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In an effort to aid people in keeping track of their energy use, Google and several utility companies throughout the U.S., India and Canada are getting together to launch a new program that will bring smart meters and the Google PowerMeter gadget into residences and business. For those of you that are unsure of what a smart meter is, it helps identify electricity consumption in more detail than your average run of the mill meter. It can also communicate that information via a network back to the local utility company for billing purposes. Google PowerMeter has made it possible to view your electric consumption with a secure gadget, the product is still being worked on and with fingers crossed it should be on the market later this year.

With the Google PowerMeter Gadget you will be able to determine how much it costs to leave your T.V. on, what uses the most power in your home and keep track of the energy efficiency within your home.  By keeping track of the energy consumption in your home, you will be able to make more informed decisions on how to become more energy efficient.

Keep your eyes peeled; this new tool should be available soon.

~Wind

Nearly everyone has heard of the repercussions from eating certain types of fish due to the mercury contamination.  How pregnant woman and young children should stay away from fish, as mercury is a neurotoxin.  It attacks and attempts to destroy the nervous system, the spinal cord and the brain.  During the first several years of human life, a child’s brain is developing rapidly; exposure to mercury can inhibit development causing possible mental retardation, cerebral palsy and many other complications.

There are two main contributors to mercury pollution; they are chlorine chemical plants and good ol’ fashioned coal-fired power plants!  The process of extracting chlorine from salt uses huge amounts of mercury each year.  Many of the more modern chlorine plants are using a cleaner technology; however, seven of the older plants continue to use mercury.  There is nearly 200 tons of mercury kept at these plants at all times and nearly every year these plants have admitted to ‘losing’ dozens of tons of mercury during the extracting process.  Where this mercury goes still remains a mystery to both the plant and the Environmental protection agency (EPA)!

Coal is naturally contaminated with mercury and during the burning process 50 tons of mercury is released into the air annually. Pollution control devices could be installed, however, during 2004 the Bush Administration proposed a plan that would put an end to the EPA considering emissions that are produced by coal fire plants to be considered hazardous, and would consider the emissions released to be just your basic average pollutants.  Therefore, power plant emissions are unregulated.

Other sources of mercury emissions are gold production, smelting and cement production.  Recently the EPA is proposing to reduce the mercury emissions from Portland cement kilns, which is a big step towards cleaning up the environment and perhaps making it safe to eat fish again. The fact that the EPA is starting with the cement kilns could mean that maybe it will only be a matter of time before they make their way to coal fired plants.

Spreading the word

~Wind

When we speak about becoming self-sustained, we are speaking about relying solely upon ourselves for all of our needs.  This idea doesn’t just revolve around harvesting our own vegetables, getting “off the grid” or learning to bake our own bread and make our own cheese, it means “all of our needs”. This includes ridding ourselves of the waste that we as humans tend to make.  Sure we can reduce, re-use and recycle, we can burn our garbage, and we can even turn our food waste into compost to feed our gardens, but what about a composting toilet?

A composting toilet is like a little tiny ecosystem that will recycle human excrement. It will actually safely contain the excrement while microorganisms turn it into humus for you to return back to the soil. The composting toilet uses very little water, unlike the toilets that we use now.  A “normal” toilet uses almost 5 gallons of drinking water to every ounce or so of waste, which accounts for over 30% of our household water used only for flushing the toilet.

As long as these “humanure toilets” are operated correctly they can be clean, odor-free, environmentally friendly, provide fertilizer for your garden and use less water.  So, what do you think? Would you go this far to become self-sustained?

~Wind

I have always thought that ants were a very cool species!  Every ant in the colony has it’s own special job, whether it’s workers that gather food and work to insure the survival of the colony, the queen who lays back and spits out babies all day or the males that make sure that the queen does her job (wink, wink), each ant is so busy doing their own “thing” that I really enjoy watching these little guys!

The Leaf Cutter Ants are especially cool. They live in the warmer climates in Central America and are named after the precise way that they cut the leaves from the trees. Oddly enough; they don’t use the leaves as a food source, they grind the leaves and use them a fertilizer for the fungus that they eat. The males in the leaf cutter ant colony are called drones, their particular job is to mate with queen, eat and die.

One species of Leaf Cutter Ants, the Mycocepurus Smithii, has been found recently and consists ONLY of females. They are located in the Amazon and have evolved into a species that reproduces through cloning, as their reproductive organs have almost completely disappeared. There are two very unique circumstances that occur because of the lack of males within the colony.  The lack of males provides the females with more energy to create elaborate forms of ant agriculture, however the down side is that since the colony are all clones of the queen ant, if a virus kills one ant it can just as easily wipe out an entire colony.

So, what this means is that, through evolution, this species can survive without males altogether! hmmm…I wonder who’s going to fix their cars?

~Wind

So, here’s what they don’t tell you…

The Florida Everglades is slowly dying! Development pressures from industry, urban areas and agriculture have destroyed over half of the original Everglades. The sugar cane farms have graciously contributed pollutants from fertilizer run-off into the Everglades ecosystem, poisoning the surrounding environment!

For many years the State of Florida has been working on an Everglades Restoration Project, and last year Gov. Crist finally made a deal with U.S. Sugar Corp, the United States largest cane sugar producer, to purchase 180,000 acres of agricultural land for restoration purposes. However, due to the economic challenges of today, Florida is still trying to secure financing for this deal and U.S. Sugar Corp is taking bids from others in order to sell the land for more agricultural use, instead of trying to preserve it!

