Bienvenidos al Carnival o’ the Green!. Last week Evangelical Ecologist did a fine job hosting it, and next week GreenDealsDaily is ‘posed to host it.

But enough idle chit-chat; let’s get this show on the road.

Organic Mess

Have you ever wanted to compost, but it just seemed too dang complicated? Then you’re in luck, for Talia has provided some tips on simple composting.

Neighbor Nancy shows y’all how to get some free vegetable seeds and how you can grow a ton in small containers. I’m about to go plant even more plants in old containers now.

Julie has ten reasons why organic lipstick is the way to go, to get that special bee-stung look that’s all the rage.

Jennifer took composting to the extreme and even composted her finger! What a true eco hero!

Ed Biado spouts off about organic this and that. While I approve of most organics, I don’t think they’re always the best option.

Go Green and Save Green

Ah, helping the environment whilst helping your wallet. That’s what EcoJoes is all about.

ishan is all about that, too. He dared to ask the question “Do hybrid cars really save you money?“. His conclusion is much the same as mine.

JT has some leftover stuff, but doesn’t want to throw it away. Here’s how he makes money by selling used mess.

Energy

FreeOrganicNews ponders what exactly is solar energy? His findings may shock you; then again, they may not.

Big Mack has found some zany CFL designs, and he brought them for show-and-tell.

Nancy Miller has found 50 blogs that have good info on energy. Not to be one to judge, but her site is kinda weird and spammy.

Getting out and Enjoying the World

TravelCat4 has some handy eco-tips for how to travel in an Earth-friendly manner. My favorite tip was the ‘grow a beard’ one; zero effort required, plus you get that rugged look that draws all the ladies in!

All our new-fangled technology is no substitute for the real world and real life. Get out and enjoy the real world now, people!

Global Warming

Not content with one submission to the Carnival, Mack also wrote this Debbie Downer article about global warming. Heed his warnings, people.

Sally decides to go all the way to the top, and ask Mr. Barack Obama to help prevent future extinctions.

Other Green Mess

Another post by Ed Biado gives some tips for living a greener life.

The aptly-named Mesquite Pete is all about some DEET. He has had enough mosquito bites, and decided it’s time to fight back.

Earth Day is right around the corner (April 22). Astrid Lee has provided this handy chart of ways to celebrate this planet we live on.

Beth Terry contemplates the pros and cons of recycling plastic into oil. I think it’s great that they’ve found a way to do this, but I do understand Ms. Beth’s concerns.

Ryan and Leslie help us visualize the huge number of plastic bottles used in the U.S. in just five minutes.

Alex has some easy ways to save car fuel, and it looks like he’s from England, talking about “tyres” and “boots”.

Scott is eager to let you know that this recession is a great time to start a green business.

Dang, that about wraps it up for this Carnival. Thanks for all the submissions; hopefully I didn’t forget anyone or mess up a link. Until next time, this is EcoJoe, signing off.

I shall make this short but oh so sweet. Today, dozens (if not hundreds!!) of people will be celebrating Earth Hour the way it has been celebrated since way back three years ago. If you want to join them, here’s how…

From 8:30PM to 9:30PM, local time, turn off all your lights and appliances (unless you work in a hospital or something). Apparently, this is how you “Vote Earth” (I’m not quite sure who Earth is running against). Also, feel free to sign up for this event at this site.

Will turning off your lights for one hour make a huge difference? No. But, it’ll be interesting to see how many people do this as symbolic support of a greener future.

P.S. I wonder if Google will show their support for Earth Hour again this year. Last year they went black, but then they went back, thus disproving the popular adage.

It’s always good to have a paper shredder, to get rid of all that “sensitive” information on bills and credit card offers. But how to do it without using precious electricity?

This hand-powered paper shredder takes care of that. I got it for free from BCBS, and it’s been useful for shredding paper, which can then be used to make some homemade paper. It works really easily too, and shreds CDs and credit cards.

So if you’re thinking about getting a paper shredder and don’t want to use electricity for it, go for the hand-powered kind. They work good, save money, and help conserve energy AND your identification. Truly a win-win situation.

