The Mileage Guys

I’m surprised this person hasn’t been on national news.  He’s been on the local news quiet a bit.  He and his business are called “The Mileage Guys” he has created a kit that turns a regular car into a hybrid.  I was going to have the kit put on my car when we got our stimulus package  but my husband has decided against it since there is no guarantee it would work.   This means I will probably be saving up my own money to get it put on my car.  The man put the system on the exact same model car I drive and improved his mileage by 70%.  That would probably turn my 30 MPG car into a 50 MPG car.  I could definitely deal with that.  To learn more about them visit TheMileageGuys.com

The Road Runner Showerhead

Unless your using one of these new shower heads your probably wasting hot water and therefore wasting energy (unless of course your using a solar shower head).

See if this sounds familiar: you stumble in to the bathroom in the morning and turn on the shower. While waiting for it to warm up to “wake up temperature,” you check yourself out in the mirror, pick at your teeth, rub the sleep out of your eyes, pat your head and rub your belly, or do whatever until you can verify that hopping in the shower won’t be like joining the Polar Bear Club. Unless you’ve been standing there with your hand under the tap, waiting for it to get just right, chances are that a precious few drops (or a precious few gallons, depending on your showerhead and how long you’ve been preening) have escaped down the drain.

That phenomenon is a thing of the past with this smart head; when the water temperature reaches 95 degrees (plenty warm for getting started, at least), it automatically shuts off, letting you know that it’s warmed up and ready; you can finish brushing your teeth or gazing at the scale at your leisure, since you aren’t pouring water down your tub’s drain anymore.

A Light bulb that is also a motion sensor

You always hear about how you should change to compact fluorescent lightbulbs and turn out the lights when you leave the room; with something like Motionbulb you can have both at the same time. A slick motion sensor is embedded in the bulb’s housing, turning itself on when it senses motion within 25 feet, and switching off when you leave the room.

Details are a bit sparse on their site, but the CFL-style bulbs do screw directly into conventional light sockets. I don’t think this would work in a regular lamp with a shade because I don’t think it could sense motion with a shade on it but it might be useful in other applications. I read somewhere where someone recommended them to replace outside lights in garages and carports. Unfortunately these are compact fluorescents and not LEDs.

Its a solar car

Its cool, its awsome, its a solar car. It started out as a Taiwanese entry in the Australian World Solar Challenge and was scaled up. “As [our team] has done quite well in the past 10 years at international solar car races — this year ranking second out of more than 50 cars at the WSC — we decided two years ago to broaden our advanced solar technology applications and make a car for the consumer market,” says team leader Ay Herchang. “At a time when carbon emission reduction and fighting global warming are top priorities of governments and people, a wholly solar-powered car would offer a good alternative for the green-minded.”

Consumers take a stand when the governemnt doesn’t

USEPA on occasion has failed to act on the Precautionary Principle. How else might one explain USEPA recommendations that MTBE be used as a gasoline additive for anti-knock and oxygenation properties? During EPA’s decision making process in the late 1970’s, people must have realized that MTBE could create a bad taste in water, that it had high water solubility and could move more quickly in groundwater than other common fuel components, and that the nation’s underground fuel lines and storage tanks were leaking…badly. EPA’s decision to reformulate gasoline with still higher MTBE concentrations, a decision which ultimately cost taxpayers millions, if not billions, in solving drinking water contamination issues, seems anything but cautious.

Two decisions don’t add up to a trend, but it certainly seems that the Precautionary Principle is still not being followed with BisPhenol-A based plastics being sold into the infant care market. The good news is that when better designed consumer choices appear in the marketplace, EPA’s risk management muddling matters less.

As a far-reaching article from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel documents, when it comes to BPA-based plastics, the infant care market is showing signs of having lost patience with industry toxicologists quibbling over “weight of evidence.” The public opinion jury is in on BPA, and parents are buying glass baby bottles. Gerber is offering them. Glass bottle makers are pleased. This consumer movement reminds us of recent reports of large numbers of consumers seeking US made wooden toys for their children’s Christmas presents. Chinese manufacturers and US designers could not be trusted to manage risk, so parents walked out on their offerings.

This information comes from treehugger.com

Recycle old glass ball ornaments

I have a whole bunch of glass Christmas tree ornaments that I have to do something with this year. My husband stored them in the storage building outside and the extreme changes in temperature cracked the enamel on them. There ruined. But they are not useless. One thing you could do with them are break them and make mosaic ornaments or any number of other mosaic things with them.

Another good idea is to buy a box of those clear glass Christmas ornaments that you can put things into. Then take your old ornaments and put them in a bag and beat the crap out of them. You might want to wear gloves and goggled. Break those old ornaments down into a coarse powder. You may need a screen to filter out larger pieces. Then use a funnel to pour the powder into the clear glass ornaments and roll it around inside. Static electricity will cause some of the dust to stick to the inside the ornaments and a large amount of sparkly powder will gather at the bottom as well. Or if you want the entire ornament covered you could pour some thin glue inside the ornament first and roll it around so that the inside is well coated and then add your fine glass powder.