The Amazon Kindle is a gadget that is forward thinking in many ways and that was one of the first to offer a contract-free internet connection as well as one of the first popular e-readers that attempted to do for e-books what the iPod did for MP3s. But it’s also very forward thinking in terms of going green, and for people who are interested in going green, the ways in which it manages to save energy and resources are very impressive. In fact it teaches us some lessons about eco friendly hardware that other companies can learn from. So here they are…   The first feature that qualifies the Kindle as an eco product is its screen – and this is what primarily makes the Kindle great for going green. The good thing about the Kindle screen is that it works using droplets of ink arranged around the screen. In other words there’s no energy used to power the light of the pixels and this means that the screen uses up no energy at all once it’s loaded. This is […]

Let’s open this up with a fact that can demonstrate just how important it is to consider the use of LED technology where possible and how this can help you to go green: if every household across the US were to replace just two of their current incandescent lightbulbs with LED technology, more power would be saved than the output of the largest nuclear power plant every day. That’s an incredible amount of energy and it shows you just how easy it is to use this method to go green. Here’s another one: LED bulbs can last for 30,000 hours – that’s around10 times as long as a regular lightbulbs. So in other words LED technology isn’t just crucial if you want to go green – it’s also a very smart investment and can save you money. Most importantly though governments are starting to step up and take notice of these statistics. If you don’t stop using incandescent bulbs by choice, soon you won’t have to option – as of 2012 US residents won’t even be able to buy them […]

Biomass, which sometimes is called ‘biofuel’, is a term used to describe any biological material that can be used to produce useable energy. This is true of biological matter that is part of the ‘carbon cycle’ – which stores energy from the sun to use itself either directly (by photosynthesis) or by consuming other creatures. Biomass has been shown to be a highly useful source of energy for going green that is sustainable and has minimal by-products, here we will look at it in a bit more detail. Biomass is a goods source of energy for going green because it is combustible. This means it can be burned which produces heat. That heat then can be used directly to heat installations and properties, or it can be converted into electrical energy and this way used to power household appliances. Most of us will have used biomass at some point in our lives – even if we weren’t aware of it at the time (and particularly if you’re interested in going green). If you’ve ever thrown logs onto a fire for […]

If you truly want to go green, then it’s a good idea to take it upon yourself to learn the science behind it and the science in particular about alternative sources of energy. By bettering understanding how these work you can stay on top of new developments, and you can choose more carefully which technologies to employ yourself. Solar energy is one of the top considerations for anyone going green and yet many of us know little about it. For instance, one thing that many people don’t know is that there is more than one type of solar energy, and that these work in very different ways. These are: Solar Thermal: Solar thermal energy is the lesser known form of solar energy among those going green. Here it is the heat energy from the sun that is of interest which is used to heat water that can then be employed for various other applications. Solar thermal solar panels utilize panels covered in tiny tubes carrying water. These are then simply heated by the sun before being rerouted to work in […]

A wind turbine is a device that harvests wind energy to be converted into electricity for a power grid. Because this is a natural, clean and ‘renewable’ energy source that doesn’t rely on burning fossil fuels, it is a great way for areas to go green and to reduce costs and emissions. If you’ve ever gone on long journeys through the country side, then chances are that you will likely have seen wind turbines at work. They essentially look like huge windmills that are more narrow and much taller and that tend to be out in open fields in large numbers. But how can these wind-mill type structures help us go green? And how can they turn the very wind around us into usable electric energy? Here we will look at the answers to those questions and how wind turbines work their magic. Basically wind contains kinetic energy because it is created by lots of fast moving air particles. These particles exist because after the sun heats the earth, this causes the air touching the ground to heat up and […]