Going green is the newest trend worldwide with many people taking steps to reduce their environmental footprint and try to create sustainable practices as opposed to the wasteful living many of us are guilty of now. One of the best places to start is in the garden and backyard. Traditionally, these are areas where a lot of harsh chemicals are used to kill weeds and ensure a healthy lawn, but at what cost? There are plenty of ways to have a beautiful garden and enviable backyard décor while also doing our part for the environment.

1. Use Natural Sunlight

One way to begin is to use the very source of light nature provides us. Purchasing solar powered lights allows us to save energy, using them to store light by day for use at night. Depending on the theme of the backyard décor, they can be purchased to resemble rocks or other natural objects, or purchased on strings and used in artistic ways to provide a warm glow around patios, gazeboes or other areas. And of course, adding a motion sensor means they only activate when you need them.

2. A Good Reason to Cook Outdoors

The best reason to cook outdoors during the summer is that it saves energy. Everyone knows how a hot kitchen means turning up the AC, but by firing up the barbecue, you not only save energy indoors, but you can enjoy an occasional outdoor evening meal with the family. Add to that a tastefully (and Green!) furnished outdoor dining area and dinner can become a special experience.

3. Natural Décor is Better

The more natural your patio, backyard, and garden decorations look, the more appealing to the eye they will be. Don’t use metal chairs that can rust, for example. Natural woods like cedar look beautiful and age well. And since they are naturally durable, you can avoid using dangerous paints, sealants, and other chemicals. Just remember to use wood that has been harvested in an environmentally conscious fashion and don’t forget also that rocks can be used to great effect in the backyard or garden to accent other décor.

4. Use Local Flora for Your Garden and Backyard

Another sustainable way to take care of your garden and backyard is to use local flora instead of paying extra for trees and plants from other areas. This is because, since they are acclimated to the temperature and rainfall, they will require much less watering and maintenance, and they will provide shelter for birds and other local wildlife. And attracting birds and butterflies will enhance your garden’s beauty. Speaking of beauty, don’t overlook the artful placement of rocks to highlight areas of your backyard.

5. Minimize Your Lawn

The American obsession with having the perfect lawn is slowly fading away as the price for such extravagance becomes clear. Many native plants were considered weeds and dangerous chemicals were used to get rid of them. But that is changing gradually. You can do your part by allowing native plants to grow alongside the grass, filling out your lawn and still keeping it green and beautiful. A mixed lawn will require less maintenance and can still be mowed and trimmed as desired.

6. Adding Water as a Soothing Touch

What garden or backyard design would be complete without water added into it? A soothing fountain can become a beautiful place to gather one’s thoughts and relax, and by making sure it is solar powered, it too will be a green and environmentally friendly addition. Another possibility is a fish pond. They are inexpensive to install and can quickly become the favored place for outdoor gatherings as well as quiet contemplation.

7. Use Wood Grown Responsibly

One such variety of wood is red cedar, which can be used in a variety of ways, from patio deck work to furniture, both indoors as well as in the garden and backyard. It easily resists rot and decay, and any wood that is raised on a tree farm on in a similar fashion reduces environmental waste and contributes to a sustainable and renewable environment.

8. Looking at the Long Term

Always consider the long term lifespan of the products you purchase. If poorly made and low quality, it will wear out before you know it and end up contributing to more trash in a landfill. Even recyclable goods require an investment in energy and materials to be effective, so the best alternative is to purchase products that are of good long lasting quality. Ideally, you would want to be able to give items away when you’re finished with them, and they may even increase in value. Also, when making room to redecorate, don’t throw things away. Instead organize a sale or donate them.

9. Avoid Dating Your Décor

Another thing to keep in mind is to be careful when shopping for larger items or deciding on the overall design of your backyard and garden décor. The last thing you want is to choose items that in a few years will make your furnishings look like something out of an old movie. When shopping for items like porch umbrellas, picnic tables, etc. choose the ones that are classic in design and unlikely to lose their appeal. Wooden porch swings, for example, never go out of style and enhance the enjoyment of any outdoor design. Keeping these ideas in mind will give you a timeless and enjoyable environment that can be enjoyed for generations.

