There is more and more evidence being discovered every day that the overall temperature of the planet is increasing. Along with this, there is also a lot of well documented evidence that humans are responsible for this climate change. Granted, there could be other factors playing their part, but the overwhelming factor seems to be human-related. There are so many changes taking place because of the worldwide climate change, that there are new things being revealed all the time. One such thing I recently read about that hits close to home is how much water levels have dropped in the Great Lakes in recent years. This may not cause immediate concern for some people, but if you think about the fact that the Great Lakes are the world’s largest supply of freshwater, you might realize how big of an issue it is. There was an excellent article in August’s issue of Popular Science with some very alarming statistics regarding Earth’s state of freshwater. Clean, safe drinking water is not really in abundance on our planet. In fact, there are more than one billion people on Earth that do not currently have easy access to clean drinking water and that figure is expected to at least double in the next 40 years. Also, every year 1.7 million people die from issues related to water shortage problems. I hope everyone realizes what a limited resource fresh water is and we are able to do something to correct this issue before it is too late. 

-LINKS-

NYTimes.com 
Great Lakes 
Popular Science

Hopefully, since last I wrote, you had some time to look into the first two issues concerning the greener building of residential homes. If not, clicking here should give you another shot or at least bring you up to speed. In the Segment II we talked about energy and the quality of air. Now it is time for the other half of the battle; water & waste. 

Did you know that the average American household uses about 400 gallons of water every day?! It’s true; and in some areas, such as the western regions, this amount can be much higher. This amount is pretty staggering and does not need to be nearly this high in many cases. One way to become more efficient concerning your water usage is to do something as simple as upgrading to more water-efficient fixtures around your house. To put things in perspective, If one out of every ten homes in the U.S. upgraded to water-efficient fixtures, doing so could save more than 300 billion gallons and nearly 2 billion dollars annually if everyone were to follow suit! 

If you don’t really care about your water usage, consider this: depleting H2O reservoirs and groundwater aquifers can put water supplies at serious risk. The lower water levels get, the higher concentrations of natural contaminants, like arsenic, radon, or man-made pollutants, such as chemical agricultural wastes are present. This directly effects the overall health of the planet’s environment and its humans (such as yourself) health.

The other main component of residential greenness is something many have heard long ago in grade-school perhaps… The Three R’s. These are: 

                REDUCE 
                REUSE                 
                RECYCLE                 

Let’s break them down a bit and see how they apply to your residence. Reduce the amount and toxicity of trash you discard. This can be accomplished by seeking out and purchasing products and packaging which are durable and as non-toxic as possible. Reusing items in your home is a strong part as well. If you can’t repair something yourself, or don’t want to, try selling or donating it instead of just throwing it away. This is even better than recycling in that the item doesn’t even have to be reprocessed before it can be used again by someone else! Finally, recycling is a great way to incorporate green into the way your home is run. Recycling, which includes composting, kept 79 million tons of debris from landfills and incinerators in the year 2005. Help to keep this number grow even larger! 

Hopefully this third installment has given you a better awareness of green residences and how to move toward them if you haven’t already done so. In the fourth installment of this series, I will be looking into schools and similar facilities. We will discover how these buildings have become more green then in previous years and what developments are in the works to propel this trend for years to come. 

-LINKS-

Greener Buildings Part II 
300 
groundwater aquifers 
incinerators

As many know the florescent light bulb is not the only alternative for incandescent bulbs. The up and coming challenger is the LED light bulb. LED’s started their life as a feedback mechanism for early electronics. They were dim indicators that showed that something was on or that something was happening. Until recently they were never considered a serious challenger to the current incandescent bulb. They have plenty of energy savings but also were not very bright and had issues with natural color light. 

Once upon a time LED was the ugly duckling. Sure it gave off light and used little electricity but not enough for everyday use. Recent research had determined ways to make LED’s much brighter and increase the possibility for home use. Another issue was the ability to give off white light, this issue too has found a solution. Still there are issues that keep them from homes. One of these issues is the price to purchase a LED bulb. Currently due to the complexity of LED bulbs because they use so many LED’s for one light bulb it is expensive to manufacture and that is passed down to the consumer. Currently to buy an LED bulb it costs anywhere from $20 – $80 to get a normal 30 – 60 Watt replacement bulb. Another issue is the angle of the light. LED lights have a very narrow path of light so it makes it difficult to get bulbs to have the wide angle lighting that normal incandescent bulbs. For instance, I have an LED flashlight, and its bright but, it only show the things you point it at so when you point it at the key hole on your car door the light does not show on your door handle. 

On the bright side, pun intended, there are advantages. LED Light bulbs have very low power requirements, and usually use less than half of the power of a comparable brightness Florescent bulb which is four times less than a comparable incandescent bulb. Also due to this efficiency there is very little heat produced. Finally LED lights are expected to last 10 times longer than a compact florescent bulb and 100 times longer than and incandescent bulb. That is quite a bit longer if I do say so myself. 

The future is so bright you gotta wear shades. OLED is the latest popular derivative. Some of the interesting ideas for OLED is to make a thin layer of the OLED material and put it all the way across you celling and give your whole house light or wrap it around a pillar. Some other ideas would be to make a clear version of OLED canvas and place it on your window, so at night you could turn on your window lights and it would light the room similar to daylight. For more news on this you should definitely check out Google News. 

