Yeah, it has been freezing conditions lately and if you are among the religious commuters within the DMV area, you’d wish for quick arrival of buses or train with heater on full blast. Well, hang in there we are a couple of weeks away for some relief while walking in the cold. For D.C residents, It would be in your interest to invest in an affordable means that will improve your comment.
D.C’s government move to open bike lanes, starting from the Northwest region is the significant attempt to make the city “cyclist conscious”. In a crowded city like D.C where residents park several blocks away from their condos, and daily commutes during rush hour in almost stagnant movement, bike lanes look to be one of the solutions on this issue.
Consequently, this will make bike sharing programs much more relevant and increase ridership; thus most likely influence D.C residents to exercise the option of biking. But now, it appears neighboring cities also want the same. Alexandria and college park of Virginia and Maryland respectively are pursuing bike-share program. The perceived success is driving this initiative for their residents and visitors to enjoy.
However it may seem like there is more concern than content towards this effort. Though it is on the matter of rejection for change, it is a matter of well thought out designs for bikes. It appears the bike paths are actually contributing to D.C traffic than reducing it. Some of the lanes are places in between opposite traffic while some are at the far end – to the curb. I can understand that wrong placement of these lanes will actually be an impediment to the cause of increased biking and will also threaten rider safety.On the other hand, motorists are constant violators by parking on cycle-tracks. They have often forced cyclist to leave their assigned lanes onto the rest of the roads or sometimes the sidewalk. This is very particular along the 15th Street as well as Pennsylvania Avenue.
It may be that the position of the lanes do interfere much. But in a city such as D.C, there is only very little room that could accommodate bike lanes. Such would be enough to allow cyclist travel several blocks without disruption. Of course new laws and applications will help manage and control issues relating to bike safety and violations. In the end this is an agenda towards a clean energy environment for D.C and smart living.Given the circumstance, this may be the least of interested topic but as we look onto warmer weather, when better would it be to discuss alternative clean practices than now?
Let us hope that D.C officials correct or address provision for parking, bike safety and interference and efficient regulations that will make bike ridership a much popular and preferred means.This will be a lesson both cities will learn when designing bike lanes surrounding the vicinity of the bike stations.
Tags: bike sharing, bike-sharing program, clean energy
This entry was posted on Monday, February 28th, 2011 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Environment, Featured Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Monday, February 28, 2011
D.C Bikeshare and its woes
Fear the Turtle AND the Trash!
A big shout-out from the Sobuka folks goes out to Elfalem from the Univ. of Maryland in College Park! Why do you ask? because he saw a green related issue, took a picture of it, and sent it for our Green Photo of the Month contest, and yes, he’s the winner for February with a $50 prize!
In his own words, “the picture represents the efforts undertaken by the University of Maryland to reduce its trash and protect the environment in typical Terp fashion,” and as mostly former Terp alumni ourselves, we couldn’t agree more! In fact, the university set up a sustainability council in 2009 that operates a fund for various green projects, and the school was recently awarded grant money to install a 641 kWh solar PV system on one of its buildings. For more on the university’s efforts visit http://sustainability.umd.edu.
Thanks again to all the participants! For your chance to WIN take part in our next contest.
Contest Rules:
Submit one picture that you took of something green (environmentally friendly technology, service, process, etc.). Remember to tell us where it was taken, and why you think it’s green related. Mail your photo to contest [at] sobuka [dot] com. Happy shootin!
