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Archive for April, 2009
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
April has felt like tornado season as Earth Day, Spring, and nine guests have come and gone through my apartment. Since my apartment is already dirty, that makes it the perfect time to make my Earth Day green change and “green clean” instead of “spring clean”. As I tasked myself to research the best ways that I could green clean, every tip surprisingly made me think, “wow, that is so cheap and doable!” To round out a month of green blogging, I wanted to provide you with my five favorite tips on how you too can green clean.
1. Clean your entire home with only six basic ingredients
Almost every website I visited used the following ingredients to clean everything from toilets to carpets to ovens:
• distilled vinegar
• baking soda or borax
• castile or eco-friendly soap
• oxygen bleach powder or hydrogen peroxide
• water
• antiseptic essential oils, such as cinnamon, clove, lavender, and lemon
Thedailygreen.com, whose mission is to show how going green is relevant to everyone, can give you the ingredient combination for your cleaning needs. My favorite combination chases ½ cup of baking soda down a drain with ½ cup of vinegar, covers tightly, and then flushes one gallon of boiling water down the drain to unclog a post-guest drain. And it costs approximately the same as any traditional cleaning product.
Best of all, according to Seventh Generation, if every U.S. household used a homemade green cleaner instead of one 32-oz. bottle of petroleum-based all purpose cleaners, we would use 6800 fewer barrels of oil . I’d say that is one small step for vinegar and one large step for “household kind.”
2. Recycle your paper and old clothes into cleaning devices
Why not look to that hoard of newspapers and clothes you don’t wear anymore to help mop up the grime? Cotton t-shirts are easy to rip into the perfect size reusable cleaning rag. Additionally, most researchers agree that the large pile of newspapers amassing in the corner is ideal for cleaning windows and glass objects before being recycled.
3. Recycle unwanted electronics – they contain precious metals
As I mentioned in my previous post on mobile phones, in a 1.2 billion global mobile phone market, 60% of all purchases replace existing cell phones – while only 1% of them are recycled.
A cell phone contains 14% copper by weight and also contains gold, silver, and about one cent’s worth of platinum. I would not throw away a bracelet if it contained those elements, so why discard a drawer full of mobile phones?
E-cycle these items, just don’t dispose of them!
4. Plant one houseplant per 100 square feet of living area
The EPA estimates that indoor air is 2 to 10 times more polluted than outdoor air due to the synthetic materials in much of our household appliances, accessories, and cleaning products. A NASA study of 15 common houseplants found that they could help remove toxins from the air. Although the EPA did not find any evidence that houseplants could remove significant quantities of indoor pollutants, outside of allergies, what is the harm in trying? Plants that might remove home toxins are spider plants, gerbera daisies, chrysanthemums, peace lilies and bamboo.
And let’s face it: green just looks good in a home!
5. Fresh air and weatherproofing is an energy saving combination
According to The Global Warming Survival Handbook, the average US home creates twice the CO2 of a car in one year. That is 22,000 lbs. Taking advantage of warm weather to increase my household’s energy efficiency could also decrease my energy bill by 20-30%. And it all starts with spring cleaning!
Weather proofing windows with “low-e” coasting, blocks heat and UV rays and can lower energy consumption by 20-30%. Additionally, the natural light that longer days provide, enable me to finally change traditional light bulbs to fluorescent ones, reducing lighting energy consumption by 80%.
Wow! My Earth Day resolution poses a lot to tackle! But as a Chinese proverb states “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” It’s time to start walking!
Tags: community development, energy efficiency, environmental sustainability, green banking, ShoreBank, spring cleaning, triple bottom line
Posted in Green Collar | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
To celebrate Earth Day tomorrow I think I will get out my bike. A little exercise, seeing the city and having some fun all sound great. And I have the Active Transportation Alliance to thank! ShoreBank awards an annual Green Neighbor Award to an organization that has had outstanding impact in creating more sustainable practices. We hope that you will be as inspired by this year’s award recipient, Active Transportation Alliance, as I have been.
Two years ago I was talked into participating in Bike the Drive, an annual event run by the Active Transportation Alliance. I didn’t know what the event was – and when I started to get details I was not encouraged. I would have to get up very, very early. And then I would go biking on Lake Shore Drive, which would be closed to cars. I hadn’t been on a bike in years. I didn’t even own one. (I thought that last fact would get me out of the event, but it turns out you can rent bikes…) With no excuses left and a bunch of my friends participating, I was in.
Photo Courtesy of Active Transportation Alliance
The shock was that I had a blast! Hanging out with my friends was fun – but biking was great. I was outside, I was getting exercise and I was actually going places on wheels without a dirty tailpipe. Two weeks later I bought a bike. And I have been member of the Alliance ever since.
Active Transportation Alliance has been a customer for 11 years, but it’s a relationship deeply rooted in our shared commitment to leaving a smaller footprint and to building stronger, healthier communities. Active Transportation Alliance promotes safe bicycling, walking, and public transportation that is also fun and convenient. While I was introduced about the organization from the “Bike the Drive” – since them I have learned that they advocate for a wide array of practices and legislation that supports low impact, transportation “that is good for the environment and good for us.” Their website is full of great bicycling information and ways to get involved in their efforts.
According to the Urban Transportation Report Card, transportation is responsible for 20-60% of carbon emission in major U.S. cities. And many car trips are made within 2 miles of home. However, if you were to bike a 4 mile return trip instead of driving every day for a year, based upon the Urban Transportation Report Card table below, you would reduce your CO2 emissions by approximately 1591 lbs per year.
