesting article in the New York Times recently about the logistical challenges that we’re facing here in the US in relation to renewable energy production. I mean, no matter which side of the debate about climate change you believe, we all know we need to diversify our power production means. And what everyone is facing is that overhauling our power production and the power grid that currently facilitates our infrastructure is going to be a big challenge.

As the renewable energy market is flooded with funding from the stimulus package, we can get excited by the ramping up of renewable energy resources, but it is a fact that our entire power infrastructure is also going to need major work to sustain the influx of new clean energy.

Why is this?

Well, clean energy like solar and wind power fluctuate in production depending on the weather. The sunnier it is the more electricity a solar panel can generate and likewise the more wind there is, the more electricity a wind turbine can generate. But of course, on cloudy, rainy or snowy days solar panel power output is depleted and on still days wind turbines are not as productive.

There is a natural symbiosis to a degree, between solar and wind power. Essentially, if the weather is overcast and poor for solar power generation, there is usually more wind, boosting wind turbine power generation. This is why hybrid renewable energy systems are so popular for folks living off the grid. But although this natural symbiosis could be exploited on a large scale, it is the very fluctuation that remains the issue.

The current power grid has been constructed with the assumption of sustained and consistent energy production by power plants. Also, we know the technology we use now, so any fluctuation is easily managed because we’ve faced almost every scenario – and the power grid was developed for this kind of energy.
Renewable energy that is produced by wind turbines and solar panels creates power at different levels and at times entirely intermittently. The question is – how to store power and then funnel it out to the public at night or on days where there is no wind.

Fluctuating power is managed in battery banks in standalone renewable energy systems and power plants and the power grid will need to work out power storage and fluctuating power production and use as the renewable energy potential of the US is truly tapped.

Thankfully, energy and grid technology experts agree that the US should be able to successfully scale up to the demands of renewable energy production – although it will take time, ingenuity and plenty of capital investment.

In the meantime, individuals should empower themselves by implementing their own renewable energy solutions towards a democratization of power production.

I was in New York City a few weeks ago and one evening my friend and I were driving from dinner in the city out to her place in Queens. The city at night from the FDR was so amazingly beautiful. The lights were magical but I couldn’t help but cringe at the sheer amount of power being used by all of those buildings.

I mean, was someone really in every one of those lit offices? How many of those buildings are employing smart and sustainable policies? And then I noticed, the beautiful Empire State Building. It was lit up in the night sky – a wonderful sight to behold – but it really became a symbol to me, in that moment, of the waste we as a society are willing to accept in the name of tradition and beauty.

So, man, was I super glad to see an article on Treehugger about the Empire State Building going green! They have announced a major retrofit for the building to make it significantly more energy efficient. It is a project of massive scope – about 20 million dollars is being spent just on the retrofit which will reduce carbon emissions from the landmark and save more than 4 million dollars in energy bills!

Windows and radiators will be retrofit as well as tenant lighting and plugs. Tenant energy management systems will also be installed and the chiller plant and whole building system controls will be updated. The plan is to reduce the energy being used by the building by about 40%.

I’m so happy because this means the next time I drive by that gorgeous building, a real beacon of history and hope in Manhattan, that I won’t get that feeling in my stomach that no one is paying attention. I sincerely hope that other buildings in New York City are following suit and that every one of those windows lighting up the night sky are doing so with compact fluorescent light bulbs!

Interested in cultivating some seeds inside?

It’s a great and much cheaper way to get your garden going. Although there is some upfront cost in getting started, depending on your setup you can even grow plants all winter long. But one of the first things you need to consider is light. Not everyone has sunny south facing windows – and even if you do, you may not get enough sunlight year round to sustain plant growth. This means you need to consider supplemental plant lighting, typically called a grow light.

There are, as in all things, several types of grow lights at varying costs and varying intensities. But if you’re interested in growing plants indoors, then you need to consider all of them; their pros and cons and then choose what will best meet your needs.

Fluorescent Grow lights are probably the most popular option out there. Low in cost to purchase and run, these lights are also great for working in tight quarters. Because fluorescent grow lights don’t give off a lot of heat, they can be much closer in proximity to the plants without hurting them or burning them.

Some companies have actually started to incorporate fluorescent grow lights into special carts and trays to you can fit maximum plant growth in minimal square footage. In some cases, keeping fluorescent lights within four inches of the plants themselves yields the best growth. There are also high intensity fluorescent lights out there, and in the case of light – the more and the white the more growth, so consider that in your buying decision.

