Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with green

Give the Gift of Green (Planet)

DetonatedManiac — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:31:22 -0800

I am looking for good/effective/interesting environmental charities to donate to as Christmas gifts to family and friends. Working on 2 tracks 1) Charities that do the most actual good 2) charities that would give unique swag or "works-in-their-name". ~$25-$50 per person. In my family we have made a stated effort to reduce our carbon footprint for X-mas and not give too much "stuff" that people don't really need. Since we are all environmentalists I thought donations to a Green Charity in other people's name would be a good gift.

Still, I'm used to giving something tangible to people, especially something unique. Some thoughts I had were:
-Share of stock (and certificate) in a green energy company
-Certificate that says you have saved 1 acre of rain forest, or saved a baby seal, or planted trees as carbon offsets, etc.
-Something else that is unique, or gives an interesting keepsake, or just doing really really good work.

ON THE OTHER HAND. I realize that many charities that indulge in this type of swag marketing are not as effective. Obviously they have to spend some overhead to design, print, distribute the certificate or whatever. And you run the risk that they may be selling the swag more than they are actually doing good work.

So Hive mind, give me some good recommendations that let me give the gift and save the planet at the same time. I am aiming for 5-7 gifts at $25-$50 a pop, but could maybe do one or two bigger gifts for the whole family.

Greener cookware recommendations?

cadge — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:56:17 -0800

Can you recommend greener cookware (preferably not cast iron)? My small set of cookware (one frying pan and two saucepans) is getting really old and worn out, and it's time to replace it all.

I've read up on safer and more environmentally-friendly cookware, but I'm having trouble figuring out what would be the best type to buy. It's a bit overwhelming.

In every writeup (and previous Ask MeFi post), dozens of people recommend cast iron. But I've looked at cast iron cookware in my local shops (a cookware shop and a camping shop) and it's just too heavy for me! It was effort just to pick the smallest pan off the shelf! I'd really like to avoid buying cast iron cookware if I can.

My cooking needs aren't much. Mostly I use the frying pan for simple stir fries, tofu, grilled cheese sandwiches, and browning ground meat. I don't fry eggs. I use the saucepans for vegetables and pasta sauces. I'd like to cook more, but I doubt it'll be anything elaborate. That said, I don't mind investing in higher-quality/higher-price cookware that I can use for years to come.

Is Green Tea Good for You even when it's cold?

lynnie-the-pooh — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:09:17 -0800

I heard Green Tea is extremely good for you. If I drink it cold, will it give me the same benefits as hot green tea? I like the Snapple Green tea drink you can get in a glass bottle and you drink it cold. Thanks, Lynnie-the-pooh

Things to Do and See and Eat on the Western Side of the Green Mountains

foxy_hedgehog — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:47:27 -0800

My sister planned a trip for us to Vermont next weekend, and we are driving up from the Boston area on Friday morning. We will be heading to the western side of the Green Mountains (in between Arlington and Manchester), and I'd love your recommendations for everything and anything in the area and along the way. I did a search for Vermont on the sight, but there doesn't seem to be any info on this specific part of the state.

I'd be particularly keen on recommendations for particular hiking trails in the Green Mountains or elsewhere, other potentially fun outdoor antics, and any strong opinions on local restaurants, roadside attractions, alpaca farms etc. in the area or places to stop or eat or sightsee along the way.

Our likely course will be Route 2 through W. Massachusetts, and then Route 9 through Vermont. And it looks like it is going to be cold.

Thank you!

More info needed about the world of Thin-Film solar panels

thewalrus — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:45:13 -0800

Solar power question: What is the pricing of thin-film solar panels like per watt, compared to standard PV cells? I'm comparing 80W thin-film panels in the 6% efficiency range to 135W, 185W, 210W sized Kyocera panels. Also questions about sourcing from China and thin-film solar manufacturing. I am working on a spreadsheet that calculates the cost of a medium to large sized off grid solar power system.

This is normally based on a standard setup of 135 to 190 or 210W sized Kyocera panels on ground mounts, with MC4 cabling and connectors to junction boxes, with the rest of the setup pretty normal (a lot of 200aH batteries, fat wires, 3000W sine wave inverter, appropriately sized Morningstar charge controller, etc).

I have what I think are the best $ per watt prices for Kyocera or house brand panels from SunElec and a few other USA dealers of solar panels sold by the pallet load. This works out to $2.38 per watt+shipping for their house brand 210W panels or about $2.98 per watt for the more expensive panels, or slightly smaller sizes.

