GOING GREEN

Given my proclivity for adopting minimalist New Year’s resolutions, I’m really pushing the envelope this year by vowing to thoroughly declutter my house and my life.

In January, I dove head over long into my decluttering campaign, rummaging through the garage, closets, and dresser drawers for items I haven’t used in at least the past year or two. I’ve told myself that those are the things I should seriously consider parting company with. My pile of rarely used items quickly began to take over the living room floor, and when I stood back to appraise my progress, a wave of anxiety hit me. It was a veritable tsunami of materialistic nostalgia.

The Greener Gadgets 2010 conference is tomorrow, February 25, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST (at the McGraw-Hill Conference Center @ 1221 Avenue of the Americas in NYC. Incidentally, I have been working on a pair of green tech books for McGraw-Hill over the past few months). Registration is still open for Greener Gadgets, so come on by! It’s only $75 for students for the day, or $395 for attendees.

In an idea that predates the popularization of the Internet, green maps have been around for years, highlighting many eco-friendly features in local areas, from parks to health food stores, bike paths, environmental ed centers and clean power installations. One of the great things about green maps is that they are locally developed, so they feature whatever each community feels is important. Coordination, technical help and resources have been provided by New York City-based Green Map Systems, led by the talented Wendy Brawer.

This new video from OK Go shows you an elaborate way to recycle your trash.

Source:OK Go's New Video Shows a Better Way to Recycle Your Trash

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about a box the size of a baseball that could power your entire house with fewer emissions than a modern power plant.

Bloom Energy has been teasing us with reports of a household fuel cell that’s a smaller version of the parking space-sized devices (pictured above) that are now being used to power the facilities of Google, Wal-Mart, FedEx and other big players.

It sounds promising, but some questions remain about the long-term feasibility of these fuel cell devices. Even so, I hope we hear more about this and other alternative energy innovations.