It wasn't that long ago that paper towels were not common. The idea of throwing away a towel after every use has become common place in my own lifetime. I don't know when, but what I can tell you is my grandmother didn't even keep them in the kitchen. If your experience is similar to mine, you probably can't think of a household right now that doesn't have a roll easily accessible around the kitchen counter or under the sink.

We need to change our thinking.

For routine cleaning like wiping down the kitchen counter, you can use a sponge or a kitchen towel. Not only do reusables like this help save trees, they save you money in the end. My preference for cleaning up spills is a microfiber cloth. Microfiber is very absorbent and is available in the big box stores cheap. There is a trick to making microfiber perform like a paper towel, DO NOT use fabric softener when you wash it. In fact, whatever type of cloth you might decide to use will absorb better if you skip the softener.

For windows, my first choice is newspaper if you subscribe. Remember the paper can still be recycled after cleaning windows. If you don't subscribe to a print newspaper, do what I do and use a microfiber cloth. Microfiber works really well. I can clean about 10 windows with one washcloth size towel before it is too wet to do a good job. To avoid lint, don't wash them with other laundry, get enough that you can save up a load of just microfiber rags and dish towels.

On the go, try to minimize your paper towel use too. How many towels does it really take to dry your hands? Try just one or two towels, and use the whole thing out to the edges. You may be surprised at how well they work. In fact, you might find that just one will remove enough "big drips" that your hands will air dry the rest of the way in just a minute or two.

My favorite TV personality, Alton Brown, is always talking about multitaskers in terms of kitchen appliances. This line of thinking applies other places too. Multitasking items help avoid excess production and transportation. This reduces the overall impact on the environment. As an experiment, try keeping a few rags folded neatly next to the paper towels, you may find a dozen ways to avoid using paper and discover what a great multitasker a good cloth rag or towel is.

By the way, I think Kleenex is going the wrong way with their new hand towels. If you washed your hands, then you are removing clean water from your hands. They want you to think that a damp towel might be full of germs or not remove enough moisture to dry another set of hands. I am personally amazed the product even hit the market.

I don't know how old my average reader is, I assume at this point we are all adults. However, being an adult doesn't guarantee that you will remember the oil crunch of the 1970's. You may remember that you were only allowed to pump gas for your car on certain days, if your license plate number was even you could only purchase on an even numbered day and the same for odd plates and days. From what I found on Wikipedia, this was only implimented in 3 states, California was not on the list, but I remember it. Maybe, local legislature adopted the policy, I was too young to pay attention to that type of detail. The reason I bring this up is that a UK government minister has been doing some homework and is predicting another crunch between 2011 and 2015.

More specifically, the U.K. government is predicting the cost of crude oil to double by some point inside that time frame. From the article:

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I recently considered six reports written by groups as wide ranging as UK business leaders, the US military, insurers Lloyds, Kuwait University engineers, the German military and an Australian think tank. Taken as a whole they refer to aging oilfields, oil industry underinvestment, the limited output of unconventional sources such as oil sands, increasing global demand and the possibility of the world being close to peak oil, the geological natural maximum output. The point is, you don't have to believe in peak oil theory to see a coming oil supply crunch. These reports didn't all agree on the issue of peak, but nevertheless pointed to a supply crunch between 2011 and 2015.

... the International Energy Agency is forecasting record world oil demand, and warning that the "era of cheap oil is over."
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I have not seen anything so bold or specific regarding the U.S., however this information is equally important for us. Oil is a natural resource with a limited supply, so this information should be taken as a warning. We need to continue to find better sources of transportation and minimize our use of disposable items and plastics.

Even more importantly, we need to focus on renewable energy, like wind and solar. With an abundance of alternative energy, charging an electric car or truck should become cheap and practical.

To read the original article, follow the related link below.

Making food last is good for your budget and good for the environment. When food doesn't travel as far, it is generally greener or lower impact on the environment. This means every time you make food last longer, there is no transport of the would be replacement.

