That’s how I feel about them. Kind of a six-year-old’s level of enthusiasm. I just love ‘em. If I could have a superpower, it would be making a fifty-year-old tree appear wherever I pointed. We’re lucky to live in the Midwest, which has an amazing range of tree species to choose from. And the coolest part is, they’re so darn useful.

This image summarizes a lot of the reasons why planting or having trees around your house makes so much sense (at least, when you’re not in an area prone to wildfires). Not only can trees make it cheaper to cool and heat your home, they help your whole neighborhood’s air quality and keep it cooler in summer. And when it comes to property values, trees are golden. They add not only curb appeal, but also real dollars to your selling price.

So there are economic reasons aplenty to plant a tree. But the aesthetics are why I have planted six trees at our house in the past six years. The sound of breezes through the leaves, the birdsong, the dappled shade; they add more than I could ever put a price tag on. The other side of our street is a mature neighborhood, so they have huge silver maples and red oaks cutting the afternoon sun over our road.

It’s getting towards the end of the best time window to plant trees, but if you can get them in before Memorial Day, you’ll be good. If you remember to water them! Water all summer and into the fall. Soaker hoses are a sure bet, but don’t be stingy with the water. It’s a great reason to have a rain barrel!

A couple of important notes before you run out to the nursery and grab whatever is on sale:

1) Know your soil.
Is it acidic, alkaline, full of clay, or sandy? Even if you choose a tree native to your region, it has to be a good match to your soil.

2) Choose a native.
In almost any situation, a tree species that naturally grows in your region will do better. Look up your local county or university extension online to get a list of good trees for your area. If a nursery tries to sell you an ash tree, take your business elsewhere.

3) Pay attention to what size your tree will be when mature.
Don’t doom your oak to a life of ghastly trimming by planting it underneath wires. Power companies often provide their customers with brochures showing planting guidelines. The more you know about the tree you want to plant, the better!

4) Call before you dig.
In Illinois, Call Julie (http://www.illinois1call.com/). Don’t be the person who cuts a cable.

Taylor Studios is on the edge of an older residential neighborhood, so we’ve got a nice view of some great trees. We’re very lucky. I hope your workplace is similarly blessed!

Every so often, a couple of the hats I wear here at Taylor intersect. I also act as the front line IT troubleshooter, so I do have a little computer geek credibility. A few years ago, we purchased a powerful new server that was running Windows Server 2008 and had a bunch of extra RAM. The IT company we called on to set up the server was very eager for us to use a new technology, Virtual Machines (also called VMs). This allows the physical server to contain multiple other servers that are only virtual. They don’t have their own physical location. They exist only as rather complicated programs running on the physical server. If you have a Mac and have used programs like Parallels or VMWare to run Windows (within a window on your Mac desktop), then you have been using a virtual machine.

Well, virtual machines are mighty handy even when you’re not mixing operating systems. Some major business tasks, like email, do best when they are the biggest program running on a server. Can’t afford another physical server? Make a virtual one! And if you set it up correctly, you can shut down that virtual machine and move it to another physical server in an emergency. The entire virtual machine is contained within a Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) that is just a really big data file.

What’s so green about VMs? Look at it this way. Every large, electricity-gulping server you turn into a virtual machine reduces your power usage. You have fewer machines to keep cool, and your servers take up less space. From another angle, you can add a server to your setup without purchasing another piece of hardware that will only become toxic e-waste in five years.

Come to think of it, you are probably using a virtual machine already. Many of the internet services corporations running data centers the size of football fields have been using virtual machines for years to save power, infrastructure, and space.

Is this the first time you’ve heard of virtual machines? Does your company use virtual machines in your own IT setup? They may not be a perfect fit for every company, but they can both be green and save green!

The landscaping here at Taylor features perennials, which works out great, since we don’t have a gardener on staff. Our excellent handyman, George, hits the flowerbeds every month or so, but he has loads to do anyway, so low maintenance is the way to go. One of the nice things about perennials is that they are pretty water-efficient, especially if you get something that is native / regional. This is leading to the fact that we at Taylor don’t collect rainwater for watering our plants, but for homeowners, rainwater is a great gimme. Granted, water prices in this area are cheap (thank you, Mahomet Aquifer!), but why turn down free water?

The last several years have seen a boom in the rain barrel market, with scores of different models out there to meet any budget or décor choice. Many of the big box DIY stores carry multiple models, and even smart nursery owners are getting in on it.

