When the American Recovery and Reinvestment act went into effect last winter, $300 million dollars was set aside for use as a rebate program toward the purchase of more energy-efficient appliances. That $300 million was divided to the states and territories based on population and the states were responsible to develop programs to disperse the rebate funds and to recycle the old appliances.
Individual states and territories had until October to submit their plans to the Department of Energy, and according to the DOE, everybody made the deadline. So far, 36 out of 56 eligible programs have been approved by the DOE and the rebate programs will begin to kick in soon.
That's a screen capture I just made with Windows 7's Snipping Tool. It's pretty handy and if I don't stop myself here, I am likely to say something positive about Microsoft. Lord knows we can't have that!
Here's the list of the appliances covered by this program, again from the DOE's website:
More than 70% of the energy used in our homes is for appliances, refrigeration, space heating, cooling, and water heating. Replacing old appliances and equipment with those that are ENERGY STAR® labeled can help American families save significantly on their utility bills. Each state and territory may select its own set of ENERGY STAR qualified products to rebate. DOE has recommended that states select from among the following appliances:
Boilers
Central air conditioners
Clothes washers
Dishwashers
Freezers
Furnaces (oil and gas)
Heat pumps (air source and geothermal)
Refrigerators
Room air conditioners
Water heaters
More information about the rebates offered in each state will be available on this site once programs have been approved by DOE.
So that's what I know so far about the appliance rebate program. If you have a refrigerator or washing machine that's on its last legs, hold on for a couple of months so you can take advantage of this program.
To those of you outside of the US, what incentives are available for you to purchase more efficient household appliances? Most of my international readers are from Canada and I know you have a program there. I know that a fair number of you are reading this from Australia, the UK, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Russia too. Any of you care to share?
I poke around the internet in a quest for inspiration and story ideas all the time. Sometimes, I find things that don't quite warrant a post of their own. Here's a handful of them.
Patricia Gray is a Vancouver, British Columbia interior designer who's idolized on both sides of the 49th parallel and with good reason.
She wrote a column about color trends and I'm happy to report that I used this palette in a bathroom design a week before I saw her post. I love being on target with a color scheme. Grey and yellow is this year's blue and brown. Believe it. From Patricia's blog:
Key colours for the Farrow & Ball Industrial 2010 Color Trends:
I wrote about underwater mortgages and the ethical and moral dilemmas swirling around the idea of a planned default on a bad mortgage this week. In fact, I wrote about it twice: on Sunday and on Tuesday. Those posts opened up a really great comments discussion afterward.
Dirk Shad, Times photographer
Well the whole thing was prompted by a wire story from last Saturday's St. Petersburg Times. In today's issue of the same paper, the Deputy Business Editor, Becky Bowers, wrote an essay on why she and her husband are staying put in their underwater mortgage. That she lives up the street from me and that we share a love for this neighborhood is a bonus. Thank you Becky.
My great friend Tom is a consummate Manhattanite and loves New York with a passion I envy. Tom sends me glimpses of day to day life in that great city regularly and the other day he sent me this video.
This is the Christmas display at Saks' and this video features the actual music piped into the street for this Christmas spectacular. It's no wonder tour buses carry many thousands of people to that great city every day.
Once of my Twitter pals posted a link to this brilliant column about marble as a counter material.
The blog is called The Petch House and it details the renovation of an old home. The post I'm linking to is as impassioned a defense of marble as any I've seen and he says everything I do about the stuff. It's a good read and I plan to throw it in the face of the next person who starts telling me how readily marble scratches and stains. Here's that link again. And just for good measure, here it is one more time.
Eric Schmidt is one of the founders of Google. He's also my homeboy. In yesterday's Wall Street Journal he delivered what can only be called a beat down to Rupert Murdoch and the rest of the self-immolators in print media.
I quote:
With dwindling revenue and diminished resources, frustrated newspaper executives are looking for someone to blame. Much of their anger is currently directed at Google, whom many executives view as getting all the benefit from the business relationship without giving much in return. The facts, I believe, suggest otherwise.
I love Twitter. There I said it. It took a month of playing around with it to finally grasp what it is and six months later, Tweeting is so ingrained in my day that I can no sooner imagine the day without it as I can imagine my not blogging. Twitter also makes me nuts because it's one more thing to keep up with. Shane Nickerson is a comedian who's similarly hooked on Twitter. He's got a potty mouth and he's hilarious. Do not play this video if the word "fuck" offends you.
Rome (AP) Italian officials have unveiled new discoveries in an ancient Roman luxury complex filled with priceless mosaics, elegant porticos and thermal baths. The 1,800 square-meter (2,000 square-yard) complex, dating from the 2nd to 4th centuries, has been excavated intermittently starting in 2004, when the ruins were accidentally discovered during renovations of a Renaissance palazzo that now stands above them. In the latest digging campaign, which began in March, archaeologists uncovered a palatial room decorated with precious marble and a colorful mosaic made with half a million tiles brought from all over the Roman Empire. The 16th century Palazzo Valentini, which sits on top of the ruins in downtown Rome, houses local government offices. The ancient complex will be open to the public from Friday through Jan. 6, before closing again for further explorations.
