Transportation – I love looking at the transition here, from driving a hybrid car, to riding a bike, to renting out our car. Now I’m driving to work (boo!), but Jason’s riding a bike, so I guess it balances out.

• Prius
• I Got a Bike
• Renting Out Our Car with Relay Rides

Home Improvement – We made a lot of effort to learn about weatherization after we moved into a drafty apartment, and it was a lot of fun.

• Caulk
• Installing V Channel Weatherstripping on Drafty Windows
• Incense Sticks Find Drafts We Missed
• Weatherization Barnraising
• Fun with a Thermal Leak Detector

Water – From reducing wasted water to reducing wasted water filters.

• Converting to a Dual Flush Toilet
• Truly Low-Flow Showerheads
• Water Filter Update

Energy Use – If I’m going to make an effort to save energy, I like to know the best places to focus.

• Fun with a Kill-a-Watt
• Residential Energy Use with Michael Blasnik: Higher Priorities
• Residential Energy Use with Michael Blasnik: Lower Priorities
• Replacing My Refrigerator with or without Energy Star
• Which TV Is the Most Energy Efficient?
• Steam Radiators? Here’s How to Improve Your Boiler’s Efficiency

Recycling – From municipal recycling to people recycling.

• Cambridge Switches to Single Stream Recycling
• Touring the Casella Recycling Plant
• Festival Recycling: 3 Lessons Learned
• Green Burials

Food – I have a hard time cooking real food regularly, but focusing on it for this blog helped me out a lot.

• Farmers Markets in the Boston Area
• Food Blogs I Have Loved
• Easy Orzo Salad
• Which Reusable K Cup Filter Is Best

Personal Care – Some of the most personal — and successful — changes I’ve made.

• Why I Switched to an IUD
• Smell My Armpit — I Dare You
• Oxybenzone Worse than Parabens
• How Do I Know if My Shoes Are Vegan
• Where to Find Vegan Shoes in Boston

Cleaning – How to clean your house (or have someone else do it) without using horrible chemicals or supporting unfair employment practices.

• Vida Verde A Green Cleaning Co-Op
• Green Cleaning Products from Vida Verde
• Interview with Ruth Alves from Vida Verde Co-Op

Vermicomposting – Probably one of the least impactful things I’ve done, but the most fun.

• Worm Composting
• Baby Worms
• Harvesting Vermicompost
• Vermicompost in Potted Plants

Education – The most difficult (and most fulfilling) thing I did in the last decade was going back to school. It took up so much of my time that I didn’t do a lot of outside writing, but here are a few posts about it, along with a great paper my niece did on land use of my parents’ property in Maine that I know we’re going to continue to refer to.

• My Thesis, Or Everything You Wanted to Know about Anaerobic Digestion
• Environmental Masters Programs in Boston
• Forestry Management

Reviews – Fun reading (and not-so-fun watching).

• Book Review: Green Metropolis
• Negative Impact Man
• Women Don’t Ask

Thank you for reading my blog! I learned so much while I was writing it, and I loved the conversations we had through it.

Here’s our competition.

For people interested in reducing their home energy use, the first step is to have a Mass Save home energy assessment. Cambridge has partnered with Next Step Living to do outreach (sign up here), but you can also call the main Mass Save number (866-527-7283) or use another home performance contractor, if you prefer. Whichever you choose, during the 2-3 hour home energy assessment you’ll get no-cost instant savings measures installed, like LED light bulbs, faucet aerators, showerheads, and smart power strips. I think these are worth the time on their own, but you’ll also get recommendations for deeper measures, like insulation, air sealing, heating systems, etc. and information on rebates available for them. And don’t think this doesn’t apply to you if you’re a renter — get the instant savings measures installed, then present the report on other measures to your landlord to see if they want to make the investment.

Even if we don’t win the Georgetown Energy Prize in the end, our efforts will help save ourselves money and energy, and improve the comfort and value of our homes. It’s win-win.

Unfortunately, the experience wasn’t great for me. The first issue I had was with scheduling. The program has online scheduling, but only offers three options at a time. So I chose a pickup time and then scheduled my new fridge delivery around it. But that fell apart when my new fridge came with a dented compressor and we had to get a replacement. Suddenly the back-to-back schedule that we’d set up didn’t work, and the old fridge wasn’t picked up until a couple weeks after the new delivery. There also weren’t any weekend times available, so one of us had to stay home from work for the pickup. (Thanks, Jason!) And the worst part…the program doesn’t pick up from a third floor. We had to move the fridge to the driveway ourselves, which wasn’t fun without all the right equipment. All in all, it wasn’t the best way for me to recycle my refrigerator.

