What’s your Earthscore? This 36 page, $5 guide is a great read to help you determine what your impact on the environment is. It does this by asking you questions about 14 areas such as energy usage, transportation, and consumerism and assigns impact and action points. Along the way it gives great tidbits of information about these different areas to help you understand what actions you take can hurt or help the environment. A lot of the tips were very helpful to me. In the end you fill out a chart and come up with a final score of your impacts and actions. It’s meant to give you an idea on areas you can improve on and not to tell you how many Earths your using or how bad you are. The author encourages you to take the Earthscore again after a year to see how you’re doing after the initial audit. I only tried it out for the first time a month or so ago so it’ll be interesting to see how I do in a year. The ultimate goal of this guide is to help people become more aware of how they live and how that affects the environment.

If you want to get a copy of this book the only place you’ll find in Arizona is The Student Book center on College just north of the ASU campus. You can also buy it online at Amazon.com or from the publisher Morning Sun Press. The publisher offers discounts if you buy in volume for a class.

CFLs use up to 75% less energy then a standard incandescent light bulb and last about 10 times longer. Over the past few years my wife and I have switched out must of the incandescents for CFLs and are quite happy with the result. Apparently quite a few people aren’t happy with the light they put out and with the short warm up time they need to reach full brightness. I don’t mind the light at all, but will admit it’s not quite as nice as light from an incandescent. As far as the warm up time that doesn’t bother me at all. Check out this story over at NPR’s Marketplace about CFLs and why some people don’t like them and some advances that are making CFLs better. HERE

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. House for the third time in more than a year approved new taxes on the oil industry to pay for incentives for renewable energy and efficiency.The $18.1 billion measure, versions of which have been rejected twice by the Senate, would remove a $13.6 billion tax credit from the world’s five biggest public oil companies, and impose a $4.5 billion tax on oil and gas companies operating abroad. Money from the policy changes would promote wind and solar power and offer incentives for energy savings technology.

Bloomberg Article Here

For one, the new store taps more local suppliers like Tonopah Rob, who produces locally grown lettuces, baby cabbages, beets, turnips and watermelon radishes, said Chris Petroulakis, Whole Foods regional produce coordinator.And Petroulakis found French Kiss melons from a Yuma farm family, the only ones with the seeds for the extra juicy variety, he said.

Article at East Vally Tribune

Who doesn’t love taking a dip!? Maybe you like to take a refreshing swim in the backyard or or perhaps a nice relaxing bath before bed. Ever wonder which uses more water a year? This is my totally unscientific battle of Bath VS Pool! In this battle we’ll figure out on average which of these uses the most amount of water a year here in the desert.

After poking around the internet very unscientifically I found that most sites say the average size bath is 40 – 60 gallons (1/2 filled) and that the average sized residential swimming pool holds around 20,000 gallons.

Lets assume the pool is already filled and not count the 20,000 gallons it took to fill it the first time. Being that it’s so hot and dry here a pool loses almost it’s entire volume of water a year to evaporation. Not looking good for Pool because that’s 20,000 gallons of water a year so far.

The battle isn’t over yet though because bath likes to slow down and unwind every night which means bath is using 50 gallons of water a night times 365 days a year equals a whopping 18250 gallons! Uh oh, all of a sudden it’s a tight contest.

I don’t know, do we have a winer here? Bath wins by a slight 1,750 gallons, but since this isn’t very precise.

Winner: Bath

Considering we should all bathe and having a pool is a luxury it was a unfair contest to start. I was curious how many gallons of water each might take a year, so I found out and thought I’d share. I’d probably say not having a pool would be best and instead head down to the local community or public pool. If you do have one installing a pool cover significantly reduces the amount of water that evaporates especially in the summer. You also don’t need to use as many chemicals if all your water isn’t evaporating.

As far as baths you can take fewer of them or substitute in a shower with a low flow shower head.

Here’s some water saving tips from the Arizona Department of Water Resources.