I’ll keep this short and sweet… you can get a FREE Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb this week. How, you might ask?

I might answer, the GE Energy-saving light bulbs are on sale at Target for $1. Use this $1 off coupon and ka-chow, you can be saving electricity with your new free CFL bulb.

No money down, no excuses. Just do it and start saving energy and money today.

You may have heard about these new-fangled CFL bulbs. They last up to ten times longer than incandescent light bulbs, use only about 25% the energy (so they cost one-fourth the amount of money to run), and they produce 90% less heat (waste) than an incandescent bulb, so you get more light per watt!

But I digress. When these CFL bulbs eventually die, you can’t just throw them away, since they have some mercury in them. You have to take them to special CFL bulb collection places. I had to do this recently, and found these easy places to safely get rid o’ CFLs.

* Call your garbage service and ask them
* IKEA
* Home Depot
* If all those fail, check out Earth911, they should be able to help.

Good luck recycling them CFLs. Truly, you are on the path to being an eco-hero.

This morning outside my work it was about 70 degrees and sunny. The weather was quite literally TOO good. So we turned off our air conditioning and opened the windows to air out the office. As the cool outside air came rushing in, my brain gears started turning, and I wondered to myself, “Self, if every house in the U.S. of A. turned off their A/C and opened their windows whenever the weather was nice outside, how much money and electricity would that save?”

Welp, let’s see. The average price in the U.S. for energy is 9.49 cents per kilowatthour. And the average home air conditioner uses “more than 2000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, causing power plants to emit about 3500 pounds of carbon dioxide and 31 pounds of sulfur dioxide.”

Okay, stay with me. According to the OFFICIAL ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION, in 2005 there were about 93.3 million American houses with air conditioning. So let’s figure that those houses are in places that have nice weather (65-80 degrees) about 20% of the time, or 70 days each year.

That means that if all those houses turned off their air conditioning on those days and opened their windows to let in the fresh air, then:
400 kwh per house * 93.3 million houses = 37.2 billion kilowatthours saved!! That equals out to savings of over $3.5 billion each year! Ay chi wa wa.

Of course, the actual amount of nice days could vary, but still, if everyone did this whenever the temperature was nice outside, we’d be saving billions of kilowatthours. Dang, crazy.

So next time you’re at work or at home, and the weather is nice, instead of cranking on the ol’ air conditioning and wasting energy and money, why not just open the windows and let some fresh air in? You’ll be saving money and electricity while getting some fresh air in your cave.

Last Tuesday, good ol’ TMQ had some stuff to say about how the huge increase in oil price can be partially attributed to the reluctance that the U.S. showed with raising fuel standards.  Let’s take a look at what he had to say, shall we?

You Don’t Need to Speculate in Futures Contracts for Members of Congress, Since They Are So Easy to Buy: As the price of a barrel of oil nearly doubled in the first half of 2008, members of Congress ominously blamed petroleum speculators who, it was said, were ominously buying up futures contracts. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called a news conference to introduce his grandly titled Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008. If “excessive” speculation, whatever that means, really is influencing oil markets, then those ominous speculators are now being punished by the same markets, as barrel prices fall. But how convenient for the United States Congress to blame unnamed, shadowy speculators instead of blaming … the United States Congress.

It is Congress, after all, that from 1988 to 2007 repeatedly refused to raise fuel economy standards for cars, trucks and SUVs, thus guaranteeing U.S. oil imports would rise, and helping push up global oil demand, increase the price of oil and channel more dollars, euros and yen to the Persian Gulf dictatorships that support anti-Western and anti-Israel terrorism. Under Republican and Democratic leadership alike, for 20 years Congress was warned and warned and warned again regarding trends in U.S. petroleum use, and for 20 years did nothing. With an election coming, how about we throw these unctuous rascals out, and to play on a suggestion by the late William F. Buckley, replace them with 535 names chosen at random from the nation’s telephone books?
 

If you want to read the whole column (which is 90% about football, and which I recommend), you can read TMQ rooootttcccch… HERE.