So I looked into others. These include:

• Municipal recycling – My city, Cambridge, offers pick up and recycling of refrigerators. You have to pay $25 to apply for a permit and leave the refrigerator on the curb on the appropriate day with the doors removed.
• Retailer recycling – The EPA’s Responsible Appliance Disposal program partners with retailers, as well as utility energy efficiency programs. (Mass Save is part of this, too.) Home Depot, Sears, and Best Buy are all retail partners. Since we bought our new refrigerator from Home Depot, that would probably have been the easiest. They charge $15, and offer delivery to/removal from the third floor.

In sum, if you live in a 1-2 story house, I’d still suggest giving Mass Save’s refrigerator recycling a try. If not, I’d go with one of the retailers partnered with the EPA or your local Department of Public Works. They’ll cost you a few bucks, but they’ll likely be easier, and you can still rest easy knowing your fridge was recycled properly.

It’s a lovely (tiny) bin.

Each building (with less than 13 units) has been given a small green bin to hold the scraps outdoors. It’s made of extra thick plastic and has a locking mechanism on the lid to deter rodent interest. We’ve also all been given a small, ventilated bin to collect the scraps indoors, along with a year’s supply of compostable bags to line it with (and coupons for more). They’re encouraging everyone to use the bags — tying them up and tossing them in the outdoor bins every couple of days — so it doesn’t get disgusting. I also keep my bin in my freezer, so the scraps don’t break down so quickly. The indoor bin also locks if you rotate the handle to the front, which makes you less likely to spill it.

A lot more things can be collected in this composting program than you can compost in your backyard. Because it’s composted at higher temperatures, even meat can be included, as well as soiled paper products. This means that even if you’re already composting yourself, this can still be useful.

The program’s already off to a great start, with more than 10 tons of food waste collected the first two weeks. If you’re on the Monday route and haven’t received your bins yet, or if you have questions about the program that aren’t answered by these FAQs, call 617-349-4815 or email recycle@cambridgema.gov. And don’t be surprised if I show up at your door with a fluorescent yellow vest and big “volunteer” badge, trying to get the word out.

• Finally! @BlueApron Offers Packaging Return – Organic Glory. The packaging has always been the worst part of this great program. Now they’ll give you a free return label to send it back for reuse.

That’s it for now, but I’m trying to restart regular posts, so if you come across anything interesting, send it my way.

In looking for a new refrigerator, I immediately looked for which models earned a $50 rebate from Mass Save. Unfortunately, those are only the 17 models rated Energy Star Most Efficient. Looking more closely, I realized that there are some serious flaws in Energy Star’s rating system for refrigerators. Because they split the fridges into categories based on their configuration (top freezer, bottom freezer, french doors) and only grant the label to fridges 9-10% more efficient than others in their own category, configurations that use the most energy (generally french door bottom freezers with through-the-door ice makers) have a larger spread and are more likely to get the label than others. And the thing that can make the most difference in energy use–the size of the refrigerator–is ignored. So I decided to ignore the Energy Star label entirely and just look at the kWh use.

Another important factor was my space limitations. Unless I wanted to remove the cupboard above or the wall next to it, the new fridge could only be an inch or two bigger than the old one. And an 18 cubic foot refrigerator was surprisingly hard to find. There’s been a creep upwards in terms of refrigerator size over the years, so that the most common size I found in stores was 24 cubic feet. Jason also had a preference for a bottom freezer. That and size were our major parameters.

We finally settled on a Kitchenaid KRBX109EWH. (A GE Artistry ABE20EGHWS was our second choice.) Its annual energy use is 469 kWh/year, a savings of 364 kWh/year over our old one. (By comparison, the EnergyStar Most Efficient refrigerators ranged from 448 to 637 kWy/year.)

It’s being delivered next week, and we’re very excited. I’ll let you know how we like it once we actually start using it. And keep an eye out for our experience recycling our old fridge through Mass Save.