Incandescent Grow Lights are not the most efficient in just about every way. They use more power, they produce less white light and they give off heat. The best use for incandescent grow lights is as a spotlight grow light – sort of like a focused supplemental light source for tropical plants and small clusters that need an extra boost to really get going.

The other good thing about incandescent lights is that they fit in many sockets and fixtures – especially those super convenient clip on fixtures.

Finally, there is a class of lights called High Intensity (HID) grow lights that come in two flavors. Metal Halide (MH) grow lights offer light that is closest in color and intensity to sunlight. They are very powerful, long lasting and efficient.

The other flavor is Sodium (HPS) which had a red spectrum which prompts flowering and fruiting. Some people use these lights at various times to mimic the changing seasons – MH to grow strong and tall and then HPS to flower and fruit. In the case of HID lights, you can actually grow an entire little herb garden or even grow tomatoes inside.

So if you’re just cultivating seedlings for spring, fluorescent grow lighting should offer you the intensity and light that you need. If you’re interested in cultivating a small garden, or you want to grow plants quickly and keep them strong, you might consider an HID lighting setup. If you’re growing a number of plants indoors and you have one that needs an extra boost, employ an incandescent grow light!

And so it has begun! I’ve been planning my garden for months. I got the book that I needed for Christmas, chose the plants and even placed my organic seed order in late January. The seeds have been waiting for me, like Christmas morning in late March.

And when I say I’ve been planning, I’m talkin’ serious planning. I made a list of all the seeds I chose and used my book to organize a seed spreadsheet. I know, I know, it sounds crazy – but the only way I can make up for my lack of experience is by being organized. The spreadsheet lists when I need to start the seeds and then they need to be transplanted into the garden. I actually worked backwards after estimating the final frost day in my region.

I won’t go into too many details, but my seed start date was this last weekend; March 29th! We needed to start the mustard greens, radishes, cilantro, carrots and chard seeds.

Of course, this is also the time of year when everything gets busy. We’ve got plans, we’ve got yard clearing and all of our friends are coming out of hibernation. I have a trip per month this year so I’m missing three weeks of at home yard work and planting time. This means as a family we have to work on the garden, so I was motivated to find a simple way for my daughter to be able to help and to enable my husband to stay organized and maintain the seedlings.

One of my veteran gardener friends introduced me to the pellet green house kits. These are plastic trays with small disks of dirt that are encapsulated in biodegradable gauze. You can stay organized and start up to 72 seedlings per tray. The trays can be reused year after year and they come with a top to keep the plants happy, moist and warmer.

This was clearly the right solution for us, so we picked up just one tray to start the process. Yesterday, only one day off – my husband and daughter got to work on the seedlings.

• First, they added water and my daughter literally sat there for 30 minutes watching the little discs expand and grow.
• Then, my husband carefully showed her how to use the end of a chopstick to put small holes in the dirt and then they planted the right number of seeds per disc.
• Finally, they put the lid on the tray and put it in a warm, dark place for three days to allow the seeds to germinate.

The process was super simple, my daughter can’t stop asking about the seeds, and it was all completed in the comfort of my kitchen! There wasn’t even the slightest mess!

In three days time we’ll need to keep the babies under lighting – but that’s another post! In the meantime, we’re going to be doing a lot of digging in the yard, preparing the 100 square feet of vegetable gardening goodness for this summer’s project.

Did you know spring is here? We’re up in Massachusetts and it always takes forever but there is in fact evidence of tulips, daffodils and crocuses all over the place! The economy is hitting everyone and maybe you’re sitting at home bored and unsure of where to put your energies? Well, skip the gym and hop into your garden!

Maybe you’ve only done nominal yard work up to this point and you’re nervous to really jump in with both feet? Well, to start here’s what you need to make sure you don’t make yourself miserable:

1. Get a pair of gardening gloves. Don’t be afraid to invest because these will keep you warm and callous free and nothing will stop your gardening-go faster than fat blisters and wrecked hands!

2. Pick a pair of shoes that will become your “gardening shoes.” They’re going to get dirty people – just accept it – so choose a good pair – I use Crocs and then stick with them.

3. Go with long pants and long sleeves in the spring. Why? Protect your skin from the sun, protect your knees from dirt, rocks, leaves and debris and if you don’t know what poison ivy, sumac or oak look like, just protect yourself period!

Ok, now you’re decked out and ready to dig in – both literally and figuratively!

Here are three easy things you can do to learn about your garden and get your green thumb mojo going!

1. Enjoy tidying! We rake in the fall just like we’re supposed to but no matter what there always seem to be more leaves to rake come spring. There is almost no better exercise for your upper body than a good hour a day raking leaves and debris as you clear the decks for your growing season. We have a huge compost and leaf pile in the back of our yard and rather than stuffing bags full of garden waste we try to use it to replenish our soil.

