During my drive home from work this evening, where I first stopped to pick up J-cub from nursery, then to drop off the boys at their karate lesson, we had a long, rambly conversation. We covered topics such as how much it cost to fix my car door, why I couldn't afford to buy an Ipod, or an Iphone, or an Ipad, or the DVD of Avatar (all things the boys thought I should own, rather than things I necessarily want), which of their old toys I thought J-cub might like, and how many spiders I thought might be living in their garage, how much I fancy David Tennant and how much I'd cried during his last episode of Doctor Who, why alternative energy sources are important, and how wind turbines are being set up in America above highways, to harness the energy of passing cars. That sounds interesting, said I, I'll have to look that up when I get home.
Today's post is therefore a bit different - I've looked up this unimagined concept which the boys had seen or read about, and found that not only is it true, but there's a whole variety of ways of harnessing wind energy, which don't have the negative impacts which are so often associated with standard wind turbines. There's an excellent post on Biofriendly which explains it all if you're interested. The pictures are amazing, I especially love the aesthetically-pleasing streetlights towards the end of the post.
We try to do our best to help the environment here, we are fanatical recyclers, are now cloth-nappy users, grow our own veg, only have one car ... I know there's a lot more that we could (and should) be doing, particularly to cut down our electricity usage. I was reminded of this post on The King and Eye, about making your blog carbon neutral, which I read a while ago and forgot to follow up. It's high-time I did so, even though my blog falls waaaaaay short of the apparent 'average' traffic of 15,000 hits per month (where are you, readers?). The initiative in question was started by a company called kaufDA in Germany, and, in their own words: "“My blog is carbon neutral” is an initiative, originally started in Germany by the “Make it Green” programme, that has the goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. We plant a tree for your blog and thereby neutralise your blog’s carbon footprint for the next 50 years! Everyone can make a small contribution to the environment. Every tree counts!". All you need to do to sign up is to write a post about the initiative, insert one of their buttons, email them, and they'll plant a tree for your blog. How awesome is that? Your tree, in its lifetime, will offset the carbon produced by your blog, as well as doing all the other wonderful tree-ey things that trees do.
3 comments:
Thanks for the awesome link to the article about different types of wind power. I've also been reading about the windbelt, which is a non-turbine method of collecting wind energy, especially suited for micro applications.
I really love renewable energy, but I get annoyed that it's too expensive for those of us on low incomes or in rented accomodation. If us lot get our act together and manage to form a housing co-op and buy a house, we're really hoping to be able to save towards solar hot water at least, and hopefully some more renewables over time.
It's good to know you're interested in this sort of thing too, and credit to the boys for knowing about the highway ones! How are the cloth nappies working out?
xxxx
Hey, this is fab. Will definitely do it.
Me too! Here's to 50 years of Carbon Neutral Blogging! x
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