CO2 Emissions Per Mile (Pounds)
SUV – 1.47
Car – 1.09
Hybrid Car – 0.42
Bus - 0.41
Subway – 0.24
Bicycle – 0
Walking – 0
My favorite story transportation story comes my fellow ShoreBank blogger Sarah Ewing. When Sarah was living in San Francisco she calculated how long it would take to get to the commuter shuttle stop to Silicon Valley – one option was to walk the entire way, the other was to walk to a bus stop, then wait for the bus to take it to the destination. To her huge surprise, it averaged about the same amount of time. “Sounds good, right? But the real impact came in other ways. By walking 4 miles every day for a year, instead of taking the bus, she saved $45 a month on a bus pass and another $110 by going without a gym membership. In addition to the savings, she used the time saved from skipping the work out to sleep-in an hour longer!. But best of all, she lost 10 lbs and had more fun doing it then she could have imagined—P.S. I promised her that I would spare the details of some of the “wild and crazy adventures” she experienced along her daily walk. .
Now that she lives in Chicago I suspect Sarah will join the Alliance too. Wherever you live you ought to be able to find an organization similar to the Alliance just by clicking here. So let’s celebrate Earth Day by resolving to make a positive impact upon the environment and on our own health, and have fun doing it too.
Happy Earth Day!
Tags: Bike the Drive, community development, Earth Day, green banking, green transportation, ShoreBank
Posted in Community | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
For most of us, weatherization is something we only think about as winter approaches and we head off to our local hardware store to buy caulk, weather-stripping and plastic for our windows. But this Earth Day, there are more reasons than ever to consider weatherizing your home this spring.
With funding for energy efficient improvements a key component to the President’s stimulus plan and a growing pot of funding from local utilities to incent homeowners to reduce energy usage, now couldn’t be a better time to save money on your utility bills and to reduce your carbon footprint.
The Department of Energy is set to soon award billions of dollars to state government agencies and local jurisdictions for energy projects – in my home state, Illinois, the State will receive over $100 million and the City of Chicago will receive tens of millions more. Moreover, our local utilities, ComEd and Peoples Gas, will spend more than $100 million collectively on energy conservation programs, including a significant boost in spend for homeowners’ efforts. In addition, Federal Energy Tax Credits are available for many types of energy saving upgrades.
The combined benefits can be huge. For example, in Chicago, if a homeowner decided to insulate their attic and seal around their window, doors, and vents, and switch to a high efficiency furnace, the combined costs likely would amount to $5,000 for a typical homeowner. The owner, however, would be eligible for $1,100 in rebates from the local gas utility and another $1,000 in federal tax credits. So, the net cost would be only $2,900 (even before receiving other rebates, likely from the stimulus funding); but the potential savings would be upwards of $400-500 annually on their utility bills.
If the homeowner was a participant in our Homeowners Energy Conservation Loan Program, we’d throw-in another $500 voucher towards a new ENERGY STAR rated refrigerator. In total, the rebates, tax credits and voucher would equal 50% or half of the cost of all the measures – while the homeowner gets to keep all of the savings and take satisfaction from knowing the environment is better-off and neighbors have been employed for a worthy cause.
Tags: community development, Energy Tax Credits, green banking, home affordability and stability plan, home ownership, ShoreBank, triple bottom line
Posted in Mortgage Lending | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
The City of Chicago recently released its comprehensive and innovative Chicago Climate Action Plan. Chicago now has a very good baseline of existing emissions and a blueprint for its goals of reducing Chicago’s greenhouse gas emissions to 80% of 1990 levels by 2050. Thanks to the leadership of Mayor Daley and tremendous efforts by the City’s Department of Environment, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and others, such as ShoreBank Corporation board member and former head of the MacArthur Foundation, Adele Simmons, the City now has a clear understanding of what it will take to achieve its ambitious goals.
The steps required to meet the goals are staggering. For instance, the plan calls for retrofitting 400,000 units of housing by 2020. Currently, approximately only 6,000 residences are weatherized annually. This figure should rise substantially given the programs authorized in President Obama’s stimulus package. Even so, the ramp up is considerable.
Interestingly, while the plan offers a great deal of detail on many facets, nowhere does it quantify the expected costs and capital needs for meeting the objectives. Indeed, the capital needs are likely significant. While the exact figures are difficult to calculate since each building will have a different level of capital investment, assuming $7,000 per unit of housing (the estimate used for weatherization costs in the stimulus bill), the housing portion comes to $2.8 billion, and this doesn’t even include the additional costs of more expensive items, such as windows, let alone, higher cost technologies, including geothermal, solar thermal or photovoltaic systems. More likely, given the costs of these items, the capital needs, just for the housing portion (and not including the costs to retrofit the 23,000 commercial buildings), exceeds $4-5 billion.
Such a level of investment would be a huge boost to the region’s economy – indeed, the spending on these retrofits is likely to create tens of thousands of good paying jobs directly, and indirectly support many times that number in the manufacturing, retail and ancillary industries. All told, the investment could support nearly 500,000 jobs regionally. And considering the highest unemployment in 25 years, the dividend on the investment will be an enormous one.
We have seen firsthand how these types of investments impact individuals, families and communities. From the drillers being hired by a geothermal company such as Indie Energy, to the energy raters and installers, active in our Homeowners’ Energy Conservation Loan program, we know that every dollar makes a huge difference reducing energy costs, creating jobs, and protecting the planet, whether its in Chicago, or in any other densely built area of the nation.
To learn more about the Chicago Climate Action Plan’s environmental impact, check out my colleague Karen’s earlier post here.
Tags: Chicago Climate Action Plan, community development, green banking, green building, green jobs, ShoreBank, triple bottom line
Posted in Green Collar | 4 Comments »
