The other day we were ranting and raving about the wasted energy opportunity gyms have. All those people working away on treadmills, stationary bikes, and elliptical machines could be generating power to juice up the very buildings they're in. As if on cue, New Scientist came in the mail with a great roundup answering dumb eco questions. One of those dumb questions concerns the validity of our rant. It turns out there is such a gym in Portland. The Green Microgym opened in August and features specially adapted machines that can generate 1000 watts.
For those who don't live in the northwest there's Pedal-a-Watt, a stand that turns your regular road bike into a stationary bike. As you pedal your bike's rear wheel spins a generator. The generator consists of a spinning magnet within a coil of wire. As the magnet spins electricity flows through the coil, which can then be used immediately or stored in a battery.
posted originally from: Unplggd
Who would have thought your carbon footprint extends all the way to your search queries on Google! In a new study by Jonathan Kommey of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, servers for Google and other behemoth web companies are sucking up an immense amount of energy. According to Koomey, these firms' data centers consume one percent of the world's electricity and with the way they're growing, they may eat up five times as much a decade from now...
Any way you can avoid having your home office look like a display at Staples is worth looking into. Maya*Made has a great project that involves turning a burlap coffee beans sack into a mounted cork board. Rather than covering her bulletin board with fabric, Maya staple gunned a sack from her local roaster around cork board. She then mounted it above her desk and now has a unique looking place to tack up ideas, inspirations, and reminders. 
The sustainable RV we 
When Mike Davis, an astronomer, moved to a remote part of Arizona he realized his astronomical sights were so rad in his new location because he had no light pollution. As a result, he also had no electrical grid to plug into. To solve the problem he went on eBay and bought some of the materials he needed to build his own solar panels, including inexpensive blemished and damaged solar cells...
Installing solar panels on your home is one of the smartest things you can do, but it's also costly -- even if you're using 
Stopped by my screen printer's today to put in a new order of 
I thought I had a composting disaster this week, but then I found out all the normal things are happening, even if they don't look normal. 
Last month's green ideas left their mark on us, as we continued to discuss eco-friendly gadgets (
It's been a week and a half since I 
I haven't been this excited about a product since my parents bought me the original NES in the fifth grade. I've been wanting to compost for a few years now, but the idea of breaking down organic material inside has been intimidating (the cold New York winters and stifling summers don't make composting very viable outside). I've done some reading on the matter and I just didn't know if I could handle balancing the ratios of soil to worm to green and brown items properly. I envisioned coming home and my house smelling like, well, a New York City street in the middle of summer. 
