Ted is always looking for ways to minimize his ecological footprint. Professionally, Ted is working to gain the skills necessary to turn his passion for sustainable development into action, as an entrepreneur or financing sustainable businesses.
Ted studied economics and international business at Saint Louis University’s campus in Madrid, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and was honored as the Distinguished Student in International Business for his class. As the founder and president of the SLU Madrid Business Club, Ted focused the club’s activities on sustainability.
While working for commercial real estate multi-national Jones Lang LaSalle’s Madrid office, Ted strove to implement sustainable practices both within the firm and for its clients. He proposed and designed an Environmental Sustainability Action Plan for JLL Spain. Green Building and Environmentally Sustainable Development remain a passion for Ted: he believes that the intersection of sustainable infrastructure and sustainable attitude is where we’ll find a sustainable society.
Ted currently works for a private equity firm in Madrid, learning skills that he hopes to apply to finance Environmentally Sustainable Development in the United States and around the world.
Cherl Petso is the Associate Editor at Disaboom.com, an online magazine for people with disabilities. Her writing expertise includes articles about the environment and sustainable living, and vegan/vegetarian issues. A vegetarian for 16 years and a recent vegan, Cherl is passionate about animal rights and issues. She enjoys writing about simple ways to lessen the impact on the Earth.
Cherl recently moved to Denver, Colorado from Bellingham, Washington. She enjoys hiking and hanging out with her puppy.
Alexis Steinkamp grew up at Helderledge Farm, a perennial plant nursery in an apple orchard near Albany, New York. As a teenager, she hybridized daylilies, raised chickens, grew tomatoes, chopped wood, picked apples, baked pies and feared mosquitoes. She left the farm to attend Northwestern University and study art and design.
After graduating in 1991, she stayed in Chicago to work in theater, film and special event design. She didn’t make much money, but lived simply and saved for a rainy day or a place to live—whichever came first. As it turned out, the condo came first. Her friends were shocked that she, a starving artist, could afford a condo in the city. How did she do it? She should write a book about it! So, she did. She wrote a personal finance workbook to help young women budget, save and dream called Thrifty Girl KICKS YOUR FINANCIAL BUTT; Get a grip on your finances without dying of boredom. And, she developed a personal finance class that she teaches at Truman College in Chicago.
Today, Alexis still lives simply. She works part-time, writes and lives in a tiny condo with a beautiful view of the Chicago skyline. Visit her online at Thrifty Girl
Loretta White is a writer, educator and scholar who gained huge diversity of experience within varied industries; energy, government, high tech and more. The last fifteen years she brokered deals with the top multinational companies globally, her Rainmaker skills are unsurpassed and she remains an authority on BD, BI, sustainability and the Global Marketplace.
Frugality was the voice of her elders who endured wars, rationing and Depression, raised to respect, love and to co-exist with nature through sustainability, self reliance, need and RRR practices. Loretta’s juxtaposition of ideas, deep love for the planet and her Yankee sensibilities are the foundation of a lifestyle that is in partnership with nature. Loretta indulges her passions for renewable energy, organics and being green on her 17.5 acre farm in central Massachusetts.
Recently Ms. White has lead an Assoc. of Caregivers providing support to those caring for parents, disabled, and others.
Loretta is invested in the community of our species and our planet and her diverse background in technology and green living gives her a unique perspective on how to live with nature and with our own gifts of technology.
Ms. White’s work has been published by Corporations, magazines, readers digest and many others.
Lauren Mangion is a writer, engaged citizen, and an eco-coach from Calgary, Canada. Lauren’s personal life and work are intimately intertwined, both being experiments in more sustainable, lower-footprint urban living.
Through Conscious Home, an eco-coaching service, Lauren educates and inspires her fellow Calgarians with tools and resources toward reducing the individual ecological footprint.
Boston born novelist, short-story writer and who has published thousands of technical papers now works in the horror-fiction world. Occasionally, his characters and stories transcend genres and travel from fantasy to realism.