You can take your rain barrel purchase a green step further and get one that is a reused food barrel. Our barrel is from Kraft. A local entrepreneur got a hold of several of these and turned them into rain barrels, then sold them at the farmer’s market. And if you’re handy and can lay your hands on a barrel, you can make your own. Take a look at your local Craigslist or other local sources for a barrel, since shipping a reused barrel across the country kind of cuts down on the green aspect…

While it may not be crucial in the Midwest to store water for the dry times, in the drier areas of the South and West, it makes a lot of sense. There, when things get dry, watering restrictions go into effect, which don’t apply to rain barrel water. Though considering how dry last summer was here in central Illinois, I am thinking of getting a second one. And a rain barrel is so incredibly easy to set up! A few cinder blocks, a flexible downspout, and you’re good to go. The darker ones can do double duty as chalk art target, if you have kids in that age range. If you don’t think a reused / utilitarian barrel quite fits your idea of curb appeal, you can try hiding it.

Tell us if you’ve adopted a rain barrel into your family, or maybe if you have a secret stash of old food barrels you’d like to sell!

Next step, gray water reclamation. (Sounds yummy!)

With Spring showing up rather early this year, cleaning out the back rooms and garages has become a priority. Among the empty boxes and expired catalogs, you may come upon obsolete or broken electronic devices. If you are skilled with eBay or Craiglist, you may be able to pass on what you want to get rid of and even make a little money. If, however, you are a business, spending valuable time listing equipment that may not sell (or be picked up) isn’t good for the bottom line. What do you do? There is always the temptation to just pitch it in the dumpster, releasing toxic materials into a landfill with direct leakage into groundwater. Sounds rather irresponsible, no? But that option no longer exists in Illinois. This year, Illinois’ Electronic Products Recycling & Reuse Act banned all e-waste from landfills.

So what will Taylor Studios do? We actually have a few options, and so do you, if you live in central Illinois. We like to use Mack’s Twin City Recycling in Urbana for most everything, though they don’t take TVs. Best Buy takes almost everything, but they aim their e-waste recycling at residential customers, limiting the program to three items per day accepted from a household. Staples seems more business-friendly, even if their website doesn’t list what they accept. Another option is Marco Recycling in Champaign (302 South Market Street, Champaign, IL 61820 (217) 352-4707), a division of Mervis Industries. Mervis has also announced plans to build a recycling center on North Cunningham in Urbana, on the site of a former drive-in theater.

Have you had to scramble to find a place to dispose of your e-waste? If you’re outside of Illinois, does your state have e-waste disposal laws?

Nuclear power has always been nightmare material to me. Maybe it was being a child during the Three Mile Island era, or equating Cold War nuclear weapons with nuclear power, but my kneejerk reaction has been to just say no. Fortunately, I’m not in charge of nuclear research.

The majority of current nuclear reactors are Light Water Reactors, or LWRs. Companies already building nuclear reactors have focused on making them more economical, longer lasting, easier to maintain, and (hopefully) safer. But these are only evolutionary steps, improving aspects of the designs without actually dealing with the scarcity of the uranium used, the extreme radioactivity of the waste products, or the sheer size of the installations necessary. Since the vast majority of nuclear power is used to generate electricity, this issue ties in directly with coal-fired power plants and carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Nuclear has been pushed as a carbon-neutral alternative to coal power. The uranium mining is less harmful to the landscape than coal mining. Coal-fired power plants emit ash, mercury, other trace metals, and massive amounts of carbon dioxide. However, spent nuclear fuel is dangerous to be near for millennia, and no one wants it anywhere near them.

It’s the classic complaint, “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we do better than this?” We can, and people have been working on this since the beginning of nuclear power. Generation IV is the new wave of reactor designs, but this is quite the alphabet soup to deal with. I’d like to focus on one called the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor or LFTR.

This type of reactor is based upon research done in the 1960s. It uses Thorium-232 (which is about as common as lead in the Earth’s crust) to create Uranium-233 very efficiently. The thorium is contained in a molten salt mixture that circulates through a reactor chamber. This chamber is the only location the reaction can take place. Once the reaction heats up the molten salt to a set point, it is circulated out of the reactor and through a heat exchanger. This heat exchanger transfers the molten salt’s heat to a carrier liquid that either directly or indirectly runs a turbine to generate electricity.

One of the advantages of a LFTR is its ability to be designed as a passively safe reactor. This means, if some aspect of the system fails, the nuclear reaction will stop without operator input. Current reactors run the risk of their reactor cores becoming more active in an emergency, or they depend on secondary cooling systems that can also fail in emergencies. This is part of what caused the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The systems that should have cooled the fuel also failed.

A LFTR would create much less radioactive waste per gigawatt than current reactors. Thorium itself packs more punch than Uranium-238, which is the most common nuclear fuel today. More than 99% of the thorium used in a LFTR would convert to useable material in the reactor. One more advantage is that a LFTR could use hazardous waste from older reactors as fuel, converting it to less radioactive materials with shorter half-lives.

While the concepts are exciting, the actual engineering will be a lot of work, and no one expects to see a LFTR running on a commercial scale for a couple decades. This is one field I look forward to following.

