Green Homes Gain Heat in Cool Housing Market

(NEWSER) - Being sensitive to the environment doesn't have to cost a fortune. In fact, the green option is often the most cost-effective one. Scientific American spotlights nine ways of cutting your bills as you save the Earth:

• Shrink your living space. Prefab homes and plans for dwellings as small as 65 square feet are widely available.

Architects, not automakers, have the power to halt global warming

(NEWSER) - With US homes on average twice as large as they were 50 years ago—and, of course, dwarfing those in all other developed countries—rethinking our idea of "home" is as crucial to cutting global warming as switching to a smaller car, says architect Edward Mazria in Fast Company. Half of all greenhouse gas emissions are building-related; residential buildings make up 21% of national energy consumption—almost as much as transportation. More»

Fido, Fluffy fetch bad news for environment

(NEWSER) - Forget the gas guzzler—it's Fluffy and Fido who are delivering a carbon blow to the global environment. That's the odd warning from a pair of New Zealand professors who claim the carbon pawprint of a large dog delivers twice the impact of a Toyota Land Cruiser driven 6,000 miles a year. A cat is more akin to driving a Volkswagen Golf, while a hamster is like owning a plasma TV. More»

People who live near vegetation suffer fewer diseases

(NEWSER) - People who live close to parks or other “green spaces” are likely to be healthier, a new study suggests. Dutch researchers scoured the health records of 345,000 people, comparing their health status to the amount of green space in the surrounding area, from a half-mile to 2-mile radius. Of 24 health conditions—including cardiovascular, respiratory, and neurological diseases—people living in purely urban areas suffered higher instances of 15 of them, notes HealthDay. More»

Is unplugging the fridge and fueling up on vegetable oil eco-friendly or just nuts?

(NEWSER) - How far would you go to reduce your ecological footprint? Would you run your car on waste vegetable oil? Use your lawn as a bathroom to save water? Huddle for body heat? Unplug the fridge? Some 7% of the population is “dark green,” the New York Times reports, though the jury’s still out on whether the so-called "carborexics" are eco-heroes or borderline obsessive-compulsive. More»