White contributes to L. A, Weekly occasionally and other magazines and online forums, he also blogs regularly for several news and industry sites.
Current projects include; “Underwater City Salvage,” “Real Vampires”, “The Black Coach”, “The In-Between Time.” His novels are richly textured with excellent grasp on popular culture, and explores feelings of angst, deep-rooted in ancient themes.
A freelance writer specializing in environmental and health topics, Linda recently was part of a core team of writers who developed content for GreenYour, a website devoted to greener living.
She wrote an environmental column for five years for Good Housekeeping magazine called Green Watch. You can find her articles in Plenty Magazine’s online newsletter, Fit Pregnancy, Good Housekeeping, Arthritis Today, Profiles (Continental Airline’s in-flight magazine), and Microsoft’s Encarta.
She served on her town’s environmental commission for 15 years and remains an active volunteer. Her personal essay column for the local newspaper offers her take on the natural world and on environmental topics in her neck of the woods.
Dayanti Karunaratne is a freelance journalist based in Canada's capital city, Ottawa.
Since graduating from Carleton University's journalism program in 2006, Karunaratne has worked on the news desk at the Port Hope Evening Guide, the Ottawa Citizen, and the Molokai Times. Karunaratne's writing appears in the Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Magazine, the Globe and Mail, and other lifestyle publications.
Heather O'Neill is the founder of Eco to the People, a green living blog.
Before founding Eco to the People, Heather O’Neill wore so many hats in the field of journalism that even the Queen Mother would envy her collection. She has worked as the managing editor of a beauty trade magazine; as a copy editor for an online tech magazine; as the associate editor of a city magazine and as a newspaper reporter and columnist, and as the senior editor at the popular online newsletter ecofabulous.
Her work has appeared in many publications, including Parenting, Alternative Medicine, Natural Solutions, Marin Magazine, Greenwich Magazine and HOME.
Heather earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from California College of the Arts. She lives and works in San Francisco.
Television producer-turned-blogger-turned-ecogeek, Kirsten Dirksen is co-founder of faircompanies.com a news/blog/video site focused on environmental sustainability for people and the planet.
For the cause, she has transformed her life into an eco-experiment, documenting every endeavor. Before moving to Barcelona, Spain, Kirsten was a TV producer/shooter/editor for U.S. networks like MTV, Oxygen, Sundance Channel and Travel Channel.
You don’t have to look under the floorboards to find the cash that’s hidden in your home. Many of your ongoing monthly costs come in the form of energy - you know, those bills that keep showing up every month.
We can show you how to take control and reduce your carbon emissions in each room of your home – and discover that hidden cash.
If you have a few evenings free, become a Weeknight Worker with our simple, easy projects. If you have a little more time to dedicate, become a Weekend Warrior - it’s a bit of a bigger time commitment, but you’ll see bigger savings.
Laundry Room: save $60 to $185
Weeknight Worker
Did you know that 90% of the energy needed to do a load of laundry goes into heating the water? The easiest way to start saving money in the laundry room is to simply wash your clothes with cold water. With today’s advanced detergents and soaps, cold water can be just as effective as hot water. Merely pressing the “Cold/Cold” button on your washing machine 80% of the time will save you between $60 and $100 per year.
Weekend Warrior
Want to “launder” even more money? Well, add another energy saving twist: skip the clothes dryer and line dry your laundry. By avoiding another laundry room appliance you can save up to an additional $85 per year. Adding that savings to the $60 to $100 you saved with the cold water laundry, you could save anywhere from $145 to $185 every year.
Kitchen: save $20 to $300
Weeknight Worker
Here’s a simple way for you and your family to save money: use the dishwasher less. Most people do a load every day, but by waiting for the dishwasher to be full before you run it, you could cut your dishwasher use by a third, saving you a total of $21 per year.
