Energy Awareness Month

Top 5 Home Winterization Tips For Energy Awareness Month
Earthtechling.com: 10.20.2012 by Beth Buczynski

Don’t be fooled by the bright sun and lingering warm breezes, winter is most definitely on its way toward North America. Even though it seems like just yesterday we were talking about how to stay cool without cranking the air conditioning, it’s already time to start keeping your home warm without creating a painful heating bill.

In honor of October being National Energy Awareness Month, we decided to round up five of the best home winterization tips we could find. Home energy upgrades can be costly, but we tried to narrow it down to actions that were easy, relatively cheap, and sensible for both homeowners and renters. Meet you after the jump!

1. Replace your HVAC filters once a month to maintain an adequate and clean air flow which can help reduce energy costs.

2. Use energy efficient light bulbs like CFLs or LEDs. Light bulbs meeting new standards can result in significant energy conservation of 25%-80%. Light your home with the same amount of light for less money. Upgrading 15 of the traditional, less energy efficient incandescent light bulbs in your home could save you about $50 per year. Can’t decide between CFLs and LEDs? This post can help.

3. Add caulking or weather stripping around windows and doors. Your home may have small openings around doors and windows that cause heat loss. Caulking and weather stripping can reduce energy waste and protect your home from moisture damage. Covering large windows with affordable insulating plastic can also be a way to trap the sunlight’s heat inside your home during the day, and prevent drafts at night.

4. Close doors and central air vents in rooms that don’t see a lot of use. This prevents you from paying to heat empty rooms, and redirects the air to the parts of your house that need to be the warmest.

5. Reverse the direction on your ceiling fans. During winter, the warm air generated by your heating system naturally rises to the ceiling while cooler air sinks. By switching the direction that your fan blades turn, that cooler air is drawn upwards, which forces the warmer air near the ceiling back down into the space. How does this save energy? According to the folks at Apartment Therapy, since thermostats are typically located at human level, keeping the warm air low where it’s needed means you can turn the temperature down a few notches and still stay warm.

BWP
Green Home House Call
A complimentary service for Burbank residents provides weatherization, energy, and water efficiency products and services for your home. A trained energy and water expert will install the products plus provide expert advice on how to make your home more efficient and environmentally friendly.

Eco Solutions: Entertainment Industry Workshop

Eco Solutions & The Entertainment Industry
October 27, 2012
1:30 - 4:30pm
Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center
Hope Conference Center
501 S. Buena Vista Street

Join Leaders greening the entertainment industry in a valuable discussion on Implementing Initiatives, Redefining Trash, and Influencing Change.

This one day workshop is a FREE opportunity to learn eco-solutions for various trades, management settings, and all stages of production. This event is ideal for anyone in the industry or looking for sustainable solutions.

TOPICS
• Implementing Initiatives: Rachael Joy, Co-Chair, PGA Green West
• Redefining Trash - From Disposability to Responsibility: Kris Barberg, Executive Director, EcoSet
• Sustainability at All Stages of Production: Diana Pokorny, Executive Producer
• The Role We Play in Social and Environmental Accountability: Mike Slavich, Director of Sustainability, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

Brought to you by the Burbank Green Alliance and City of Burbank Community Development/Team Business

RSVP @ or call Susie at 818.238.5198.
Tickets are FREE and open to professionals across Los Angeles. Space is very
limited, so reservations are highly suggested.

Burbank Green Spotlight Award: September 2012

Burbank Sustainable Commission Green Spotlight Award
Each month the Commission will present the award to a resident or business for sustainable efforts. The Award was established at the December meeting.

SUSTAINABLE BURBANK COMMISSION

September 17, 2012 MINUTES

 

VI. BURBANK GREEN SPOTLIGHT AWARD PRESENTATION:

Mr. Aboulsaad announced that the September 2012 recipient of the Burbank Green Spotlight Award is Entertainment Partners. Mr. Aboulsaad introduced representatives from the employee-owned Burbank business and gave a brief PowerPoint presentation outlining the company’s sustainability efforts which include a paperless workflow, use of biodegradable materials, server consolidation, recycling, and use of office supplies made from recycled materials. Entertainment Partners established a Sustainability Council in 2007 and provides its employees with monthly sustainable to-do ideas through their intranet, employee newsletters, and emails. The Council also encourages employees to compete for the “green” employee of the year award. The Commissioners congratulated the representatives from Entertainment

Partners, and Mr. Lewis presented them with the Burbank Green Spotlight Award.

