Multimedia journalism project for COMM 190 at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa

Summer is here and there are a number of communities around the country that are asking their citizens to do whatever they are able to do in order to conserve water due to a low amount of rain. Droughts are not uncommon across the United States at least every few years and if you can, you should do what you can to conserve water not only during these times, but also year round. Here are a few tips that you can use to help you in this.

The sprinklers that you use to water your lawn should be set to be active for shorter periods of time than normal. What you want to do is allow your sprinkler to water the lawn for just a few minutes, stop for much longer, then water once again for the same period of time as earlier. You want to give the water that was sprayed on the lawn the first round a chance to penetrate into the ground before watering again. Something else you should do is turn your sprinklers off when you know it is going to rain or set the rain delay feature of your sprinkler system if it has one.

If you do not have a sprinkler system and water your lawn with a garden hose, you want to do this early in the morning. This is a good time for plants around your home to be fed and watered, since the water on the leaves later in the day during the summer will evaporate quickly and could burn the leaves.

Another good way to save water is to take a Phillips head screwdriver and try to push it down into a spot on your lawn a few inches. If it goes in easily, you do not need to water your lawn for at least a few more days. Watering your lawn correctly can save you lots of money every month.

Instead of using a water hose to clean off your patio or driveway, just use a broom.

You can also take showers instead of baths, since these will use a lot less water than a typical bath will. A 10 minute shower will not use as much water as a bathtub full of water. Plus, showers are better for you since they wash all the dirt and dead skin cells away from your body instead of allowing you to lay in them in a tub full of water.

An environmentally-sound home is one that makes less of an impact on the environment. This example of home can incorporate things like energy-efficient appliances or low-e windows to make your home more efficient or maybe even adding more extreme items like solar power or a water recycling system. If you are implementing these modifications now, the neat thing is that many of the technologies cost less now than in the past. If your home is pre-construction, you can choose to have the home designed to take maximum advantage of the natural illumination of the home. Making a home more efficient or buying an eco-friendly home will not only save you money on things like energy bills, but is also the environmentally responsible choice to make.

Solar derived energy is a somewhat new idea. Nonetheless, as a modern-day homeowner you can take advantage of the technology that is available and get the power that you need for your home. The way that solar energy is employed is that solar panels are situated in a place where they can get ample sunlight. These large panels are made of glass and have tubes with water coursing through them. As the sun warms the water in the tubes, it is transformed into energy that you can use for your home. An additional benefit is that the hot water can then be used instead of a hot water unit. Most homeowners position the panels up on the portion of the roof that gets the maximum amount of sunlight. That means that shade from trees needs to be minimized anywhere the panels are installed. Every system is different, but it is possible to derived energy an entire home using solar panels.

Water is a limited resource, so we all need to do our part to use less water. One way of making your water usage more eco-friendly is to have holding tanks where you can store water and then send it through a filtration system where it can then furnish the water needs of your home. This water recycling method is a great way to take care of your yard’s water requirements.

Recycling water can save about eighty percent of the overall water used in many homes. Another easy way to reduce the quantity of water that you are using is to put in a low-flow showerhead. A low-flow showerhead is easy to install and will save hundreds of gallons of water every year. Also, if you have older toilets, upgrading to a modern toilet can also reduce your water usage for the future. When you start to think about the many ways that you can save water, you can perhaps come up with even more.

Eco-friendly homes are the wave of the future. Finding ways to decrease each family’s use of electricity and water is important for all of us. You can make modifications to make your home more earth-friendly that will really make a difference. Recycling, utilizing solar power and monitoring your water use are all great ways to establish your home as a green home.

It is hard to ignore, we are all producing too much CO2. It could be from inefficient electrical usage, car usage or simply quantity of waste sent to landfill. Being a business we have a larger CO2 footprint than most – and so we have implemented as many procedures as possible to reduce the impact EvolvIT has on our environment.

Our main office is based in Bristol, however as we began looking into our carbon footprint a very simple question was asked “Why do we come to the office everyday, when 95% of our work is done remotely?”. Much head scratching ensued and no one could really see why a majority of work could not be done from our home offices, of which all staff and directors have. A quick calculation showed that EvolvIT travelled a staggering 40,000 miles a year just to get to the office and back – that is almost 14 tonnes of CO2 emissions. A policy with immediate effect was put into place to cut this by 80%, and has proved so successful that we now do over 90% fewer miles!

We then turned to our suppliers, we must be responsible about who we purchase from as that has just a big an affect as we do. One supplier stood out as being particularly energy hungry. That is ourhosting supplier, Rackspace. Over the years the number of servers we have hosted with Rackspace has grown to the point that we cannot ignore the CO2 footprint those servers emit. We spoke with our business management consultant at Rackspace regarding our thoughts and explained what we are trying to achieve here at EvolvIT. We are glad to report Rackspace take this just as seriously, see this green link for more info!

The last major point that became obvious was our responsibility for our customers equipment power usage. We could simply set policies in place that would make every machine use less power – but we have to be mindful of our customers existing policies and how they use their systems, internally and remotely. It was decided that the best way forward was education, and so an email shot was sent to all our customers explaining simple – yet effective changes to usage and computer settings to make every machine use less power and thus have a smaller CO2 footprint.

See the points below for other areas we have changed,

Bulbs replaced with energy efficient variations Scrap cardboard must be recycled, included customer boxes when asked to remove Paper to be shredded and recycled Company equipment to be configured for maximum power savings when not in use Replace battery wireless devices with re-chargeable alternatives Supply only top rated low power screens and devices We hope that with our tips above and push to be greener, other businesses can follow suit in lowering their carbon footprint.

At the NETL Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships Annual Review in Pittsburgh, Edward N. Steadman, a senior research adviser for the University of North Dakota’s Energy & Environmental Research Center, details the progress that has been made on underground and terrestrial projects by the Plains CO2 Reduction (PCOR) Partnership.