Editor's note: Rebecca's taking the week off to attend the New York International Auto Show, so several of us will be filling in for her.

Spring is here officially, and for many homeowners, that means its time to start thinking about the lawn. As you consider your approach to keeping the grass green, we hope you'll incorporate some greener methods of doing it!

Did you know, for instance, that a 2001 Swedish study showed that “Air pollution from cutting grass for an hour with a gasoline powered lawn mower is about the same as that from a 100-mile automobile ride.” Homeowners cranking up those gas powered machines on the weekends may create as much as 5% of the nation's air pollution.

There are alternatives, though. Electric mowers don't spew emissions themselves; of course, emissions likely do come from the power plants producing the electricity, so they may only be marginally better. Solar-powered mowers are on the market, but you'll pay a premium for them. The best (and cheapest) alternative: an old-fashioned, human-powered reel mower. These may not be practical for a really big yard, but for smaller and medium-sized lawns, they'll cut as well as a mower powered by an engine, and give you a bit more exercise in the process.

Of course, there are other options that keep you from having to mow. More on those later in the week.

Jeff says: I've been using a reel mower for five years now on my small, urban yard, and love it. It cuts well, and takes no more time than a power mower. And, I spend nothing on gas or maintenance.

We've got a couple of good questions that have shown up in the Discussion Forum over the past day:

1) GO member attacat asks about using biodegradable trash bags/bin liners:

The bin liners that are commonly used are made of synthetic polymers like polyethylene and polypropylene, and these are not considered biodegradable. Eventually, these plastics will break down, but only after being submitted to decades of heat and light.

Green Your Office proposes a new technology called d2w totally degradable plastics. Apparently, these refuse sacks will “degrade turning harmlessly into CO2 and water”. I may be missing something here, but isn’t CO2 one of the main gases that the greenhouse effect has been blamed on? Are biodegradable bin liners actually harmful to the environment as well?

Got an answer to this one? Is the amount of CO2 produced by these products negligible when compared to the impact of plastic?

2) GO member tamilee is likely not the only person with this question:

Where can I find home solar power systems and how they work explained in the simplest terms possible? I'm looking for a solar power for dummies website or book. I have been interested in solar power for decades but whenever I try to learn about it there is so much jargon used I just get lost.

There is a Complete Idiot's Guide to Solar Power to Your Home; the second edition will be released in May. Any thoughts on this book, or other recommendations?

As always, please answer these questions in forum where they were posted…

Editor's note: As we move into our second month, we've ramped up efforts to sell ad space on the Green Options portal. Sponsored posts are one type of advertising option we're offering to potential clients; we're proud to bring you the first of these from Oceana, the largest international organization exclusively dedicated to ocean conservation.

Rest assured that we'll always label sponsored posts clearly and unambiguously. If you ever have questions or concerns about one of these posts, feel free to let me know.

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Keep up with the latest news about the world's oceans, and what you can do to protect them. Sign up for Oceana's free newsletter reports.

When most people hear the word "solar," they automatically think "expensive." Gary Reysa, the publisher of BuildItSolar.com, has demonstrated again and again that this doesn't have to be the case; with the right (easily-available) materials and a little time and elbow grease, almost anyone can add useful, valuable solar features to their home or other building.

Gary's $350 Solar Heater plan has gotten quite a bit of play both on- and off-line — I was one of a number of bloggers to write about it, and Home Power magazine and Mother Earth News have also featured the project. That's not surprising — for a really small investment in time and money, Gary now has a clean, green heater for his workshop. Keep in mind that he lives in Montana, too; if this works for him there, it will likely work for you, too.

Materials

Please note: I've included the dimensions from Gary's plan, but you'll probably need to adjust them. As he notes in the article from Home Power, you'll want to have as big a wall space as possible.

