My Choice Green

Few days and year 2011 will come to an end to celebrate the New Year. But as we approach to the end it is important to take a pause in  time and look back to the trail we left behind us.

Governments are still in conflict into how to manage the climate challenges , and the recent United Nation framework convention on climate changes which was held in Durban-South Africa is a good example. It’s amazing to see that even the existing Kyoto protocol seems to start to fall apart with Canada leaving the protocol.

This has been said many times, if we wait the governments to take the action, years might go before anything useful can be achieved. But that does not mean we cannot do anything. In fact, if we all work together on reducing our individual carbon foot prints, governments and industry would have to follow. This website and of course hundreds others have lots of tips and ways to reduce your carbon foot print, and knowing all that info is amazing ,  but the application can be challenging.

So as the New Year is coming soon, let’s define the challenges we are ready to take. Which area are you planning to work on to reduce your impact on environment?  Our three musketeers, Reduce, reuse and renew, (read about the three musketeers here)   can help you plan the coming year reduction scheme.

Take the time to think about the planner, fill the cells you want to act upon and make it a commitment that you shall follow during the 2012 year. No one will ask you how much you’ve accomplished except yourself,  If you really want to make difference in the world, start with yourself.

We have one earth and it’s the responsibility of all of us to keep it beautiful and clean for the new generations to come.

Wishes for a Happy and greener new year, from the family of MyChoiceGreen.com, to all of you.

Few days ago I had fever, my temperature rose up a little and I had to stay in bed . But during all that I remembered our earth, and thought about its rise in temperature as well. I said to my self, The earth is having fever as well..and if fever made me so unproductive then defiantly global warming is affecting earth hardly.

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Global warming as  a term defines the continuous increase of the average earth temperature . This increase is affecting the life of many  creatures on earth. including humans, the main reason of such problem as it is believed. ” but temperature of earth is not fixed, one day it is hot, the other is warm, few weeks and the weather is wonderful, what warming you are talking about?” can be a very valid question. What we are looking at is the average temperature of the earth in general, or  in other words the amount of heat getting trapped in the earth.

Many agencies around the world have warned that the last few years are recording increase in maximum temperatures to limits that earth did not see the past hundreds of years. winter is shifting, coming warmer while summer is starting earlier with unbelievable hot days.and that of course is all over the world, even the north and south poles, where ice  glaciers and permafrost are melting.

Of course melting of ice means one thing: more water in the sea, or in other words, higher sea levels. The danger of this can be understood if we know that islands will be disappearing under water, cities might go below sea level and rivers might end up flooding and destroying lands . The first impact anyone would think about is the lose of homes for thousands of people, lose of agricultural lands and many natural resorts.

Wild life  will be affected with all this lose of natural habitats, unable to adapt to the very fast changes will stress natural life and cause thousands of species to disappear. Food chains will defiantly change, this will endanger  the food supply system and cause food shortage.. then people fighting over the new limited resources..then big wars..!!

All that can be blamed on what is called the greenhouse effect, a phenomena happening due to the increase in the percentages of gases that prevent  heat coming from  the sun to be radiated out to space again. Gases as CO2, water vapor,methane ,CFCs and nitrous oxide are some of the gases blamed for the green house effect , that’s why they are called Green House gases or GHG.

The first to blame for such an increase in GHGs is us; HUMANS.  burning fossil fuels, industrial and agricultural activities are known sources for such gases, of course cutting trees,   destroying wild life and playing with natural resource are all causing changes in the GHGs levels.

Governments are trying with not much success to reduce these emissions, but we as individuals can force to reduce these GHG release. How? by reducing our individual environmental foot prints. Consume less will force factories to produce less, use less energy , like using CFL bulbs, turning off appliances when not in use will force electricity companies to burn less fuel to generate energy, and using our feet and bicycles, would reduce the need of more fossil fuel to be burned.

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I have finally made the decision… I am going on diet .

I admit I am over-weight. Well not obese, but i do have some extra pounds on. And I am going serious about it. For two factors; having a healthier life and, reducing my carbon footprint! Yes! Absolutely , going on diet can help you reduce your carbon footprint.

Our bodies are nothing but some complicated machines working on burning some energy, and the more you burn the more gases you generate (I mean GHGs) . But that can be debatable on how much effect this can make ,as when you burn energy to walk you will decently be saving CO2 emissions from your car exhaust.

So what’s left that can actually help is, what do you eat and how much do you actually intake. In the article  “apples carbon footprint”  I talked about the impact of what we select to eat on how much CO2 will be released. For instance, getting imported fruits in out of season times will defiantly cost ecologically much more than selecting the local grown fruits and be satisfied with the variety available.


