Hippy Green

Dreaming of owning a Tesla Roadster but knowing how much they costs has been keeping down, have now fear. For the cool $35,000 (and a sam’s club membership) you can pickup a FULLY ELECTRIC SMART CAR! Plus a bonus trip to to witness a space shuttle launching! I know I have thought about a smart car but more if I was in New York City (this car could park anywhere).

This 2007 Hybrid Technologies Lithium-powered Smart Car is PERFECT for any city environment as well as short nearby communities. This smart car is a REAL CAR, top speed of 80mph with a 0 to 60 time of 7.1 seconds! Yes, there is the 6 to 8 hour charge time, but you can travel about 140 miles per charge! This is a great commuter car and with the money your saving in gas, you could almost buy 2!

Now if your a bit more into the exotic hybrids, you should take a look at the aptera, the famous 330mpg trik. This car does NOT have to go through rigorous testing like other 4 wheeled cars, because of its design, this vehicle falls under a motorcycle and WILL be street legal in all 50 states! It comes in 2 options, fully electric or plugin. They expect to start producing these in the next 12 months and you can reserve your name on the wait listing for only $500, fully refundable!

Although I enjoy my fun prius I may have to sell if and move to this futuristic badass car!

Following up Kohl’s plans to install solar panels on its buildings, they recently flipped the switch and turned on the Laguna Niguel Kohl’s location. This roll out is just the milestone in the building of solar electric systems at 63 of Kohl’s 80 California locations. Keep in mind Kohl’s operates 834 stores in 46 states, but has not yet announced plans to roll out solar to all its other store locations. To put this into perspective of how much solar Kohl’s plans to install. In total, more than 138,000 solar panels are expected to be used when Kohl’s solar installations are complete in 2008. Once finished, Kohl’s solar installations will generate more than 35 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy annually, the equivalent of powering about 3,087 California homes.

If your are in the phoenix metro area and are thinking green, you should stop by and watch the feature film, “WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?”.
Its a great movie and there will be a gathering of others who want a change.
I will not make it tonight, but maybe the other dates.

Heres is the info you need to stop by and speak to other alternative thinkers.

DATES: WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 26, OCT. 3, AND OCT. 10
SHOWTIMES: 6:30 PM
LOCATION: HARKINS VALLEY ART
509 S. MILL AVE. (DOWNTOWN TEMPE)
TEMPE, AZ 85281
(Parking on 5th or 6th St. east of theater – free with validation)
FEATURE: WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?
SHORT: NOBELITY

If you do attend, please comment below and let me know how it goes.

Today, I received an interesting question and I wanted to pass it along to my readers. Chris asked a question about which type of environmentally friendly light bulbs are people buying, and how are they disposing of them.

The basic argument is that CL light bulbs use less electricity, but contain harmful chemicals that MUST be properly disposed. Most people just throw away light bulbs after they burn out, but are you recycling them?

Chris told me he was using CL light bulbs and recently tried to recycle his dead CF bulb at a Lowes, but was not sure where to put them. With CF bulbs containing the harmful chemicals that they do, Chris put them in the battery recycling, but is he doing more harm then good?

It’s a very intersting argument, but I will be the first to point out that I would look at LED replacements. I find LED a bit more pricey, but the ability to last for “almost” ever. Since my move I have not had to replace any bulbs, but I plan to upgrade to LED bulbs and feel greener on the inside.

So what’s your take, do you just throw out light bulbs, do you buy CF?

Please comment below.

When I think of wind power I think of these huge blades spinning around and creating a couple of megawatts of power, not a in my backyard kind of device. Well Mariah Power has create an affordable $4,000 vertical wind turbine that produces 1kW of power and stand only 30 feet tall!

The Windspire is a vertical wind turbine that stands about 30 feet tall and 2 feet wide. The perfect wind turbine for DIYers. Many “wind bashers” find vertical wind turbines better then horizontal wind turbines due to the “possibility” of bird killing via migration. I find this HARD to believe and hear much of the SAME people bashing cell phone antennas and TALL BUILDINGS. Think about it, do you see birds flying into a huge building, NO so why would they fly into a spinning blade. (sorry for the rant, ugh I just hate those people who complain and do NOT understand the FACTS!)

Anyway, The Windspire is a rugged and simple constructed vertical wind turbine that has limited maintains. It produces about 25 decibels of noise at five feet, which is about the same as a noise neighborhood house. The Windspire only needs a 8 MPH gust of wind to produce power and can survive up to 100 MPH winds!

