This winter has seen a lot of snow for many areas of the country. A couple of weeks ago, there was snow on the ground in every state but Hawaii! With each forecast for additional inches of accumulation, the shelves of hardware and home improvement stores are emptied of snow supplies by people preparing to battle the snow on their own front steps, sidewalks and/or driveways. Snow shovels, salt and snow blowers can all help make these areas passable again – but what’s the greenest way to get rid of the white stuff? View Full Article

Electronic gadgets are all around us, helping us out in innumerable ways. But over time, they stop working, become obsolete, or for whatever reason, we no longer want them. What happens to all those unwanted electronics? Unfortunately, a lot of them end up in the trash. View Full Article

In a previous article, I wrote about how each of our individual “green” actions can have a positive effect on the overall condition of our environment. In November, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a study that quantifies just how much of an impact individual actions can have. The authors examined 17 types of voluntary actions that households could choose to take to decrease their energy use and thus reduce their emissions. How much of a potential impact could reducing household emissions have? View Full Article

Some self-improvement goals seem to lend themselves to black-or-white, all-or-nothing thinking. For example, if you’re interested in getting in shape, maybe you feel you ought to be ready to run a marathon within the next year. Similarly, if you’re interested in going green, sometimes it can feel like the only way you can really make a difference is to stop consuming any natural resources and producing waste—essentially, to go “off the grid.” But setting such ambitious goals can mean View Full Article