Low-Cost Solar Heater Made From Soda Cans
Posted by Sonja Ebron
The green economy is here, and those seeking to profit from it must keep an ear to the ground for new business ideas. As a sign that green thinking has reached the grassroots, I recently found a Daily Kos diary describing how to heat your home with soda cans. The materials are easy to find at most hardware stores, and the process is relatively simple. This could be a great money-maker for an industrious entrepreneur with a little mechanical skill.
Here’s what you do:
- remove the ends of 240 soda cans,
- glue 16 cans together with caulk to make a column,
- repeat step (2) until you have 15 columns and let them dry for 2-3 days,
- drill 15 circular holes into two 2 x 6’s to make column manifolds,
- fit the soda can columns between the two manifolds,
- make a rectangular box with a plywood base and line with aluminum foil,
- place the cans and the manifolds inside the box,
- cover the box with Lexan sheeting and seal the edges,
- connect the columns with flex duct on the top and bottom of the box,
- attach some piping, an in-line fan, a thermostat and other accessories.
Despite all the high- tech research on new products to save energy and the environment, these are the proven, low-tech, low-cost concepts that will see most of us through.
Shopping Online Is Eco-Friendly
Posted by Sonja Ebron
The number of shoppers buying online grows every year. Consumers cite the convenience of staying home and a lesser need to see products before buying. Now there’s evidence that shopping from home actually helps the environment. According to a study by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, shopping online prevents the emission of a key greenhouse gas.
An estimated 30 percent of holiday gifts will be purchased online this year, saving half a million metric tons of carbon dioxide from getting into the atmosphere. Some of these savings are offset by commercial delivery trucks, but they make several deliveries per truckload, compared to one delivery per brick-n-mortar shopper. Savings are also reduced by the online shoppers’ computer usage, which is typically powered by burning fossil fuels. Still, the environmental costs of shopping are much lower for those buying online. This year, consider shopping from home to find gifts for your favorite people.
Eco-Friendly at Lower Cost
Posted by Sonja Ebron
Conventional wisdom says environmental improvements cost money, that we can’t do anything about climate change without sending prices skyward. The most exciting thing I ever heard from Al Gore was that protecting the environment would provide economic benefits as well, but I was never clear on how that would work. Industry has begun to understand that our response to climate change will force them to think in new ways. There’s good news that may help manufacturers move faster.
People Make blackEnergy Go Round
Posted by Sonja Ebron
I like to take all the credit for blackEnergy’s success, but the truth is there is a fantastic staff doing the company’s work. Dave Benfield, our VP for sales and marketing, is retired from the same position at one of Georgia’s natural gas suppliers. Besides mentoring me (read: keeping my head on straight most days), he uses a thick Rolodex to introduce me to lots of helpful contacts. He’s also made it much easier than we thought to transition from exclusive relationships with utility suppliers to a tenable independent status. Gwen Sheppard, an old and dear college friend, is a retired military officer and software genius. As director of operations, she keeps the trains running on time and just gets the job done right every day. Crystal Grant (pictured below discussing energy conservation with an Atlanta resident) is a recent graduate of Spelman’s innovative environmental science program. As our special projects coordinator, she has a hand in everything from government contracting to consumer education initiatives.
Crystal also supervises our summer intern, Sarah Jones, a political science and environmental science major at Spelman. Perhaps because they’re young and inexperienced, Crystal and Sarah add the energy and out-of-the-box thinking the rest of us old-timers sometimes lack. Along with our vendors and suppliers, I think we make a great team. So while I can’t take credit for their work, at least I can take credit for hiring them.
Ms. Magazine Profiles blackEnergy
Posted by Sonja Ebron
The summer issue of Ms. Magazine carried an article entitled “The Green Bottom Line: How environmentally conscious, women-run companies do good and do well.” The article, written by Ms. contributor Laura Orlando, begins with blackEnergy: “The trade-off between social good, the environment and profits isn’t really a tradeoff anymore — it’s an excuse. Just ask Sonja Ebron, CEO of blackEnergy in Atlanta. Her company, founded in 2001, secures energy for black communities, using collective buying power to negotiate some of the lowest natural gas rates in Georgia. Moreover, it sends some of its profits back to nonprofit organizations in its customers’ communities. And since the company anticipates that access to energy will get much tougher because of climate change, Ebron — who has a doctorate in electrical engineering — hopes its efforts to locally produce power will help ‘ease the transition to low-energy living’ for its customers.”
