Archive for September, 2009

Travelling the Green Highway

If you’re going to be taking a trip across this beautiful country of ours, there are several things you can do to make your travel as green as possible. The first thing to do is take your car in for a thorough inspection, to make sure it will be able to safely make the trip you want to make. Have the oil changed, all fluids topped off, and so on.  Don’t just look at your tires with a critical eye and decide that they’re fine – check them with a tire gauge and be absolutely sure.  And if they’re the least bit under inflated, top them off as well. Quite simply, under inflated tires waste gasoline.  And by extension, money. The faster you go in your car, the more gasoline you burn.  This can be a trade off.  The faster you go, the sooner you arrive at your destination, and the more time you have to spend on vacation.  But really, how much time do you save?  A couple of hours? It’s certainly hard to be the only car on the road going 60 when everyone and their brother is passing you going 70, but in the long run it saves on money and ...

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Enough To Make You Turn Vegetarian

In doing some research on the differences between ethanol made from corn and ethanol made from sugarcane, I came across the following sentence: “Cows are flatulent because they are fed corn, which they do not normally eat.” That set me off on another search, to find out if this was actually true. As Dr. Doolittle says, “I love red-blooded juicy chunks of meat.  Legs of lamb.  Sides of beef and chops and steaks and veal.  And pork of course, my favorite meal.”  But that’s before I found out how this food is “grown.” I hadn’t devoted much thought to how livestock is raised for the dinner table, I confess, and I always thought what PETA was concerned with was the manner in which they were killed…not the manner in which they were raised. Of course, I got some inkling a few years ago; when it was revealed that some farmers fed their cows on the remains of “downer cows” – i.e. turning the cows into unwitting cannibals.  Well, it turns out they feed them on a lot more than that. There was an article in the Feb/March 2008 issue of Mother Earth News that ...

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What is Happening With Your Water?

Many people don’t trust the water that comes out of their taps, so they decide it will be safer if they only drink bottled water, instead.  Unfortunately, many people don’t realize that bottled water is not that great for the environment, and may not be healthy for you, either.  Sure, plastic can be recycled, but within that plastic is a little chemical called bisphenol A (BPA), that leaches out if the bottle becomes hot (as, for example, if you’re going out biking in 90 degree weather for a significant length of time). And, the ironic thing of course is that the water in most of these bottles doesn’t come from fresh mountain streams, but from the same water supply you’re drinking from.  (Of course, it probably isn’t being siphoned through decades-old pipes and picking up contaminants that way, which is what bottled water drinkers are worried about when it comes to their tap water.) The solution is to simply install a purifier on your tap, or your refrigerator, should it have that function.  (Indeed, fridges that have receptacles for getting cold water and ice without having to open the fridge door are great energy savers!) But my question is this.  Do you know, ...

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Can Electronic Files Save the Planet?

If you were, or are, a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you may have seen an episode where Captain Picard is relaxing in his quarters, reading a book printed on paper!  Well, he likes antiques.  But for everybody else on board the starship, they read their books on the computer mainframe, or even on hand-held devices, so that the starship could carry millions upon millions of books, with not a single tree having been cut down to provide the paper on which to prevent them. We’re at that point now.  Amazon, for example, has introduced the Kindle, an electronic book reader that can store 1,500 books in its innards.  That’s a pretty decent sized library! Of course there’s a drawback.  (There always is, isn’t there?) If you forget your book on a bus or plane trip, you’re only out about $9.  If you forget your Kindle (and people have been known to do it!) you’re out about $300!  And a Kindle, like any other mechanical device, will eventually give out, and then it’s off to the landfill with it.  Whereas, books can be recycled. Nevertheless, if you’re a reader, a Kindle or other book reader is a good thing to have.  ...

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5 Tips to Take Care of Pets and Environment

In December 2008, after Vice President Biden obtained a new dog from a breeder, the poor woman who owned the kennel was pilloried by PETA, and harassed by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.  Dog breeders have been demonized as over breeding animals, inbreeding animals and lousy food and living conditions.  Well, while some breeders abuse their charges, the same can be said for any business. Some people are ethical, some aren’t.  This woman didn’t deserve what had happened to her. Having said that, when it comes to protecting the environment, it does make a lot more sense to adopt a dog from a dog shelter rather than purchase a pure-bred one from a breeder.  That’s because there are so many abandoned dogs out there, especially now when the economy has been so bad that thousands of pet owners have abandoned their pets because they could no longer afford to feed or house them. If you want to get a dog from a breeder, don’t let anyone pressure you into not doing so.  However, consider that there are plenty of loveable dogs and cats in shelters that will make the perfect pet. 1. Spay or neuter your pet One you do get a dog or ...

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