Hippy Green

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.

Tonight at the NY Tech Meetup the meeting changed its agenda, instead of a couple of presentations getting 5 minutes, it was an unstructured conference. There were 20 topics that was chosen by raising hand and calling them out. After the topics were picked, you broke off into areas where the 20 groups meet to talk about the topic. One person in the audience gave the topic of Clean Tech. So I walked over to the group that was Clean Tech and talked to the people crowding around.

Clean Tech, what is that?… well after speaking to a number of the people who walked over there, it was a discussion of ideas from energy efficient computers to solar/wind farms. The ideas of going green in New York is picking up and there seems to be a growing need. I have blogged in the past about how NJ/NY/CT has large tax breaks for renewable energy, hudson going green, and taxi’s going hybrid by 2012, but I feel that as a community we need to do more!

While talking green, someone wondered in the group asked if a NY Green Meetup needs to get started. Sounds Good to me! The only problem for me, is I am moving to Arizona. Since I travel so much I might be able to attend some of the meetings if this gets started an/or telecommute to them via ichat. Anyway, I handed out my contact info and my link to a couple of people, so please let me help organize and/or post some information in the comments. Also someone asked about Green Events, greenfestphilly is an event I was contacted about and blogged about.

Lastly, if this is your first time visiting Hippy Green, please contact me if you have any cool green tech links to show off and/or news. I always enjoy guest blogging and promoting green tech events here.

I forgot to post up that I purchased a 2007 Toyota Prius, totally forgot to post it here too. No need for double post, so just a cross blog link.

So check out my blog and yes most people say you lose $2k when you buy a NEW car, but hey I got a hybrid!

Are you a savvy business person in NYC who uses a car service everywhere you go, or needs one for a trip to the aiport, but want to be more environmentally friendly? Need a eco-luxury private car service? Have no fear, OZOcar is here!

OZOcar is a car service that uses hybrids (Toyota Prius and Lexus RX400h) as their cars to pick you up and drop you off. OZOcar was started by Jordan Harris and Roo Rogers in 2005 with the goal of providing customers with style, service, and sustainability.

So not only are you “saving the environment” with a hybrid but you are also get some nice perks from OZOcar, such as the usage of a Apple iBook with free wifi to check your email, 200+ satellite stations to listen too, and some enjoyable refreshments.

So if your in the NYC area and need a ride, call 1 866 OZO 5966 or 1 886 696 5966.

Are you planning on laying out on the sand and get your tan on? Do you plan on bring your iPod, iPhone, mp3 player, and/or electronic gadgets. Well if you are like me, you are always looking for an outlet to “recharge”, we theres a new green solution for an outlet.

Reware is now selling beach bags equipped with solar panels built in that allow you to bring your towel and charge your electronic device. The techno pale nerd inside of you, can now get a tan and listen to some tunes. I think integration solar panels into current products is not only an amazing idea, but something that needs to be picked up by the masses! I would also be interested in mailing or shipping my current “product” to a company and get a solar panel integrated into it. For example, I have thought about picking up a new crumpler, but want one with a solar panel. Maybe this is a sign I should start a company that does this and converts popular products like clothes, cars, anything that is outside and could require power. Do you want to preorder one? Have a bag you like but want to go green?

Maybe I should try and team up with timbuk2 and/or other companies and either get them to go green, or allow me to license their product for resale with solar panels attached to them. Anyone interested?

Well okay, maybe not all the cool technology, but the researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology have created a way a solar cell can be painted on flexible plastic sheets.

Somenath Mitra, PhD, professor and acting chair of NJIT’s Department of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences says, “Imagine some day driving in your hybrid car with a solar panel painted on the roof, which is producing electricity to drive the engine. The opportunities are endless.”

The researchers have developed a way to utilize carbon nanotubes to produce the power for these inexpensive solar cells. One day we may even see household printers that allow for printing solar onto clothes, houses, etc.

So the next time you think New Jersey what’s that smell, remember NJ is on the ball creating the technology to paint on solar.

I love when readers submit stories and I received an email this morning from Fred who writes:

Check out this US Carbon Footprint Map, an interactive United States Carbon Footprint Map, illustrating Greenest States to Cities. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State & City energy consumptions, demographics and more down to your local US City level.

This is a great link to go with our think carbon post today. This is a pretty pimp site that shows some cool stats. These stats are great because it shows the carbon footprint of each state as well as compare it to the per capital population of the state.

This is a great reference and thank you Fred for contacting us and letting us know. I always love hearing feedback/comments from readers. (positive or negative, their all great to me!) I especially like to see users submitting or suggesting stories. I know my buddy Steve is always submitting stories on del.icio.us you can to just use the tag hippygreen and anyone and see it.

Again please feel free to submit stories directly.