Go Green Orange County

It gets hot here in The OC in the summertime. I noticed that while walking my dog at night, it seems as though the majority of people in our complex run their air conditioning at night. Even though it is summer, it is actually quite nice once the sun goes down but most find it nice to just flip on a switch and let the air run all night which is not only expensive, but also and energy waster as well as running the ac can put out as much as 363 pounds of CO2.

Last weekend, after being tired of the heat, I went down to Lowes and picked up a ceiling fan. Even though I am pretty handy with home improvements, I found it to be very easy to install. After about an hour or so, I was up and running and saving energy in the meantime.

I know how lazy we all can be and using those gas powered lawn mowers seems like an easy solution to keep up the yard but it is far from easy on our environment. Gas lawn mowers pollute up to 10-30 times more than a car. It is estimated that lawn mowers contribute up to 10 percent of our air pollution.

A great way to “go green” and help the environment is to get a push lawn mower. For a person with an average size yard, this alternative is not only a great way to reduce emissions into the atmosphere, but is will also help burn more calories as well. So go get in shape and help save the planet.

GigaOM lust launched a new tech oriented blog called Earth2Tech. For all the tech nerds out there, think techcrunch but with a eco-friendly theme. The site is based out of San Francisco and is devoting their time to really report on the tech industry and their eco-initiatives towards going green.

I think this is a great move for GigaOM. With the tech industry being so revolutionary these days, Earth2Tech will hopefully be at the forefront to really push for companies to move towards sustainability and earth conscious efforts.

Some great features of Earth2Tech is that they focus on not just big companies and their green efforts but on startups as well which will hopefully be a great place to learn of new green businesses getting off the ground.

My good friends over at To Die For Clothing have been doing their part to help promote Going Green by inspiring people to get up and ride a bike. Every few weeks, the entire TDF Crew sends out emails to friends and fans to meet up in Costa Mesa and ride bikes around town. This glorious event has been dubbed “To Bike For” and has been gaining serious momentum amongst the locals.

Living in Orange County, the majority of people take for granted their beloved automobile and the guys at To Die For are really doing their part to promote self reliant energy by riding bikes.

I encourage everyone to take part in the next “To Bike For” and meet some new friends and get some exercise all while helping out the environment. I will be attending as soon as I get a bike.

www.todieforclothing.com

My wife and I have been doing this for a while as a way to cut back on having so many excess plastic bags in our cupboards. A plastic bag can take 1000 years to biodegrade while also emitting harmful greenhouse gasses.

Some grocery stores even offer incentives for using your own grocery bags. Our local Trader Joes gives out raffle tickets everytime we use our own tote bags and gives out drawings for $50 gift certificates each month. Henry’s market gives back 5 cents for each bag a customer brings in that is their own as well.

Seriously, this is one of those things that anyone can do to help the environment as we all show for groceries. Plus, when using your own tote bag, they tend to be stronger than any paper or plastic bag so the chances of having the bag break or bottom fall out are pretty slim.

View Recycled Cotton Canvas Tote Bag in Our Shop