Tags: campus sustainability, green campus, green photo, green students, Terps, UMD
This entry was posted on Monday, February 28th, 2011 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Featured Content, Green Photo of the Month. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
DC on the verge of solar support shrinkage
Just when things couldn’t get any worse, DC Council is proposing to a move that will discourage solar purchases among businesses and residents. The District Department Of The Environment (DDOE) has scheduled a meeting to discuss these proposed changes:
- $1.50 for each of the first 300 installed watts of capacity (from previous amount of $3)
- $1.00 for each of the next 7000 installed watts of capacity (from previous amount of $2)
- $0.50 for each of the next 10,000 installed watts of capacity (from previous amount of $1)
These numbers add up to reflect a drop in rebate amount that entice DC solar purchases; thus making solar systems unaffordable. It is unfortunate that under this heavy wave of challenges to increase solar communities and boost alternative energy trends, the options for such continue to reduce. Some have noted that the funds for this program is not drawn from the city tax revenue; so it should be considered a “deprivation” of support for homeowners and businesses to go solar. It would be a tolerable debate if this reserved resources is decided for relocating to another renewable energy avenue but it is not; while the renewable energy standard for D.C is suffering, other “needs” must not cause solar programs to be substitutable.
With few encouragement on the eastern part of the country picking up pace on the benefits to alternative energy (wind, solar, geothermal), there is still a lot more that needs to be done to bring more involvement to make such market promising for average consumers. Consequently, S-RECs ( Solar Renewable Energy Credits) in D.C is losing its worth. The value of throughput for solar systems would be less than its previous sale – there goes another treasure.
Now the question is how much can be done to halt this plan? D.C residents must first understand the depth of this effect and realize that there efforts depend on the entire outcome of energy efficient benefits for the city. Fortunately, there are dedicated advocates standing against this, but need more grassroots support to fight this change. D.C residents should join to continue the fight and initiate contact with solarcoop@yahoo.com.
Tags: DC legislation, green rebates and incentives, rolar rebates, Solar Energy
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 27th, 2011 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Environment, Solar Energy, green rebates and incentives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The Volvo V60: all-electric, hybrid, and diesel all-in-one!
We just posted some great videos highlighting green cars from the Washington DC Auto Show (Watch SobukaTV), and we found one more cool car worth mentioning, the amazing Volvo V60! Most car manufacturers pick a specific efficient technology and design the car around it, but the engineers at Volvo decided to merge three different technologies into one!
Scheduled to be revealed at the Geneva Auto Show on March 1st 2011, the Volvo V60 Plug-In Hybrid is designed to operate as an all-electric, as a hybrid, or as a diesel, at the switch of a button. This gives consumers the choice of changing their driving style depending on the situation. If you have a simple commute of driving back and forth between work and home, you can drive it as an all-electric, with a range of up to 30 miles. Not enough? switch it to a hybrid and stop worrying about the distance, because in Hybrid mode it can cover up-to 745 miles (125 mpg equivalent) on a single tank of diesel! That’s like driving from Washington D.C. to Chicago, IL or Jacksonville, FL on a single tank of gas! Obviously if you’re stuck in traffic, etc. this may change some, but it’s still amazing! And if you pull up next to some ego-tripping “lemme race you and leave you in the dust” type, switch to Power mode and let them taste the 285 horsepower from the combined diesel and electric motors, with 0-62mph in 6.9 seconds and 472 foot-pounds of torque. They’ll have second thoughts of ridiculing your Volvo “family” wagon.
The V60′s front wheels are are powered by the five-cylinder 2.4 liter D5 turbo-diesel engine (215 horsepower and 320 foot-pounds of torque). The rear wheels are powered by a 70 horsepower electric motor that gets its juice from a 12 kilo-watt-hour lithium ion battery pack. The car comes with a six-speed automatic transmission. Volvo estimates the car will be in European showrooms by 2012, and it seems like it will be a while until we get it here in the US. With Europe’s diesel prices at approximately $7.80/gallon compared to the $3.80/gallon in the US, you can’t be mad at them for that… but we need such cars here too! (viaTreehugger, wired, and volvo)
Tags: electric, green cars, green tech, hybrid, plug-in, V60, volvo
This entry was posted on Saturday, February 26th, 2011 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Green Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Be my [green] Valentine
Be my [green] Valentine
Posted on February 1st, 2011 by Daniel
What do vegetable and soy inks, recycled and bamboo papers, fair trade chocolate, and an organic wine have in common? A great Valentine’s Day gift of course! For the eco-conscious couple that thinks about today’s actions for a better tomorrow [for your kids, and kids' kids..] or for the rest that wants a well-thought-out gift idea, here’s a short list.