I have followed with interest the news over the past few years about startups like Nanosolar and First Solar claiming to approach the magical $1/watt figure with inexpensive albeit relatively low output thin film panels. If you google "China thin film solar" and look around on Globalsources you will also find several manufactures of thin film panels in China.

The typical large thin film panel appears to be about 1300 x 1100 x 50mm with an output of 70 to 95W, a bit less than half of the output from a similarly sized traditional PV cell. I don't care that the output is less - I care about the $/watt. If it's less, I'll go with thin film.

The problem, and finally the question, is that thin film pricing is more opaque in the marketplace that the highly competitive regular panel market. I can open the websites of eight bookmarked dealers and look at bulk prices for pallet loads of panels easily, but none of them sell thin film. I have seen a lot of PR about the output of many thin film factories going primarily to large (1 megawatt+) grid-feeding solar panel power plants, which is great... But does that mean the average person or small business putting together a more modest solar setup can't get the best pricing? Particularly I'm thinking of costs under $2/watt. Does anyone know what a 80W thin-film panel is supposed to cost, FOB China, or have links to dealers in the USA that sell them?

Reference links:

SunElec, dealer of regular panels

More on China thin-film solar manufacturing and sources

Globalsources.com product listing of thin-film panels made in China, 30W to 90W size range

Are My Green Cookies Going to Kill Me?

RedEmma — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:54:06 -0800

What turned my cookies green? I just baked some sunflower butter cookies, and after cooling, the insides turned a green a few shades darker than this page. I adapted a peanut butter cookie recipe: included the sunflower seed butter (which has a few seeds in it), margarine, flour, baking soda, sugar, salt and one egg. When they first came out, they looked normal inside, though they were more cakey than crispy. By two hours later, any part of the cookie not exposed to air turned a deep shade of green. I have eaten three with no apparent ill-effects, though I do have a funny taste in my mouth which may be entirely psychosomatic. I do not believe that anyone in the house wants me dead.

WTF?

Installing geo thermal in an old house with boiler?

idyllhands — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:07:09 -0800

Installing geo thermal in an old house with boiler? I am considering buying an old (1910s) house with a boiler and radiators installed. I was thinking it would be great to convert it to run off of geothermal. How difficult/expensive would this be? I live in Kansas, so we need good heating as well as cooling for summer. I was hoping to accomplish both with a geothermal system.

How to long until we hit 1.21 gigawatts?

advicepig — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:03:57 -0800

How can we present instantaneous stats on our energy consumption and generation in a site with a windmill and possibly other forms of energy generation? We have a number of sites where we're going to install windmills, solar, and other green bits. We'd like to have the meters attached to these sites continuously report how much energy they are drawing from the grid, putting on the grid, and how much is being generated by each device.

We were using a meter that I'll choose not to slander here. According to spec, we should be able to get this data, but we found its serial modbus connection to be lacking. Ideally, the equipment on site would be internet connected and not rely on a server at the site, but relay data to a central server under our control.

Have 125 romance novels. What can I BUILD them into?

Quarter Pincher — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:47:53 -0800

RedGreenShowFilter: I've got a bunch of crisp paperback romance novels I've scavenged from dumpsters around town, and I'd rather turn them into something than read or try selling them. What can I build using them? I'm thinking clear box tape instead of duct, so the corny covers will still be visible. Bonus points for something handy. There's about 125 of them, at 4.25" x 6.25 " x (varying thickness, avg .75"). I can get hundreds more at local used book shops for less than $.50 each.

No idea too crazy, as long as it's feasible with 125 books, or more within reason.

That pretty much eliminates a giant Gundam, alas.

Looking for old 90's mac/pc game involving a green haunted house...

frankie_stubbs — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:38:36 -0800

Looking for old 90's mac/pc game involving a green haunted house... The cover had a greenish haunted mansion on it and the object of the game was to go through the house and find clues to escape. You open random doors, talk to random creepy people, and play "educational" puzzle games. I remember beating it only once and I think the way out was through a fire escape type thing? I know if I see the title I will recognize it...I recall it being fairly long (meaning about 4 words or more), may have had a name in it, and for some reason, the word "spooky" and "mansion" comes to mind. And, I believe it was an educational game...