That being said, Florida Crystals, the second largest sugar cane producer in the state and also part owner of Domino Sugar, has been fighting Gov. Crist’s deal every chance they get, seeing the deal as an unfair competitive edge. As for the current deal, Florida Crystals Vice President Gaston Cantens said, “We’re adamantly opposed,” citing a land leaseback rate “that is well below market … That is just wrong.” Florida Crystals is also having talks with U.S. Sugar to possibly buy its assets; however, a big portion of the land must be left for agriculture.

So, Domino Sugar can boast all they want of their “Earth Friendly Farming”, but the reality is; they are killing the very earth they claim to be working towards saving!

~Wind

 
Photo Credit: Tatnuck Brook Watershed Association

Happy Earth Day!  Nearly 40 years ago the first Earth Day was formed by the Senator of Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, and nearly 20 million people participated!

There will be many celebrations to honor the Mother Earth around the world on this day; however, if you are unable to participate in any of them, you can participate in our own private celebration at home. This doesn’t mean having an Earth Day party at your house, although, that’s not a bad idea, but just by doing something for the environment around the house to give a tribute to the Earth on her special day!

• Plan a fully organic meal; support your local farmers, if you are able to use the veggies in your garden!
• Plant some herb seeds in pots. By keeping your herbs in pots you’re able to move them around so that they don’t get too much sunlight.
• Change out your incandescent light bulbs to CFL’s. This practice is not only good for the environment, but for your wallet too! CFL’s have gone down a bit in price, they are still a little more expensive than the Incandescent bulbs, but in the long run, they will save on your utility bill!
• Make some homemade household cleaners. This too will save you money and promote a lesser carbon footprint on the environment.
• Change the filters in your a/c, your car and your water system. Keeping the filters clean, enables the equipment that you are using not to overwork itself and it also good for your health.

Have a wonderful Earth Day!

~Wind

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You are What you Eat
How to Grow Herbs all Year Long
10 Steps to Greening Up
Common Household Ingredients for Common Household Cleaners

 
Photo credit: Consumer Reports
And so it begins…the mass production of “environmentally safe” products! But are they really environmentally safe? I read an article today by Greener Design on the Environmental Protection Agency possibly loosening restrictions and allowing some manufacturers to market disinfectants as “environmentally preferable.”

Please forgive my skepticism but what exactly does “environmentally preferable” actually mean? Does this mean that on a scale of 1-10 these products aren’t as harmful as the others? It would be very easy for a consumer that is uneducated in the ways of the environment to be easily persuaded into purchasing a product that they believe is safe for the environment because the product has some misleading label.  When the reality is that the consumer has purchased a product that just isn’t “as bad” for the environment as all the others!

The only way to protect our consumer rights is to educate ourselves with the products that we use and limit the products that we buy. Practice creating your own natural products at home.  Items such as cleaners, clothes, growing our own vegetables and other food products such as eggs, herbs or cheese can be made or grown at home much safer and cheaper than the products that we buy at the store.  When you must by products at the store, do a little research to make sure of what you are buying, it’s important.

~Wind
other related articles
Common Household Ingredients for Common Household Cleaners
Bag Gardening

 
Photo: State of Delaware

There is another species that is on the verge of extinction, and I could not be happier!  Coal fired power plants are slowly fading into history! In the past couple of years, 95 of the proposed coal fired power plants have been either put off or cancelled altogether. This figure counts for nearly half of the total of proposed plants since 2000.

The plants that have been placed on hold are eagerly awaiting word from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), on whether limits will be placed on carbon dioxide emissions, due to the clean air act.  If a cap is put into place, this will inevitably put a halt to the construction of any new coal-fired power plants across the nation! Utility companies know this and are beginning to step back from coal and look to the future with clean, renewable energy!

If off shore wind power were completely developed off the east coast, the windmills could generate enough electricity to replace nearly all coal-fired power plants in the nation, according to Ken Salazar, Secretary of the U.s Department of the Interior. The winds off the ocean could generate 1 million megawatts of power, which is the same amount that 3,000 coal-fired plants could produce. It would take many years to build a fully operating off shore wind system, but now is time to start moving in that direction, before it’s too late.

~Wind

Photo Credit: Thiswaytothe.net
In 1992, it was first proposed by the Government of Canada at an Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, that World Oceans Day should be designated by the United Nations as a time of celebration for the world’s oceans. Unofficially, many organizations have celebrated Worlds Oceans Day on June 8th, as a time to acknowledge our personal connection to oceans.

However, finally, after many years and thousands of petitions, the United Nations has declared it official, that World Oceans Day is June 8th of every year. He have celebrated Earth Day since 1970 and it has taken nearly 40 years for the world to acknowledge the seriousness of the Earth’s degradation and to finally act on the issues.  Let’s hope it doesn’t take that long for us to realize the importance of our oceans and the critical role they play in maintaining the planet’s ecosystems.

~Wind

Florida has a season for everything! We have Hurricane Season, Rainy Season, Foggy Season and yes, we have sea turtle nesting season…and this year it started early!  Sea turtle nesting season normally begins on May 1st and ends on Oct 31, however, this week the officials in St. Johns County have discovered two leatherback turtle nests on the beaches.

These turtles crawl out of the water, make a nest on the beach, lay their eggs and head back for the waters overnight.  Once the hatchlings arrive, they are usually greeting by a host of creatures that would like nothing more than to make them breakfast!  Birds, fish and raccoons are the three top predators for newly hatched leatherback turtles.  Most counties in Florida implement some sort of protection plan for these little turtle babies to ensure their survival until they make it back into the water, once in the ocean, they are on their own!

Since the turtles have started to come early this year, none of the normal beach restrictions have been put into place, therefore, residents and visitors in Florida are urged to reduce the beach front lighting and limit their driving time along the beach at night and during the early morning hours, this will reduce the risk of possibly harming the leatherback turtles.

~Wind