Turn Off Your Gadgets Easily

Having moved to the US I am still surprised by the lack of power switches on wall sockets. When the wall sockets have power strips attached, the strips usually have a power switch, but often they’re located on the floor or behind a set of drawers.

This Energy Saver Bar has a handy foot switch for turning off the power strip without that awkward bending down or hunting around. For around $30 (€19.95) it’s available from Proidee.

[Via: OhGizmo]

Save $100 Per Year with A New Fridge

I’m not one for throwing out products you already have for more eco-friendly ones (like a guy I knew who threw out a perfectly good table to buy a recycled one as he felt it made him look better). However sometimes it can be worth it, if the products you have are harmful, or they’re very energy inefficient.

Energy efficiency is sometimes a hard thing to achieve for a eco-minded person. Is it better to throw out an old refrigerator to buy an energy efficient one? What about the energy that is used to create the new fridge, will using it make up for the amount your old one wasted?

Well now you can have help to work this out, at least in part. The US Department of Energy has a calculator so you can determine how much energy your fridge consumes, and how much energy & money you can save by opting for a new Energy Star model (Energy Star fridges must adhere to even stricter criteria starting April 28).

The calculator allows you to input how much you pay for electricity and the model of your current fridge. If you don’t know this, don’t worry you can work it out based on approx year made, size and configuration. If you have an old fridge, why not give it a try?

If everyone who purchases a new refrigerator in 2008 in the US chooses a model that meets the new ENERGY STAR criteria instead of a non-qualified model, consumers will save enough energy each year to:

• Light every household in Washington, D.C. for over 20 months.
• Power an ENERGY STAR qualified 32” high definition LCD screen television for 640,000 years of non-stop viewing.
• Launch the space shuttle into orbit 298 times.
• Equal the amount of energy generated by burning 25million gallons of gasoline.

Recycling your old fridge:

• Buys you coffee for nearly 80 days!
• Saves enough energy to light ten 13-watt ENERGY STAR qualified light bulbs, one after another, for 70 years!
• Saves enough energy this year to freeze ice cubes in a new ENERGY STAR fridge for more than 2 years.

Earth Friendly Dishmate Washing Up Liquid Eco Product Review

Nigel’s Eco Store offered me an alternative to Ecover when it came to environmentally-friendly washing up - Nigel’s Eco Store Earth Friendly Dishmate Washing Up Liquid.

For reasons only known to our landlord, our dishwasher is incredibly difficult to open so it sits there doing nothing looking smug as I scrub the dishes. But I actually don’t mind washing up and have been using Ecover for years so am used to not having many bubbles, and this Dishmate follows suit. I’ve been using the natural grapefruit ‘flavour’ (made from essential oils) but couldn’t smell it really apart from when sticking the bottle up my nose, which I don’t recommend by the way. But smell isn’t something needed when cleaning dishes.

It’s said only 1.5ml of the ‘ultra concentrated’ liquid is needed (500 bowls per bottle!) for a bowl of washing up but unless you measure it out a small squirt is cool enough. It’s a bit more like traditional washing up liquid in that it’s quiet thick and it’s in a similar bottle. And it’s also tricky to squeeze out with one of those pull out tops. The reason I haven’t taken a picture of my own bottle is that I dropped it attempting a big squeeze. To be fair it survived the fall, albeit with a bash on the shoulder.

Earth Friendly Dishmate has a raft of environmental claims, including: neutral PH value, contain no petrochemicals, ammonia, caustic soda, chlorine, phosphates or formaldehyde, are vegan and GM free, formaldehyde free, safe to use with a septic tank and the bottles can be recycled. Presumably ‘where facilities exist’.

But how does it clean? And the answer is perfectly well. It doesn’t offer any fantastic results that amazed me, it did just the job it was asked and did it well. I’ve been using it a while now and it seems to be lasting a long time so am really happy with it. If they could just sort out the opening thingy so I don’t have to squeeze it so much, I’ll be pleased as punch.

A 1.5 litre bottle costs £3.40 from Nigel’s Eco Store and is available in grapefruit, pear and almond. The ingredients are: water, naturally derived coconut oil surfactants (not sodium laurel sulphate), salt and essential oil.

Nalgene Plastic Water Bottles Eco Product Review

Nalgene sent me a lot of their bottles to test, seven in total. Reusable bottles are a great alternative (we’ve previously looked at SIGG) and these plastic bottles represent many different styles and uses so it was great to test them.

From left to right in the image below we received two 32oz wide mouth HDPE Retro bottles; Oasis Loop Red Top; Loop Top - Sunny Yellow; pink ATB Bottle; OTG bottle; and a Loop top.

As you can see the bottles vary quite a lot. All are extremely durable, resistant to staining, resistant to retaining odors, dishwasher safe (top rack only) and guaranteed leak proof. The wide mouth bottles didn’t really appeal to me, though are much easier for getting ice into them, and can be hand washed easily. The other narrower bottles really have to go in the dishwasher to get properly clean. Our favorite is the OTG bottle that does not leach any taste, is a handy size and very sturdy. It probably looks the best out of them all, and can be opened with one hand.