10. And Don’t Forget the Five R’s For the Green Enthusiast

Reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, and redecorate. These are the words to live by if you are truly interested in changing to a greener lifestyle. So much of our culture is geared towards being disposable that we forget that so many things we have can be repaired and reused. Sometimes all that is needed is a simple repair or a new cushion to make something as good as new. Always keep an eye out for furnishings that are recyclable or easily repaired or refinished so that you can keep it for as long as possible. And don’t forget, when redecorating, sell or give away the old; don’t simply toss it in the trash.

The switch to a greener lifestyle is a step towards helping to heal the environment one step at a time. The changes aren’t difficult at all, since all it takes is a little more awareness when you shop and an eye for the long term impact of your purchases. And by teaching out children these lessons, we can insure that these practices will continue on in future generations.

About the Author
Jay Chua, an outdoorsman and nature enthusiast, lives in Vancouver, Canada with his wife Deisy. Jay enjoyed relaxing on his hatteras rope hammock when not tending to the organic fruit trees at his yard. He also likes sharing what he knows about using green practices to decorate the garden and backyard. His website PorchSwingSets.com provides a wide array of options that keep green and durability in mind such as the pawleys hammock stand.

Promotion of solar power generation is booming. After analyzing a few of these announcements one is left with quite a few questions. Why are solar farms built when financial data clearly show that solar power is still the most expensive electricity generation technology available?

Solar power plant developers and marketers obviously know that they need to lower costs. Cost reduction is, however, expensive and takes time. Many new enterprises have been formed and want to become profitable when the big construction boom in solar power plants will hit the road. In the meantime they must pay bills, advance their technologies, and stay alive.

There are two major technologies for solar energy conversion. One approach is based on the conversion of sunlight into heat and using the heat for the generation of steam. This concept has progressed to a relatively high readiness level. Electricity production with steam is a very mature technology. Remaining technical risks, therefore, relate exclusively to the design of the thermal concentrators or parabolic mirrors that optically transfer thermal radiation to a heat transfer medium and to the design of the heat receiving transfer and steam containment surfaces.

The other technology is the direct, photovoltaic conversion of sunlight into electricity. This technology will most likely become the dominant solar electric power generating technology – eventually. The big question for investors and for marketers is the uncertain duration of “eventually”. Converting sunlight directly into electricity is much more elegant and will almost certainly become less expensive than thermal conversion – eventually.

Very recently, IBM proposed a third concept, a kind of a hybrid approach. In this concept, the sunlight is concentrated onto a solar panel. This approach reduces panel area and saves lots of expensive silicon. But it generates another problem. The concentrated sunshine creates very high surface temperatures on the solar panel. To save solar panel area and make the solar panel price competitive, one must cool the surface of the solar panel very efficiently to prevent it from melting and destruction.

Installing highly effective cooling loops and providing a low temperature cooling medium presents a new set of technical challenges and costs. We will have to wait and see how IBM will solve these issues.

Present production costs for generating electricity with solar panels are hovering around $0.50 per kWh. This compares with an average US retail price for electric power of $0.095/kWh. Right now, solar power does not yet make economical sense.

All renewable energies share this distinction. None of the available technologies using renewable energy can compete with the cost of electricity generation from coal.

This is also one of numerous examples where free markets perform poorly. The technologies for generating electricity with solar power, wind power, marine power, and geothermal power are very well understood. What is missing is the industrial hardening of these processes and related hardware. This process of moving a technology from the demonstration plant stage to a more dependable and less costly mature system status is the most critical, costly, and dangerous step when developing industrial systems, which must operate uninterrupted 24/7 for thousands of hours on end.

The US cannot reduce its carbon dioxide emissions and cannot achieve energy independence without employing renewable energies for electric power generation and for the critical production of liquid transportation fuels.

At present, a respectable number of windmill farms and solar panel farms are being installed. Forward thinking industrial and public entities take the liberty to impose hidden taxes on the consumers of electric power in industry, in commercial enterprises, and in homes.

