The Off-Grid blog has a great story about harvesting rainwater:

“We call it ‘the movement that’s taking the nation by storm,’” said Robyn Hadley, spokeswoman for the Austin, Texas-based American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association, whose membership has jumped by more than 40 percent this year.

Hui, 37, got her first 55-gallon plastic barrel for free five years ago. The barrel had been packed with maraschino cherries, so when rain first filled it the water smelled like candied fruit.

Now, she has a daisy chain of 25 linked barrels under her back deck with a combined capacity of nearly 1,250 gallons. She built the system herself, after searching the Internet for information and buying the necessary plumbing parts at a hardware store. The whole setup cost her $200.

Click Here to read the article.

You know a movement is going mainstream when the topic starts showing up in Wired Magazine:

Once you realize how easy it is to make the concrete jungle bloom, it changes the way you see the world. Urban environments suddenly appear weirdly dead and wasteful. When I walk around New York City now, I see the usual empty lots and balconies and I think, Wait a minute. Why aren’t we growing food here? And here? And here?

Click Here to read the article.

There is an interesting study from Cornell University:

Eating less, eating local and eating better could slash U.S. energy use, CU study finds

“We could reduce the fossil energy used in the U.S. food system by about 50 percent with relatively simple changes in how we produce, process, package, transport and consume our food,” said David Pimentel, professor emeritus of ecology and agriculture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell.

Click Here to read the article.

Farmer Darrell at the Garden in the Desert blog has some great tips for transplanting garden plants so they survive the Arizona heat.

CLick Here

While you can find a CFL to fit most light fixtures these days, it’s a mistake to think they’re directly equivalent to incandescent bulbs. Like most things, CFLs present us with a series of trade-offs. You’ll have to do some thinking if you’d like to enjoy the energy saving benefits of CFLs without being surprised by their little quirks.

Lighter Footstep has put together a quick guide to living with CFLs in the real world. Consider a few of these ideas, and your personal transition to CFL life should be painless and stress-free.

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OK, I admit it: My childhood memories of eating home-grown Kale are not that pleasant. Perhaps it was the way my mother cooked it, I don’t know.

I found an article on the Off-Grid Blog that causes me to have second thoughts though:

Click Here to read it

Follow this link to see a video produced by Fine Gardening magazine about making compost.

From GReen Daily, 10 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Compost.

If you have recently recycled an old cellphone, perhaps you wondered – like I did – what cellphone heaven looks like.

This great article in Technology Review takes you behind the scenes at ReCellular, the nation’s largest cell-phone recycling facility, to show you what happens to your old cellphone.

Read this great little article on Earth Friendly Gardening as Caroline discovers that urban farming means Whole Foods does not get all her money

When doctors recommend drinking eight glasses of water a day, they certainly don’t expect us to put our health at risk in the process! You see, although our water is processed it is far from pure. In fact, sometimes it contains many different toxins, chemicals, pesticides and organic material that may jeopardize our health, even if it is just absorbed by our skin in the shower.

When water arrives at our homes from the public water supply, it already has lived a long life and seen many things. After undergoing a series of filtration processes during which solid material settles and is separated out, drinking water is commonly treated with chlorine and fluoride. Chlorine is one of the most widely used public-water-supply disinfectants and is used to kill harmful pathogens. Fluoride was once thought to be beneficial because it helped treat dental deficiencies, but now dentists warn against using it in infant formula because it is known to cause discoloration of the teeth, arthritis, bone cancer, osteoporosis, and increase bone fractures.

You know there is chlorine present when you get that funky taste in tap water. In the past it was used to rid our water system of typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery. Today, chlorine is known to cause respiratory complications, according to the American Council of Industrial Hygienist, and when combined with organic material such as decaying leaves, it creates a toxic byproduct called trihalmoethanes (THMs), a known carcinogen.

It is particularly important to filter chlorine in your bathrooms–especially in your shower. When water is heated, the chlorine is more readily released as a gas so when the shower gets nice and steamy, we inhale this toxic gas. Also, hair-stylists say that 50 percent of their clients have chlorine-damaged hair. In addition to hair, skin suffers from chlorine as it is known to heighten the appearance of premature aging. Installing a filter on your showerhead will help protect your health while persevering the natural beauty of your hair and skin.

The Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for setting the National Primary Drinking Water Standards. The EPA claims that more than 90% of America’s tap water is safe to drink and exceeds drinking water standards; some public water utilities monitor up to 103 contaminants, but the EPA only requires that standards be met for the 80 most harmful toxins and neglects to test for many agricultural and industrial pollutants.

