Hippy Green

Being a graduate of UVM and knowing the club’s advisor and Chairperson personally, I just had to post up this story. Direct from The View at UVM.

This past May 5 - 7 was the International Formula Hybrid Competition at the New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, NH. Universities from Yale, Dartmouth, and more came to participle included schools from Russia, Canada and Taiwan. The car was designed and built by members of the Aero (Alternative Energy Racing Organization) at the University of Vermont. Their car won Chrysler’s Best Hybrid System Engineering Award, the Best Hybrid-in-Progress Award, the Dartmouth College Thayer School Dean’s Award for Most Innovative Design, and even second place in overall technical design.

The UVM team designed their car nicknamed, “GreenSpeed” as an all-wheel-drive hybrid with front regenerative breaking that recharges onboard batteries. The director of the Formula Hybrid Project at Dartmouth College said “These two things have never been done before” in competition.

All their work of building this amazing machine took a wrong turn with some electronic controls due to software bugs and a pair of $15 failed switches, which took them out of the race for the acceleration and autocross competitions. A bittersweet disappointment for UVM, but a victory by still winning various awards and competing in the 13-mile endurance test.

I knew this is only the beginning of UVM competing Green and will be looking forward to seeing how next years competition pans out.

Although I am getting more and more emails about starting this blog backup again, I just do not know if I have the time to dedicate to this project. I feel like I was Green before it was popular and missed the boat by being too early.

Anyway, If you are really interested in this news and want to help out please contact me and I will look into revamping/building this whole site. I have plenty of ideas, but looking for a partner in crime and/or possible guest writes. So if your interested, please contact us.

I have posted a side note about Hippy Green going more of eBooks and timeless articles, but I wanted to hear from my readers WHY you enjoy going to this site. I can not compete with hugg.com or treehugger.com who have plenty of writers or “user” submitters, but I do want to push this idea of Green using technology.

The past month I have been thinking a lot about what to do with this site, either continue posting some stories, hoping to get dugg/stumple upon or just change it completely to articles on HOW to go green as well as REAL information that about Tax write offs for alternative fuels.

So rather then keep you in the dark and not post as much, I want to see if anyone out there has an idea or wants to work with me on pushing green technology. Do readers want a ebook from Hippy Green, do you want interesting articles that I find and write about, How can I make this site more enjoyable (other then the obvious of posting more daily content).

Please comment below what you enjoy about hipppy green and How I can make this blog/site better for my “current” readers.

Update: Check out my Eath Day 2008 post on John Murch dot com.

1 ) Buy CFL or LED light bulbs and replace the ones you have around your house. You can also just wait for each light to burn out and pickup a CFL or LED light bulb, this lowers the upfront or initial cost and spread it out over time. Seriously is a $2 light bulb going to bankrupt you? You will probably break even in a year with your electricity bill. () Enjoy! LEDs are a LOT more expensive, but they last so long and use hardly any power.

2 ) UNPLUG, Do you know how much electricity we waste just by having charges and/or TVs plugged in that are NOT ON. The simplest way to do this is to hook a lot of your electronics up to a power strip and flip that little button when you want it on or off. Yes this can be a hassle, but hey if everyone did it, imagine how much power we would save.

3 ) Stop buying bottled water. I know its cheap, but seriously we should look at cutting down on each of our carbon footprint by not only recycling but thinking about what we buy. Do we really need water from Fiji? Pickup a Nalgene bottle and a Brita filter and take that money your saving and put it in a Roth IRA or pay off your Credit Card Debt. Do you realize on the average each American carries over $8,000 in credit car debt! So lets think smart and not pickup that smart water and instead carry a clear nalgene bottle.

4 ) Change your cleaning products. I know most of us use the same cleaning products for the house and/or clothing. We probably have been using the same ones our parents have been using and just buy it without thinking, but seriously you can go green and smell good! I find that I am switching over to a lot of green products.

5 ) Cut down on waste. I know 1 sheet per flush is a bit much, but lets think the next time we use an entire roll of paper towels to clean up that mess. We should pickup the 10 pack of dish towels at Costco or target and just wash them in the laundry. This way we are not cutting down trees to clean up some spilled milk.

6 ) Go bamboo not plastic. Having plastic forks around for serving cake can cut down on washing the dishes, but why not look at a more “organic” type of silverware. They even sell corn based recycled silverware, or better yet, just use the dishwasher, thats why we created it. Since I have moved to Arizona I have taken full use of my dishwasher and plan to NEVER GO BACK!

7 ) Save water and money. Buy water-efficient showerheads or better yet, take showers together. Do you have a partner or friend who wants to save the world, tell them you want to cut down on your water consumption and want to shower together. I find this is not only a fun time, but you really do save time in the shower and with a water-efficient showerhead it can help even more.