• 10 Suntuf corrugated polycarbonate panels, 2 x 8 ft.
• Black window screen, 4 x 70 ft.
• Lower sill & studs, 2 x 6s, 68 ft.
• Paint, caulk, lag screws, etc.
• Upper sill, 2 x 8s, 22 ft.
• Glazing 1 x 1 in. supports, 130 ft.
• Suntuf “wiggle” closure strips, 40 ft.
• 200 Screws with EPDM washers

Build Your Solar Heater

Gary's the pro here, so rather than trying to excerpt or edit his instructions, I'll let him take over… from the Mother Earth News and Home Power articles:

It took me about three, eight-hour days to build and install the collector. Follow these suggestions and you may be able to do it in less time!

1. First, measure your building’s south wall to determine what changes you will have to make to the collector design. Pay particular attention to the vertical height available and to stud spacing. Next, lay out the vent locations. They should be offset enough from the wall studs to allow the verticals to be lag-bolted from inside the building. Mark the vent locations on the inside and outside of the building to ensure no conflicts exist. After you are certain the layout is correct, take a deep breath, and cut all of the vents.
2. For the frame, cut the top sill long enough to lap over the end verticals by at least 1 inch (2.5 cm). Bevel the back of the top sill so that it slopes about 10 degrees when fitted against the siding. Next, cut all the verticals, noting that the two end verticals are longer because they extend below the lower sill. The tops of the verticals must be cut to match the slope of the top sill. Gang the verticals together and cut the notches for the two, 1- by 1-inch horizontal glazing supports.
3. Prime and paint everything. Although you do not need to repaint the siding under the collector, painting it a dark color will improve the collector’s efficiency slightly. Keep in mind that a muted version of this color will show through the collector screen, so be sure it meets your aesthetic sensibilities. After the paint has cured, mount all of the verticals to the siding. Take care to keep everything level, plumb, and straight—this will save you a lot of four-letter words later. I fastened the verticals to the wall sheathing and siding from the inside using lag bolts. If your siding is not strong enough for this, consider mounting the verticals from the outside, using lag screws through the verticals and into the wall studs.
4. Next, attach the top and bottom sills. Use flashing above the top sill if desired. Then, seal the collector frame with silicone caulk. Mount the battens that will support the screen absorber. Staple the window screen onto the battens. You can fold the edges of the screen to make it fit in the slightly less than 48-inch (122 cm) bay widths.
5. Make five 4- by 8-foot (1.2 x 2.4 m) glazing panels by joining pairs of the 26-inch-wide by 8-foot-long corrugated panels. Overlap the panels by one corrugation, and apply a light bead of silicone between the overlapped sheets. Fasten the overlapped corrugations to a 1- by 1-inch wood strip using screws with EPDM washers.
6. Install the horizontal 1- by 1-inch glazing support strips to the collector frame. The surface of the strips should sit flush with the surface of the collector’s frame when installed in the notches of the 2 by 6s. Do any cleanup, caulking, or other work you need to do inside the collector frame now! You won’t be able to get to the inside after the glazing is applied.
7. Next, mount the glazing panels. Install the “wiggle” closure strips, which fill in the contours of the corrugations, on the top and bottom sills. Run caulk beads on the first set of verticals and mount the first glazing panel section. (You’ll quickly find out how square your frame is.) Fasten the panel sections to the frame using screws with EPDM washers. Install the rest of the sections in the same way. Overlap each new section over the last section by one corrugation, using a bead of caulk in the overlap. Make the flapper valves for the ten inside top vents. I used two thicknesses of plastic garbage bag for each flapper. Before attaching the flapper, attach 1/2-inch hardware cloth over each vent. Then, staple the flappers along the top edge of the vent, just above the vent opening.

That's it! Want to find out more about the science behind this, or the performance of the unit. Check out the article.

Green Options member Jeroenla has a question that's probably crossed many of our minds:

My heart is on the right place: I want to save the planet

I would love to eat only bio-meat (no, I am not going to be a vegetarian), eko-eggs and all that stuff, but seriously: how can you guys afford to do so?

When I am in the store, I can buy "conventional" food or eko, but the eko-stuff is always at least THREE times as expensive!

Sure, I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for "decent" food, but three times more… If I would pay that, I would need to take an extra job, and stop doing everything else I do: the money simply isn't there.

