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At their annual meeting last night, the Northeast Ohio Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council announced the winners of the Downtown Green Building Challenge.

Congratulations to IMG Center for your achievements and hard work. We would also like to extend a congratulations to Fifth Third Center for your efforts on becoming the most improved building in the challenge. Both winners received Proclamations from Mayor Frank Jackson acknowledging their hard work and also received Hybrid Energy System Faucets from Kohler. Congratulations!

The top 5 Greenest Downtown Cleveland Buildings and most improved were also acknowledged with certificates from the USGBC northeast Ohio Chapter for their efforts.

Top 5 Greenest Buildings

• IMG Center
• Erieview Tower & Galleria
• Old Stone Church
• Great Lakes Science Center
• Cleveland Public Library

Top 5 Most Improved

• Fifth Third Center
• IMG Center
• Old Stone Church
• Cleveland Public Library
• Progressive Field

And moving forward, we recently kicked off the Downtown Cleveland Green Office Challenge.

Here are the preliminary Top 5

Top 5 Greenest Downtown Companies

• Breen & Co
• Cleveland Indians
• Greater Cleveland Partnership/Cose
• Forest City Enterprises
• URS Corp

WHAT WE CAN GET FROM SOLAR ENERGY

Source: http://www.solar-energy-advantages-blog.com/catego...

There are numerous advantages that solar energy offers however; most people hesitate to use this kind of energy. One main reason that some people does not want to use solar energy is the lack of idea on what we can get and the benefits that it offers us.

Some people have tried to get acquainted with solar energy and failed to use this kind of system

knowing that it would be an expensive investment. On the other hand, you control the flexibility of your expenses and create long term savings for you and your family.

Some of the opportunities that solar energy offers are as follows:

1. Lesser electric consumption.

Solar energy can provide you with a simple amount of energy that can be used to brighten the basic corners of your house. In full context, it can also provide you with a minimum amount of energy that is needed to warm water and heat the house when its too cold.

2. Huge savings for the environment.

Taking advantage of the sources available at your doorstep not only reduces global warming effects but also make use of the sun’s energy that never runs out. This can craft large amount of savings for the entire family. Not only that you can spend more of the necessary things that calls for your family, but it also caters different investments that even your kids can appreciate.

3. Enjoying nature is an more convenient way

It can be hazardous and disadvantageous at times if you rely your electricity to electric company. Since you are in control of your own power source, wou will nere run out of energy when you are using solar power system.

If you are concerned about the ever increasing and unpredictable energy bills, the effect of unanticipated blackouts, power outages and future energy shortages, now is a great time to explore and plan your strategy to transition to solar energy.  Moving to an energy solution is a multi-stepped process and will take some time and careful planning. Explore and discover your choice.

 

Source:

http://www.solar-energy-advantages-blog.com/catego...

Go earth is a NGO which is willing to defend human and earth interest by ecological and humanitarian actions.

 

Being a homeowner does come with a lot of advantages as well as a number of extra additions that will always cost a pretty penny. Utility bills are always adding up each year and it can be difficult to stay on top of everything at one time. If you need to cut yourself a break then take a look into wind turbine construction in order to reduce your monthly electricity costs.
Using wind to power your home may have seemed like a crazy idea years ago, but it has now become a possibility. Home all over the country are reaping the benefits and most importantly, saving money! This is what most people strive for when they utilize wind technology to produce electricity.
Saving money has always been a great perk and can literally cut your utility bills literally in half. Of course you will need to think about the money that you will need to put into building a wind turbine for your home first. This project needs to be looked at as a budding investment that will allow you to never have to worry about high utility bills again!
Protecting the environment is another great benefit that people are striving for with wind turbines. You may not realize how much energy it takes to power up your home or even just to drive your car around. If you switch your home power and everything to wind turbine technology, then you will be able to keep your carbon footprint as small as possible!
If you need even more incentive to switch to this energy source then think about tax time each year! There are great tax credits that the government will hand over to you once the proper proof and paperwork is filed. Take the time to find out how much extra cash you could get each year!
If you feel that you can take on a project such as this one, then get started today! Building a wind turbine is not going to be as difficult as you might think. Get online to find all of your tools and materials needed and you could have this done within a week or two!

 

Home Wind Turbine Construction

What is woodworking plan? If you've ever wanted to become a woodworker you may be a little intimidated by all of the tools, fancy lingo and workshops that are usually associated with woodworking. But the fact is that anyone can be good at it as long as they don't try to get in over their heads. The best thing to do is get some easy woodworking projects and take it slow.

