Righto, so a little while ago, I built me a homemade water barrel out of a trash can and assorted odds n’ ends. The only thing left to do was attach the barrel to my gutters to collect all that free rain water.

It turned out to be pretty easy to do, and I’ve been enjoying free rain water for my garden ever since, saving money and cutting down on my city-water usage. Bah-blam.

Supplies

Here’s what you’ll need to READ MORE »

Here at the official EcoJoes Estates, we’re always looking for ways to cut our water use to help the environment and save some precious dinero on our water bill.

After reading this semi-literate, grammar-error-ridden piece on the top three ways to save water in your bathroom, my thoughts turned to how to save water that the toilet used.

One easy solution was to not flush the toilet every time I peed in it. If it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down.

Boom, instant savings! Unfortunately, this makes the house smell even more like urine than it usually does.

What to do? How could I READ MORE »

A rain barrel is a great way to conserve water by storing the rain from “Father Sky” until you want to use it for gardening, landscaping, or other assorted outdoor activities. This can also save you a chunk o’ change on your water bill.

Here’s an easy way to make your own rain water barrel. I basically followed the instructions at the RaleighNC site, with a few EcoJoe twists thrown in for good measure.

Supplies

For this here project, you will need some supplies. You can get these for less than 45 bucks. Heck yeah.

Handy Hint: If you tell the person working at the hardware shop what you’re building, they can help you find what you need.

READ MORE »

Soft drinks. Carbonated beverages. Sody pop.

Everyone knows soft drinks by one name or another, but do you know how much waste soft drinks contribute? About 131 billion cans are produced in the U.S. each year (only around 65% of those are recycled), and of the soft drink plastic bottles, only 24% are recycled. Gadzooks!

Not only that, but soft drinks, even though they cost pennies per gallon to make, cost you many times that amount. Why are they so expensive?

So you probably can figure that disposable soft drink cans and bottles are not the way to go. They waste plastic and aluminum, not to mention all the shipping and transportation for those materials. What are you to do if you want to save money and “go green”, as people are apt to say, but you simply can’t bear to be without your precious fizzy drinks?

SodaStream to the rescue. What the heck is SodaStream?, I hear you thinking inside your mind. Welp, it’s a company that sells sparkling water kits. They were charitable enough to send me a sample kit. Here it be.

What’s in the Homemade Soft Drink Kit?

• Penguin Carbonator
• Glass Bottles to make the carbonated drinks in
• Flavors
• CO² container

Basically these kits include a hand-powered machine that injects carbon dioxide into water, thereby making it carbonated. They also have a veritable cornucopia of different flavors you can put into the carbonated water, from sugary soft drink syrups to a wide variety of extracts (orange, berries, lemon-lime, etc.).

I got it about a month ago, and I’ve been making carbonated drinks just about every day. I’ve tried all the flavors I have, and there are a ton more I might one day order and try, but I’ma also try to make my own soft drink flavors.

So if you’d like to cut down on your plastic bottle and aluminum can waste, but you for some reason are unwilling to give up your beloved soft drinks, then I recommend you look into SodaStream.

Water. Agua. The big H2O. The universal solvent. One of our most important natural resources. Some even dare to say that without water, we would die. But do you know how safe your water is?

Welp, if not, then here’s a free way to test your water. Just CLICK ON THIS LINK and you’ll be whisked away to an Internet webpage whereupon you can order a free water test.

Just fill out the form (selecting “Order Free Water Test” under “Reason for Contact”) and you’ll be on your way to the peace of mind that only a water test can give you.

Man, it’s been a busy as heck couple of months. First, I’ve been busy with a brand new job, developing the web software of tomorrow, today.

Second, I just yesterday got back from mi luna de miel. What with that and helping with wedding planning, my life was purty dang busy.

Anyhoo, enough about me. What I bring to you today is a good video from TED Talks showing time lapse proof of extreme ice loss.

James Balog, a photographer, founded the Extreme Ice Survey to capture the changing glaciers by time-lapse photography and video. His goal is to show everyone visual proof of just how fast glaciers are melting.

Without any further ado, I bring to you his talk.

You know those lil’ paper cups of latte that you get from coffee shops? Think about how many people get one of those lattes every day. How much water does that take?

Welp, it turns out that to make each cup o’ latte, it takes 200 liters of water. That’s over 50 gallons of water for each latte!! Hot dang!

Besides just the water you see, lots of water is also used for the coffee production, milk, disposable cup and sleeve, lid, and sugar. Check out this here video from WWF for more information…