But again that’s not all of it, selecting the type of food has great impact, think about your lunch today and it’s ingredients ,does it have beef? Or is it chicken? Have you ever thought that eating chicken has less impact than beef? Are you grilling the food? And letting the charcoal to burn for hours ?(Read about BBQ effect here) The roll of many factors are to be considered, but In general, veggies are considered the least harm, fish and sea food comes next, chicken then, beef and red meat.

How much do you eat is playing important roll. Our bodies require some amount of “food” to change to energy , eating that amount will keep your carbon footprint to a minimum. The more you eat, the more you ask producers to work, the cows to breed, the factories to work, collectively this causing huge GHGs amounts to be released in the air only to satisfy unnecessary need.

When I decided to go for diet, I had all of that in my mind, so I now eat less, try to depend more on vegetables and less on red meat. Lots of products are there on markets’ shelves with, lose weight slogans, but I know that “more CO2 in the air” slogan are written secretly behind the product . What I mean is that most of these products are manufactured and processed and plastic wrapped with huge Environmental effect left from all the CO2 released.

So you want to help nature? start with helping your self into less CO2 foods.

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Few days ago while I was bored, I thought to read one of the local newspapers. All the news were as usual except for one article titled “solar cells in 5-10 years, new step”. That was new to me. I always had the impression that plastics are things working against electricity, we use them to insulate conductors, and now I found an article saying that the plastics can actually generate energy.But then I remembered the physics class when we used a plastic bar, rubbed it to a cloth and picked some paper cuts. That was static electricity. So I thought that I must read through to know what’s going on.

The article was a news break about some researchers in the UK (Scientists from the Universities of Sheffield and Cambridge ) was able to spread thin layer of complex molecules on a thin “cling film” plastic. They came to understand the system better and found a way to produce it in cheaper and easier way. the process is almost as printing on plastics systems available readily. ( You can read the full article by clicking here.

So they did not actually make a break through in using plastics, that was already an existing idea, using polymers to make photovoltaic devices was not a new thing, they did something about the manufacturing process. For me that was amazing. We always talk about photovoltaic panels to be made out of pure silicon, how hard and complected to make them, and how un-green the whole process is.I actually wrote an article about the ungreen side of solar panels. and all the discussion was about the silicon type Click here to read it again.

The news was good for me, the system they are talking about uses low temperature process, This means less energy needs for manufacturing, it uses much less material, which means less manufacturing time, and energy. These factors give the plastic photovoltaic cells an advantage by reducing the CO2 payback they must make during the operation cycle, or they will be running on zero CO2 emission after producing less power. But not in less time unfortunately.

The efficiency of these plastic photovoltaic panels is still much lower than the silicon competitors, which means less output over the same period. The good news is that when I went to the old articles I noticed that the efficiency started from less than 1% some 10 years ago , to jump over 6% these days, and if we keep ourselves optimistic, in 5 or 10 years plastic photovoltaic cells might be ready to take over.

Lets be be patient, hope for the best, and dream about a better future.. till that time, please take care with energy consumption..

Image by phil_g via Flickr

Few days ago I was reading a book, and one of the questions the author asked was “ Are computers Green?”.. The first answer that came to my mind was.. ”Of course not!” , It is full of silicon chips, it is made of plastics. It is not green for sure.. But that was only one side of the story. After I put the book of my hand, my mind started debating itself, are we so sure computers are that guilty? I reached to the conclusion that.. Wait a minute!!, let me tell you all what I thought of and then you help me to decide if it guilty or not..

Computers are taking a huge part of our lives, I will take my self for an example, I start working at 7:00am and the first thing I do after I got my coffee is to start my computer, I read my mail, I write my reports, check the web and close out the day after 10 hours of looking at the screen by shutting down the computer. I do not know how many of you has the same day routine, but surely most of you spend few hours a day in front of the computer screen.

A rough figure of about 200 to 300 million computers are being sold yearly indicates the huge manufacturing carbon footprint, as we all know computers are made of plastics, and the smart parts of it are made out of pure silicon, which means huge amount of CO2 in the air. This is not all of it, running the computers requires energy, electricity in form, and that is generated for most of the world by non renewable sources.