The most interesting part that would make me buy a Windspire is the fact the Windspire also includes an internal wireless modem that can continuously transmit power production information directly to your computer so you can check your power production at any time. Monitor your offset and see how fast you can pay it off. At 10 cents a kilowatt it takes about 20 years to pay it off, but at $4,000 a nice investment for the green person inside you.

BrightSource is doing just that (Yes, 400 Megawat Solar Power Plant) and has filed an application with California to build these plants. (if only they were COOP, UGH!) The idea is to build 3 power plants, two 100 megawatt power plants and one 200 megawatt solar power plant. These power plants will be made up of many sun-tracking mirrors that focus on a tower with water that boils and rotates a turbine to create electricity. I am all for building solar power plants in the desert, living in Arizona for over 2 weeks makes me think, lets cover more of Arizona with solar.

BrightSource is not the only utility company going green, some of the others utility companies are also thinking solar like Southern California Edison who are contracting a large-scale solar power plant with Stirling Energy Systems. As for where power is going, BrightSource has talked about selling the power to PG&E(PCG) a California utility company.

Chris sent me this joke today and I have to post it. It’s a green joke and hopefully spices up your day.

A Harvard, Yale, and University of Vermont graduate enter the mens
room. The graduate of Yale spends 4 minutes aggressively washing his
hands with soap a constantly running water proclaiming “At Yale we
learned to be hygienic”. The Harvard grad then proceeded to quickly
wash his hands using very little water and no paper towels noting “At
Harvard we were taught to conserve resources”. At this point the UVM
graduate finished up, zipped up his pants and headed for the door. On
his way out he quipped “At UVM they taught us not to piss on our
hands.”

As most of you know I have moved to Arizona and have been enjoying the “hippy” style out here with my prius. I have recently been shopping at Wild Oats and Whole Foods. Well tonight it finally hit me, how much more it costs for staying organic or even trying to buy products that have less carbon footprints. I am amazed at the price difference, but also the quality. I have fun myself much happier due to the amazing taste and well quality food, but have also saw a nice hit on my Credit Card/Bank accounts. It makes me wonder how so many people who want to go green, are staying green and not going red with their bills. I AM saving a lot on gas by having my prius, just hit 1300 miles and on my 4th tank of gas, not bad considering the A/C is ALWAYS ON and have been driving in traffic all last week.

Anyway, I wanted to post some questions and hope that some of my readers post comments about it, but let me know how your staying green without going red.

Do you find it hard to stay green or to buy organic? Do you think it’s worth the cost to help the environment as well as you body?

It seems with every new account I open along with the piles of junk mail I receive, there is always a lot of wasted paper. I have been meaning and trying to reduce my paper trail. I find it hard enough to shred all these documents that contain personal information about me as well as accounts to banks, credit cards, etc.

So what? Well, I have been moving to paperless with all my bank accounts, credit cards, and even insurances. I even found with USAA I save $50 every 6 months because is saves them money too! Imagine that, they pass along the savings.

Today I was going through my Google Reader and saw iJustine (so hot!) received a solid 300 page bill from AT&T for her iPhone. I was shocked! So after reading this I was l thought, wonder how bad mine WOULD have been. So I logged in and downloaded the PDF of my bill. 55 PAGES!!! Most of the bill shows data transfers, even though its UNLIMITED! WOW!

I find this unbelievable and can only imagine the cost to send out all these bill statements to their customers. I would SUGGEST and/or REQUEST people switch to paperless. Not only are you saving the planet 1 tree at a time, but hey maybe you can convince AT&T (if their WILLING) to pass their savings along to us by not having them kill so many trees and pay LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY ON SHIPPING!!!

Working at a business and want to go green? Start by replacing your lights, or replace them as they go out, with a new LED replacement for fluorescent lights.

EverLED TR is the first commercially available fluorescent tube replacements that utilize LED technology. This replacement allows for easily going green in the work place, but cutting down on the amount of electricity being used. LED (Light Emitting Diodes) lights use less electricity then fluorescent lighting.

So for a business, you can just order the EverLED TR and replace your current fluorescent lights with the same size/dimension light, but with a LED based light rather then fluorescent. You could take a big step and replace all the fluorescent lights, but they are about $149.00 a light.