I found one shortcut for the vegetables: we now rent a 140 sq.metre patch of land on which we grow food, but that too isn't cheap (tools, seeds, all the other materials etc).

So, I am curious, how do others, who don't earn loads of money, do that?

Liam has suggested wholesale; I've mentioned farmer's markets. What other suggestions do you have about ways Jeroenla can eat green without breaking the budget? Let her know… others are probably interested, also…

Editor's note: "Weekly DIY" is a new Green Options blog series that will show you green projects, both small and large, that you can do yourself with readily available materials.

Worm composting is one of those practices that's going to earn you strange looks — mention your "worm bin," and you'll inevitably see a raised eyebrow, often followed by the question "What's a worm bin?"

If you live in an urban or suburban setting, though, using red worms to transform your organic trash (fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells, etc.) into usable compost (in this case, worm poop… or "castings") takes us a lot less space than the traditional pile or bin, and will likely keep your neighbors happier.

While a number of worm bins are available for sale, I found that it was much cheaper to make my own. After digging around online, I found a great plan at the Whatcom County (Washington) Agriculture site.

So let's build a worm bin!

What You Need:

• Two 8-10 gallon plastic storage boxes (dark, not see-through). I took a trip to Target and picked up two Rubbermaid containers with lids. Don't remember the price offhand, but very reasonable.
• A drill with 1/4" and 1/16" bits
• Shredded newspaper (for bedding)
• A pound of redworms. You can order these online, but I went to the local bait shop.

Make Your Worm Bin

From the Whatcom County site:

1. Drill about twenty evenly spaced 1/4 inch holes in the bottom of each bin. These holes will provide drainage and allow the worms to crawl into the second bin when you are ready to harvest the castings.
2. Drill ventilation holes about 1 – 1 ½ inches apart on each side of the bin near the top edge using the 1/16 inch bit. Also drill about 30 small holes in the top of one of the lids.
3. Prepare bedding for the worms by shredding Newspaper into 1 inch strips. Worms need bedding that is moist but not soggy. Moisten the newspaper by soaking it in water and then squeezing out the excess water. Cover the bottom of the bin with 3-4 inches of moist newspaper, fluffed up. If you have any old leaves or leaf litter, that can be added also. Throw in a handful of dirt for "grit" to help the worms digest their food.
4. Add your worms to the bedding. One way to gather redworms, is to put out a large piece of wet cardboard on your lawn or garden at night. The redworms live in the top 3 inches of organic material, and like to come up and feast on the wet cardboard! Lift up cardboard to gather the redworms. For example, if your food waste averages 1/2 lb. per day, you will need 1 lb. of worms or a 2:1 ratio. There are roughly 500 worms in one pound. If you start out with less than one pound, don't worry they multiply very quickly. Just adjust the amount that you feed them for your worm population.
5. Cut a piece of cardboard to fit over the bedding, and get it wet. Then cover the bedding with the Step 5cardboard. (Worms love cardboard, and it breaks down within months.)
6. Place your bin in a well-ventilated area such as a laundry room, garage, balcony, under the kitchen sink, or outside in the shade. Place the bin on Step 6top of blocks or bricks or upside down plastic containers to allow for drainage. You can use the lid of the second bin as a tray to catch any moisture that may drain from the bin. This "worm tea" is a great liquid fertilizer.
7. Feed your worms slowly at first. As the worms multiply, you can begin to add more food. Gently bury the food in a different section of the bin each week, under the cardboard. The worms will follow the food scraps around the bin. Burying the food scraps will help to keep fruit flys away. What do worms like to eat? Feed your worms a vegetarian diet. Most things that would normally go down the garbage disposal can go into your worm bin (see the list below). You will notice that some foods will be eaten faster than others. Worms have their preferences just like us.

The Whatcom County site also has information on what to feed your worms (and what not to), and some troubleshooting tips. For more information on worm composting, you can also visit my Composting with Worms Squidoo lens.