However, I looked up many other games and know that it isn't any of the following:

Spooky Mansion
Haunted Hotel
7th Guest
Transylvania
11th Hour
Phantasmagoria
Haunted House Quest

Help our printing to go green!

melissam — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:09:57 -0800

How can I make my non-profit's printing more green? We've been using a company that rhymes with Bovineright Dints, but we want to go greener and frankly their customer service is abominable. As it's a non-profit, we don't exactly have a ton to shell out in terms of money, so I need something that is priced reasonably. Our last print job was several thousand color postcards and cards for an event, but sometimes we do smaller print jobs of 100 or so for sub-programs. I have already started getting price quotes, since my end goal is a report on how much it would cost our organization to use green printing.

Does anyone have any good tips or experiences that might help this project be a success?

Can I recycle a broken hairdryer?

Kirn — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:43:13 -0800

I have a broken hair dryer. Can I recycle it? I live in Brighton, UK - I can't find anything on the local council website about recycling this type of item. Do I just bin it? Thanks!

What are the chances of getting a green card back?

msali — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:14:07 -0800

Several years ago a friend willingly surrendered his Permanent Resident Alien card in the United States. Now he wants it back. What are his options? This friend spent most of his life in the United States, but his family decided to return to Brazil for him to attend high school. He returned to the States three years later to attend college, but he never completed his degree. He returned to Brazil, and willfully surrendered his green card in 2004, because he knew that he was not going to be living in the States anymore, nor would he be visiting often.
....Until now. The boy has seen the light, and wants desperately to return to the States and finish his degree. In fact, he is here right now, on a regular old tourist visa. Currently, he is pursuing an I-20 student visa, but is also researching the possibility of recovering his permanent resident alien status. Can anyone tell me if this is possible, and perhaps provide me with a few resources?

Camping in Green Bay, WI area

zzazazz — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 06:19:42 -0800

Going to be in Wisconsin this weekend around the Green Bay area. Can anyone suggest a good campground around there? We are going to be tent camping but would like a campground that has a shower since we are road tripping.

What kind of bird was this unfortunate creature which was killed by my cat? Green/olive feathers with a white/black spotted breast.

h00py — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:44:17 -0800

My cat killed a bird which I was unable to identify and I'm wondering what it was. It had a greenish/olivish tinge to its feathers but its breast and underside was white with black spots. Its beak was similar to a doves. This poor bird somehow managed to find its way onto my balcony at night so my initial thought was that it was a nocturnal bird that somehow got lost, but it didn't really look anything like what I've always imagined night birds to look like (my knowledge of such is Extremely Limited) so I'm thinking that perhaps it wasn't a night bird, it was a day bird of some kind which just, very unluckily, fell out of its night time perch and ended up on my balcony where my incredibly quick cat decided to leap upon it and kill before I had a chance to do anything! I'm in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. I've done a quick google search for birds but alas, my google searching skills are pathetic and I wasn't able to narrow my search down far enough to get any meaningful results. If anyone could help, it would be appreciated.

Extending digital camera battery life

devnull — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:24:24 -0800

Should I keep my camera turned on to save electricity? I have a newish compact digital camera with a 3x optical zoom lens. It's small enough that I actually carry it around and use it.

When I turn the camera on, the lens extends and the screen comes on.

Sometimes when I take a few photos I worry that leaving the camera switched on is wasting electricity and will wear the battery down.

But turning off the camera will cause the lens to enter the body again, using electricity. When I want to take a photo again, the lens must extend again to get back to where I was.

How long could a camera be left on before the energy from retracting and extending the lens, as well as the energy to run the camera, is more than the energy to turn the camera off and on again?

(I realise this question is camera specific, but I'm looking for a rule of thumb - thanks!)

Help me obtain yummy, convenient New Mexico chiles along the I-5 corridor!

bunji — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:16:29 -0800

Help me obtain yummy, convenient frozen New Mexico chiles along the I-5 corridor! I've always kept tubs of chopped, frozen green chiles (such as the Bueno Foods or Albuquerque Tortilla Co. brand) for quick n' easy year-round use, but cannot find them anywhere near Seattle (mail-order shipping is outrageous, like $50 for six.)

However, this weekend I'm returning from the Bay Area along I-5, so if anyone knows where to buy some along the way, I would be delighted. And if anyone does know where to find them in the Seattle area, you would be my absolute hero!

Help me find websites that trade or sell gently used cosmetics.

scazza — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:06:08 -0800

Help me find websites that trade or sell gently used cosmetics. Found this thread from 2006; is there anything other than Makeup Alley? Ebay is not the best. I'm looking for a specific very expensive moisturizer. I saw that Makeup Alley has some bad reviews of this product and I wonder what those people did with what they had left. I'm not worried about sanitary issues, this has a very sanitary container.

Thank you!

