GaiaGeek

Wired Magazine is featuring an insightful article on Peak Water, with a look at the water supply situation in the Southwest U.S., London and Australia, noting the interdependency between water use and energy production. There are some interesting points throughout, such as the fact that a pair of jeans requires over 2,800 gallons of water to produce.

Living in such a hot and dry country, Australians are no stranger to water shortages and have become leaders in implementing conservation strategies. For instance, it’s no surprise that they claim birth to the dual-flush toilet: a toilet with buttons for half-flush or full-flush depending on what you’re leaving behind. Since toilets are one of the biggest water-wasters in households, the half-flush option can end up saving a lot of water.

If you want to follow in the Australian’s footsteps a step further, then consider implementing the following philosophy: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” While some might not like the thought of entering the bathroom and finding a toilet with anything less than crystal-clear water in the bowl (which is rather ironic given what you’re about to do to it), consider the impending alternative: if (when) your town or city runs out of natural supplies of drinkable water, you may end up drinking recycled waste water.

If you’re a regular user of Google’s search engine home page, you may have noticed their page went from basic white to basic black in recognition of going dark for Earth Hour. The environmental campaign started in 2007 when Sydney businesses and residents powered down, resulting in a 10% city-wide energy reduction. Now the campaign has gone global, and looks forward to even greater recognition next year thanks to Google’s small but symbolic gesture.

Slashdot has a discussion on Western Digital’s new low-power consumption Caviar GP hard drives - the GP standing for GreenPower. It turns out that not only do the drives save about 10W of power over other hard drives with similar specs, but these drives are some of the quietest hard drives around, making them ideal for quiet rooms and anyone doing home studio recording with their computer (or just anyone who likes a quiet computer).

These drives are great if you’re using a desktop system, but they still use more power than a typical laptop drive, or a solid-state disk drive with no spinning platter. Unless you really need a desktop, a laptop remains the computer to use for the least power consumption (and they also happen to be far more practical for surfing the web from your sofa).

CNET has photos of the Mitsubishi iMiEV from the 2008 New York Auto Show. The 4-door car can get about 100 miles of travel when its lithium ion batteries are fully charged. This seems to be a more passenger oriented version than the car Mitsubishi unveiled last year, featured by Treehugger, which had a more sporty look and a solar roof. It makes a great deal of sense to put a solar roof on an electric car, knowing that it can charge for free while you’re at work all day. That might bring of reversal to our tendencies to look for a parking spot in the shade on a hot sunny day.

CNN / Money Magazine note that self-made billionaire Warren Buffet has been investing in America’s railroads. The article points out that technology improvements have resulted in trains getting 80% more mileage from a gallon of diesel than they did in 1980, and that “for distances of more than 1,000 miles, using trains rather than trucks alone reduces fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 65%.”

It seems that if the U.S. is to ever become energy independent, using our existing railroads is clearly one way to go. Interestingly, due to trains making predictable stops and specific locations, they would also be an excellent candidate for using hydrogen fuel-cells. A quick Google search found this page discussing the idea.

CNet’s Green Tech blog is reporting on solar company Konarka which has developed what amounts to solar-powered plastic. Flexible solar cells are not new, but this seems to take things a step further in that solar cells would be easily integrated with just about anything plastic. They are not as efficient as rooftop-type solar panels, but if coupled with low power devices, they present the possibility for portable electronics that never need recharging.

While they also claim to have developed inkjet printed solar cells, I think it’s safe to assume we won’t be printing solar cells from our home printers - at least not without some interesting hardware changes.

Now, if they wanted to make this idea even more green, they could build solar cells integrated in plastic made from corn.

Wired offers up a Wiki page on how to Fly Through Airport Security. One of the best points listed and something I always do myself is the practice of putting your wallet, keys, phone, watch and belt into your carry on bag. Anything else metal that can be easily removed should go in there as well, though I recommend that metal jewelry be left at home or already packed in your carry-on bag when possible. Another good tip is wearing shoes without laces, which is also good for the security of your own belongings, since you’re less likely to notice someone taking your bag instead of theirs if your crouched down tying your shoes.

A thought on watches: I stopped wearing mine when I realized the chances of me not having my phone on me are pretty much zero. I honestly haven’t missed it. It’s one less thing to remove when going through airport security, one less potentially expensive item to worry about losing, and now I don’t have a funny little tan line around my wrist during the summer.