Get thee to Rome before January 6th. If I can get the stars to align, I'll be back in Rome in June, but I'll have missed this once in a lifetime wonder.
If you have never stood in front of an ancient mosaic or other piece of ancient art, please find a way to do so. The word awesome is horribly overused, but it's the only way to describe such an experience. Seeing ancient art is the best way I can think of to stare ancient people in the face and see a reflection of yourself staring back. Roman culture is the very bedrock of western culture and to know that frees you from the burden of thinking that you're so unique that you're alone in history. None of us is alone, we stand connected to every other human being who has ever walked the face of the earth. Our joy, our pain, our love, our lust, our strain, our suffering and our triumphs are the same as they've ever been.
Read Nancie's wonderful blog, Mosaic Art Now. It's part of the great art annual of the same name, Mosaic Art Now. Speaking of Mosaic Art Now, wait until you see what's in store in the 2010 edition. More details to come on that, believe me.
When I was in high school, my Dad renovated our bathroom. I am the fifth kid out of seven making a family of nine. The house where we grew up was big, we had plenty of room. But times were different then, and the nine of us shared a single bathroom. That was some kind of fun, let me tell you. So Dad's decision to renovate the bathroom single-handedly was not one he undertook lightly.
My Dad never did anything half way, he still doesn't. Since this took place in 1979, he used Corian for not just the vanity counter, but for the shower surround as well. I never appreciated his labors until I was older (his labors on this bath as well as his many other labors) but the man was a marvel. Again, since it was 1979, my Dad's miraculous bathroom was a vision in Venaro Peach.
As my appreciation for my Dad's devotion and commitment to his family grew, my esteem for his choice of materials declined. Times changed and tastes changed. Over time, more materials became available and Corian fell from favor as the go-to choice for kitchen and bath surfaces.
I've been referring to it's entire category, solid surface, as dying for years. I think the last time I put it in a kitchen was six or seven years ago, and that was under extreme duress.
One of the more enjoyable parts of being a blogger is the relationships I get to cultivate with PR and Marketing people from all over the place. These are symbiotic relationships and it's interesting to be part of a rapidly changing media landscape.
So yesterday I got an e-mail from Sandra Bauman, from Bauman Research and Consulting. I participated in a study on induction cooking with Sandra over the summer so she knows I'm an appliance kind of guy. This time however, she's looking to talk to people who own a very specific LG refrigerator.
The refrigerator is 2009's LG LMX 28987ST, 4 door model. I have never specified one but I agreed to help find someone who has one. So, anybody? If you have one and are willing to talk to a market researcher about it, let me know. Thanks!
Someone sent me what has to be the fourth or fifth list of the ways I can "green" my Christmas yesterday and I've about had it. To a one, each of those lists concerned ways I could either spend more money than I would otherwise on unattractive crap or new and inventive ways for me to wear a hair shirt in public and thereby prove my "green" bona fides to passersby. Please.
Human civilization faces some very real and very pressing environmental problems. Left unchecked, a number of these have the potential to grow into outright crises and they need to be dealt with decisively and immediately. All of them can be traced to an American (and increasingly global) pattern of consumption. It's not just a matter of quantity of that consumption either, it's more a problem of that consumption's inefficiency.
The contemporary "green" movement was no doubt founded with the best intentions, but the more of its popular expression I see the less enthused about it I become. These Christmas lists I've been seeing are a terrific case in point. The problem is excess and inefficient consumption. So the solution cannot be more consumption. Buying a $75 Christmas tree ornament made from an old sock is still buying more unnecessary stuff. It's a more sustainable idea to just keep using the Christmas tree ornaments you already have.
The overpriced "green" trinkets and gewgaws being pitched around the internet are just another manifestation of this consumption problem. What needs to change is the impulse to buy stuff for the sake of buying stuff. "Green" consumerism is still consumerism.
A better way to think about your role in the face of these looming problems is to commit to using scarce resources wisely and efficiently. That goes for all scarce resources: energy, land, water, time and your money. Make a commitment to yourself and at the same time a co-commitment to the people with whom you share the earth.
So rather than a bunch of simple minded lists of how to have a "green" Christmas, why not just stop buying crap? Stop substituting things for your time for and emotional availability to the people you love. Gift giving is a great custom, one of my favorites in fact. But how smart is it to go broke every December?
"Green" ideas for this or any time of year start with the best intentions, but all too quickly become the social equivalent of methadone. Buying crap is still buying crap, regardless of its recycled content. So don't buy crap. See? No hair shirt.