How Green is your Email?

SpiffyRob — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:17:36 -0800

Can one quantify the carbon footprint of email? Perhaps I'm grasping at straws, but I'd love it if there was a simple way to quantify the carbon footprint of emails, given the size of the email and the number of recipients. There's been some discussion of this recently, but it's either been too general or focused on spam.

Full disclosure: I've found that my company has a nasty habit of sending internal memos as PDFs or .docs or images, when the information could easily be conveyed through plain text. Today, after seeing a 591K email going out to everyone in the building to celebrate Earth Day, I was hoping to politely point out the impact this has, and suggest that there may be a better way.

I'm thinking this would be most easily approached in terms of electricity used by the server to send these out, but would be curious if there are any other ideas. What little I know about email servers is irrelevant as soon as electricity use comes into play, so I appreciate baby steps where necessary. Thanks in advance.

Ok, so you have hot rocks. Now what?

bitter-girl.com — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:56:42 -0800

This weekend, I saw a green renovation show that used a large amount of gravel in the basement to hold heat gathered from a solar-collecting area in the roof. My dad, a builder, says this method doesn't work well. Help me understand if someone has devised a "better mousetrap" or if this is just something that has never worked and is being done for greenwashing on TV... The premise: attic space with solar glass panels in the roof (which are exceptionally clear and transmit the most UV rays through) also features double-insulated windows on the inside wall to let light in. Space heats up, presumably like a big solar cooker, and using a 12" PVC tube + small fan, the heat is transmitted to a large, concrete-block-walled room in the basement filled with a few tons of gravel.

Show host says the heat from the attic space warms the rocks, whose thermal mass then distributes the heat for up to 48 hrs. But HOW?

My dad's a carpenter, and worked for a gravel company in the 70s. He said he's seen this done before but it's not very effective.

Effective/efficient are two different things... presuming the heat makes it down and warms up the rocks, sure, they'll stay warm for a while, but what's making my head hurt is HOW can this heat be used to warm up the rest of the house? Even as an adjunct heat source, it just seems as if you'd have a nice warm roomful of rocks in the basement and not any real effect elsewhere, no?

I'm interested in building a straw bale house with an insulated foundation someday and am wondering if putting a system like this would help warm the area under the first floor, but can't quite wrap my head around how this works, or would work best... thanks!

green roth IRAs du jour

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:52:30 -0800

What are some environmentally and socially concious mutual funds that I should be switching my $2k roth IRA to? Since Washington Mutual is switching to Chase, if I figure this out before 4/20, I don't have to pay the $75 transfer fee, so now's the time!

Disherwasher vs. hand washing

markcmyers — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:18:25 -0800

Dishwasher vs. hand washing. Assuming we run the dishwasher only when it's full, which method uses less water and fuel?

Is an energy audit worth it?

walla — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:12:26 -0800

Should I get a home energy audit? This article says old houses use up to 50% more energy than new houses!!! Our house was built in the 1880s, and it's big enough (around 3000 sq. ft.) for waste to matter. We also live in Chicagoland, so we use a lot of heat. Our utility companies don't offer free audits, so getting one could cost several hundred dollars. Has anyone actually saved money because of changes recommended by an energy auditor?

New industrial architecture

lou — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:28:49 -0800

Looking for examples of creative, modern industrial architecture. When I think industrial buildings, I (and probably most people) imagine gigantic bland boxes, tens or hundreds of thousands square feet large surrounded by parking lots. But it doesn't always have to be that way, right? Zaha Hadid's BMW Central Building in Leipzig comes to mind, but even then, it's just a small piece in a collection of otherwise typical box warehouses.

What else is out there? I'd really like to see:
- Green - I'm thinking along the lines of LEED certification, or some kind of production in green materials.
- Industrial - light or heavy. Blue collar work environments. Nothing that's primarily office space.
- Mixed-use? If you can mix office, retail and residences, is it possible to mix industrial? Perhaps smaller industrial spaces? Does this even exist?
- On a similar vein, high-density is a bonus.
- The exterior environment is really important- It's not just the architecture that should be compelling but also the landscaping.

Alright, now please educate me!

How do I build a hand cranked projector?

tealeaf522 — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:51:28 -0800

How do I build a hand cranked projector? I'd like to build (as easy as possible!) a hand cranked projector to show a simple 30-second film (no sound). It's for a Green project so I'm trying to use no electricity to show the film(s) and I think it would be fun if it used something like bike pedals or some such to crank away. I can't seem to find anything online like this...any suggestions?