We also try to capitalize on this time before a lot of leaves have grown in to remove any unwanted plant friends growing around our deliberate plantings. For example, did you notice that maple tree growing in the middle of your forsythia? Or did you miss that bittersweet winding up your lilacs? Take care of them now before you can see the weeds for the leaves!

2. Start some seedlings! This is a great thing to do with kids and you can really grow interesting plants and vegetables on the cheap. Grab some seed packets on sale at your local home store, use some rubbernecks you have lying around and even just dig up some soil for your yard! If you want to you can buy potting soil or use compost to boost your growing power and start a little tray of seedlings in your garage or basement. There’s nothing more satisfying that calculating the money you save by sprouting your own – and watching your little babies grow!

3. Learn about what you have! Go to the library and look up your tree and bush types. Learn about when they should be trimmed and what’s good for them. You can even do some research online and identify plants that flourish with what you have. Write it down in a little notebook. You don’t need to try to keep it all in your head but it is useful information. This means you’ll keep what you have happy and as you augment your garden you know things are more likely to thrive.

Now – go on out there and get dirty!

When I was a kid, I loved worm hunting. I was at turns grossed out and fascinated by fat earthworms and as I learned about what they could do I came to cherish them. Now my own daughter loves to hunt for worms and since I’ve started composting, I’m thinking it’s time to start a worm farm!

What is a worm farm you ask? And why would you want something so wiggly? Well, we love composting and we’re also doing our best to start some plants (and keep some going) in our basement for the vegetable garden. I would love to have access to compost year round and I love the idea of being able to dump our compost materials in the basement instead of having to trek through the snow!

A worm farm is basically a large bin filled with a couple of pounds of worms and existing compost, some newspaper cut up into strips and your organic kitchen waste. The worms are super efficient and can devour all of those organic materials keeping them out of your trash, the landfill and creating great soil for your garden or even your herb window box!

As the worm reproduce you can also take some of your worms out of your bin and move them to the outdoor compost heap to keep that production going and you can just spread them out in your garden so they help your soil. Or you can give a friend their own worm farm to get them started! This is seriously a gift that keeps on giving.

I have a friend whose brother is an organic farmer and he told me this crazy story that involved newspaper, compost material (organic kitchen scraps), a kiddie pool and the generation of a crazy worm farm but I don’t think I believed him until I saw this video by the Environmentals:

The Enviromentals (Episode 1) How to Make a Worm Composting Bin from Hal Brindley on Vimeo.

After watching this, my husband and I have been totally inspired. I went online to find a worm supplier and came up with this great site, FindWorms.com, which has a map of the US so no matter where you are you can get your start up worms.

We’ll be ordering from the most local supplier possible, who happens to be on Cape Cod. I’m so excited at the idea of having so many worms and some good compost to get started with this spring in the garden!

The website also lists great recommendations for worm bins, but I think we’ll be going with the DIY version involving some rubber storage containers with air holes and some screening. Looks good to me! We have just the right space in our basement which is cool but comfortable or in our heated garage to help the little guys flourish and I can’t imagine a better little science project for my 4 ½ year old to manage and participate in!

So if you’re looking for a way to compost year round, make more worms for your property and even for a great environmentally friendly science project for your kids, consider vermicomposting! I know I am!

We’ve talked before about a very cool green gadget called the Kill-O-Watt meter. Basically you plug it into your wall and plug an appliance into the meter. You leave it plugged in for a few days (or a few weeks for larger appliances) and you can find out how much energy an appliance is using. The meter can also guage how much energy you’re using overall on a daily basis – which can be super helpful if you’re trying to reduce your overall kilowatt usage on your electric bill – which means being greener and saving money!

The kill-o-watt meter is a great, and pretty inexpensive, way to really assess if you need to replace an older appliance with one that’s more energy efficient and also a great way to really understand your power consumption! After all, assessing your electric load is one of the first steps towards successfully changing your energy habits and preparing to implement any renewable.

Well, a modified version of the Kill-O-Watt meter, called the Tweet-O-Watt just won the #1 Audience Pick in the Greener Gadgets awards over at Treehugger. This modified meter actually wirelessly publishes the user’s daily energy consumption in kilowatt hours onto their Twitter account.

Created by Philip Torrone of Make Magazine and Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries, this is literally an open source hardware modification to the regular Kill-O-Watt meter – so anyone can make it at home. The guys who developed the gadget have put step by step instructions on how to recreate it out onto the web – hence the open source – in hopes of inspiring energy aces worldwide!

