Fuel efficiency

Go easy on the brake and even easier on the gas pedal. Hard stops and fast starts are tough on your car and murder on your gas mileage.

You should aim to drive smoothly and consistently for the best fuel efficiency. In fact, using cruise control can be a great way to maintain optimal speed for increased fuel savings. Another way to find a smooth ride is to plan your trips for off-peak hours and avoid traffic altogether. When tooling around town, don’t play the “hurry up and wait” game. Coast to a stop for red lights. Then take off slowly when the light turns green.

© Barbara for Green World 365, 2012. | Similar Topics: Green Tips, aerodynamics, eco driver, fuel efficiency, saving gas

Looking for a quick, free way to get on the energy conservation bandwagon? Keep your doors closed inside and contain heat to the rooms you’re in.

If you’re family is anything like mine, then you probably tend to congregate in one or two rooms. Keeping the doors closed to rooms that aren’t currently being used can conserve a lot of energy. This will also save green on your home heating bill.

The biggest culprit is the bedrooms. Close the door to your bedrooms during the day and evening when they’re not in use. Just remember to open it up an hour or two before bedtime and it will warm up to a comfortable temperature by the time you’re ready to go to sleep.

The bathroom is another room to pay close attention to. Obviously this room gets used quite frequently, but one doesn’t typically spend too much time inside. For this reason, you might want to keep the door closed — sure, it may be cold while you’re in there, but you will warm right back up as soon as you are out.

Conserving energy is about using only what you need. Lower your heating bill this winter by warming up only the rooms that you are actually using. Isn’t it great when saving money and saving the planet go hand in hand?

© Barbara for Green World 365, 2012. | Similar Topics: Green Tips, conserve heat, energy conservation, heating bills, saving money, winter, winter heating

As eco-minded consumers, it’s easy to focus on the big money items — buying green appliances or building a green kitchen. But it’s the little things we do every day — like eating – that have the most impact on the environment. That’s why cooking green is such an important decision. (...)
Read the rest of Cooking Green: 15 Eco Tips for the Kitchen

© Barbara for Green World 365, 2011. | Similar Topics: Food & Health, Green Tips, appliances, cooking, green appliances, saving energy

Homeowners with a fireplace have a unique set of concerns when it comes to greening up their home heating practices. Fireplace owners, here are two methods you can use to help cut your heating costs and make your fireplace more environmentally friendly.

Use EcoBricks in your existing fireplace or consider installing a brand new Eco-Fire Super-Grate on your fireplace today.

EcoBricks are made up of compressed sawdust and woodchips, which provide you with a much cleaner, much more efficient alternative to using wood in your fireplace. They also burn hotter, last longer and don’t produce as much smoke as ordinary wood does. Visit www.eco-bricks.com for a demonstration and information on where you can find this product in your local area.

Available at www.ecofire.com, the EcoFire Super-Grate acts as sort of an electric fireplace bellow and can help reduce fireplace-related indoor pollution. This works by increasing the temperature of the fire, which burns off more pollutants than normal and in the end, leaves you with a cleaner burning fire and a reduced carbon footprint.

If you give either of these products a try, let us know the results by leaving a comment below.

© Barbara for Green World 365, 2011. | Similar Topics: Green Tips, eco-bricks, fireplace, sawdust, winter heating, wood alternatives

Start with a proper tune-up — including things like spark plugs, oxygen sensors, hoses and belts — for a 4 percent bump in gas savings. Make sure to regularly replace your cars air filter — up to a 10 percent fuel savings. Inflate your tires according to the manufacturer’s instructions — another 3 percent nudge. Always use the correct weight when replacing motor oil. You can also look for the words “Energy Conserving” on the label — energy-conserving products contain special additives to reduce friction. Just these simple car care tips can make your vehicle up to 19% greener.

You can also consider getting a “Green Checkup.” The checkups, championed by the National Automobile Dealers Association, are free at participating dealerships and offer 10 simple service checks that can be done in about an hour.

