Keep warm without losing your cool. New Energy-saving Apps are here!

It seems like we can do just about anything from our smartphones these days, and monitoring home energy usage is one of them. Although we’ve been playing around with the concept for years, modern technology has gotten to the point where products are not only more intuitively designed, they’re also capable of learning on their own.

Some of the earlier concepts of real-time home energy use monitoring came in the form of Google PowerMeter and Microsoft Hohm in 2009. While both programs were designed to use data from homeowners’ utility companies and display their energy usage in real-time, the platforms were underutilized and Google PowerMeter was discontinued in June 2011, followed by Microsoft Hohm in May 2012.

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Don’t we know GMO?!

Earlier this week, Proposition 37 asked voting Californians to approve new legislation that would require food and beverage manufacturers to notify consumers about the use of genetically modified organisms on the product label.

While the proposition did not pass, it was close, with 46% for the initiative and 54% against. Why didn’t it win? While the issue is complex and polarizing, there are a few attitudes and beliefs discovered in NMI’s most recent Organic Study that shed light on the subject.

Here are a few of those beliefs that may have affected the outcome:

Some consumers say, “I don’t understand it, so I don’t care”
Some consumers fear labeling GMOs would increase the cost of food
Some consumers believe GMOs are necessary to feed the world population

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Another inconvenient truth

From parabens to phthalates, according to this infographic the average woman puts on her body approximately 515 chemicals every day. What about you?

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Want zip antibiotics in your meat? Enter your zip code here to find it.

We don’t want you to eat meat with antibiotics in it, you shouldn’t want to eat meat with antibiotics in it, and Robert Kenner, the director of the occasionally disturbing movie about the commercial food industry, Food, Inc., really does not want you to eat meat with antibiotics in it. Which is why he created this delightful crowd-sourced map that lets you enter your zip code to locate stores, farms, restaurants, and markets where you can get meat that won’t contribute to antibiotic-resistant superbugs that will kill us all.

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Turning a Small Company into Something Big

It’s funny how starting with a simple idea to make little things can grow to where it bumps up against big things.

When I see something like the recent controversy over the US Olympic team uniforms made overseas, I compare it to my experience with my company, Teres Kids. I started my company to make the world’s most comfortable children’s clothing.

The clearest path to super comfortable clothes led to organic cotton, then to made in America, then to superior quality, incredible durability, and – Presto! – outstanding consumer value.

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Are women greener than men?

When it comes to caring for the environment, is there a gender difference between men and women?

A growing body of social science research suggests yes. Women consistently rank values strongly linked to environmental concern — things such as altruism, personal responsibility and empathy — as more important than men do. They also say they see environmentalism as important to protecting themselves and their families.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research found women are less likely than men to support environmental spending cuts and are less sympathetic to business when it comes to environmental regulation. They also have more positive feelings about environmental activists and are concerned about environmental risks to health, especially locally.

Women in industrialized countries are more likely to buy ecologically friendly and organic foods, more likely to recycle and more interested in efficient energy use, according to research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And a survey of research by investigators at Stanford, Ohio State University and the Associated Press found women perceived greater vulnerability to risks and were more willing to pay higher income taxes and gasoline prices to protect the environment.

So where does that leave the dudes?

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How long does it take to decompose? It’s frightening

Look at this the next time you throw something “away”. Where is away anyway?

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What? Students suspended for biking to school.

Via Treehugger

On the second to last day of school, 60 seniors from Kenowa Hills High School in Walker, Michigan, rode their bikes to school. It wasn’t an improvised things either, as they had police escort and did it safely, and even the mayor joined them (handing out donuts, which isn’t exactly health food, but nobody was forced to eat them). But their principal, out of some sort of “I’ll show you who’s boss” primal instinct, decided to reprimand them, calling the bike ride a “prank”, going as far as suspending them from a traditional year’s end celebration at that school.

But calling this a prank is taking the “letter of the law” too far and forgetting the spirit. This wasn’t burning dog poop, exploding toilet and naked kids running around. It was a safe bike ride with adult supervision, something that an untold number of kids do every single school day in many places around the world.

Schools Would be Empty in Amsterdam and Copenhagen…

Now it’s possible that this wasn’t done in the best possible way and that this slowed down traffic some (the school pretends it was terrible, the police escort says it wasn’t a problem — whatever), but it still was an act that should be commended, not punished. This could have been the beginning of a great tradition, and the next ride would have been even better organized, rather than a sour end to some kids’ high-school career.

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What are the Most Sustainable Colleges in America?

From Fast Company

More and more, students seem to be using environmental credentials as a key decision-making factor in deciding where to go college. Which schools are doing it best?

Aspiring higher eduction students have all sorts of reasons for picking a college: academic performance, cost of tuition, and alcohol availability among them. But, according to a new survey, one consideration is rising fast amid all the others: environmental performance.

According to the Princeton Review’s latest “Hopes and Worries” survey, which scans the views of 7,445 college-bound students, 68% now say commitment to sustainability impacts their college choice.

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Garden Activists: Bringing green thumbs to urban blight

From Washington Post

by Emily Wax

“Let’s throw some bombs,” a young woman calls out, waterproof floral purse swinging on her shoulder and Laura Ingalls braids flying behind her as a band of 25 followers cheer, “Cool!”

They rush toward a drab vacant lot in Shaw. Some climb up onto the back of a truck to get better aim at their target. But these bombers aren’t likely to appear on any terrorist list or even get arrested. They’re throwing “seed bombs,” golf-ball-size lumps of mud packed with wildflower seeds, clay and a little bit of compost and water, which they just learned to make at a free seed-bombing workshop for Washington’s guerrilla gardeners.

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