All of you reading right now, are connected the Internet, and so do many people around the world. All of us, I mean the Internet users are served by servers that host all the data we can log into while surfing the net. These servers are electricity hungry devises that run 24 hours to keep the net accessible any time (Just for the record MyChoiceGreen.com is using a server that is running on 100% green energy, for more details or if you are searching for host running on green energy click here)

So in nut shell computer are energy consuming, made of non renewable material that is not degradable or decomposed naturally, and that are emitting CO2 into air when ever we push the on button, and all that what made me giving my first verdict.

But on the other hand, using computers is reducing the use of papers, for me I rarely write anything on papers, and my consumption of paper is becoming minimal, which of course save trees, more over, now searching for information is only a click away, I remember when I was at school, I had to ask my parents to give me a ride to the local library, I had to take my notes on my notebook, and go home by car again, all the energy and CO2 that I used to emit to obtain the information is now eliminated, all thanks to computers.

Recently the online shopping is becoming a fashion in the Middle East, (it started earlier in places like the US and Europe) and that also has eliminated the idea of driving to the mall or shop, searching for hours, getting stuck in traffic and emitting lots of CO2.

Computers in general made our lives easy, more accurate and less waste, take cars for example, they are now more efficient, and produce less CO2, all that because of the computers inserted in them.

Thinking about all that made me not sure if we should blame computers and call them entire not green, at the end they are helping us becoming more green. For me I still think that the end result is emitting more CO2 than they save. They are still not green for me. What do you think?

When I look into my self I more and more believe what my wife always tell me ; “You are like your father” is her sentence. I do not know how many of you guys get the same accusation or how many of you ladies use this , but one thing I can confirm is that a father is a model , and at some point he is an idol. Now I look at my children and know that they look at me as I looked at my father, and believe that what I teach them is the right thing to know..and here comes the responsibility of us the fathers, to teach our children how to do things right. This also includes teaching them how to respect nature, how to use resources wisely or how to handle their waste.

Living green has always been a choice, and taking the right choices needs some guidance. to throw away or recycle? a question that we need to teach our kids answer correctly.how? easy, you start recycling and they will follow, want to make it more fun, creat games around recycling, tell them bed stories about the bottle that was recycled.. man be creative.. Taking care of the garden is a hobby shared by many, and including your children in doing it makes them more involved with nature, teach them to irrigate wisely, when and how much are important factors (I left some tips on last post) to understand. Shopping is a great place to learn to live green. starting from using recycable paper bags for shopping, talk to them while shpping on why did you pick these bags over plastic nice colored ones, when you pick your products, check that they are localy produced, and why not including some sports and go by bike or walk to the near store. every day we can find something to teach our kids, now we have the chance to influnce them , later these kids will be the fathers and mothers for the next generation, and they will influnce their kids in return, so lets infuse the loving of nature and taking care of resources into our kids to be transferred to theirs. Happy Father’s day to all dad’s around, be proud of your roll, do it right and know that you are helping nature so much.

Are you a books lover? why don’t you check this cool collection:

I am now well known among the family by my strawberry plants and my in house small garden. I can’t hide that they bring a cool sensation of satisfaction seeing all that green in the house. Knowing the great effect they have in helping me to reduce my carbon footprint. Being in the Arab gulf area, which is a very hot place, forced me to continually check on the soil humidity, and that by time built a panic system in me that I ended up watering more than needed…

So did we change to gardening subjects..One might think, but the truth is; if you recall my definition to green living, it is the living with the least harmful impact to nature. Wasting water during irrigation has an impact, well wasting water generally has very harsh impact on nature.. So after setting the facts, let’s go on with our story.

The first impact I received from my plants protesting against the excessive watering is getting some leaves disease. That was the time to act, I studied the irrigation techniques, how much to water, when and how, I applied what was applicable and I have my plant growing happily.

During all that I learned few simple steps that can help in producing better plants, while saving water, power and money, and I thought to share them with you.

The number one key is to know how much each plant needs water. Putting more water will do no good to the plant, invite harmful diseases and wasting all the excess water into evaporation or drained out of the pot. No standard time is available for this, but consulting a specialist might do you good, or you can experiment until you find the right amount, for my strawberries I water them once a week with half a cup per plant.

Irrigate early morning.. I know, I also like the early morning sleep, but that’s the best time as evaporation is minimal. Why not at night? Because, this is a good recipe to get turf and plant disease. If it is really hard to wake up, why not getting an automatic valve that starts the water using pre set program.

Irrigation can be made by many methods, by bucket, hose, drip, sprinklers, misters.. etc. Each has its functionality; advantages and disadvantages, none can be considered the best for all applications. While drip systems allow for controlled watering, proper distribution over wide spaces can be very inefficient. For us plants owners, drip system with small programmable valve can do the trick. Consult your Gardner for best methods applicable for you.

