Amazon Green, a new store from Amazon, focuses on listing environmentally friendly products. Included already are eco-friendly cleaning products, EnergyStar approved lighting products and office electronics.

Currently, they’re also asking customers for their Green 3 products: the three green products that they wish everybody had. The current top three are reusable shopping bags and a couple of different CFL bulbs (fourth is a push reel lawn mower).

Earth2Tech has a list of ten companies who have provided some eco-friendly equipment for the games. Everybody from LED lighting experts Cree, who provided LED displays for the swimming cube and the bird’s nest National Stadium, to companies like GE who are involved in all kinds of projects at the games, including wind turbines, solar lighting and even rainwater recycling.

Hong Kong
While most events will be held in Beijing, the equestrian events will be taking place in newly built facilities in Hong Kong. Horse events are not new in Hong Kong – the race track has been an important part of the city since it was created by the British.

The new facilities have been designed and constructed to respect the environment. Internal structures are use bamboo; the rubber floors are all made from recycled tyres and all the organic waste is collected and taken to a worm farm to be converted into natural fertilizer.

• A cardboard bicycle from a student at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. Created initially in an attempt to reduce theft, the low cost cardboard bicycle which is made almost entirely from recyclable and recycled materials and uses interchangeable mechanical parts.
• Inhabitat reports that Mercedes Benz intends to convert their entire line up of luxury cars to alternative fuels by 2015. That might sound like a long time in the future, but it is only 7 years away!
• SolarLab will be launching a solar powered rickshaw in London next year as a pilot program. If it performs well there, it will be released into other cities around the world too. The solar hybrids are human/electric hybrids combining pedal power and solar electric power from an array of photo-voltaic panels on the roof of the rickshaw. [Via InHabitat.]
• In Austin, Texas, Doug Pelmear claims he has modified a 1987 Ford Mustang engine, perfecting ideas his grandfather had 60 years ago, and his car now achieves 110 mpg. The car produces 400 bhp, and is claimed to go from zero to 60mph in just 3 seconds.

As oil prices continue to rise, consumers will become more and more interested in lower cost alternatives. Luckily for the planet, many of the solutions for reducing our dependency on oil are also good for the environment – a win, win situation.

Compact Fluorescent Lights

The simplest choice today is compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). These use fluorescent technology, but rather than being long straight tubes, the tubes have been coiled up to look like a glass spring. In some cases, like the flood light in the picture, they are then enclosed in a glass shell so they look almost exactly like the regular incandescent bulbs they replace.

CFLs use around 25% of the power for the same light output, and they should last longer than a regular bulb, but they’re not perfect. From a usage standpoint, perhaps the biggest drawback to them is that they tend to start dim and build up to their full brightness over a minute or two. From an environmental viewpoint, they contain mercury, so they need to be recycled carefully when they do need to be replaced and not just thrown away.

If the bulbs you’re replacing are in a 3-way switch or are controlled by a dimmer switch, then you need to look for CFLs that are compatible with those systems. They are available though in most of the same styles as the regular CFLs.

LED Fixtures and Bulbs

A relative newcomer on the scene, and still much more expensive than CFL bulbs, LED lights offer even lower power consumption at around 5%-10% of an equivalent incandescent. They are cool to the touch and should last 10 times longer than a CFL (or 50-100 times longer than a regular light bulb), so they should last you a lifetime. And that’s a good thing given how expensive they are today.

There are an increasing number of options out there to replace most types of bulbs, they come on at full brightness immediately (faster than an incandescent in fact) and many are compatible with dimmer switches too.

Switching Off

Another simple way to save some energy (and money) is to remember to switch off the lights when you don’t need them. During the day, try to make use of natural light whenever possible. It’s free, better for the planet and arguably even better for you. At night, switch off lights you don’t need. If you have multiple bulbs on a single switch and you don’t need that much light, try taking out some of the bulbs (or replacing them with old, burnt out bulbs so they don’t look like they’re missing).

Who Are We?

Vertography is run by a small team of engineers who care about the environment, and want to make it painless for anybody to live green. We think we can help you see that living green doesn’t need to be difficult, and even better it can save you money; money that is much better spent on enjoying your life.

What Are We Going To Write Here?

While we’re busy working on the main application, we’ll be sharing with you some of our hints and tips for living a greener life. And don’t worry, we’re not into hugging trees. We like to enjoy life to the max, but at the same time avoid hurting the planet – after all, it is the only one we have.

We’ll also be writing about new green technology that we hear about; everything from light bulb technology to high performance electric cars are in scope for the blog. If you find something cool out there too, please share it with us either by leaving us a comment or by emailing it to us at feedback@vertography.com.