Weekend Warrior
If you’re ready for extreme kitchen efficiency, it’s time to upgrade those old clunkers. New Energy Star rated refrigerators and dishwashers use a fraction of the energy that those terribly inefficient older models use. If you upgrade your older dishwasher and refrigerator to Energy Star models (top freezer for fridges is the best) you could lower your annual energy cost by $85 every year (from $170 down to $85). And if you use the government’s new stimulus money for upgrading appliances, you could receive up to an additional $200 for your new Energy Star rated refrigerator. That’s a total of $285 saved in the first year alone.
Bedroom: save $50 to $150
Weeknight Worker
Replace just five incandescent light bulbs in your bedroom with CFLs and over their lifetime - a little over three years if you average five hours of use every day - you can save $30 per bulb. That works out to about $10 a year per bulb, so by replacing five incandescent light bulbs you can save around $50 every year.
Weekend Warrior
If replacing more incandescent light bulbs means saving more money, why stop at just five? You’re a Weekend Warrior, you’re committed. Why not go for an additional ten light bulbs: 15 CFLs could save you a total of $150 every year. Heck, replace every light bulb in your home and cash will pour out of every light socket.
Living Room: save $20 to $225
Weeknight Worker
Money is flying out your windows: leaks can be responsible for 30% of the total heat lost in your home. There’s a simple solution though – and that’s weather stripping. Depending on your window type and air flow method, you could potentially save $7-$14 per window, per year in efficiency upgrades. If you weather strip just three windows in your living room you can save $21-$42 every year.
Weekend Warrior
Why not weather strip your entire home? Increasing the efficiency of your windows and blocking the small leaks that allow air to go in and out, you can knock off up to 15% of your annual heating and cooling costs. A typical U.S. family spends about $1,500 on their utility bills every year so by minimizing air leaks through your windows, you could save around $225 every year.
Adding It All Up
So how much cash is hiding in your home? If you follow all of the Weeknight Worker tips, you can count on saving $152 to $213 every year, and all for a few simple changes and a few hours of dedication. Now, if you put in some serious time as a Weekend Warrior, you’re looking at annual savings of $805 to $845.
Yes, you’re saving a lot of money. But don’t forget the environmental benefits as well: for example, just one CFL bulb can save over 2,000 times its weight in greenhouse gasses over its lifetime compared to an incandescent. Now that’s big savings.
Why do clothes always say wash in warm water if they don’t need to be? Is it just safer? I have never had a problem with cold water, so good to know 80% of my laundry bill can be saved. That’s amazing
Nicky
October 2, 2009 8pm EDT
Big energy savings can be had with the right combination of laundry equipment. The new front-load washers not only use less water, but they do not need hot water AND the spin the clothes out so fast that they come out almost dry.
Then just take those ‘almost dry’ clothes and hang them up on a clothes drying rack like this one. If you get in the habit of doing one load each evening then there is plenty of time to let them hang dry overnight.
Rich
October 11, 2009 10am EDT
I read recently about manufacturers racing to produce a reasonably priced LED bulb for home lighting use. It was implied that LEDs would be way superior to CFL bulbs, but I’m not sure why…no mercury, higher efficiency, maybe? How about an article on this?
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Why do clothes always say wash in warm water if they don’t need to be? Is it just safer? I have never had a problem with cold water, so good to know 80% of my laundry bill can be saved. That’s amazing
Big energy savings can be had with the right combination of laundry equipment. The new front-load washers not only use less water, but they do not need hot water AND the spin the clothes out so fast that they come out almost dry.
Then just take those ‘almost dry’ clothes and hang them up on a clothes drying rack like this one. If you get in the habit of doing one load each evening then there is plenty of time to let them hang dry overnight.
I read recently about manufacturers racing to produce a reasonably priced LED bulb for home lighting use. It was implied that LEDs would be way superior to CFL bulbs, but I’m not sure why…no mercury, higher efficiency, maybe? How about an article on this?