Solar power does not make economical sense, yet. However, by providing an income guarantee for investors, the crucial hardening and cost reduction phase of full size solar farms will be shortened tremendously.

There is one inherent danger in this approach. The consumers of electricity pay for this most crucial development phase while other participating parties make out handily. Effective controls for avoiding unproductive duplication of certain types of solar farms are sorely missing.

Duplication of experience is much less valuable than gaining broad experience from competing technologies and installations. Well engineered solar power farms can indicate their readiness for more widespread applications after a couple of uninterrupted, full capacity, generation campaigns. At completion, qualified technology leaders can begin to compete and can drive down total system installation costs by a variety of cost reduction measures.

Where are we now? A random sampling of recent announcements of solar farm installations reveals that system installation costs are in the $3000 to $7500 per kW installed capacity. These plant costs loosely translate into a cost of producing electric power at $0.30 to $0.60 per kWh. This very unfavorably compares to the cost of electricity generation by any other technology.

These figures do not yet contain the costs of energy storage. As long as solar power constitutes only a very small fraction of overall electric power generation, the additional costs of storing intermittently produced electric power are not yet of concern. If the US is going to depend significantly on the intermittent production of electricity from solar power and wind power, it must begin to develop storage technologies for huge amounts of electric energy. Frequent brownouts due to lack of wind and sunshine are unacceptable in advanced economies. Intermittent, renewable energies and electric energy storage are inseparable. This is a technology field where inventors, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists still can shine.

Dr. Hemsath recently published the book: CLIMATE CHANGE – GOLD RUSH OR DISASTER? For 50 years he has worked as scientist, process engineer, Corporate Vice President of R&D, Company President, CEO, and Inventor. He holds more than 60 US Patents. He is working on a new book: “THE SOLUTION FOR ENDING GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE”. Go to http://www.thermalexpert.com
Article Source: Sustainable Living

But also most alternative energy sources give problems for the environment. Some of them take up vast areas of land, like bio-fuel production, extensive solar cell plants and wind mills. Extensive use of croplands to produce bio-diesel, methanol, ethanol or other bio-fuels can cause a chronic hunger catastrophe. Others, like nuclear power stations can accidently destroy the environment of vast areas and potentially kill millions of people. Also leakage from deposits of nuclear waste can give the same effect. But nuclear power is very clean if everything goes well.

As it seems, there is no easy or elegant political or technical solution to the problem. The problem must be challenged with a clever combination of several means.

An important module in the solution is energy economization. Where it is possible one must use engines, technology and logistics that utilize the energy as effectively as possible. One must also stop using energy on activities that do not result in any added comfort, do not give gain of any sort, or give only marginal resulted value. By using the energy sources more effectively, the World’s energy need will perhaps drop by so much as 30%.

Then the use of oil and coal must be replaced with all kinds of alternative energy sources, but no alternative must be used in such an extend or such a way that it cause new problems.

One part of the solution is using bio diesel or other bio-fuels made of waste from croplands. In the process of converting the waste to fuel, the content of minerals in the waste can probably also be extracted and sold as fertilizers. But it is unethical to grow crop just for making bio-fuel, since that can cause food shortage and rise of food prizes.

Use of solar energy to make electricity will be a great part of the solution. Theoretically every roof and outer wall in the world can be covered by solar cell panels, even though it will not be estheticly or practically possible to go so far. Wastelands that have little other value can also be used to mount large solar cell plants. There is however a limit on how much solar cell panels you can mount before the environment is disturbed.

Much more electricity can be produced by wind-mills than today, but there is a limit on the number and extent of wild-mill parks you can set up before the environment is heavily disturbed. In areas like Denmark and Northern Germany the disturbing effects can already be seen clearly.

In many areas the waves in the sea or the stream of tide water can be used to produce electricity in a commercially economical fashion, but again there is a limit on how far you can go in building wave or tidal power plants before you destroy the environment.

