So, we’re starting to make that plunge towards conserving our automobile use. As you may be aware from previous episodes, Amy is already a telecommuter, so this one falls mostly to Rhett. Just by taking a bike for his daily commute and changing his lifestyle around slightly (read: no going home for lunch), he’s able to carve off a good 90 miles a week. That might not sound like much, but he really doesn’t drive very much as it is. If we’re not going on a road trip (which is rare), then that’s probably at least a 50% reduction.

Commuting and running errands with a bicycle is pretty easy. Just hop over to t or your local bike shop and get a nice, sturdy, used bike…then replace the mountain bike tires with slicks designed for use on the roads. A couple of small and simple tools to go with it, and you’ve got a vehicle that’s mighty fun, healthy, and green to ride.

Oh, and did we mention it’s the most energy efficient mode of transport? Yes, even if you take a very pessimistic analysis, it is not only more efficient than virtually any other choice in ground transport, but shaping your lifestyle around a bike encourages conservation.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), MPEG-4 Video (.m4v)

Tags: bike, bicycle, commute, bicycle commute, green, green lifestyle, new urbanism, travel

Rhett’s in the kitchen this week showing off some simple ways that we reuse water in the home. Greywater, or the water coming out of (non-kitchen) sink drains, washing machine drains, and shower drains, is ripe for reuse and constitutes 50-80% of household waste water. Just through the simple application of “bucket and spout”, it’s possible to water significant portions of your garden or even flush your toilets.

The simple methods shown here are motivational examples and they’re only the tip of the iceberg. For more ideas, check out our resources and show notes:

• The Greywater Guerrillas - activists for greywater reuse and recycling. This site is ripe with projects and ideas for homes of all sizes.
• WVU on Greywater - Great rules for the safe handling and use of greywater.
• Colorado State on Greywater - A moredetailed coverage of greywater handling. It also mentiones rainwater harvesting.
• New Mexico State University - The basics of New Mexico’s laws on greywater. Also has an excellent coverage of safe handling guidelines.
• Greywater irrigation - Stats on greywater production, use, and pollution. It also includes material on greywater treatment options.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), MPEG-4 Video (.m4v)

Tags: green, green lifestyle, apartment living, reuse, reduce, greywater, water

Hey there, guys.  We really try to stay dedicated to our weekly format.  We feel it’s really important to publish on a regular, weekly schedule.  This is partially because regularity is important in blogging, and it’s also because the discipline that comes with a weekly format is really good to ensuring that we keep greening our lives.  It’s for these reasons that we really feel it’s important to explain why we’ve been slipping on the schedule lately and specifically why Episode #17 is so late.

A number of factors have been working together.  The first of these is Rhett’s work schedule.  Rhett essentially has two careers.  In his day job, he works at Motorola as a cellphone designer.  On his weekends and some of his evenings, he tries to pursue research on his doctorate in computer science.  He does his best to juggle Greentime along with those two things, and it’s worked pretty well for a while.  Things have been far more hectic on that front, however.  His phone is supposed to ship any day now, and since July, he has ended up working in some capacity on nearly every critical issue the project has faced.  This has meant a lot of nights, some Saturdays at work, and a LOT of headaches.

Normally, we keep this going by having a regular schedule.  We have a night put aside for Greentime.  When an emergency comes up, however…and we’ve had at least one a week for the last month…other things essential to keeping our lives and jobs end up getting pushed around and squeeze on Greentime.  Each episode looks simple, but each one takes several hours from equipment set up to the time we post to Blip.tv.  Our emergencies have varied from health concerns to rescuing a stray kitten.

In addition, any time we’d normally have free has been scheduled for other things.  For example, we were visiting Amy’s mother for her 70th birthday.  She has a rare kidney disease (believed to exist only in her), and so every birthday she gets is a blessing to us.  It was worth it, but that took away that weekend.  Rhett had to visit his research lab a couple of weeks back…that was 10 hours spent on the road, and it burned an entire day.  We’ve also been doing a favor for a friend and producing a very special video for him, which has taken several nights away from us.  Virtually everything in our life has suffered.  We haven’t been getting regular exercise in over a month, for example.

So, this is what has, up until tonight, basically thrown our production schedule into shambles.  We thought that maybe we finally were starting to reach the other side.  We had a night where we could shoot Episode #17.  And…we did.  We shot it.  And the footage was atrocious.  The camera basically hid a number of critical problems in the viewfinder and they only came out when we loaded the footage on the editing console.  No part of it could be saved.  We tried.  It wasn’t good.

We are going to try again.  We want to do it tomorrow.  Amy is undergoing a routine medical diagnostic procedure tomorrow that will require sedation, however, and if she’s too ill to work the camera, then we’ll have to shoot Saturday.  Saturday may become a double-header for us, because we’ve been sitting on enough material for a “bonus episode” of Greentime.

Thank you, so much, for staying with us.  Greentime is in no way suffering from “podfading”.  We have ideas galore and we want to try them all out for you.  We have suffered from a level of obligations that have basically turned out lives into a whirlwind.  Thank you so much for making this blog exceed our wildest dream, and we sincerely hope you will continue to have faith in us.

Look for Episode #17 by the end of the weekend, and if we’re lucky, a bonus episode right after that.