halves

Zero Waste and the Johnsons

March 19, 2011

I came across this video at JetsonGreen and just had to share it. I first heard of the Johnsons via a friend sharing the link to her zero waste home blog and was intrigued by Bea’s take on the three Rs. Before you ever get to reduce, reuse or recycle, you should refuse, refuse, refuse. [...]

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Project Homeless Connect and Perspective

March 17, 2011

Saint Patrick’s Day, 2011. The day of the fifth annual Project Homeless Connect (PHC) in Lane County, Oregon. Simply “ordinary people finding extraordinary solutions to end homelessness.” If you’re wondering here what aspect of living a simple, sustainable lifestyle this addresses, it falls squarely into the triple bottom line leg of social equity. This was [...]

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Junk Mail

January 26, 2010

So last time I talked about phone books. Today I’d like to talk about junk mail. No one gets junk mail do we? Oh, really? You do? Our recycle bin at home is dominated by the junk mail that comes to us in the snail mail. I think that’s the dominant form of paper we [...]

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Saving Water

January 14, 2010

Water. Something we in the US take largely for granted. We go to the faucet, turn it on and don’t really think twice about it. For us it’s abundant, cheap and clean. And for those of us in the Pacific Northwest, it’s cool, refreshing and drinkable — right out of the tap. But a lot [...]

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Phantom Electricity

January 11, 2010

This handy little device is called “Kill A Watt”. I have one. It’s been very educational. You can buy them at most any hardware store and our local library will even check one out to you for free. What is does is measure the amount of electricity flowing to any device: computer, TV, DVD player, [...]

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White

January 9, 2010

If you’re following a recent wave on Facebook, you’ll have noticed women posting their bra color to raise awareness about breast cancer. Well, I had already planned this post, so thought it timely to go for it. I was originally going to call it “Halves and Doubles: Underwear”, but decided to change simply to “White”. [...]

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Grouping Your Trips

January 7, 2010

Depending on how you drive or get around, you might be able to “halve” your gasoline consumption. I used to think that riding my bike or the bus to work would save a majority of my gasoline consumption. But I recently learned that the majority of our VMTs (vehicle miles traveled) are NOT going to [...]

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Vinegar and Baking Soda

January 5, 2010

Household chemicals. Probably some of the most dangerous things we have around. Have you ever really looked at the labels on some of that stuff? My wife and I have a rule (seems like we have lots of rules, huh?) that relates to food and is making its way into many aspects of our lives. [...]

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CFLs and LEDs

January 3, 2010

In addition to the thirty second rule, we went through our house and replaced quite a few of our light bulbs with CFLs (compact fluorescents) ad some LED (light emitting diodes). We started with the exterior porch lights. This was because we leave our porch lights on all night for security. And, since we live [...]

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The Thirty Second Rule

December 29, 2009

I want to dedicate this blog entry to my friend Levi. In a conversation he and I had a while back, he told me they have, what he calls, a “thirty second rule.” What that means is, if they are going to leave the room for more than thirty seconds, they turn off the lights. [...]

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