The idea here is that by publishing your daily kilowatt hours you become far more aware of how much electricity you are actually using – and you can watch the changes to your energy usage by changing your behaviors. You’ll be able to actually track the energy you save from taking care of ghost loads, changing out your lightbulbs or just being a better energy ace.

By tweeting your progress you can serve as a great example to the folks who follow you on Twitter and other social media sites – since you can actually have your twitter feed right into your Facebook (or other social media site) status updates. Your friends can watch your kilowatt hour usage evolve and you’ll be making them more aware just by showing them what you’re doing and informing them about how electricity is metered and used.

As energy efficiency becomes a hotter issue its education and information that becomes the most valuable commodity. People need to better understand how much power they’re using, how they’re using it and how much power they actually need in order to move forward in the process of going green.

Who knows, you could even inspire them to take steps towards reducing their own energy consumption!
So if you haven’t invested in your kilowatt meter, think seriously about getting one – and if you’re feeling really intrepid, consider using this hardware hack to inspire other to become as energy efficient as possible!

It’s cold up north right now. Everything is covered in snow and ice which means that most of us are focused on our indoor hobbies and tasks. What most people don’t know is that this is the perfect time to start planning your alternative energy system.

It’s the perfect time for a number of reasons.

One – you have the time now. Hibernation after the hubbub of the holidays is the perfect time for all of your spring planning. You can work out your garden plan – figure out the timing of your seedling growth and planting and you can become more informed about renewable energy and potentially create a budget.

Two – this is the time when most renewable energy companies are in their slower period. That means more access to human resources to help you identify the right renewable energy option and for system design. It can also mean you have more control over installation timeframes with contractors and you can get better deals on components because they are looking to offload inventory!

Three – We all have to start some time! No matter your motivations – whether you want to save money, reduce your carbon footprint, reduce your fuel consumption or become energy independent, we can help you find the right path and the right system for your individual goal.

One of the coolest things about renewable energy these days is that you can look for solutions for electric power or for heat and hot water. While solar panels, or photovoltaic modules, and wind turbines are well known and popularized in mass media, solar thermal technology can actually be more cost effective and efficient for first time renewable energy buyers. In some cases though, solar electric power or wind power might be a great fit – but how the heck do you start?

Most people have no idea where to begin – and that’s totally understandable. In our world, you sign up with a company for a utility and then you just have to pay. Most people can’t decipher their bills or really understand how things are measured. They might see the change when they switch the more efficient light bulbs, for example, because the bill goes down, but they may not understand how electricity or oil is really measured.

Electricity:

Your electricity is measured in kilowatt-hours. An average household uses about 950 kilowatt-hours per month.

Some useful definitions:
• Kilowatt (kW) - A unit of measure that is a rate of electrical POWER; equal to 1,000 Watts.
• Kilowatt-hour (kWh) - A unit of ENERGY measurement equal to 1,000 Watt-hours. Commonly used as the unit for electrical energy commerce.

How do you know where your kilowatt hours are going?

Start with your own self assessment by making small investments in some cool gadgets.

Start with a Kill-O-Watt. This is a gadget that measures the energy consumption of your existing appliances. You can see how efficient your refrigerator, washer and television are. You basically plug the Kill-O-Watt into the wall and then plug your appliance into the Kill-O-Watt.

This is the first step towards becoming more energy efficient – identifying where your energy is going! Once you see which appliances need to be replaced, you can buy more energy efficient alternatives to lower your monthly kilowatt hours of usage.

Heat and Hot Water:

Solar electric panels and wind turbines can be more expensive than your expecting, so if you have older heating and hot water systems in your home, solar air heating or solar water heating system might be a more inexpensive way to start on the renewable energy path.

Solar water heating collectors typically mount on your roof like a solar electric panel but use the power of the sun to heat water for a hot water heating system. A solar air heater can be mounted on the roof but actually works better if mounted on a southern wall. But, just like electric systems, you need to know what you’re using and make it optimally efficient before you start installing solar technology.

A great place to start is with a digital thermostat. By installing a programmable thermostat in your home, you can keep your oil or other fuel costs lower by ensuring that your thermostat defaults to a reasonable temperature and doesn’t heat up the house during the hours when people aren’t there. Almost anyone can install one of these thermostats and they are available for less than $50.00!

The other thing to do is see if you can get an efficiency assessment of your home. They will tell you if you need to improve your insulation, windows or even your furnace or boiler. When your home is efficient you can decide which kind of system will work best for you.