In addition to concerns about chlorine and fluoride in drinking water, there are other pollutants that occur outside the water-treatment plant. The EPA estimates that 20% of lead exposure is from drinking water which is contaminated by old-house plumbing and can cause major neurological damage. Dartmouth University found that arsenic, a known carcinogen, is a common contaminant in New Hampshire, Maine, the Southwest and the Rockies because it enters from the surrounding bedrock. Private residences in these areas with their own wells often have an arsenic problem that goes undetected for a long period of time.

If you are interested in purchasing a more comprehensive filter system than just a showerhead, consider carbon filters, which target contaminants that cause unusual odors and tastes, such as chlorine. There are several types of carbon filters–

• Point of Entry filter: attached where the water supply enters the house and provides filtration for the entire house.
• Faucet Mounted filter: attached at the faucet-head, providing individual filtration.
• In-line filter: located underneath the sink and attached to the cold water line it leaves the hot water unfiltered.

If you have more serious contamination issues such as arsenic or lead, there are other options. A reverse osmosis system is an all-in-one unit that incorporates filters, membranes, and tanks and is effective at removing inorganic compounds such as nitrates, along with sediment and unusual odors and tastes. This system tends to be expensive to install and costly to repair. Another option is a distiller that purifies your water as steam condenses onto distillers and then cools and drips into a separate container, leaving impurities behind. This unit can be expensive to install and maintain and requires electricity to run. For arsenic problems, a specialized filtration system is required.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said it best in Wind, Sand and Stars (1939), “Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.”

Authored By Maura Yates

Online University has published 50 Simple Techniques that Will Increase Your Gas Mileage

Here is a tip from Darrell at A Garden In The Desert:

It’s HOT here in the desert right now, and about the only thing that will grow well in your garden are weeds. As this is unacceptable to most of us, the least amount of weeds in your garden the better off you are. Here is an inexpensive way to control weeds.

Most products on the market are not organic and contain harmful chemical residue. Vinegar is acetic in nature and will kill most simple weeds. For most applications you should use a 5% concentration meaning 95% water and 5% vinegar. You can use a stronger mixture of 15, 20, and 25% concentrations. All vinegar causes weeds to turn brown within 24 hours.

Read More…

Urban Garden Casual has a great article about growing your own pineapples.

Based upon what they say, I think it should be possible. It’s interesting that you water it by spraying water on the leaves, not the soil.

A new San Francisco company named One Blog Off The Grid (1BOG) is using bulk purchasing to drive down the cost of solar power for SF homeowners. 1BOG’s goal is to help cut the price of solar installations in half. Their strategy is to get an organized group of homeowners in a neighborhood to all go for it together.

“People don’t want to be the first one on their street to install solar, to go through the permitting process, etc.,” she says. “So we identify others who are interested so you don’t feel alone. There is a level of comfort that we bring.”

Read More…

How would you like to help the environment and make some easy money while doing it?

Almost everyone has at least one old cellphone laying around. We all know that we shouldn’t just throw them in the trash. A company called PaceButler Corporation will buy your old cellphone:

http://www.pacebutler.com/cell.cfm

I like pedestrian-friendly places (don’t we all?)

I have fond memories of strolling Koenigstrasse in Stuttgart, window-shopping, people-watching, and buying meals from street vendors. In London I have been know to spend the day strolling from Covent Garden to the West End.

I found this cool site:

http://www.walkscore.com/

Walkscore not only can tell you the walkability score of any address (Mine is 26 out of 100 – low but not the worst either). It also does a mashup with Google maps to show you the shops and restaurants within walking distance .

Pretty cool. Give it a try!

What can you grow in Arizona? When should you plant it!

Our climate here is so different that conventional wisdom does not apply.

Greg Peterson and Matt Suhr have published a planting and harvest calendar specifically for our desert urban farms.

In it you will find 76 different fruits and vegetables you can grow in Arizona

There is a new resource coming soon: Green Map

Green Map System energizes a diverse global movement of local mapmaking teams charting their community’s natural, cultural and green living resources with universal icons and adaptable multi-lingual resources.

No, it’s not what we call California after it slips into the ocean.

It’s a salt-loving plat that may hold the answer to a lot of our problems. I read about it on 12 Degrees of Freedom:

A so-called halophyte, or salt-loving plant, the briny succulent thrives in hellish heat and pitiful soil on little more than a regular dousing of ocean water. Several countries are experimenting with salicornia and other saltwater-tolerant species as sources of food. Known in some restaurants as sea asparagus, salicornia can be eaten fresh or steamed, squeezed into cooking oil or ground into high-protein meal.

Salicornia has another nifty quality: It can be converted into biofuel. And, unlike grain-based ethanol, it doesn’t need rain or prime farmland, and it doesn’t distort global food markets. NASA has estimated that halophytes planted over an area the size of the Sahara Desert could supply more than 90% of the world’s energy needs.