The wind can also be used more directly, as it were in former periods. Sails can be mounted on large ships, especially on large cargo carriers. However, the sail rigs will probably look quite differently than those of the old vessels, and be operated automatically by computers.

Many countries have special natural energy resources that lend themselves to easily exploitation. Geothermal energy is one of these. Iceland is extensively using geothermal heat directly or to produce electricity. This technology can probably be extended for use in areas where the geothermal heat is somewhat more hidden, but still relative close to the surface.

Heat pumps are installations using a reversed refrigerator technology to carry heat from the outside environment to the inside of a building where it is concentrated to a higher temperature. The heat can then be used for warming the building or other applications. Heat pumps need some electricity to work, but extract more energy from the outside that they consume. More extensive use of heat pumps can give a great amount of the energy needed for heating,.Heat pumps can also be used to fetch geothermal energy of low temperature and concentrate it to a higher temperature without digging very deep.

Hydroelectric power plants using the natural fall of water from high to low areas have long been a major source of electric energy, and many of the existing plants can be made more efficient. To some extend new plants can also be built, but there is a limit also on this technology before the impact on the environment gets too heavy.

Unfortunately it is not possible to avoid using more nuclear power than today if the energy crisis shall be solved. There are however new developments in this area that makes nuclear power less dangerous. Scientists are right now developing a new type of reactors that will use thorium as a fuel and that will be work subcritically. The reactions in these reactors cannot go out of control. The waste also will cease to radiate after some hundred years, and not many thousand, so the storing of waste will be less problematic. But still there will be waste that must be handled safely.

Most alternative energy sources produce electricity, but it is not always practical to use the electricity directly. It is however possible to use the electricity to produce hydrogen, and the hydrogen can then be used as a clean fuel in applications where electricity does not fit.

In the long run, use of fusion power will probably be the permanent solution. But commercial fusion plant will probably still not be available in the next forty years.There is however a joker that might show up to be salvage of the world’s energy problem, namely cold fusion. This seems to be a real phenomenon, and not a misunderstanding as many thought and still thinks. But one does still not know if this phenomenon can be used practically to produce useful energy.

Author, Knut Holt is an internet marketer and consultant focusing at technical, health and scientific items. To find items like car equipment, remote control models, airsoft guns, chemistry sets, electronic kits and components, microscopes, binoculars, night vision instruments, music instruments, computers, PDAs and more: http://www.mydeltapi.com Also health advices, fitness products and natural products to treast diseases, please visit:http://www.abicana.com
Article Source: Articles Sustainable Living

This catastrophic event graphically illustrated the connection between health of America’s water system and the health of its people. And although it was the largest and most consequential water system failure in recent history, it is by no means the only one.

For example, in 2009, the city of Portland, Oregon, instructed city residents to boil their water prior to drinking, as potentially deadly E. coli had infiltrated the city’s reservoir. In Washington, DC, a huge water break turned a major commuter route into a raging river, putting the lives of several commuters and the rescue crews in serious danger.

Water system failures do not always end well. In 1993 a bug by the name of Cryptosporidium made its way through the water supply in Milwaukee. Hundreds of thousands of people drank contaminated water and estimates suggest that more than 100 may have died as a direct result.

In cities across the country, water main breaks are a routine occurrence. Most of the time they are simply an inconvenience. Traffic is briefly snarled while utility works patch the pipes. Homes and businesses lose water pressure for a few hours. But these small breaks are warnings that larger disasters may be on the horizon.

Why is this happening? The answer is simple. In many cities and towns, our water systems are old and worn out. U.S. cities first began laying pipes for household water delivery and sewage treatment in the late 1800s. By the 1930s, the backyard outhouse was a rarity in all but the most rural areas.

Not only are these systems still in use, often these very same pipes are hauling clean water to your home, and dirty sewage off to the treatment plant — except when they break and mingle their waters, as happened in Massachusetts.