Earlier this year we put out an RFP for a lighting distributor at work, and while we were discussing which light bulbs to choose for the program I felt woefully underinformed. I only had one in my own house (the result of a home energy assessment). So I got five different kinds and tested them  out. There are LEDs for almost any type of bulb you can think of, but all of these bulbs are dimmable replacements for 60-watt incandescents—the most common kind in my house. They were, from best to worst:

Phillips 11-Watt A19 LED – This was amazing. Its design was the prettiest—slimmer than an incandescent, smaller and lighter than the other bulbs. It dims well and has a warm light. Its directions say it shouldn’t be used in completely enclosed fixtures, because the heat will shorten its lifespan, but I ended up using it in my enclosed fixtures anyway, because I liked it the best. If you live in Massachusetts, your local utility buys down the cost of this bulb to make it more affordable—just $7.50.

Phillips 10-Watt A19 LED – This bulb won the U.S. Department of Energy’s L Prize, which encouraged lighting companies to design an affordable LED replacement for 60-watt incandescents. It’s weird looking, but cool. It has the warmest light, uses less power, and has a longer lifespan than the 11-watt. Like the 11-watt it’s dimmable and isn’t designed to be used in enclosed fixtures. I’m not sure this is available anymore, since the 11-watt is Phillips’ newer, more affordable version.

TCP LED Dim A Lamp – This is completely unobjectionable. Of all the bulbs, it’s shaped the most like an incandescent. It’s not as warm a light as the two Phillips, but much better than any CFLs that I’ve seen. Like the first two, it’s dimmable and isn’t designed to be used in enclosed fixtures. This is another bulb where your local utility buys down the cost (to $6.25), and it’s most likely the kind you’ll get during a home energy assessment.

Rambus A19 LED – This bulb’s light is as warm as the TCP’s. Of all the bulbs, it diffused light best into the corners of the room.It’s also dimmable. However it’s big, heavy, and weird looking and the ceramic base of it got hot quickly. But this is because the base disperses the heat better than the first three, so it’s designed to be used in an enclosed fixture. It costs around $20.

Bright Value LED A Lamp – Like the Rambus, this is designed for an enclosed fixture, so it’s also big, heavy, and weird looking. However, although it was advertised as dimmable, it wasn’t any more dimmable than a CFL, flickering and going out halfway. It costs around $15.

It can be confusing to figure out what bulb to get if you’re used to thinking of them in terms of watts (or how much energy they use). With all the different kinds of light bulbs out there, it makes more sense to think of them in terms of lumens (or how much light they give off). 800 lumens is the equivalent of the old 60-watt light bulbs—and it actually seems brighter than that to me.

Do you have LED bulbs that you prefer? Let me know which ones and why!

If you just want the CliffsNotes version, anaerobic digestion is basically breaking down organic materials (like food) with bacteria in an environment without oxygen. Composting is aerobic digestion, meaning it does roughly the same thing with oxygen. But with anaerobic digestion, we can collect the gas that’s produced (roughly half methane) and use it to generate energy. This happens in landfills, anyway, and there are some landfills that have gas capture systems, but if we control the process ourselves we can tweak it to be faster and generate more methane, and we can make sure the methane doesn’t escape into the atmosphere (very important, since methane is a greenhouse gas).

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There are a few places already doing this in Massachusetts. There are six wastewater treatment plants with anaerobic digestion and three farms. Manure and wastewater are both reliable feedstocks, but if you mix food waste with them it’s even better, generating more biogas, reducing the volume of the sludge, and making the process more stable. The three farms are adding food waste to the mix, but the wastewater treatment plants aren’t yet. However, Deer Island—the wastewater treatment plant that serves most of us in the Boston area—is planning a pilot food waste project for the fall.

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Here in Massachusetts this is especially relevant, because we have a commercial organic waste ban coming up in October. This only applies to entities that generate a ton or more of food waste per week, not residents. But some towns are  considering doing residential food waste pickup, too. Hamilton has been doing so for about a year now, and Cambridge is doing a pilot project in one neighborhood. Anaerobic digesters are a great place for all that food waste to go.

That’s dramatic.

Since taking a GIS class this fall I’m really interested in data visualization. Did you know the New York Times dialect map had the most views of any article in 2013? And it was posted on December 20! It really pushes home that we need to be thinking about more interactive ways to communicate information.