8 ) Buy rechargeable batteries for all your toys. I find that most people just pickup a 20 pack of AA and use them until they run out. What a waste! We are in 2007 and they SELL rechargeable batteries, even ones that plug in to the USB port and can be used as AA. Think about the electronics in your house, the tv, dvd, cable, audio remote, and the Wii remotes, clocks, flashlights, etc. Just think USB Cell the next time you need some AA or AAA. You can plug them into your computer, laptop, and even some dvd players to recharge. (any USB port)

9 ) Adjust Fridge and Freezer Temps. This can save you on your electricity bill as well as keep your food cold, but not frozen. I am not talking about turning it completely off, just adjust it to 37 degrees F for the refrigerator and 0 degrees for the freezer.

10 ) Raise the Central Air or keep it around 75 degrees. You can always install a ceiling fan (also adds value to the house) to help cool down your place as well as circulate air.

Photo by khalid-almasoud

I am always blown away by how people say the “technology” has been the problem with GREEN. Didn’t you see that movie? with Al Gore?

Well for those not paying attention to their RSS feeds, ecogeek posted an interesting story about Porsche. Porsche the well know German car company built a car with in-wheel electric motors with an onboard gas engine to charge batteries more then 100 years ago! The in-wheel motor is pure genius and is something that I would like to see on more lightweight electric vehicles. Porsche is featuring this car in Los Angeles’s Auto Show and promoting their “going green”.

I just do NOT get it, why are car manufactures that DUMB! Seriously, wasn’t someone thinking about these types of cars in the 70’s and 80’s when gas was a problem. I also do NOT understand how these soccer moms complain about $4/gallon gas bills while driving their Hummer H2 to hold their “over weight” kids and hold their daily grande low fat upside-down caramel macchiato. UGH!

Well, I am ALWAYS interested in major companies going green and hopefully in the next couple of years we will see these types of technologies being implemented in future vehicles.

On a side note I will be restructuring Hippy Green a bit and focus on ebooks and articles on how to Go Green rather then report on Green articles. I find that I am just reposting the article with my views rather then “creating value”. I want to give my readership something worth reading and offer tips and tricks on how to go green, even on the cheap!

The email keep rolling in. The latest is from Raz Godelnik and who is the co-founder of Eco-Libris, a new green biz that lets book readers balance out the paper used for the books they read by planting trees.

So what Eco-Libris is all about?

About 20 Million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone. What we want to do is to raise awareness to the destructive environmental impacts of using paper for the production of books and provide people with an affordable and easy way to do something about it.

The process itself is fairly simple - upon entering our website, customers decide how m sooner then later, books will be made from recycled paper or other eco-friendly materials and logging for paper will stop. On that day Eco-Libris plans to move on to a new cause, but until then they think every book reader should take action. We also don’t forget the responsibility of the book publishing industry to the current situation and we intend to become a strong voice in a call for change towards printing books in an eco-friendly manner.

I love hearing about these types of companies who are thinking outside the box and taking action to fight for something they care about. I know I am tired of buying books and then just putting them on the shelve hardly ever reading them again. In the past year I have thought about buying a eBook reader (since I read a lot!, but just can not stand how BADLY designed they are. UGH! I just do not understand how SONY or any other company can screw it up so badly. I guess I will add my eBook Reader idea to my todo project list.

Thanks Raz for help creating this site and bringing it to my attention. Please keep me posted on your continue works with getting publishing companies to plan trees based on how many they use!

Until next time, plant a tree

Since I have been receiving some interesting about recycling programs such as swaptree and second rotation I decided to talk about a new one Green Sight.

Green Sight solves the problem of recycling old electronic good as well as created a program for retailers. To my amazement, Costco has joined up and you can not only recycle with them, but on SOME devices get PAID! Although to my laughter, I noticed their website had a MAJOR error, unless your buying your video equipment off of a truck, a CANNON (note the spelling below!) Digital MiniDV can get you $40 plus get it recycled.

I am pretty sure its Canon, but hey, it’s a Monday detail.

Anyway, I have a couple of CRT monitors and a old pentium 133mhz computer that should get recycled. Oh, and big note, only COSTCO member,can use this service, I have posted others ways to recycle on my blog.

I love hearing from other green blogs as well as stories/articles that are current or up and coming. Please feel free to submit any stories via our contact page. Thanks again for all of those who submit stories!

I recently received this story and wanted to post it up. This stories comes from the co-founder of Swaptree, Mark Hexamer.

As a former Vermonter let me congratulate you on a fantastic blog. Lots of great green tips, comments, and insights on there.

Since your both green and tech geek, I wanted to introduce you to a site I co-founded called www.swaptree.com. Swaptree is a unique website that allows you to swap and recycle your books, CDs, DVDs, and video games for free.