Editor's note: Thanks to C. Scott Miller for sharing this post, originally published on his BIOwaste blog. Scott is president of The Miller DeWulf Corporation in Los Angeles, and a consultant, blogger, writer, webmaster, and print designer who has worked in marketing and communications for numerous engineering, educational, and utility firms.

Although located near the site of two famous Bull Run battles of the Civil War, the rural community of Warrenton, Virginia is not the kind of place you would normally expect to find revolutionary figures. Yet the town's mayor, George Fitch, envisions a future of green choice and self-reliance for his community by converting local waste and crops into bioenergy - ethanol for cars and green electricity for the grid. He may be one point of light that ignites the imagination and energy of thousands with a similar vision throughout the nation - and the world.

Apparently, someone on the U.S. Senate Energy Committee decided it was a perspective that needed closer inspection. At its Transportation Biofuels Conference on February 1, this small town mayor was a featured speaker along with representatives from Ford, Chevron, MIT, and the American Corn Growers Association.

An advocate of decentralized waste diversion into energy production Fitch's message is that local communities can be a major contributor to the goal of 20 billion gallons of renewable fuel. He said he has embarked on a plan for an integrated biorefinery at a landfill site which would produce 10 million gallons of ethanol and 8MW of electricity from a wide variety of wastes and residues.

“Most of the feedstocks would come from municipal solid wastes including construction debris which now are being buried at the landfill emitting greenhouse gases. This amounts to more than 100,000 tons annually of useable waste that can be converted into energy. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from a biorefinery using wastes would be over 50%,” Mayor Fitch commented.

“We’ve estimated there are about 10,000 tons of forest residues, 5,000 to 20,000 tons of collectible agriculture residue and another 5,000 to 7,000 tons of sewer sludge and animal manures which could be used as feedstock for the plant. “I’ve been told there are more carbons in a 10 cent bushel of manure than a $4 bushel of corn.” the Mayor said.

“We don’t expect to get much of the agriculture residue at the beginning because it will take awhile to solve the infrastructure problem of efficiently harvesting, gathering, storing and transporting the corn stover Right now, it’s trial and error. We hope to involve John Deere which has developed a machine that allows just a single pass to pick up the grain and the residue at the same time. This would reduce the cost of corn stover to the biorefinery by at least $10 per ton.

He pointed out that the technology seems to have evolved so you can use a wide variety of biomass material to co produce ethanol and electricity at an integrated biorefinery. He added, “we are looking at three different gasification technologies from three different companies for our project.”

Mayor Fitch told the committee and audience, “there are a lot of communities like Warrenton across the country, certainly hundreds if not thousands, which could be self sufficient in renewable energy. Like Warrenton, they have a variety of biomass material right in their backyard. Collectively, that represents billions of gallons of ethanol or renewable diesel – and all of it made from waste and residues.”

“That is a major contribution, which I think has been overlooked, to the goal of 20 billion gallons of renewable fuel by the 2020. The focus seems to be on creating large scale biorefineries producing 50 to 100 million gallons a year by the ADM’s and Cargill’s of the world. Communities like mine are just as valuable. Perhaps more so because we can engage the people in our community to get behind our renewable energy initiative and be a stakeholder.”

Mayor Fitch added, the economics of small scale biorefineries now work. It used to be that you needed at least 3,000 to 5,000 tons of feedstock per day to be economical. Not any more. Our model shows that 300 to 500 tons per day will be profitable; provided it produces both ethanol and electricity.”

Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina told the audience, “Mr. Mayor, you have stimulated our thinking. We need to think about small scale biorefineries across the country using different types of wastes. He added, “decentralization of renewable energy would give our country more energy security.”

For more information, you can contact Mayor Fitch directly at: (540) 347-1101. He would appreciate supportive letters to the editor to a local newspaper article written about his plan. Address the letters to the author Cheryl Chumley.

Mike Taylor is the publisher of Solar Kismet, where he orginally published this post.