Clean water is essential to life, and these recent incidents reveal how we can no longer take it for granted that it will be available to our families in the years to come. Today’s government leaders face a dilemma. The longer they argue over where to find the money to overhaul these vital systems, the more expensive the eventual repair bill will be.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to recognize that our water bills have too low, for too long. If we had all paid just a few cents or a few dollars more per month when those systems were built, there would be plenty of money available to retrofit, overhaul, and upgrade the systems a century later.

So now the elected officials of today face difficult choices. Facing a repair bill that amounts to many billions of dollars, they must answer the question about where the money will come from, and how to raise it fairly.

An obvious source of funds is the ratepayers themselves. After all, isn’t it fair that the people who use the water system pay to maintain it? In the Washington, DC area, officials estimate they would have to raise water bills by more than 400% to raise enough funds to start repairing the system faster than it is breaking. Is that fair for the residents of a city with so many poor neighborhoods?

Another source of funds is the U.S. taxpayer. After all, it’s certainly not fair to allow an upstream city to share its a water pollution problem with every other city downstream. That’s why the federal government in Washington has long organized a rotating “loan” fund that cities can tap into, but the amounts are woefully small compared to the need.  Is it fair to raise the taxes of every American to improve the water systems for some?

A third choice is business. Some cities are selling their public water systems to private corporations. These companies invest the money needed to bring the system up to par, in return for the opportunity to raise rates to a level that brings in a profit. This raises questions of fairness, too. After all, the rate payers built the system — and now its sold to a business at a fire sale price? And do we want one of life’s necessities provided with the same level of customer service as the average cable company?

Up until now, elected officials have found it easier to put off these choices until next year — year after year. But as millions of Massachusetts residents ask themselves where they can get a safe drink of water, it’s clear that we are running out of room to duck the difficult decisions before us.
Article Source: Sustainable Living

Are you involved or interested in public utilities in the Washington DC metro area? Are you a civil engineer, elected official, water company insider? If so, check out the Metro DC Utilities Blog. This article was placed in this directory by the Water Words That Work, LLC, an environmental awareness and communication company.

The forward-looking College, which has an international reputation for its education work in environmental and social sustainability, will host a series of one-day practical sessions from 19th to 21st July, with contributions from leading land and agricultural practitioners.

Entitled Practical Skills for Sustainable Local Food, the sessions will demonstrate sustainable agriculture in action and teach participants how to grow and harvest their own vegetables, herbs and crops.

Educator and professional gardener Dyane Osborne, who holds a degree in Environmental Education from specialist agricultural school Bicton College, leads the course. Martin Crawford, founder of the Agroforestry Research Trust, will demonstrate methods used in the Forest Garden at Dartington; Horticulturalist Nick Gooderham will show students around the pioneering School Farm; and Permaculture expert Rhamis Kent will explain how agriculture can transform urban areas for the better, using his regeneration work in Detroit as an example.

In order to get a real flavour of College life, Taster Day students also have the opportunity to engage with the community living ethos – an essential part of the Schumacher experience. In supervised morning and afternoon sessions, students can spend time in the Schumacher kitchen, playing their part in the creation of the delicious vegetarian food that the College has become famous for or in discussion forums and workshops.

The taster days take place on Monday 19th July, Tuesday 20th July and Wednesday 21st July. Each one-day session costs £75 and includes access all tuition and course materials; vegetarian lunch and refreshments; and access to the College’s Open Evening with Rhamis Kent on Tuesday 20th July.

Full information can be found at www.schumachercollege.org.uk and you can book your place by contacting Schumacher College on 01803 865934 or admin@schumachercollege.org.uk.

About Schumacher College and Dartington
Schumacher College is a department of The Dartington Hall Trust.
Dartington is an international centre for the arts, social justice and sustainability – a unique place where enterprise, creativity, social and environmental responsibility flourish together. In our charitable activities, we work to create social change in collaboration with pioneering thinkers, artists, entrepreneurs and activists in the UK and around the world. Our enterprise activities include the Cider Press Shopping Centre with 15 boutique shops, a conference centre with accommodation and the award-winning White Hart restaurant and bar. Over 1 million visitors annually come to visit Dartington. For more information, visit www.dartington.org.