Made In The Shade
BWP

Shade your home or business with FREE trees to keep air conditioning costs lower! Trees are nature’s air conditioners with the ability to reduce air conditioning use from 10% to 50%.

Residents can select up to 3 shade trees for free. Businesses up to 20 shade trees all for free.

A certified arborist will help you select the best planting sites and the best trees for those sites. BWP will also provide stakes, ties and arbor guards, also for free!

Burbank renters can also participate if they receive written authorization from the owner. Call the BWP at 818-957-8196 to schedule a consultation at your property.

Losing our cool: uncomfortable truths about our air-conditioned world (and finding new ways to get through the summer)
Stan Cox
New Press, 2010
306.46 COX
Losing our Cool shows how indoor climate control is colliding with an out-of-control outdoor climate. In America, energy consumed by home air-conditioning, and the resulting greenhouse emissions, have doubled in just over a decade, and energy to cool retail stores has risen by two-thirds.

Barry Commoner: Pioneer of the Environmental Movement

Barry Commoner Dead: Pioneering Environmental Scientist and Activist Dies at 95
Huffington Post: 10.01.2012 by Peter Dreier

Described in 1970 by Time magazine as the "Paul Revere of ecology," Commoner followed Rachel Carson as America's most prominent modern environmentalist. He viewed the environmental crisis as a symptom of a fundamentally flawed economic and social system. A biologist and research scientist, he argued that corporate greed, misguided government priorities, and the misuse of technology undermined "the finely sculptured fit between life and its surroundings."

Commoner insisted that scientists had an obligation to make scientific information accessible to the general public, so that citizens could participate in public debates that involved scientific questions. Citizens, he said, have a right to know the health hazards of the consumer products and technologies used in everyday life. Those were radical ideas in the 1950s and 1960s, when most Americans were still mesmerized by the cult of scientific expertise and such new technologies as cars, plastics, chemical sprays, and atomic energy.

Commoner linked environmental issues to a broader vision of social and economic justice. He called attention to the parallels among the environmental, civil rights, labor, and peace movements. He connected the environmental crisis to the problems of poverty, injustice, racism, public health, national security, and war. READ MORE !

Making Peace with the Planet
Barry Commoner @ CalCat
New Press, 1992
ISBN-13: 9781565840126
Reviews the vast efforts made in the public and private spheres to address and control the damage done and shows us why, despite billions of dollars spent to save the environment, we now find ourselves in an even deeper crisis. It is a book of hard facts and figures whose conclusion--that environmental pollution can be prevented only through fundamental redesign of the way we produce goods.

Composting Workshop
October 3 - 6:30 PM
Burbank Recycle Center
500 S. Flower Street

Burbank'sComposting Program
Since December 1989, the City of Burbank has provided residents with free composting instruction and top-quality composters. Over the years, composting has played an essential part in the City’s ability to divert 50% of its waste from the landfill as required by State law. The City collects over 1,000 tons of green waste per month at the curb and takes it to a composting facility outside of Burbank. Backyard composting helps to reduce this amount.

Getting started
If you are interested in backyard composting, please call the Burbank Recycle Center at (818) 238-3900 weekdays between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and ask about upcoming workshops.

Residents receive free composters at the workshops. The compost bins available through the City are selected based on a variety of attributes including bin capacity, quality, ease of assembly and handling, cost, attractiveness, and durability. Brand names vary, depending on the best available product on the market at the time. If you move within Burbank, please take your composter with you, and call the Recycle Center with an address change. If you move out of Burbank, please call the Recycle Center so that your composter can be returned and reused in Burbank.

The compost specialist: the essential guide to creating and using garden compost, and using potting and seed composts
David Squire
New Holland, 2009
631.875 SQUIR

In our ecologically aware times, composting is one smart way to minimize our carbon footprint and help the earth. This new entry in the highly successful Specialist series gives gardeners all the guidance they need to start making, storing, and using their own compost.