Natural Gas , or how I saved $200 this winter (Part 1 of 2)

We moved to the DC area last September and in the first bill from Washington Gas, it had a table of the previous owner’s natural gas use for the last year. A perfect opportunity for a little data analysis…

Using data from the National Weather Service, I was able to make sure that the numbers were comparable. If last January was colder than this January, it wouldn’t be apples to apples, but for months with similar “heating degree days,” they had the same average temperature and any differences in natural gas use would be a good assessment.

December 2006 (us) and January 2006 (old owner) had similar temperatures (639 and 672 HDD respectively). The old owner used 142 therms and we used 63 therms, which based on this year’s prices, saved us $90.

January 2007 (us) and February 2006 (old owner) were also very similar (746 and 733 HDD respectively). The old owner used 156 therms and we used 88 therms, which saved us $76.

That’s $166 in only two months!

So your first thought is that I must be freezing all the time. Nope. The thermostat is set at 70 F right now. Spent a lot of money? Nope. We have the same house, furnace, water heater, stove, etc.

Here are my secrets, which cost less than $100 and only a little effort:

• Bought, installed, and programmed a programable thermostat - We set it at 68-70 in the morning and evening, 55 at night, and 50 when we’re at work in the day. And no it doesn’t take more energy to heat the house back up.
• “Hold” the thermostat when gone - If we’re leaving for the evening, not coming back from work until late, or going away for the weekend or a week, we set the thermostat at 55 F. The cats don’t mind.
• Closed off the guest room - I shut the vent and we keep the room closed (unless a guest is visiting of course). No one’s going to notice. We do the same for a three-season office with poor insulation.
• Covered up the holes - We have a whole house fan in the second floor ceiling, which I assume will be great in the summer, but is basically a hole in the ceiling in the winter. I cut out some cardboard and taped it up. I also put weatherstripping around the attic “hatch” in the ceiling.
• Shut the basement door - It’s gross down there anyway.

Other things I’ve done since, i.e. they aren’t included in the above numbers:

• Seal the “attic bypasses” - You have hundreds of holes in your wall, which basically create a highway for warm air to escape through the walls and out the attic. I bought outlet gaskets, basically foam inserts, to put behind the light and electric outlets. For some, I put a little sealant foam around the outside if the gasket didn’t cover it enough. There are other things to do…for more information on these secret heat losses click here (PDF) - insulation without address the bypasses is almost useless. The better solution, if you have access, is to seal the tops of the wall cavities from the attic (but think about whether you’re going to insulate the walls in the process).
• Covered up more holes - I’ve since covered the kitchen fan and the office vent.

Other things you can do:

• Put up plastic on the windows - It’s not fun, glamorous, or good looking, but it works. I did it in Minnesota but we have better windows here in Maryland.
• Wrap the water heater - Trendy these days but not as necessarily if you’re water heater is newer and uses foam insulation (vs. fiberglass).
• Wrap the pipes - Buy the foam piping insulation and wrap the first few feet of the hot AND cold water pipes going into and out of the water heater. Go nuts and wrap the rest of the hot water pipes if you want to. Do the same if you have a boiler.
• Caulk - Caulk your attic bypasses. Caulk the window edges. Caulk it all.
• Put in a low-flow showerhead - They work well.
• Insulation - If you’ve addressed the attic bypasses, then insulation makes sense. Go with the ceiling and then perhaps the walls, but this isn’t necessarily a cheap option.

Things not to do unless money is no object - if you run the numbers, they aren’t your best investments:

• Don’t replace the windows for energy reasons - Do it for aesthetics. Do it for comfort. Don’t do it expecting to save oodles of money and run from anyone who says otherwise.
• Don’t replace your furnace for energy reasons - Do it for safety. Do it for a remodel. Do it if it’s broken. Have the old one checked out for safety and efficiency, but if it’s working fine, let it keep working.
• Don’t replace your washer or dryer for energy reasons - Do it if it breaks. Do it for a remodel. And when you do, get a front-loading washer and a gas dryer with a moisture sensor.

Next time: Electricity, or how I have a $30 electric bill (Part 2 of 2)