© Barbara for Green World 365, 2011. | Similar Topics: Green Tips, aerodynamics, eco driver, fuel efficiency, green check up, greenhouse emissions, saving gas

That’s why we’ve done the research for you. The staff at GreeenWorld365.com found and tested five “green” apps that will get you on your way to living a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Who said technology can’t be green?

Don’t have an iPhone. No problem, all of these apps, will also work on your iPod touch.

The Green Lemur: Of all the apps offering green tips, The Green Lemur is our favorite. The tips and trivia are really well-organized making this app easy to navigate. Users can browse by topic, search using keywords or “ask the lemur” to get a tip of the day.

A lot of the tips are simple and might even seem like common sense to those that have been in the green scene for awhile. You’ll find tips such as, choose cards made from recycled paper or buy ebooks instead of paper books. Intermediate users might find a few tips as well, such as Strategically plant deciduous trees to keep your house cool in the summer while letting in sun in the winter.

The Green Lemur had a few bugs — some of the tips were titled incorrectly — but overall it’s the best guide new greenies.

Green Tips: Powered by GreenNexxus, Green Tips is simple and straightforward — and so are the tips. Users are presented with one tip at time, no searching or sorting in this app. You can get a new tip by tapping the refresh button in the upper left corner.

The best feature in this iPhone app is the ability to email a green tip to a friend. Tap the email link in the upper right corner and you’ll be taken to an email page pre-populated with the text for the tip and a link to the GreenNexxus website.

Go Green Free: We like statistics and numbers. That’s pretty much the only reason that Go Green Free makes our list of environmental iPhone apps. This app has a few tips that include nice stats: Eliminate 2 pounds of CO2 by washing your clothes in cold water. Or, if every U.S. home replaced one light bulb with an Energy Star bulb, we’d save enough energy to light 3 million homes for a year.

The downside with Go Green Free is that none of the stats have attribution, so it’s impossible to investigate how accurate or up-to-date they are. Also, you receive ONE tip each time the app is opened. It’s kind of a drag to open and close the app to see new tips.

Get Green: This is another app that offers one tip at a time — in fact, it’s one tip per day! Get Green uses a simple date-based system to provide one eco-friendly tip each day. You can choose to save a tip to your favorites section for viewing later, but you can’t skip ahead. Get Green also offers the option to email a tip to a friend.

Despite the limitations, Get Green has some of the best eco-tips of the bunch. Using statistics — with attribution — Get Green provides the most informative tips with a slightly more in-depth description than most of the other apps.

Good Guide: Unlike the other apps in this category, Good Guide doesn’t offer tips. However, it’s a useful tool for making greener decisions on-the-go. The Good Guide app is a mobile version of the Good Guide website which provides ratings and recommendations for thousands of natural, green and sustainable products. The goal is to offer consumers enough information that they are able to make responsible decisions and vote with their dollars to support the environment.

In addition to writing for GreenWorld365, Barbara Holbrook also writes about the best iPhone apps on the popular iPhone app review site AppCraver.com.

© Barbara for Green World 365, 2011. | Similar Topics: Green Tech, clothes, CO2, Energy Star, Good Guide, green technology, iPhone, iPhone apps

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, if every American home replaced just one light bulb with an Energy Star qualified compact fluorescent light bulb, we would prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs, aren’t just better for the environment, they can save you a lot of money on your electric bills.

While they may cost a little more initially, a single CFL lasts 8-15 times longer than any incandescent bulb, with a lifespan of 6,000 to 15,000 hours. This translates to a savings of approximately $30 in electricity costs over the life of the bulb. The cost savings are compounded by the fact that CFLs virtually eliminate the need to constantly change bulbs.

So much has changed for CFLs over the years. No longer are compact fluorescent bulbs playing second fiddle to traditional light bulbs. These green energy saving bulbs come in a variety of sizes, shapes and light ratings to fit almost any lighting fixture.  CFLs are more stylish, more mainstream and designed to fit seamless into any room’s décor.