It’s a tough choice to choose a reusable water bottle these days. Which ones leach, which ones don’t, is plastic reusable OK, or are aluminum or steel bottles better? What is the cost of manufacture compared to “disposable” plastic bottles? I think it comes down to a personal choice, and depends what you use them for - the plastic ones are lighter and more ideal for sports (such as fitting in bicycle cages or graduations for measuring energy supplements), whilst I think for walking/hiking the metal ones are perhaps sturdier. For day-to-day work and the like then pretty much pick whatever you’re comfortable with. Nalgene certainly have a massive range of styles, shapes and colors from which to choose and see what you like.

The bottles range from $6 and more and are available in many, many different styles and colors from Nalgene.

How Can You Wear Leather And Be Green? An Interview With Katleen From www.georgette.be

Katleen Baum and her twin sister Liesbet run georgette, an online and real world shop in Antwerp which specialises in animal friendly footwear. The website is a delight. Handily written in English, you navigate with a flea circus and clicking on a link can give you a nice surprise. Oh, and the shoes are great too. Here Katleen spoke to Life Goggles about reconciling veganism with wearing leather.

“Ever since we were kids, we were always fascinated with fashion and shoes. And also with animals. From the moment we realised that the animal we saw in the country, ended up on our dinner plates, we did not want to eat it anymore. So we became vegetarian and evolved to veganism. No biggie, right? But as time progresses, you start to question other things…

Every vegetarian or vegan, some day, will be confronted with the same dilemma: how to reconcile a strict vegetarian-vegan diet with wearing leather?

Especially for fashion and shoe addicts like us, this is quite a hard nut to crack! So at first, you try to ignore the issue. It’s just too hard to find a nice nonleather shoe, right? But your conscience doesn’t leave you alone. So you start to do some research.

Apparently leather, as often stated, is not just a slaughterhouse byproduct, it is a booming industry. Wearing leather shoes contributes to factory farms, slaughterhouses and a lifetime of suffering for the animal. The meat and leather industry is no friend of the environment either. According to a UN report from November ‘06, the livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to global warming and land and water degradation. Animal wastes, antibiotics, hormones, fertilizers and pesticides cause serious water and land pollution.

The process of turning animal skins into leather shares all the environmental destruction of the meat industry: dangerous mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, cyanide-based oils and dyes, chrome and other damaging products are used. Also the tanning is an intensive chemical process that causes toxic waste.

Fashion, for us, should be fun, not cruel, nor harmful…so the decision not to wear leather then came quite easily.

But where to find stylish, high quality shoes without leather? Most nonleather shoes have a bad reputation: they are ‘unfashionable’, from ‘poor quality’ and made with ‘cheap, exploited labour’. Encountering ’stylish’, ‘high quality’ shoes that are ‘completely animal-free’ and ‘handmade in Europe’ seems not so easy!

After a long and unfruitful search for vegan shoes according to our strict demands, we decided to explore the shoe sector ourselves and investigate the possibilities. Many shoe factories believed we were crazy… quality shoes without leather? Impossible!

But after a while we were blessed to meet a few Italian and Spanish, mostly very small and family-run shoe companies who decided to give us a chance. We encountered nonleather materials that have evolved so much: they are soft, durable, absorbing, and gentle to the environment! They had nothing to do with cheap, unbreathing plastic (pvc) that is also highly polluting to the environment. Those new materials could be used for elegant, high quality vegan shoes…and georgette was born!

We named our shoe store after our grandmother Georgette. She always was a true shoe addict. We were always playing dress-up in her fabulous pumps and sandals. Now, she is 80 years old and she still wears ‘over the top’ stiletto-heels in lots of different colours and patterns. Our friends and family were convinced our shoe-obsession was of a genetical kind. Hence the name.

With georgette, we aim to prove that wearing high-quality and chic footwear can easily be combined with a compassionate lifestyle. Together with small family-run companies in Italy and Spain, we work out exclusive collections that are made in the best nonleather and eco-friendly materials, like natural fabrics and luxurious Italian faux leathers. Super-stylish, animal-friendly and 100% sweatshop-free!”

Again the website is www.georgette.be and I can’t wait for them to start doing men’s shoes too.

The Trials Of Being A Fish

The Conserve Our Ocean Legacy campaign is a non-profit, campaign that is an effort to build support for ocean and fish protection in America.

To highlight their campaign they have released an online overfishing game “Ocean Survivor“. It’s designed to draw attention to the perils of overfishing and provide people with an opportunity to sign a petition to make a difference.

Pollution, habitat destruction, mismanagement and overfishing have impoverished ocean resources, and have caused more than 90% of the world’s large fish, including tuna, swordfish and marlin to disappear.

Green World Bags Product Review

Green World Bags make reusable bags that are shaped like US paper grocery bags.

However they’re made from sturdier material (durable, non-woven materials, with reinforced straps and a sturdy liner), that will withstand more than a year of weekly usage and they hold the equivalent of 2-3 plastic bags. This translates to an annual reduction of approximately 700 plastic bags for the average family

Run by sisters Trina Koller and Trudy Balestreri in my new home town of San Diego, Green World Bags set out to make great looking bags that are practical and long lasting. They have a variety of fantastic silk-screen printed designs that make them much more interesting that other bags, but not more expensive.

When they finally wear out, they can be recycled. A four pack only costs $19.95 (or $7.50 each) from Green World Bags.

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