LiveScience.com has a great slideshow outlining 10 ways to green your home.  I thought it would make for a great opportunity to highlight how some of the products at earthscreen can fit into the picture.

10 - Make it, Build it Green: Choose furniture made from eco-friendly sources such as sustainably managed forests, bamboo, and reclaimed wood. Buying vintage wherever possible, rather than adding something new into the waste stream, is always in style. Also, look for furniture that is durable and likely long-lived-you'll save money on replacements in the future and prevent more wasted materials from winding up in the landfill.

For Kids, this Bohemian Garden Step Stool is beautiful and made from recycled wood.

9 - Go Au Naturale: Ditch the poisons and choose natural, non-toxic, and equally effective methods of cleaning and corralling pests. 

For Controlling Pests try Bang! Natural Insect Control.

8.  Slay Energy Vampires: their nasty pointed teeth plunge deep into your wall socket, draining power all hours of the day and night, even after you've switched them off. (Americans pay $1 billion a year to power our televisions and VCRs while they're turned off.)

Here's a power strip that turns off appliance when no one is around: The Watt Stopper.

7. Get off the Grid: Opt for clean, renewable energy if it's offered in your area.

Even if you can't get off the grid completely, you can always go solar, bit by bit.  Here's a  "Light My Shed Solar Light"

6. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle (in that order).

I love repurposing trash for good use.  We love these Record Label Coasters.

5. Buy Local Food

I bought a great book called Recipes from America's Small Farms.  One of the best things in the book is a list of farm CoOps that partner farms with consumers to guarantee delivery of locally grown produce.

4, Stop the Junk Mail

Green Dimes has a great solution for this.  They have a free basic plan as well as premium plans for a one-time fee of either $20 or $36.  Just sign up and they stop junk mail from being delivered to your house!

3. Paper Nor Plastic.  Bring your own reusable shopping bags to the grocery store.  I keep a full supply in the trunk of my car. Here's the Acme Workhorse Reusable Shopping Bag Set.

2. Always buy Energy Star appliances. The average home can pump out twice as much greenhouse-gas emissions as the average car. Purchasing energy-saving Energy Star-rated appliances, electronics, and lighting can help mitigate that, while slashing a third of your electric bill.  

1.  Switch to energy saving light bulbs.  Until affordable and effective LED light bulbs are widely available Compact Florescent bulbs are still the way to go.  They do contain mercury but studies show that the amounts are so small that they are still better for the environment than traditional bulbs which loose 90% of their energy in heat.  Also, CFLs last much longer - years longer - that the risk is reduced even further.  

Here's a 10 pack starter kit.

As environmental groups cheer the addition of the Polar Bear to the endangered species protected species list, the first such listing as a direct consequence of global warning, Republican Governor Sarah Palin announces that the State of Alaska will file a lawsuit to challenge the decision.

Yareth Rosen of Reuters reports:

Even though Kempthorne enacted a rule aimed at precluding any new restrictions on oil and gas operations as a result of the listing, the Palin administration believes a wide variety of other development activities in Alaska would be hampered if the listing goes through, Daugherty said.

Any development or activity requiring federal permits or using federal funds would have to engage in a "consultation" process to ensure that polar bears are not harmed, he said.

That consultation, mandated by the Endangered Species Act, "is a long and time-consuming process," he said. "It's just, basically, a big time-and-money-waster."

Considering the swag that Alaska's Senator Ted "The Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens brings home in the form of pork and development earmarks, this move by Palin comes as no surprise.  Until our leaders on both sides of the aisle grasp the concept of sustainable development we will continue to see greed prioritized over the health of our planet and it's creatures.

(AP Photo/Subhankar Banerjee, File)

earth2tech highlights a new company, Free Flow Power, that has just created a $3 billion plan to place turbines in the Mississippi river from St. Louis to New Orleans with a goal of creating a gigawatt of power.

It works by placing turbine generators in the river, attaching that to a power converter, and then plugging-in directly to the grid from the closest power lines.

When you think about all of the resources it takes to grow a pound of flour or a pound of beef, it makes you think twice before throwing your cooking scraps away.  Indoor composting is now easy and oder free and produces vibrant soil that reduces the need for environment-harming fertilizers.

Check out The Nature Mill's Indoor Compost Bin.  I saw one of these in action at a trade show and can promise you that it was clean and odor-free!

ecoscraps reminds us that cold shower season is here in the Northern Hemisphere.  

It's been hovering between 96 and 104 at my house and the cold shower has been a welcome relief. Also, I turn down my water heater in the summer and work with the assist from the surrounding air.

YourOwnHealth even writes about the many health benefits of cold showers from boosting the immune system to pain relief.

A happy weekend to everyone.

I'm pleased to report that we've had some winners in our eneloop battery campaign.  Here's how it works:  Join earthscreen for free.  In the signup process you will be invited to ask five friends to join earthscreen too.  Once you have 5 friends who join and confirm their email address we'll send you a free Eneloop rechargeable battery pack. It's easy, fun, and free!

Join earthscreen for free.  There's power in numbers.

ProTraveller reports the top vacation destinations that are the most threatened by climate change.  Depressing, I know, but something we should all be aware of sooner rather than later.  They are:

Great Barrier Reef, Australia:

2. Palau, Micronesia

3. Maldives, Indian Ocean

4. Virgin Islands, Caribbean

5. Cook Islands, Pacific Ocean

6. Galapagos Islands, Pacific Ocean

7. Belize Barrier Reef, Belize

8. Red Sea Reef, Egypt

9. Tokyo, Japan

10. London, UK

11. New York City, USA

12. New Orleans, USA

13. Jakarta, Indonesia

14. India

15. Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

16. Yellowstone National Park, USA

17. Lake Baikal, Serbia

18. Glacier National Park, USA

19. Columbia Glacier, Alaska, USA

20. Death Valley, USA

Be sure to visit the ProTraveler site for more photos, some beautiful, some shocking.

We started reading about Roadster,  the electric sports car from Tesla Motors, three years ago. Well, it's here, it's beautiful and it's rather pricy at $109,000.

The car zooms from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds, tops out at 125 miles per hour and goes 220 miles in a single charge. That's equivalent to 135 miles per gallon. It takes 3.5 hours to fully charge.  Pretty sweet ride!