Do you own or work for a business that offers promotional products to its clients and prospects? Many of these products are made from cheap plastics and other materials that aren’t so very green. Clients and prospects often view them as cheesy or a waste of money. They come across as being a cheap ploy to gain their business, without much thought or effort put into them. Not exactly the image your company was going for.
That’s where Empire Promotional Products comes in. They offer an entire line of green promotional products, including solar powered products, organic apparel, recycled products and biodegradable products. Giving green gifts to your clients and prospects shows that you care about the world in which you do business. Can you imagine the reaction you’ll get when you hand out hand-crank keychain flashlights or recycled shopping tote bags at your next event or trade show? Everyone will be talking about it, and about your company! Choosing an eco-friendly product just makes sense. It’s better for the environment and improves your image in the eyes of your clients and prospects.
They’ve also got a great article on using green gifts on their blog. This post gives even more information on why you should use eco-friendly promotional products in your business.

I’ve been thinking of getting a new bike for some time now. I was thinking about a regular cruiser-style bike, but then I came across this one. The Xtracycle sport utility bike! The best part is that you can convert a bike you already have using their “Free Radical” kit. I’ve thought about converting my husband’s old mountain bike (which also needs new shifters, brakes, etc.) into one, or looking for an inexpensive cruiser-type bike on Craigslist or Freecycle and converting it.

Treehugger has a great post on the seven best electric scooters. The article covers both production models and prototypes. My personal favorite is the IKOO, primarily because it just looks cool. It’s also one of the more affordable scooters, at less than $1,000.
I would love a scooter, but wouldn’t have much use for one. We don’t do our grocery shopping in the village in which we live, mostly because they carry nothing organic (except one brand of milk) and only two local products (eggs and cheese). So our shopping is done in the next town, which is too far away to take a scooter (about 10 miles, and the only main road that goes there is also the road that all of the huge garbage trucks going to the regional landfill use). So, I have no excuse to get one!

But for those who do, be sure to check out the Treehugger post.

My husband has been trying a hypermiling experiment over the past couple of weeks. For those who are unfamiliar with it, hypermiling is changing the way that you drive to significantly increase your car’s fuel efficiency.

The car in question is a 2006 Volkswagen Jetta PZEV (Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle). My husband commutes 70 miles round trip each day, going over the highest point on the entire highway (over 1800 feet above sea level). We live less than a mile off the highway, and his work is also less than one mile off the highway, so there’s negligible city driving involved.

Prior to hypermiling, he was averaging around 28 mpg. The Jetta is rated at 32 highway, so he was getting just a bit under “normal” (when I drive it, I usually get about 30 mpg).

He has filled the tank twice since starting this experiment (we never let our tank get much below half, it’s much less sticker shock when we do fill up this way). The first time, when he was very, very careful for all but one day, he got 41 miles per gallon. The second time, when he was much less careful (and which also included a trip to the city, 2 hours away and with lots of stop-and-go driving) he still managed 36 mpg. We’re pretty sure if he were to be very strict about coasting (out of gear is best) and we avoided the city driving that he would get closer to 50 mpg!

For more information on hypermiling, check out Hypermiling.com.

GreenIQ offers a quiz that aims to show how truly green you are. It goes beyond the typical carbon footprint questions and tries to determine your overall environmental impact. The questions range from basics that I hope everyone is already doing (such as turning off the water when brushing your teeth) to specifics about electricity and fuel usage. It paints a fairly complete picture of a person’s environmental impact in my opinion.
The site contains more than just the quiz. There’s a blog, news items, resources, and tips. Their blog has some fascinating articles. The most recent post, on reusable shopping bags, was quite interesting, and in general the blog seems to have very high quality content. There are only a few posts as of this writing, but all are of very high quality.

The resources and tips sections have excellent information for greening your life, and increasing your GreenIQ. The tips section in particular offers a room by room green guide to help you get your house in greener condition.

The news section has up to date information on a variety of environmental topics.

EcoFabulous appears to be affiliated with the site, and offers a variety of additional guides on the site, including a green gift guide and some housewarming tips.
FYI - my GreenIQ was 66. I’m curious where others ranked (post in the comments if you care to share).

I’ve been researching home-built wind generators lately. There are tons of plans out there that can point you in the right direction to build your own wind generator for less than a couple hundred bucks.

My husband and I will hopefully be building a new house in the next couple of years (we’re currently looking at a stone/papercrete hybrid). When I say that we’ll be building it, I mean just that - no contractors, no hired help (with the exception of maybe an excavator to dig a foundation trench, but we might just rent one and do it ourselves). Alternative energy is going to be a huge part of our new home (we’re not positive yet whether we’re going to go completely off-grid or have a grid-tie system), but we don’t exactly have a huge budget either! Building wind turbines (I can see three of four small, home-made towers putting out a total of 2-4 kW) is a project that seems totally do-able for just about anyone.

Otherpower.com has a great overview of wind generators. And here are two plans for building your own: the Dragonfly Wind Generator and the Chispito Wind Generator.