recycling

Carbon footprint, energy use, green tech: some phrases that won't be going away. From gasoline prices to global warming, we're likely to become more aware of what energy we burn up, just as most of us now have some sense of whether we're eating wisely (or not).

Just today the Live Earth concert folks e-mailed me a link to their carbon calculator. This one walks you through several pages of simple questions about how you live, and especially how you travel. This calculator was built by Earthlab.org. They want to know the size of your dwelling, … Read more

Thinking about getting green? Really green? Well, today The New York Times profiles some folks who are removing themselves from the American market whenever they can. Dumpster diving. Using wasted food and free stuff thrown off by the rapid spin of our consumer culture. They call themselves "freegans."

"After years of trying to boycott products from egregious corporations responsible for human rights violations, environmental destruction and animal abuse, many of us found that no matter what we bought we ended up supporting something deplorable. We came to realize that the problem isn't just a few bad … Read more

Presenting a new generation of blade servers at a presentation in Washington Wednesday, Sun talked a lot about speed and open source and efficiency of operation. The company mentioned saving money several times. And, of course, there was much about competitive advantage.

Then, not for the first time, but with significant emphasis, Sun talked green. In this video we hear how the servers save energy, and that they contain no plastic. Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz says the new Sun-engineered blade servers are 100 percent recoverable materials.

Staples is giving customers an alternative to trashing unwanted electronic equipment or sticking it out on the sidewalk with a "for free" sign.

Starting Monday, the office-supply chain will accept any brand of used desktop and notebook computers, monitors, printers, fax machines and all-in-one devices with a fee of $10. Smaller items like keyboards, mice and speakers are free to drop off. TVs will not be accepted because they are not sold by the chain.

The fee offsets Staples' cost to collect the unwanted items from its retail outlets to electronic waste recycling plants. Staples worked with the … Read more

So you've popped new, corkscrew-shaped, compact fluorescent lightbulbs into every lamp at home. Fingers crossed, your next electrical bill will shrink now that those wasteful incandescent lights are gone.

Millions more people may soon follow in your footsteps. A California lawmaker wants the state to ban the sale of energy-wasting incandescents altogether, as Australia is doing. Meanwhile, campaigns such as Yahoo's 18 Seconds promote switching to CFL bulbs, which are getting more shelf space in Wal-Mart stores.

However, the funny-looking fluorescents pose a pollution problem. Their energy savings may be ecofriendly, but each bulb contains enough methylmercury to … Read more

During his Macworld keynote speech, Steve Jobs played a congratulatory voice message from friend Al Gore on the droolworthy new iPhone, then used that device to locate the DVD of An Inconvenient Truth at the top of Amazon's bestseller list.

Outside the convention center's doors, however, Greenpeace activists handed out flyers painting Apple as less than hip to ecological problems, urging the company to remove toxicants from its products and set up free hardware recycling. Several blocks away, members of the environmental group also projected pictures of Asian electronics waste scrap yards onto a wall of the downtown … Read more

Now you can not only read The New York Times, you can wear it. And not just as one of those dorky paper-ship hats, either.

Artist Holly Anne Mitchell fashions jewelry from recycled newspapers, and the innovative results are surprisingly stylish--pins and cuff links from crossword puzzles, earrings and bracelets from stock listings, sudoku puzzles and color Sunday comics. The pieces--which could become collectors' items as newspapers increasingly give way to digital content--sell online and generally run between $80 and $200.

Mitchell's paper-fashion pursuits started when she was a student of fine arts at the University of Michigan charged … Read more

I know how it is: It gets harder every year to select the perfect present for that eco-friendly farmhand/truck driver in your life. Luckily, Passchal's got you covered this time.

The Virginia-based handbag maker is selling iPod and DVD cases hewn from old truck and tractor tires. The people at Passchal handmake them after picking through discarded inner tubes and soaking them in "an environmentally friendly solution" for three days.

Each case retains the original tire markings for that authentic, nouveaux vintage look. Recycling is so very now, isn't it?

Though $55 is a bit … Read more

We do it, and we know you do too. We all make paper printouts even when we don't really need to. Finally, there's something that can help relieve the ensuing pangs of guilt: a printer that reuses paper up to 500 times.

The Toshiba B-SX8R uses thermal technology and reusable paper in a process that ZDNet UK explains this way: "The special glossy paper is inserted in a hopper and printed on as usual. Once used, the paper can be put in the same hopper and passed through the machine, and the ink will be erased."… Read more