Despite all these benefits, some people are reluctant to switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs because of the trace amounts of mercury contained inside. Unlike incandescent bulbs, CFLs must be disposed of properly. When you’re ready to recycle your light bulbs simply drop them off at a local recycling center.

© Barbara for Green World 365, 2011. | Similar Topics: Green Tips, CFL, Energy Star, green energy, light bulbs

Do you love the smell of markers in the morning? Not anymore. There’s a reusable marker on the market that’s removing the toxic smell of traditional whiteboard markers and doing a whole lot more for the environment, too.

Auspen reusable whiteboard markers are non-toxic, recyclable and — if you use whiteboard markers regularly — cheaper over the long haul.

While offices and schools will be attracted to the money savings of reusable whiteboard markers, here at GreenWorld365 we appreciate the eco-friendly aspect of the Auspen kit. Here are the top reasons that switching to Auspens is the greener choice for your whiteboard:

Non-toxic ink has an ultra low odor to reduce indoor toxins

Refillable inks means that Auspens can be used over and over again. In fact, according to the company, the Auspen Starter Kit with 6 pens is equal to approximately 246 disposable markers.

It’s a double-whammy of recycling. The pen barrels are made from recycled aluminum and they can be recycled again at the end of their usefulness.

The folks over at EcoSmart World were kind enough to send GreenWorld365 a set of Auspen Eco-Friendly Whiteboard Markers so that we could test them for ourselves.

I put these reusable markers through a typical work-week and have been truly pleased with the results. The ink is vibrant and exudes smoothly from the tips. The pen nibs have a finer point than many disposable whiteboard markers. If you find the nib breaking down after use, it can even be flipped over for longer wear.

I found it a pleasure to write with these pens, they flowed so nicely over the board that my normal chicken scrawl became slightly more legible. Of course, it might also be that fewer fumes left me free to concentrate on proper handwriting techniques.

All jokes aside, disposable whiteboard markers are a sort of “silent killer” when it comes to waste in offices and schools. They’re an often overlooked detail, but these small details contribute to the larger problem of toxic waste in landfills. Switching to a reusable whiteboard pen is an eco-friendly option for any organization that is trying to reduce their footprint.

At about $70 for the starter kit, Auspens will cost a bit more upfront. But, for those that share the larger vision of lowering indoor pollutants and keeping unnecessary items out of landfills, then the unexpected reward is money saved on office supplies.

© Barbara for Green World 365, 2011. | Similar Topics: Green Products, AusPens, ecosmart World

Don’t get dragged down. Aerodynamics is about more than a sleek, sexy exterior. At highway speeds, up to 50% of engine power is used to combat the effect of aerodynamics. That leaves a lot of room for improvement.

The most obvious fixes are to remove any barriers such as luggage/surf racks when you’re not using them.

Another drag on fuel efficiency is open windows. While negligible at lower speeds, at higher speeds the drag is sufficient to impact gas mileage. Air conditioners will likewise pull down your MPG. Consider just cracking a window and using the air vents when driving at higher speeds.

Fly free and stay green!

© Barbara for Green World 365, 2011. | Similar Topics: Green Tips, aerodynamics, eco driver, fuel efficiency, saving gas

Loose seals around the sides of doors or windows are one of the most common areas where heat escapes. Fortunately, it is also one of the easiest areas of your home to winterize.

Weatherstripping is available at many home improvement stores, and is made in a variety of sizes and colors to match nearly any door or window. Weatherstrips are easy to install and usually inexpensive to purchase.

Even if you’ve done weatherstripping in your home, you may have small cracks left over. For these, consider the use of caulk. Hold a stick of incense near doors and windows to determine if you have any air leaks.

Weatherstripping is one of the simplest ways to go green in the winter because proper insulation will not just lower your heating bills, it means less fossil fuels being used.

Check out these tips from the DIY Network to install your own weatherstripping to stop drafts and seal air leaks in your home.

© Barbara for Green World 365, 2011. | Similar Topics: Green Tips, DIY, energy use, heat loss, home improvement, weatherstripping, winter