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Posts Tagged ‘green’

With energy bills skyrocketing, both businesses and homeowners are seeing solar power as a workable alternative. One of the fastest ways to add this type of renewable energy to your system is by purchasing a DIY solar power kit. Before you purchase such a kit, you should familiariaze yourself with five important points.

Solar Power Dimensions

Check the DIY kit to ensure it indicates the solar panels’ precise measurements, which will let you know if you have enough space on your roof for the solar module. The weight of the solar panels should also be indicated — especially if you have roof tiles, since this can determine whether your roof can support the solar panels. Knowing both the weight and the dimension is necessary to determine if your roof can withstand the extra load.

Total Power Generation

Before installing any DIY solar power kit, you must first calculate how much power is consumed in your home. You should also decide how many appliances you will connect to your solar power system. Once you have this figure calculated, purchase an appropriate DIY solar power kit. There are a variety of kit sizes available on the market; additionally, certain kits are designed for interconnectivity if one is not sufficient.

Durability

Solar power panels are constantly exposed to harsh outdoor elements like rain, hail, sun and snow. Because of this, the solar cells must be covered with tempered glass and the frame must be made of a resilient material like aluminum.

Long-Term Warranty

It can take years before you see a return on investment, or ROI, from the installation of a DIY solar power kit. It is important to consider the length of a product’s warranty before buying one. Most experts recommend getting a 20- to 25-year warranty on new solar panels.

Installation and Maintenance

Get a DIY solar power kit that’s easy to install. There are kits available on the market that contain all the components needed to start your own solar power system. Additionally, you should also consider one that will require only minimal maintenance over the years in service. The best choice is solar panels that require, at minimum, scrubbing once a year to have the panels work at maximum efficiency.

Anna Vera Williams helps others understand how to utilize solar energy to live cleaner and more eco-friendly lives.

This article was originally published on Anna’s blog, at Five Things to Consider When Purchasing a DIY Solar Power Kit.

Canvas grocery bags have recently been making an appearance at the entrance to many grocery stores, selling for about $2 per bag. We know that plastic bags are bad for the environment, but are stores really trying to be more environmentally friendly, or are they just trying to get their customers to buy something else? Are canvas bags really more efficient than plastic bags?

When it comes to your budget, in some countries it’s better to bring your own bag than to rely on the plastic bags the stores give you. Some places charge for the bags themselves. Ireland has put a customer tax on their plastic bags.

On the other hand, the United States is more dependent on their cars than some other countries. When customers walk, ride a bike, or take public transport to the grocery store, they tend to buy fewer items at once, although they might visit more often.

In the United States, with our abundance of large vehicles and long distances, shoppers tend to visit the grocery store just a couple of times per month and buy large quantities at once. For this kind of shopping, is it practical to use canvas bags when one shopping trip alone can garner more than a dozen of the plastic bags?

Yet, we still know that canvas is better for the environment. Some cities in the United States are now making laws to try to curb our plastic habit. San Francisco recently passed a law making it illegal for large grocery stores to use plastic bags. As an alternative, they offer biodegradable paper bags. Boston is also considering doing this, although some customers allege that doing this causes a new kind of problem with the environment-the cutting down of trees.

However, most shoppers report that they have made the switch to canvas bags and feel good about themselves. They say that it’s rewarding to feel as if they are doing their part in “going green.”

Even though many plastic bags end up clogging drains, piled in the landfill, and flying helter-skelter through the streets during a gusty day, some people have found other ways to use the bags, even though less than 3% are recycled. You can always use them to line small garbage cans instead of buying a large box of garbage bags or use them to line cat littler boxes.

For those who prefer the canvas bags, the argument exists that the plastic bags in stores are now being made of a poorer quality and aren’t as sturdy as the canvas bags. Plastic bags generally have to be doubled for heavy or awkward purchases and can often rip on the corners of boxes. Canvas bags can generally hold heavier items.

Although paper bags were used in the past, they were often cumbersome and awkward since they didn’t have handles and customers could rarely carry more than one at a time. The canvas bags, at least, have handles like the plastic bags do, allowing customers to sling a few over their arms.

If customers don’t want to purchase a canvas bag at the grocery store, they can always find them online or in other shops. There are many websites that sell canvas grocery bags and they can usually be personalized as well.

Some bags found online also come with shoulder straps, as well as handles, making them great to use when walking some distance.

Switching to canvas bags might take some readjusting on the shopper’s part. An idea is to make several small trips to the store instead of one or two large trips. Or, shoppers can just buy several canvas bags to use every time they go.

An advantage of the canvas bags is that even though they tend to cost about $2 per bag, they last a long time. If shoppers use them properly, they should last about six months. They can also be washed and some are made from recycled materials.

For now, using the canvas bags is mostly a choice on the shopper’s part. However, if more laws are passed in the future, it might not be up to the customer which type of bag they use. For that reason, it might be wise to go ahead and start getting used to the canvas.