You simply list the items you have and the items you want, and Swaptree’s trade algorithms, instantly find the members who want what you have and have what you want. So on Swaptree one copy of Harry Potter The Deathly Hallows, can be traded to another member, and another, and another, saving trees and pollution in the process. After all do we really need 40 million copies of Harry Potter on the planet? Shouldn’t say 5 million be enough? Lets recycle all the paper AND all the books.

Moms (and their children) in particular may find Swaptree interesting. What mom hasn’t been frustrated when they buy a $55 dollar video game for their child, only for them to get bored of it 2 weeks later and want another, or when they spend $200 on Baby Einstein DVDs, only to have their child quickly move onto the Dora stage. With Swaptree, parents can trade through their children\’s\’ stages by simply listing what their children are no longer interested and trading them for the items they want now, for free.

Anyways I encourage you to take a look at the site and give it a try. I feel Swaptree is inline with the spirit of your blog, in that its all about sharing, recycling and consuming less.

Thanks in advance for your time, and let me know if you have any questions, and please keep up the good work.

Best

Mark Hexamer

Swaptree has also been covered on treehugger and on grist.org.

I took a look around Swaptree and am VERY impressed. I have always encourage recycling while moving as well as keeping green. Seeing this website I will be sure to test it out since I have over 200 DVDs. So take a look, give it a try, and comment below.

Just received a great article from Doug Fraim, Thanks! This is especially great because I have so many electronic devices that I need to properly recycle.

Today a company called Second Rotation announced a comprehensive service designed to give people an easy way to recycle unwanted items, be it an iPod, an xBox or an old GPS system. Second Rotation launched earlier this year and dedicated itself to giving people a place where they could trade in their unwanted gadgets for cash, keeping them out of the basement closet and most importantly, out of the trash, all while putting them into the hands of new owners. Now, you can now turn to Second Rotation to recycle items they have little to no value or are broken altogether and ensure that they never end up in the trash.
To identify which products it takes for recycling, Second Rotation has sifted through millions of online sales transactions for pre-owned gadgets to determine product values, and to identify products that are recyclable. In fact, a great deal of their research comes from monitoring eBay and seeing which items are not getting sold. Once a consumer identifies their recyclable product on www.SecondRotation.com, they can ship it for free in a box with another product they are looking to sell, or pay to ship it on their own. If the product in question is not listed in Second Rotation, consumers can contact the company and have that item added. With the addition of recyclable products, Second Rotation now tracks over 6,000 electronic products that it helps to keep out of landfills.

www.secondrotation.com

It seems everyone and their mom is jumping on the “green scene” trying to be “social responsible”, “organic”, and “environmental”. It just amazes me how much we have changed in the past couple of years, but then again we had help. (Thanks Al!)

Anyway, I was reading an interest article on small biz trends dot com about how their is a HUGE trend towards going Green!

Reading and seeing how companies like Eco Lips who sells organic lip balm has also pushed consumers to go “green” with other organic products. This article also gives facts such as 2.5 million plastic bottles are put into landfills every HOUR!

Anyway, I just see this trend with Big Business buying Green and wanted to stress that this is JUST THE START!

One thing that I have been MEANING To get off my chest is since my move out west I have seen HOW NOT GREEN ARIZONA IS!

Yes, you read that right, a place with at least 211 FULLY SUNNY DAYS a year, you would THINK this is PRIME REAL ESTATE FOR SOLAR! But if you live here, like I do, you will see that something as BASIC AS RECYCLING is MISSING!

My apartment complex DOES NOT have RECYCLING! I DID NOT believe this at first, but after much asking, they TOLD ME to THROW OUT ANY CANS, BOTTLE, ETC. UGH! Well, me being a bit Green inside, I collect all my recycling and drop it off at a friends house WHO DOES have recycling.

Think about this, we have a LARGE trend towards going GREEN, but something as simple as Recycling is NOT DONE due to (what I am told) COST! The city would RATHER DUMP BOTTLES then RECYCLE THEM! WTF!

On top of this, those towns WHO DO recycle put it ALL TOGETHER, so this means our TAX DOLLARS is PAYING SOMEONE TO SEPARATE IT! Growing up in New Jersey the “armpit of America” (from what I am told) will FINE YOU IF YOU DONT RECYCLE! I would ALWAYS see recycling in the cafeteria at schools, FORCED TO recycle batteries, boxes, glass, plastic, cans, etc. They have even mandatory a new ruling in the town I grew up, which requires you to “take the tops off bottles”. They WILL NOT take them if you DO NOT remove that CAP.

Okay, Sorry about that rant, but for a country that is divided we need to UNITE and NOT BY GOING TO WAR, but by looking within and HELP OURSELVES FIX REAL PROBLEMS then START NEW ONES.