Nothing works fine if not maintained properly, and this applies to your irrigation system also. If you have a sprinkler system, or drip system, insure to have the system checked for leakages, and damages which might get the water in places you do not want to irrigate. Blocked nozzles an sprinklers might reduce the performance of your system and end up putting money and energy without having the proper results.

Of course these are not everything you can do, but they can be wide guidelines that many acts can be categorized beneath each. These were lessons I learned through the process of saving my plants, which are now much greener, healthier and consume more CO2. That makes m prouder of them..

Looking at the crude oil prices can give a good indication about the expected increases of gasoline prices worldwide, the $4 per gallon is not science fiction any more in the US, and prices are expected to increase more. This by nature tells us that we do not have the luxury of wasting fuel as we used to, a new way of controlling the consumption and saving on fuel becomes important.

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So I headed to the net as I always do, and found many web pages dealing with tips for saving fuel. Being a mechanical engineer myself, I thought that I was able to filter the real tips which have engineering explanations from the non-sense. Below is my list:

1)      KEEP YOUR ENGINES OFF SAVES LOTS OF FUEL; well, it does not need a genius to figure this out. The best and idle way is to walk, especially for those near trips. It might take some more time, but defiantly will save you a lot (please make sure the weather allows for outside activities) . Some try to generalize this into advising to turn the engine off while waiting at the traffic light , or when waiting somebody. This can be accepted if you have to wait long, else you are doing nothing or maybe end up burning more as starting an engine consumes more fuel than keeping it running. Defining the time that keeping the car running and restarting the engine has the same effect is hard, but as a general rule, if you are waiting for more than 3 minutes, put the engine off, the newer the car and smaller the engine will allow you to reduce this  time more.

2)      USE CARPOOL OR PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION; public transportation is considered the most efficient way of using energy. If public transportation is not suitable for you, then try carpool, if you manage to share the trip with a neighbor or friend who is going the same way will cut the consumption into half, finding 4 people will do 25% . (to be accurate it will do little bit more as loaded car will use more fuel than a car with only one person, but still it saves a lot).

3)      CHECK  THE AIR PRESSURE IN THE WHEELS; Do you know that running a car with under inflated wheels might cause you  losses of your fuel, that’s forgetting all the wearing of the tires that will end up in shortening the service life of the tire.  Click here to read more,

4)      UNLOAD UNNECESSARY ITEMS FROM THE CAR ; just look at your car trunk, back seats or roof top and see if there is anything that you do not need for your trip , take it out. It is a simple equation, more weight to move needs more power, or in other terms, more fuel to burn.

5)      KEEP THE AIR DYNAMICS OF THE CAR UNCHANGED; most ,if not all, the cars go  into aerodynamics tests  to minimize the drag. The drag is the force resulting from resistance of air for the movement of the car into it. Attaching accessories to the body will defiantly destroy the aerodynamics and add more drag.  You guessed it right, more drag means more fuel to burn, so un attach any accessories that you do not need, like roof tops and bike hangars.

6)      AVOID HARSH ACCELERATION AND HARD BREAKS; a car engine consumes more to increase the speed than keeping it steady, and the faster you want to reach to your speed the more fuel you have to burn, so adding few seconds to allow the car to accelerate slowly save you some bucks on fuel. More break means more fuel to get the car to the desired speed, exactly ..more fuel.

7)      PLAN AHEAD; I CONSIDER THIS A SMART WAY OF DRIVING, plan the way before you start, if you have an access to traffic information check if there is any traffic jams, on your way, arrange your stopping stations to be in sequence and using the shortest way to avoid driving  in circles .

8)      DRIVE AT PROPER SPEED; something funny you lean about car engines is that its efficiency starts to improve as you drive faster, but to a limit and then the faster you go beyond this point the less your efficiency will be. This speed is called optimum driving speed, which is usually between 70-90km/h (45-55mph)

9)      MAINTAIN THE CAR PROPERLY;  air filters, oil filters and spark plugs are very important to be checked and replaced on due time (refer to your car manufacturing recommendations) , it is an overhead that you have to pay which will save you lots on fuel consumption and car health.

10)   MINIMIZE USING THE A/C AS MUCH AS YOU CAN; roll the windows down for fresh air will give you the chance to improve the quality of the air inside the cabinet and reduce the consumption of fuel. for places where sun is hot most of the year (as in the gulf region for example) tanning the windows or putting shades will reduce the power needed to cool the car from inside.