Moral sugar tooth
Dagoba‘s blend of rich dark chocolate from organic cacao beans, with raw sugar and other natural ingredients [healthy! ..in moderation] will address that craving for your sweet tooth, and it will make you feel great, considering the fact that these great chocolatiers have Fair Trade business practices. Local farmers in cacao-rich Central/South America and Madagascar grow and prepare these goodies with beneficial returns for their land and their communities. In addition, they use recycled paper wrappers and print them with vegetable based inks! Here’s a link to other organic chocolatiers.
Flowers and emotions spilled on paper
Whether you craft your emotions on paper or you need someone to say the things for you, we don’t care. But we do think it would be pretty cool to get some eco-friendly Valentine’s Day cards. By far our favorite, the plantable [yes, as in seeds!] cards from Botanical Paperworks let you give the gift of freshly grown flowers from a card! So if you forget to get the flowers, you actually have a pretty sound excuse:
He: “I got the freshest flowers for you babe!”
She: “Yay! you’re the best! where are they?”
He: “They’re in the card, how cool is that?! …you still have to grow them.”
She: “…”
He: “fresh flowers babe, it can’t get any fresher than that.. you’ll have them for months!”So yea, …maybe you still need a bouquet of flowers.. anyway here’s a list of other eco-friendly cards for your Valentine.
For the wine snob [wannabe]
The USDA Organic seal has some very strict guidelines to follow. And when a great-tasting meal pairing is obtained with wine from organically grown grapes, then we toast to the wine maker! Grapes are frequently grown with the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, so when wine makers drop today’s commonly used fast-paced growing methods and deliver a good glass of wine, we all benefit. Our favorite here is Bonterra Vineyards, a farm that has been growing food organically since 1987. Their 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon holds strong accolades with a 92 point rating by Wine Enthusiast. A toast to Bonterra… and your Valentine.
The grub and the venue
We leave that up to you, but we do have one recommendation… how about you stay in and cook something?
Tags: bamboo paper, green gift guide, organic chocolate, organic wine, recycled paper, soy ink, valentine, valentine's day, vegetable ink
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 9:46 pm and is filed under Featured Content, green products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Free Recycling Envelopes
We would like to congratulate David Thompson from Washington, DC, winner of Sobuka’s January Green Photo of the Month contest, with a $50 prize and again it was SUPER EASY… even a child could do it. Let me tell you just how EASY it was, so our winner David went to his local post office to handle some business and purchase stamps when he noticed there was a box of FREE RECYCLING ENVELOPES used for recycling electronic waste (e-waste) such as inkjet cartridges, cell phones, PDAs, digital cameras and other small electronics. He pulled his phone out of its case and went SNAAAAAAP!…actually his camera phone was on silent and his camera flash was off so he didn’t hear the SNAAAAAAP! sound. Afterwards, he emailed his green photo to Sobuka and his photo was the best out of all the other submissions which made him our WINNER. YAAYYYYYYYY!
E-waste is literally a growing problem and we must help reduce this problem at all costs. In the U.S., we generated an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of e-waste in 2006 alone. However, this number will continue to grow as new electronics are introduced to the market and consumers continue to upgrade to the next best thing. Do us and the environment a favor and look around your house for all your old electronics (cell phones, PDA’s, etc) and RECYCLE THEM for FREE using the recycling envelops found at your local post office. For more information about recycling e-waste and recycling in general check out the following links:
Free Recycling Envelopes from USPS
Thanks again to all the participants! For your chance to WIN take part in our next contest.
Contest Rules:
Submit one picture that you took of something green (environmentally friendly technology, service, process, etc.). Remember to tell us where it was taken, and why you think it’s green related. Mail your photo to contest [at] sobuka [dot] com. Happy shootin!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Featured Content, Green Photo of the Month. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
