Easy Ways to Reduce and Reuse

Blog week of September 18, 2011


Start With Around the Home


We have a number of useful tips on easy ways to reuse or recycle in the home that are available on both our website and mobile app. However, the following are probably the most creative and have been chosen as our staff favorites:

Be sure to make full use of your water! Inserting a bucket to collect water while waiting for your shower to warm up is perfect for watering plants!

Get twice the use out of your sink water! In homes across the U.S., the bathroom accounts for 74% of total water usage. Install the AQUS System to capture water from the bathroom sink, then filter and disinfect it to provide reused water for toilet flushing! Reduce metered water usage in a two-person household by 15–20 gals a day – or approx. 6,000 gallons a year!

You have got to Clean Green! Old newspapers are great for washing windows, just crumple up and wipe clean of all dirt and grime. Be sure to also save your worn or old t -shirts and use them as cleaning rags for anything from drying a freshly washed car to dusting or polishing your furniture!

Save that Sponge! Don't clean things with a dirty sponge, but don't toss it out either! 2 minutes in a microwave can effectively destroy 99% of bacteria and other harmful buildup in a sponge and it can then be re-used to clean anything!

Finally, be sure to Pee in the shower! Save wasted toilet water by peeing in the shower. Just kidding...One Stop Green in no way endorses peeing in the shower (except under extraordinary circumstances).

As you can see, being ‘green’ doesn’t necessarily mean spending lots of money to make excessive upgrades to the home, at its very core, its just living your life in a smarter, more efficient manner in order to reduce your overall negative impact on the environment.


One Stop Green is looking towards a ‘greener’ future, sharing the latest and greatest ideas in green living and green technology with you through our staff written blogs. Going 'green' is no longer a choice, it's our responsibility, that's why it's so important to try and do the small things that can help change the outlook of the planet - and this is essentially the purpose of One Stop Green. We believe even the little things like recycling or using less water helps the environment out in a big way, and that's why our various solutions seek to nurture and edify your home or business in an eco-friendly manner.

Greener Searching

Blog Week of Sept. 4, 2011

What Google’s Energy Transparency Can Teach Us

Google, in response to recent criticisms, compiled data to reveal its energy use, greenhouse gas production, and put its environmentally friendly initiatives on display.  This all started from a claim by The Sunday Times, a British newspaper, stating “Googling” something uses the same amount of energy as boiling a teapot (British people love their tea, and so did I when I visited, with cream even).  This bold claim put Google on defense and spurred an investigation into how much energy its ever-growing data centers use.  The Sunday Times accepted Google’s response that most searches use 35 times less energy than The Sunday Times suggested, however Google wanted to be sure.

Google’s concern is valid; it is regularly seen as one of the best places to work in the United States and the perks its employees enjoy are subject to jealous comments by other office workers across the country.  Google’s statistics could be considered high, using 2.3 billion kWh of electricity last year, enough for a medium sized city (207,000 homes according to Edison Electric Institute). However, that is about half of the biggest power users, mostly oil companies, automobile manufacturers, and steel mills.

In defense, Google has decided it will now publish numbers regularly to track progress in reducing its carbon footprint.  Google has also pointed out that searching for something for a research project is more efficient than going to a library and looking in books for the information.  In addition, Google, is pushing customers to use their centralized data centers to store and process data, called cloud computing.  Cloud computing is more efficient and cheaper for a company than that company using its own information technology department (Google states an in-house email server uses 75 times more energy than using Google’s Gmail).

Google’s own in-house green initiatives have also spread beyond the company itself.  Google has invested nearly $1 billion in renewable energy projects across the United States.  Wind farms in North Dakota, California, and Oregon, and solar projects in California and Germany all have received investment from Google to help reduce the reliance on fossil fuels for our everyday electricity.  In addition, a transmission system, one of the key hindrances to many renewable energy projects, has been started with the help of Google to help jump start offshore wind farms on the Atlantic Coast.

Google’s transparency should be an example for companies across the United States.  For Google to sit down and plot out its carbon footprint was no easy task, and the results opened even their eyes to how much they use.  Companies like One Stop Green can help companies and households help identify changes that can be made to improve their own carbon footprint in order to help make the world a greener place.

One Stop Green is looking towards a ‘greener’ future, sharing the latest and greatest ideas in green living and green technology with you through our staff written blogs. Going 'green' is no longer a choice, it's our responsibility, that's why it's so important to try and do the small things that can help change the outlook of the planet - and this is essentially the purpose of One Stop Green. We believe even the little things like recycling or using less water helps the environment out in a big way, and that's why our various solutions seek to nurture and edify your home or business in an eco-friendly manner. 

Visit our website at www.onestopgreen.com or download the mobile app at http://fwd4.me/01gP