I live 12 miles out of town so a bike is too much for me. I do have a economy car though.

I hear that, I live 20 miles from work and 23 miles from school. We'll see how many times I actually make it.

When I was living in California I rode a bike 14 miles one way to work. I left at 4:30am to get there by 6. But it was all flat land and I was in alot better shape(70lbs lighter.)

umm how do you deal with the vaporized mercury in your house from inevitable breakage???

http://users.mikrotec.com/~pthrush/lighting/flo ur.html

and remember transformers containing pcb's??

Perhaps high quality ballasts contain none... but what manufacturer isnt going to shave some pennies by buying the cheapest ballast??

The electric companies were fine with power consumed until they started to undersupply the grid for the amount of users they keep hooking up...

trusting utilities is a bad thing case in point com edison supplies power in illinois for years we paid higher rates so they could build and maintain nuclear power plants guaranteeing cheap reliable power forever... but now all the nukes are spun off to another company Excelon and com ed doesnt produce power anymore and has to buy it from power producers at higher rates....those bastards!!!!!!!

Definitely something I need to do a little more research on. Thank you for the insight.

Any ways that you've been environmentally concious? I would like to try to use as many ideas as I can in my own life.

exactly, I was comparing prices yesterday. They cost 4 times as much, at $3.99 each. but last up to 12 times as long, at 12,000 hours of life. they also only use a fraction of the electricity required by regular 40 watt bulbs.

(This comment was modified on Feb 24, 2007 01:21 PM)

When you do the math, it's very beneficial to switch over. I too am switching all of mine over.

(This comment was modified on Feb 24, 2007 01:28 PM)

I've made the switch to florescents wherever practical... they're not as good used as an outdoor light in a cool climate... they take too long to warm up to full brightess. One possibility I'm looking into is replacing my heating/cooling system with a geothermal system. I can get tax incentives from the state as well as a rebate from my electric cooperative to defray part of the additional expense.

The eco friendly cleaning products is something that I had heard about before. Thank you. I will look into that myself.

The products Im using are by 'Ecoevr'.
You can always check in the health freaks' shops for those.

So there are definite flaws in every idea, but when we really get right down to it, humans are the cause of massive resource depletion and contamination.

I am just hoping that we can all be a little more helpful to our planet. We have to give it the chance to rebuild itself.

i agree you Alex.
1st fluorescent lights,my wife is allergic to the them, they give her migraines.
i pay a good sum of money a month for my trash to be taken away like yourself.and they give me a wheelie bin for normal trash and a plastic box about 3 feet by 2 feet and less than 2 feet deep,without a lid i may add to put my Recycled trash.so no i do not Recycle trash.not until they give me another wheelie bin.
i drive a 1.4 petrol car with a catalytic converter attached.that will have to do.

Like I've said to Alex, there are energy saving bulbs which are not floursecent.
About the recycling- why do you have to pay for it?
In London people get special bags/boxes from the city council to put the stuff for recycling in & they collect it once a week (its included in the council tax).
And near every big supermarket there are recycling bins, you can take your recycling grabage there when you go for shopping. Its easy to recycle in England! :)

that is in London but not in the city where i live.i have explained about the boxes my city council gives.the supermarkets do have bottle banks but that's all, but not everyone has a car.
my lights are those type that are set into the ceiling with small bulbs but i don't know if they save energy.

There are energy saving light bublbs which are not flourescent.
And about paying for recycling... I never heard about. In England there are recycling bins, and people just put their stuff there. I guess it included in the council tax (I didnt really check).

There are community recycle centers here, many that will even pay us to return cans and newspapers. Many cities though make it mandatory that we pay for a recycle pickup though. This is to ensure that we actually use the service, rather than just throw things away for convenience.

Here I have to pay the $13 for the trash can each month, plus the cost for them to actually pick it up. A recycling bin is another $10, and, you guessed it, the cost to pick it up as well.

Thats really shame you have to pay so much!
Maybe you can just use public recycling bins instead (there are probbly some near every big supermarket).

haha, well that's good.

He's an interesting fella. I actually kinda liked Gray Davis. Wrong place at the wrong time though.

arnie the illuminator!

I'll try that one, but I am afraid I may not be as effective.

Glare? I bet your meanest looking glare still comes off as endearing.

Yes it does,

Posted on Feb 24, 2007 at 03:56 PM

Beatcha... I remembered merury poisoning from the old gas meters they were taking out were spilling mercury in the home and as it sits it goes into a gas... takesd ya back a few years to when you broke thermometers to roll the mercury around in the palm of your hand... kids years back evidently were indestructable.

About as much mercury as their is in 2-3 cans of tuna.