1. Average Shower Time: Enter the amount of time you normally shower.
2. Shower Head Water Usage: The number of gallons per minute your shower head uses. If you cannot find this value, many shower heads made today use 2.5 gallons per minute.
3. Water Heater Energy Type: The type of energy you water heater uses. The typical water heater uses either gas or electric.
4. Water Heater Cost: The cost of one unit of the particular energy type your water heater uses. You can select the state you live in to get the average energy cost for the particular energy type your water heater uses.

Hopefully this calculator helps you determine how much a shower really costs you and the amount you can save by reducing your shower time. Please share your findings with this calculator.

	Water Use Average Shower Time: minutes Shower Head Water Usage: gallons / minute Water Heater Usage Energy Type: Electric Natural Gas State: Cost: $

Shower Water Use (gallons)

Shower Water Cost

What is LEED?

The U.S. Green Building Council organizes the LEED certification program that is a nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings throughout America. It also provides building owners the necessary tools to make their buildings more sustainable. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health:

• Sustainable site development
• Water savings
• Energy efficiency
• Materials selection
• Indoor environmental quality

What makes the Proximity Hotel so green?

The USGBC recently gave the Proximity Hotel it’s LEED Platinum award, it’s highest award to green buildings throughout America. This is the first platinum award given to a building within the hospitality industry in America. There is a huge list of sustainable practices that earned this hotel the LEED top award, but top few include:

• It uses 40% less energy and 30% less water than comparable hotels.
• 100 solar panels covering the 4,000 square feet of rooftop that heats 60% of the hotel’s water.
• Regional vendors and artists were used for furniture and artwork.
• Made using many recycled building materials, sustainable woods and salvaged wood.
• A green, vegetated rooftop will be planted on the restaurant.

It’s crazy how many sustainable methods the owners of this hotel used to build this hotel. A cool feature of this hotel is the solar panels that are lined on its rooftop. Not only do they look cool, but they utilize a normally unused space on many buildings. On top of that, it probably saves the hotel tons of money every year in heating costs.

On top of the hotel being green, its restaurant, the Print Works Bistro, has gone above and beyond in terms of sustainability. They provide local foods in many of their dishes, use geothermal energy to power their refrigeration system and use salvaged wood on their tabletops.

Quality and Green?

Just because this is considered to be the greenest hotel in America doesn’t mean it can’t be a world-class hotel with the luxurious look and feel of a 4-star hotel. They provide all the top amenities many top-tier hotels offer including high quality mattress and sheets, LCD TV, local art and are an entirely smoke-free hotel. I have been to a few 4-star hotels and they don’t look as nice this one.

I often check TripAdvisor to get a good idea of how nice a hotel is before choosing it.  The Proximity Hotel received 4 1/2 stars out of 5. They are also ranked one of the top hotels in Greensboro in terms of popularity. The price tag to stay at this hotel is fairly expensive at approximately $225 a night, but is the ordinary the price you are going to pay for a 4 star hotel. This hotel is a great example of how a beautiful hotel and restaurant like this one can leave a smaller footprint by using more sustainable methods and still charge a comparable price. Imagine the environmental impact if hotels across the country began using sustainable methods.

At the request of the New York Times, the   Tennessee Valley Authority released the byproducts of their plant:

The plant’s byproducts included 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, 1.4 million pounds of barium, 91,000 pounds of chromium and 140,000 pounds of manganese.

Those are some scary metals and are all linked to causing serious health conditions if exposed to.  Who knows that long-term impact of a massive spill like this to the residents in the local community as well as surrounding areas. What’s worse is that authorities from the plant have been slow to inform the local residents of the spill and the dangers it could cause.

This is just another example of wealthy individuals who own these types of plants who care more about making money than the safety of the public or the environment.  A formal investigation is going to be done on the spill and how to prevent further incidents like this from happening.  Is this really enough though?  A plant that allows a holding facility of toxic sludge to break should no longer be in business.  This is also just another wake up call to people that coal and other dirty sources of energy need to be eliminated in our country.  The danger their byproducts pose are not worth the slightly smaller price tag they have.

Photo by foxypar4.

No Starting Necessary?

As much of a surprise as this may seem to many, modern cars do not require any warming at all before driving in cold temperatures.  My father always told me to start up my car before I head out onto the road to allow for its oil and other engine lubricants to flow better.  This may apply to older cars that are more prone to sludge build up, but modern cars are better suited to handle this.  Idling is not the most effective way of heating your car anyways, driving it is.  As soon as I begin to drive my car, I always notice that it heats up much more quickly than just sitting their while it idles.  Also, allowing it to idle for excessive amounts of time can actually build up more gunk in your engine. On top of that you are just wasting gas and emitting unnecessary carbon emissions.

How about Frost?

It seems like the two main reason most people warm their cars in the cold is either because of frost or for their personal comfort.  A better method may be to wear warming clothes into your car and only allow your car to idle for up to 30 seconds.  Also, use a scraper instead of warming your car up to get rid of that pesky frost.

Turn Your Engine Off

When you are running into a store for a quick second or stuck in tons of traffic with no movement in sight, it is not always the best idea to let your car running.  For every two minutes you let your car idle is equivalent to driving your car 1 mile.  The only difference, you are not moving at all.  If you are going into a store, there is no reason to leave you car running.  You put your car at risk to being stolen as well as wasting gas.  This seems like the obvious choice to turn off your car, but most people feel completely different about turning their cars off in traffic.  The biggest worry of most is that turning your car off and on can lead to lots of wear on your car.  This is the furthest thing from the truth.  Restarting your car uses less fuel than leaving your car idle for under 10 seconds.  Also, your engine is not negatively affected by frequent restarts and the parts associated with starting a vehicle are inexpensive to replace.

Just remember these facts the next time you go to start your car when it is freezing outside or completely stopped in traffic.  There is no need to emit more carbon emissions than we currently already do and it could also save you a little on your fuel expenses.

The U.S. has continued to have high growth rates in its wind industry for the third year in a row at an estimated $18 billion in revenues.  With the record growth rates, America’s wind industry is now the largest in the world with a capacity of more than 21,000 Megawatts of energy, passing the prior leader Germany. This was all in the American Wind Energy Association, AWEA, annual report detailing the huge growth numbers and project growth for next year.

That 21,000 megawatts of capacity are expected to generate over 60 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2009, enough to serve over 5.5 million American homes.

Even though this is not a race to who can have the most renewable energy, I like the fact that America has boosted it’s research and development in these areas.  Hopefully other countries strive for this recognition and continue to grow their renewable energy industries.  One contributing factor to the high growth amid our current economic hardships are the renewable energy tax credits in the $700 billion bailout bill passed a few months ago.  I was not fully in support of the bailout bill, but I am really glad these tax credits made their way in.  They are already make a huge difference and hopefully continue to help grow our wind, solar and geothermal industries.