Advantages:
- Low power usage
- Runs cool
- Lasts a very long time

Disadvantages:
- Angle of light
- Price to purchase

-LINKS-

Google News – OLED Lighting

To continue further into the area of Greener Building, I was thinking about all the different types of buildings there are out there. Though many of us commute to larger facilities for work or school, I figured the best area to start is the one that affects the majority; in this case, residential homes. 

There are four major categories to be covered here, and the first is energy and its loss thereof. There is a myriad of things one can do to reduce their energy costs and therefore increase their cash-flow while protecting the environment. Everything from switching to more efficient lightbulbs to remembering to turn off appliances which aren’t being used. I think the most “efficient” way to find out what you can do in your specific domicile is to pay a quick visit to this calculator. 

Another category is the quality of air that you breathe. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it worse? these are important questions that cannot only help save the environment, but your general health as well! Inadequate ventilation, improper maintenance of your home’s HVAC system, and burning things like tobacco can all negatively affect your breathable air. New materials for construction or air purifying systems provide answers for many people. To find out more details on these as well as some good general information, check http://www.epa.gov/iaq/homes/index.html. 

These two categories are half of the battle, but I will touch upon the second half in the third edition of this greener building series. Until then, I urge you to investigate your own home with the information and tools I have provided. You never know what you might find! 

-LINKS-

work 
school 
residential homes 
calculator 
materials 
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/homes/index.html 
find

Invented over 206 years ago, the light bulb has gone through many changes. From its early beginnings with a battery and a carbon short circuit to todays standard of not caring what the heck is in the socket and just knowing that when you flip a switch you will be able to see the remote for the T.V. Oh what luxuries we have come to know. 

As some of our readers may know, Greener Thinking recently had an interview with a local news paper and in it I had described how I had converted my entire house to compact Florescent bulbs. I did not, however, have the opportunity to go into great detail about the advantages and disadvantages. 

One of the problems you will find when using compact florescent bulbs is that they take a few minutes to come to full brightness. Some of the newer ones do not take quite as long. Another issue can be that the compact florescent bulbs are not the same shape as a normal bulb so they do not fit into all of the same places. One of the biggest issues with compact florescent bulbs is that they contain a small amount of mercury. This is an issue because it makes it difficult to dispose of the bulbs. You should definitely look into a recycle outlet that can handle these bulbs when choosing to replace the bulbs in your home. Some companies like GE and Philips only use trace amounts of mercury in the manufacturing of these bulbs. Another issue is that upfront cost will be more. And the biggest drawback of them all is that your “Easy Bake Oven” brownies will never cook with a compact florescent bulb. Due to the fact that there is less energy lost to the friction of electricity, compact florescent bulbs will never get hot enough to cook your tiny brown cakes of goodness. 

There are also reasons why using florescent bulbs is good and very helpful. Where your “Easy Bake Oven” gets the short end of the stick your electricity bill will definitely be happier. An average 60-Watt equivalent bulb uses around 14 Watts of electricity. This means that you can run around four compact florescent bulbs with the same amount of electricity as an incandescent one. Another bonus is that a compact florescent bulb lasts around 10 times longer than the average incandescent. I started the conversion in my house to florescent bulbs about 3 years ago and during that time I have not needed to replaced a single florescent bulb, but I have steadily replaced all of the dead incandescent bulbs until there were no more. It is much nicer not to worry about changing the light bulbs in your house every 8 months or so. One other thing that makes compact florescent bulbs nice is that they are built to fit into the same sockets as a regular bulb. This means you can replace just about any incandescent bulb with a florescent one. They are getting smaller and smaller as time goes by which also makes it easier to fit them into smaller fixtures. Finally, over the life of the bulb you will save money and electricity due to the more efficient design of compact florescent bulbs and that is a win-win for the Greener Thinking philosophy. 

Compact Florescent Bulbs Cheat Sheet 

Pros

• Much less electricity to give off the same amount of light
• Last much longer than regular bulbs
• Fits into the same socket as an Incandescent
• Cheaper over the life of the bulb

Cons:

• Use Mercury
• Take a couple of seconds to get to max brightness
• The shape can sometimes get in the way of smaller fixtures
• The upfront cost is more

As promised we have started our first steps in our inaugural Greener Thinking “Project Appleseed”. For this project we will be planting trees around Michigan taking pictures and posting them on our page. Even though the name is Appleseed, we may or may not plant apple trees. 

There is only one problem we have run into so far. Currently our tree dealer only sells the trees, we will be using, during certain times of the year. As a result we have placed our order for the trees to come on September 15th so expect another update around then. 

We are currently looking at planting small Pines. We eventually plan on planting apple trees as stated in the name of the project, but we would like to get more fully developed trees for that purpose. As for now these trees are a bit expensive so we will be looking around for deals. 

If you have any information on low cost two to three foot tall apple trees please feel free to contact us at GreenerThinking@GreenerThinking.com. We are extremely excited to begin this project and know you will enjoy reading about it.