As you can imagine, you can't expect to look through a wood working magazine, go out and buy some tools and be a master craftsman. It took them years of hard work and numerous mistakes to hone their trade. But they had to start somewhere. You have to start with something easy and work your way up to bigger and more complex things.

Plans in general can be very overwhelming when you first start out. Easy plans bring things down to where anyone can understand. These plans are made for novices, but also for anyone who wants to enjoy the fruits of wood working and not have to fear that they won't be able to follow along. That's why it is vitally important that you start with something easy and take your time. If the plans have you running out to buy every wood making tool in existence then you are probably in over your head.

Once you decide to start this make sure you pick something easy as your first project. Look the plans over first to make sure that you will understand everything. You are probably picking this up as a hobby so it should not feel like torture every time you think about working on your activity.

Remember: you want it to maintain your attention and more importantly your enthusiasm throughout the whole project. The worst thing that can happen is you get aggravated and call it quits before you really get to experience the full effect. When you learn at your pace, instead of one forced on you by someone else, you will retain more and at a faster rate. You can find a plan for virtually any project so take your time and choose well.

Wood working can be a very rewarding hobby that could turn into a lucrative pastime or even a full-time career. Start with some easy woodworking projects and let nature take its course.

Find Out More

Learn More today on easy woodworking projects for the latest information on woodworking plans.

 

Greenbuild 2009 International Conference and Expo is being held in Phoenix, Arizona from November 11th - 13th.

Former Vice President Al Gore will be the opening Keynote speaker tonight, November 11th at the Greenbuild conference. You can watch his speech and other keynote speakers live or as archived video later here at GreenbuildExpo.org.

 
Grasspave2

Greening a School Playground

So I've been trying to help get rid of an asphalt parkinglot at a school here in Los Angeles and replace it with something called Grasspave. 

Grasspave and other simliar approaches, allow for cars to drive on the grass without having the cars sink into the ground.  The school that I'm trying to help has an old parking lot that the kids play on for recess, and because it's old, it crumbles and they are constantly skinning their kness and getting injured.  Because the school has to maintain a certain number of parking spaces, they can't get rid of the parking lot altogether and turn it into a grassy playground, so we had to find a new solution.  Well, we found it in Grasspave.  It's like a normal, grassy field, but it can support a great amount of weight (see firetruck picture).  Not only that, because it's grass, storm water runoff now seeps back into the ground rather than run off back into the streets and the ocean.  The grass and soil then biofilters the storm water so we solve a pollution issue also.  If we put a cistern below the grasspave, we could collect water.  Wow.  A great solution!

But we came across a stumbling block that I realize is a stumbling block many run into when they are trying to implement green solutions, and that is: PERMITS.  It turns out that the City of Los Angeles does not allow grass parking lots.  They said that they are 10 YEARS AWAY from permiiting grass parking lots. 10 YEARS.  That's a glacial pace for change. That's where non-profits and others come in.  We are now writing to our City Council people to change the law.  This experience points to how frustrating it can be to work hard on a green solution, only to have an old bureuacracy get in the way.  But that happens a lot, and it's up to us to help change the rules so that sustainable practices can be used more broadly. 

 

Help NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC KIDS Magazine set a Guinness World Record™ by donating your old jeans and other denim to help create the world's largest collection of clothes to recycle.

What Will Be Done With All This Denim?
All the denim will be donated to Cotton From Blue to Green.®.  This denim drive recycles jeans into UltraTouch™ Natural Cotton Fiber Insulation, which is used to help build houses in places that have been damaged by hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters. Your jeans will help set a record, keep clothes out of landfills, and build houses for families to live in!

It’s a Fact
It takes about 500 pairs of jeans to recycle enough denim to insulate one average-size U.S. house.

Here’s How You Can Get Involved!
1. Get a parent’s permission and select as many denim jeans as you like. (Any denim clothing is OK.)
2. The denim must be used.
3. The denim can be any brand.
4. The denim can be any color or size but must have been worn by a human (no doll clothes!).
5. Please print out this form and include it with each package!
6. Send as many jeans or denim items as you wish to:

NG Kids / Set a Guinness World Record
P.O. Box 98001
Washington, D.C. 20090-8001

For shipments that cannot be delivered to a P.O. box:
NG Kids / Set a Guinness World Record
1145 17th St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20036

Jeans must be received by June 30, 2009!        

If you live in the Phoenix metropolitan area instead of shipping material yourself, you can bring all your denim to a.k.a. Green before June 15th! They will bag everything up & truck one-huge shipment to the main denim drive in Washington DC.