Posts by — Lydia Polzer

We have run many articles on how to get cheap, non-toxic cleaning products for your home as well as how to make your own soap, A DIY washing machine and a solar powered clothes dryer.

Check out this article from Frugal Living containing 23 PAGES of useful tips on how to make your own cleaning products for next to nothing. In this article, published just a few weeks ago,  you will find tips on how to clean your home with eco-friendly homemade cleaning products. You will find more than 45 fun and easy to follow recipes to make almost every room in your house sparkle. These recipes are all done with non-toxic economical ingredients that can be found in your kitchen. (more…)

Todd Ganovski, with Bishop Wayne Boosahda (right)

As of today, Todd Ganovski doesn’t think the world will end anytime soon.

But he does believe that trouble — either a natural disaster or economic crisis — is coming. And he thinks God wants him to help people prepare for it.

Ganovski is co-founder of Emergency Provision, an eBay site based in Tennessee that sells emergency food supplies online and through church networks. He thinks recent disasters like the flood in Nashville, the tsunami in Japan and the earthquake in Washington, D.C., are signs from God that a major disaster is on the way.

“If it does happen, I don’t want to have to jump through FEMA’s hoops to get food,” he said. (more…)

Mayor Johnson – eco geekBuilding Services Journal reports lobby group London First saying decentralised energy generation could reduce the UK capital’s carbon emissions by 3.5 million tonnes pa.

In its latest report, researched by respected structural engineers Buro Happold, London First called for a collaboration between central government, the Mayor of London and his agencies, energy companies, developers and boroughs towards decentralising a quarter of London’s energy supplies.

Locally placed combined heat and power plants linked to housing estates, as well as surrounding local amenities and hospitals would, the report claims, make for higher levels of energy efficiency as opposed to centralised power. (more…)

We could all be living like Bob LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) – When Bob McGovern bought a plot of land west of Laramie, he probably didn’t know the extent to which that land would set him on a course toward self-sufficiency and energy independence. It didn’t take long, however, for ideas to begin brewing in his mind on how to build a house that was “off the grid.”

The nearest utilities to the property are far enough way that McGovern estimates that it would have cost him $25,000 to get service to his house. Instead of forking out that money, he spent time researching everything from small-scale wind turbines to solar panels, battery technology and energy efficiency. (more…)

Cambridge DJ duo

Cambridge radio show CUR Green carried a one hour interview with Off-Grid editor Nick Rosen. The award winning station CUR 1350 is hosting the show for the next month – so listen while you can.

Its the second half of the first hour of the show presented by Salman Chaudhry and Tobias Bown. And the first half of the second hour. (more…)

Buy a house, get a community

Abundance Ecovillage is a small, friendly community in Iowa, with 14 houses either built or under construction. It relies on a wind turbine and solar panels for electricity and is self-sufficient for water. Its part of a burgeoning trend all over America.

The infrastructure was already in place when Stacey Hurlin and her husband bought their house and moved in. There was just one catch: a $35,000 one-time fee that covered utility maintenance for her 950-square-foot, $115,000 home and various community projects. (more…)

Let there be light

The Development Marketplace team of the World Bank today launched a competition, to reward project ideas that address the various off-grid lighting needs of Sub-Saharan Africa, including alternative distribution models, new clean lighting technology, stronger production chains, and improvement of the policy environment.

Ten to 20 winners will receive grant funding up to $200,000.

The competition is open to a broad range of innovators around the world, including private businesses, nongovernmental organizations, universities, government entities, and individuals. (more…)

KR sells off-grid to Arnie

In a feature on companies that will disrupt existing businesses, Business 2.0 cites power company Bloom Energy

THE DISRUPTION: Energy generators in homes and businesses

THE DISRUPTED: Electric utilities

Making electricity in central power plants is so 20th century,says the report. K.R. Sridhar has a better idea: Create energy on the spot, right where it’s consumed. His startup, Bloom Energy (formerly known as Ion America), is developing a fuel cell that could kick-start the distributed-energy industry. (more…)

Phone freak.

Unexpectedly cut off from phone, fax and Internet, this writer discovers he rather liked it. By Matthew Mallon

In February 27, 1975, a fire of unknown origin struck one of New York Telephone’s major switching stations in lower Manhattan, “causing the worst service disaster ever suffered by a single Bell operating company,” according to a company history. Until service was restored, 170,000 area phones went dead, and some 300,000 New Yorkers were “deprived of a vital electronic part of the urban environment,” as reported by Time magazine later that spring. (more…)