Insteading
Homesteading & Sustainability
While some of us deal with our home's waste water through grey water systems or other technologies, most of us "flush it and forget it." Once that toilet flushes, or water otherwise runs down the …
Continue Reading about Waste Water Treatment With Corn Cobs: A Google Science Fair Winner →
If you ask the average person what cigarette waste like old filters and ashes are good for, most folks would say, "Nothing." But if you believe in sustainability, all wastes have a higher purpose. It …
Continue Reading about Reusing Cigarette Butts, Filters, and Ashes →
Need a DIY clothes dryer? That's easy: string up a line between two trees, fence posts, or whatever you've got. A DIY washing machine, however, is just a bit more involved... but as I've discovered …
Continue Reading about The Human-Powered DIY Washing Machine: 5 Plans →
Induction cooking is the hottest new technology in the kitchen. With grand claims of offering the best of both worlds -- the responsiveness and control of gas and the heating power of electricity -- …
Continue Reading about How Energy Efficient is Induction Cooking? →
In China, wind power is leaving nuclear behind. Electricity output from China’s wind farms exceeded that from its nuclear plants for the first time in 2012, by a narrow margin. Then in 2013, wind …
Continue Reading about Generation Gap: Wind Power Opens Big Lead over Nuclear in China →
The art of foraging goes back to our hunter-gatherer days, but most of us don't spend much time any more walking the neighborhood looking for edible weeds and fruit trees. That's changing, though, …
Continue Reading about Forage the Urban Bounty: 11 Crowdsourced Maps of Edible Plants →
Nuclear power generation in the United States is falling. After increasing rapidly since the 1970s, electricity generation at U.S. nuclear plants began to grow more slowly in the early 2000s. It then …
The great energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy is under way. As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about pollution and climate …
Continue Reading about The Great Transition, Part I: From Fossil Fuels to Renewable Energy →
Aquaponics is one of those concepts that I've known of peripherally for years, but didn't really give much thought to until I came across plans for The Plant in Chicago. Putting fish and plants …
Wind power is the world’s leading source of renewable electricity, excluding hydropower, with 238,000 megawatts of capacity installed at the start of 2012. Thus far, almost all of this wind power has …
Continue Reading about Offshore Wind Energy Development Picking Up Pace →
"Biomass" is one of those terms like "alternative energy": it could be a sustainable approach to energy generation, but isn't always. I once sat through a talk by an energy services company executive …
Continue Reading about DIY Biomass: Briquettes, Presses, Logs, and More →
Just back from a weekend trip up to the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, and between board meetings, was able to join in with the community's annual open house and Village Fair. Many, many interesting …
Scrap tires have been a disposal menace for decades: the EPA notes that "There are at least 275 million scrap tires in stockpiles in the U.S.," and in 2003 (the last year for which there are figures, …
Continue Reading about Building with Tires for Energy Efficiency and Disaster Resistance →
Many responsible consumers would like to be able to buy fruits and vegetables that have been raised in a sustainable manner, and many retail and food service entities want to be able to respond to …
Continue Reading about A Vision For Truly Sustainable Fruit and Vegetable Farming →
I recently posted a description of a highly sustainable form of row crop farming that combines high productivity with low environmental impact. This is not just a theoretical vision but something …
Continue Reading about A Surprising Reason We Don’t Farm As Sustainably As We Could →
(updated 8/22/11) Yesterday I posted about what I believe to be the five best things about Organic farming. These are attributes that I seriously believe are good ideas for how we should farm, …
Continue Reading about Five Key Limitations of Organic Farming →
Urbanite is the perfect symbol for the new natural building movement, the new wave of building that incorporates natural, local, and recycled materials in place of high embodied energy, destructive, …
Continue Reading about The Recycled, Post-Industrial Green Building Material: Urbanite →
I'm probably going to irritate some people with this post. I apologize in advance because that is not at all my intention. For those readers that don't think climate change is a …
Continue Reading about Organic Farming Would Be Better In Terms of Climate Change Impact. Right? →
As a follow up to Sean's post on Micro Hydro Essentials, I thought I would share an overview of my system, which has powered my home for over 13 years. We are fortunate to live on rural mountain …
Continue Reading about Living Off-Grid: Our Micro Hydro Alternative Energy System →
Paper appears to be high on the agenda of a number of organizations this week. It’s necessary. Paper is so ubiquitous – from tissues to toilet paper to memo pads to catalogs to the mess on your desk - …
Blogging, social news, peer-to-peer philanthropy, microblogging, social networking, wikis, video sharing, and more. These are the new agents of change. Back in May, we penned the original 10 Ways to …
Continue Reading about Ten (More) Ways to Change the World Through Social Media →
Buying second-hand products is always green, but it's easy to be discouraged by the stories of broken laptops from eBay or Craigslist. To quell these fears, here is a 10-step checklist on how to find …
Continue Reading about 10-Step Guide to Buying a Used Laptop That Works →
Editor's note: Students -- please feel free to use the information here. Just make sure to credit it appropriately (with a link if possible)... including credit to the owners of the …
By the numbers, here is where the United States stands in its recycling effort. Not the best, not the worst. Just making a quick assessment based on these digits -- maybe the U.S. has earned a C …
There are many ways in which entrepreneurs and ecopreneurs are similar. Both embrace failure and are idea-driven, innovative, creative, risk tolerant, flexible, adaptable, freedom-minded and …
Continue Reading about Ecopreneur or Entrepreneur: What’s The Difference? →
Scientific American has a thought-provoking proposal in its January 2008 issue. The magazine proposes a massive, far-reaching plan to get solar power generating 69 percent of America's electricity 35 …
Continue Reading about Scientific American’s Solar Grand Plan →
