Green Holidays: Tips on D-ECO-rating

Festive doesn’t have to mean wasteful. Green can be your holiday color as well as your way of life. This year the King County EcoConsumer team has expanded their Green Holidays resources to offer new and innovative ideas to green up your celebrations. Here are some of their suggestions:

Eco-tastic Holiday Decor
Energy-efficient LED (light-emitting diode) or solar-powered lights add a sleek look to your holiday decorations, and may save you $30 or more on your winter electric bill. Make sure your cut tree gets composted and turned into mulch after the holidays. Consider a living tree. These potted Christmas trees, available at many nurseries, are usually smaller than cut trees.

Wrap It Up, Sent It Out
Wrap presents in old calendars, maps, posters, sheet music, wallpaper scraps, kids’ drawings or the Sunday color comics section of the newspaper. Consider wrapping a kitchen gift in a kitchen towel to make the packaging part of the present.

Give It Up 
Draw names for family giving so everyone just gives one person a gift instead of buying for everyone. Nearly every family who switches to this method loves it! Pick a friend who you know will be receptive, and agree not to exchange gifts. Go out for dinner or drinks instead. If you're not sure what to give someone, gift cards can be a greener gift rather than just taking a wild guess at what they want. The recipient gets exactly what they desire, which usually reduces waste.

Take Winter by Storm

As the windstorm season approaches, Puget Sound Energy urges residents to get prepared and exercise caution and common sense when encountering downed power lines.

As part of Take Winter by Storm campaign, PSE has created a Web site (www.takewinterbystorm.org) that provides information about how to prepare for bad weather and what to do when storms come our way.

December 2006 Windstorm
Many of you may remember the record-breaking windstorm that hit the Pacific Northwest in mid-December 2006. Here are some facts about that windstorm:

	Strongest windstorm since January 1993
	Wind gusts of 70 mph, according to official record
	Local gusts estimated at more than 80 mph (100+ mph in the Cascades)
	1.5 million customers served by Northwest utilities lost power
	700,000 homes and businesses served by PSE lost power
	Governor Christine Gregoire requested federal disaster aid for 19 counties

Emergency Preparedness
One of the ways you can better prepare for a windstorm or other emergency is to know the shut-off procedure for natural gas service. You can find the steps to take for shutting off both natural gas and electricity at the Emergency Preparedness section of the PSE Web site.

The Take Winter by Storm Web site also provides a Winter Preparation Check List that you can use to build an emergency kit of essentials, as well as a plan for action in the event of an emergency.

King County EcoConsumer: Educating the Public About Conservation

The King County Solid Waste Division promotes public education about environmental protection through its King County EcoConsumer program. This program deals with the environmental impact of our daily activities, including purchasing decisions. The EcoConsumer Waste Calculator and the Eco-Cool Remodel Tool are interactive tools you can use to educate yourself about the impact of your decisions on the environment.

EcoConsumer Waste Calculator
The EcoConsumer Waste Calculator shows how everyday simple acts, such as discarding a plastic bottle, transform into a major impact when multiplied by a large population. For example, if each household in King County receives 30 magazines and catalogs per month, 72,319 tons of discarded paper is generated. That’s enough to fill 343 747s!

Eco-Cool Remodel Tool
The Eco-Cool Remodel Tool takes you on a tour through a virtual house and shows you ways to make your next home remodel a greener project.

For example, you can click on the kitchen area and learn 7 facts about creating a greener kitchen:

Here’s a useful fact about refrigerators — in general, refrigerators with freezers on top use up to 25% less energy than side-by-side models.

Here’s another — since a refrigerator works most efficiently when it’s full, buy one that fits your needs.

There’s plenty of other useful information and links to resources on the EcoConsumer site, including a Twitter feed.

Other Blog Postings on Environmental Topics
Here’s a list of other Redmond Library blog postings on environmental topics:

KCLS Offers Eco-Friendly Bags

infoGreen: Green information in the KCLS collection

An online guide to noxious weeds in King County

Using Site Searches to Search Smarter

If you include a site specification in your query, search engines restrict the search results to the site of the domain you specify. For example, if you want to search for admissions information from Western Washington University, enter the following query in Yahoo, Google, or Live Search: admissions site:wwu.edu

Notice that the search results from Live Search are restricted to pages on the Western Washington University site:

Search Tips
You can find a wealth of search tips for Google, Live Search, and Yahoo at the following sites:

	Search Provider	Tips Page
	Google	Web Search Help Center
	Live Search	Windows Live Help
	Yahoo	Advanced Web Search

Subscribing to the Redmond Library blog

Using Internet Explorer 7, you can easily subscribe to the Redmond Library blog feed by following these steps:

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Click the feed icon when viewing the Redmond library blog.

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