So how do we make food last? Plastic containers, not the disposable kind are a good start. A great process to keep food from spoiling is to use the freezer. From here I will focus on the freezer option.

How long will the food last in the freezer? According to the Food Safety and Inspection Service, food stored in a freezer set at 0 degrees Fahrenheit will stay safe indefinitely. But that doesn't mean the taste and texture will remain the same. Keep in mind, this means the food remains at 0 or lower until it is prepared for eating.

Here is a guide to how long you can freeze foods before you sacrifice quality. Keep in mind that quality does deteriorate the longer food sits in your freezer, so aim to defrost sooner rather than later.

Bacon: 1 to 2 months
Breads: 2 to 3 months
Casseroles: 2 to 3 months
Cooked beef and pork: 2 to 3 months
Cooked poultry: 4 months
Cookie dough: 3 months
Fruit: 8 to 12 months
Frozen dinners: 3 to 4 months
Hot dogs: 1 to 2 months
Lunch meats: 1 to 2 months
Sausage: 1 to 2 months
Soups and stews: 2 to 3 months
Uncooked chicken (parts): 9 months
Uncooked chicken (whole): 1 year
Uncooked steaks, chops, or roasts: 4 to 12 months
Uncooked ground meat: 3 to 4 months
Vegetables: 8 to 12 months

- Note: Resist the temptation to defrost foods on your countertop. The three safest ways to thaw foods are in your fridge, in cold water, and in the microwave.

- Also: Items will freeze better, forming fewer crystals if they are already very cold before going into the freezer. The best way to accomplish this is at least 4 hours in the fridge before moving them to the freezer. (Thanks Alton Brown! ;) )

I really like this comparison. I can't take credit though, it was used in the article I read about a trend toward Edison's exposed element bulbs in restaurants and other locations looking for a certain ambiance. The problem is that they are energy hogs. If they are truly being used as decoration and not in mass quantities, this might be OK, but the decorations are usually strings of the lights in large quantities.

From another article:

...they hover in groups of two and three. ...they snake through the cafe, restaurant and patio. ...they cluster near the entrance as an enticement. ...their antique glow has spread like a power surge.

In the US, the last major producer of incandescent bulbs is GE and they are set to close the line later this month. What do you think, will they find a way to hang on the way traditional fireplaces have?

The above image is an Arduino micro controller board with a piggy back board known as a shield that is designed for data logging. Also there are two custom boards I personally made for hooking up renewable energy sources. Click the image for a bigger view.

If you know me or read my blog periodically, you probably know that I have been working for several years on a renewable energy project. What you may not know is how close it is to being available on the market. The current prototype is outperforming everything I can find in a similar cost category. The real trick is the length of time for the comparison sample. I can only sit with a video camera and stopwatch so long. I am also prone to mistakes occasionally, being human and all. That's where the Arduino comes in.

The Arduino is a real multitasking geeks dream. This little circuit board is equiped with an ATMEGA328 processor, a sqeek of memory and is designed to be easy to program and easy to hook up to the real world in the form of switches, sensors, meters and anything else that can have electrical interaction. If you really want to learn a lot about it, go to www.ladyada.net. I highly recommend buying one from them if you are interested. Make any follow up units from scratch, but there is so much involved I highly recommend the first one is assembled and tested before you play with it.

I have worked with an open source set of "sketch's" , this is what an Arduino program is called, and combined them to work with my particular needs. The above Frankenboard is ready to record power production for 3 renewable sources such as wind and solar and collect temperature and light value at the same time. I don't need extreme resolution, so it will take a reading from all sources every 3 seconds and time stamp each reading down to the second. Later I will use a plotting software program to see the comparison. I intend to gather a week or more, maybe a month as a good representation of real world conditions.

Someday soon I hope to officially announce my wind turbine here.

Another good source for Arduino stuff is at the related link below.