11)   GET AN ENGINE THAT SUITES YOUR NEEDS;  bigger engines consume more fuel to run , and if you can live with a 2000cc engine why buy a 3500cc engine? Yes the acceleration will be more fun, but this will not come cheap.

I will not claim these to be the best or top tips, but will defiantly help you reduce your consumption of fuel . Drive safely and enjoy the trip.

When Easter is near, dyeing of Easter eggs is the traditional way of preparations, and I believe the same happens all over the world for the those who celebrate the Easter..and today is our egg dyeing day..

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Getting artificial egg dyes is the easiest way of course , and to tell the truth we all shifted to using these ready made pills that you dissolve in water and some vinegar, they give very nice bright colors, pink, purple, light green , and of course you can get really fun stuff.. but you leave very ugly effect on the environment.

The list of impacts on environment can be easily listed. Starting from production , CO2 emission and other chemicals and by products disposal , to packing, plastic wrapping and transportation. Ofcourse detailing every part of these will make the list grow long.

But that is not the only issue around here, usually egg dyeing has the children of the family to be involved , and although the packages tell that these are non toxic material, they can not claim that they are harm free..

So what other options available? Some might ask, the answer is, lets go back to traditional ways. Egg dyeing is a very old tradition that has been performed for long time already, long before all these chemicals were available, so how was it done? Lets not go so far in history, just 20 years ago, when we used to do this at my grandparents house, my grandmother used to use lots of natural material to get beautiful shades, I still remember the onion skins and camomile for brown and yellow.

So this year I am experimenting with more natural material, like red grapes and raspberry juice, it gave a nice marble like purple color. Hibiscus gave nice shade of brownish red. I am still experimenting..well, I am sneaking in the kitchen to do my experiments.(yes just leave a guy in the kitchen and you will not find anything in its original place..) Some suggestions might be red cabbage, beat roots, ans spinach. Actually any fruit or vegetable that leave a stain on you shirt is probably a good material to experiment with.

Most of these material work better if added to the same pot while hard boiling the eggs, so that the color will infuse and the eggs will absorb the color. This ends having all the eggs in that pot to have the same color, of-course you can divide your eggs into batches, and color each batch with different color. To make the eggs look more beautiful you can add some patterns to them, nylon socks work so fine, and let me give you my grandmother’s way:

1-Get some unneeded nylon socks. (yes if they have been used make sure they are washed and clean)
2-Cut the socks into segments enough to hoist an egg and that can be tight from both sides.
3-Arrange some parsley or any other nice looking leave on the egg, you can use some water to keep them in place.
4- insert the egg in the sock segment and tight the other side insuring the nylon is pressing very firmly to insure the leaves will not move while boiling the eggs.
5- boil the egg with some onion skins or other material as desired.
6- once cooled to managebale temperature, cut loose the egg from the sock and remove the leaves, you will end up with a nice imprint of the leaves.

Let us know if you do any experiments and what are the results. Enjoy the Easter, enjoy the colorful eggs, just don’t harm the environment..Happy Easter to All..

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I can not remember when was the first time I heard about the earth day, I admit that it did not mean anything to me at then, ah just a day as any other day, just a name..i thought. I know now that many people have the same thoughts, “so what! it’s just a day”..they would say..

So what makes it not only another day? Or why should we care? The idea of the earth day belongs to Senator Gaylord Nelson. His main idea was to derive the politics of the US to consider the environmental issues that was emerging..That was the year 1970 when the first earth day occurred.. More than 40 years has passed since then, and earth day is being continuously spreading around the world with the important massage..protect the earth, do something to save the environment..

The organization managing the event, the earth day network, launched this year “A Billion Acts of Green®” , asking people around the world to take actions to save environment, well yes, they are after getting a billion commetment from people, groups, organizations and even governments to act towards protecting the earth. The earth day is not only one day, but it resembles all the days around the year, simple every day is an earth day.  it is an ongoing act, not a one day celebration. Through many acts we individuals can help, reusing, reducing and using renewable energy , are only examples..click here for more ideas.  

 In MyChoiceGreen.com we pledge to use green energy powered servers to host the website, Personally I pledge to use power saving light bulbs at home..  We thought to give some help and invite all of you to visit the  “A Billion Acts of Green®”website and register you act to give support for this international movement to save our only earth. Maybe 40 years ago the main motivation behind the earth day was to force politicans to put environmental changes as part of their agenda, now the agenda of each of us should has envirment protection and green living as main parts,22nd of April each year comes to remind us all of all of that.