Tuesday, August 10, 2010

How about dinning in green? | Sobuka Blog | Clean Energy and Green Tech News & Events | Solar Installations | Wind Energy RECs | Energy Audits | Green Remodeling | Green Financing

How about dinning in green?

Posted on August 10th, 2010 by alex

Shopping occasionally at organic stores, growing little fruits and vegetables or enjoying more natural provenders are encouraging behaviors that will surely continue to build green-living consciousness to more communities. They would often influence daily practices, improve diets and importantly support eco-living localities. But we sometimes change routine once in a while – enjoying lunches, dinners (healthy of course) in the interest of variety.

Still, do you know if restaurants are beginning to or already disciplined in green behaviors like recycling, eliminating styrofoam and more activities of which some may not ever think of beside the aesthetic appearance or choice on menu of “the” restaurant?

A long existed and successful non-profit organization, Green Restaurant Association (GRA) has lead the efforts to make restaurants go green and maintain a required minimum level of achievements to identify as a Green Restaurant Certified member. Green Restaurant Association is a Massachusetts-based organization helping restaurants with resourceful solutions that aims to reduce baleful environmental impacts and behaviors. Expanding this trend by consumers being informed, pairs with the standards this organization enforces towards their mission – creating an environmentally sustainable industry.

GRA is partnered with various corporations to educate and largely influence the restaurant industry about environmental sustainability and responsibility. Present-day restaurants are assessed for qualification on these categories:

* Water efficiency
* Waste Reduction/Recycling
* Sustainable Food
* Energy efficiency and conservation
* Chemical & Pollution Reduction
* Furnishings and Building Materials
* Green-living education

Greening restaurants is important because as consumers, we play a significant part not only as a vital piece on the economic consumerism, but also a balance on sustainability of the environment. Unbeknownst to many, we as consumers weigh heavily on such matters from fast-food chains to sophisticated restaurants; because the pulse of consumers and behavior is the driving force in their businesses.

This does not mean boycotting any restaurant but perhaps try to impart  greening notions towards their activities and encourage those unaware to join their association. It could be one of your easy thoughts and discussion in your next dinning. Grin to a friend about it, this is a green movement.

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  2. Skip the Bag & Save the River…or Pay the Price
  3. ‘Plans on dealing your electro-junk for bucks?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Environment, Featured Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

add "are you green?" to your next dining experience

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Saturday, August 7, 2010

NASA shoots for LEED Platinum certification | Sobuka Blog | Clean Energy and Green Tech News & Events | Solar Installations | Wind Energy RECs | Energy Audits | Green Remodeling | Green Financing

NASA shoots for LEED Platinum with new building

Posted on August 7th, 2010 by Daniel

As one of the nation’s premier organizations for the advancement of science, NASA really isn’t at the forefront of the latest and greatest in eco-friendly technology. That’s why the agency is making a push to revamp its decades old centers to join the green revolution. The Kennedy Space Center’s  (KSC) Propellants North Administrative and Maintenance Facility is being constructed to obtain the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Platinum standard, its highest award for green construction.

What’s LEED? An acronym for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design,” LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system. It verifies a building’s or community’s design and construction used strategies that improved performance in energy savings, water efficiency, and CO2 emissions reduction. It also verifies improved indoor environmental quality, and ensures resources were used in an eco-conscious manner, minimizing their impact on the environment.

One of the stringent requirements is to use materials and resources within a 500-mile radius from the construction site. To help it meet this requirement,  the construction reused waste concrete from KSC’s demolition projects for its foundation, incorporated the old glazing and framing from the iconic Launch Control Center’s firing room, and added the crushed crawlerway rocks into its landscape.

Scheduled to open in late December, the 10,703-square-foot facility is designed to be 52% more efficient than traditional commercial buildings. It will have an underground rainwater collection system for irrigation and bathrooms, high-efficiency roofing, windows and walls, air conditioning with energy recovery technology, smart lighting controls, water-conserving bathroom fixtures and high-velocity hand dryers. Natural daylight will be incorporated with high windows at the right solar orientation, and the facility will use polished concrete and laminated bamboo for flooring.

Approximately 95% of all the waste generated during construction has been diverted from landfills. So far, they’ve recycled 475 tons of concrete, 163 pounds of crushed bottles and aluminum cans, 2.16 tons of cardboard, 164 pounds of white paper, 2.3 tons of wood and 3.5 tons of steel. These numbers will only increase as the project nears completion.

Our hats off to NASA.

At Sobuka, we help homeowners and businesses go green by connecting them to contractors for solar, wind RECs, energy efficiency audits, and any other green remodeling. An energy efficiency audit is the first step you should take to go green. Perform a zipc0de search on our homepage and request a FREE quote from one of our qualified energy efficiency auditors. Be part of the solution to the environment!

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 7th, 2010 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Featured Content, Green Construction and Remodeling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

i wonder if a silver snoopy award can be given for creating a healthy work environment

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Wednesday, August 4, 2010

University of Maryland going GREEN | Sobuka Blog | Clean Energy and Green Tech News & Events | Solar Installations | Wind Energy RECs | Energy Audits | Green Remodeling | Green Financing

University of Maryland is GREEN

Posted on August 4th, 2010 by Daniel

As former students of UMD, we’re not trying to toot our horn (Go Terps!), but we’d like to share with you some fabulous news about universities going green. The University of Maryland got a perfect score on the Princeton Review “Green Rating Honor Roll.”

The Green Rating looks into the school’s initiatives and performance on environmental awareness and responsibility. The key areas examined are 1) whether students’ campus life is sustainable and healthy; 2) how prepared graduates are for work in the clean energy industry, and the quality of their citizenship towards environmental challenges; and 3) how eco-friendly the school’s policies are. The study was conducted in partnership with ecoAmerica.

The remaining schools on the Green Rating honor roll are:

  • Arizona State University (Tempe)
  • College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor ME)
  • The Evergreen State College (Olympia WA)
  • Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta)
  • Harvard College (Cambridge MA)
  • Northeastern University (Boston MA)
  • Northland College (Ashland WI)
  • State University of New York — Binghamton University
  • Unity College (Unity ME)
  • University of California — Berkeley
  • University of California — Santa Barbara
  • University of California — Santa Cruz
  • University of Georgia (Athens)
  • University of Maine (Orono)
  • Warren Wilson College (Asheville NC)
  • West Virginia University (Morgantown)
  • Yale University (New Haven CT)

Here are a few examples of UMD going green: the university recently installed solar hot water heaters, pictured above, that will generate about a third of the hot water used at one of its dining halls. This investment is scheduled to save $1.7M annually! And although we’re not big fans of the metered parking costs (a bit too pricey for our liking), UMD’s parking meter booths run on sun-tracking solar panels, now that’s cool!

For more info about what UMD’s green initiatives, check out their sustainability page. In conclusion, GO TERPS! :-)

(via UM Newsdesk)

As always, if you are interested in being part of the solution to the environment, feel free to conduct a zipcode search to find green contractors near you. We recommend an energy efficiency audit as the first step towards going green. Find out how efficient you home or business is doing by requesting a FREE quote through the zipcode search on our homepage.

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  4. Using solar for desalination

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Environment, Featured Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

GO TERPS!

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