As a homeowner, I have become very aware of strange sounds in my house. Something that just isn’t quite right. When it’s not raining outside, you don’t really want to hear anything dripping or running. With kids at home who dash away from a sink without making sure it’s off, I have walked in on several dripping faucets with a sinking feeling. How long has this been running? We recently installed new Toto toilets and I am amazed at how efficient and fast-filling they are. They’re really well made, and I know they help our bottom line.

I doubt we’ll get Totos here at Taylor, but I can dream. However, when we do get new toilets, we’ll definitely get a model that gets 1.6 gallons per flush or lower. With nine toilets at the offices alone, it just makes sense. And I’m also proud to say that we don’t irrigate our lawns, either at the offices or at Taylormart. Yes, they were pretty brown last summer, but why waste water on grass? So, thumbs up for us. Now, we just need to get faucet aerators installed and swap out some old washers. I’ve cranked down on plenty of dripping faucets here, but I don’t blame the staff, I blame the hardware. I still get the sinking feeling when I hear that high, echoing whisper from the pipes. Or a toilet tank suddenly starts filling up for maybe fifteen seconds when no one’s used it for hours. There’s a toilet bowl flap slowly leaking nearby, I just know it!

What innovation at your company saved the most water? I keep arguing to get rid of the Management Team’s Jacuzzi…

Your workplace is a melting pot. In an office setting, complete strangers come together for a common goal. To work effectively, you need to be comfortable at some base level. Since you’re working together, you need to get along. And in Winter, these needs come together in (at least) one place: the thermostat.

At our last company meeting, I gave everyone an update on where we are on getting certified with the Illinois Green Business Association (IGBA). As part of that update, I announced that we would start following the IGBA energy conservation requirement that includes a maximum temperature setting of 68 degrees during the day for running the furnace.

I would have had more smiles if I had started singing all of the songs from Barney. And I had actually given this some thought. There was another requirement I could have chosen to follow that would have limited use of personal heaters to areas that were not otherwise heated. This would have meant that if you want to run a heater, the furnace would be turned off. At least this way, staff could keep their heaters and a (nominally) comfortable temperature. Unfortunately, some of the work areas in this building were not designed as office space, and the building as a whole isn’t particularly well insulated. Will this save Taylor Studios money? It’s hard to tell. Personal heater use may go up.

The only other alternative would be to ban personal heaters and turn up the furnace. On the face of it, this could work, but then you run into the fact that people run at a wide range of temperatures. 72 degrees sounds warm to me, but not to Jackie at the next desk over. Do you turn up the furnace so that the coldest person is comfortable, and warm people like me are working in T-shirts in January? John across the room would love to keep it at 63 degrees. Then you can look at how efficiently your HVAC setup works. Does the temperature seem to plunge a minute after the furnace shuts off? Here at our offices, personal heaters and a moderate thermostat seem to offer the most comfort for the most people. Despite all this, I know the next time I stand up at a company meeting, I will be greeted warily, like I am the Greek government about to present new austerity measures to the Greek citizens.

Does this sound familiar to you? How has your company sided in the temperature tug-of-war?

It has so many names – ghost load, phantom load, vampire draw, standby power. What they all refer to is that many electronic appliances and equipment use power even when they are off. Your amazing stereo setup? Your home theater extravaganza? They’re spinning your meter while you’re hard at work, trying to pay your power bill. Any device that has an “instant-on” feature is pulling power when turned off, like your TV or Blu-Ray / DVD player. Anything that has a transformer block / brick is drawing power when the component is turned off. The warmer that transformer gets, the more power it drains. Newer electronics are having to meet stricter standards for how much standby power they can draw, but it doesn’t make sense to replace electronics just because they’re energy hogs. So what can you do?

The answer is simple. A lot of these components are already plugged into a surge protector, or they should be, if you want to protect what you’ve sunk serious money into. Just shift that surge protector so that it’s easy to reach. When you’re not watching TV or rocking the suburbs, switch off the surge protector. Ghost load busted. A couple of switches to flip and you’ll be saving $5-$10 off your power bill each month.

Have problems bending over? Well, the smart folks at Belkin have developed a power strip (the Conserve Smart AV F7C007q) that has “slaved” five outlets to a “master” outlet. If you plug your TV into the Master outlet and your DVD player, Xbox, etc. into the Slave outlets, once you turn off your TV, the strip turns off the other items as well. Not just turns them off, but also blocks standby power. We like these strips so much, we’ve started using them with all our audio-visual interactives.

Have you started busting your ghost loads? What sneaky appliances have you caught sucking power?

You may remember that when I started writing this blog series, I said I’d be keeping you up to date on how our certification with the Illinois Green Business Association (IGBA) was progressing. And you’d be right if you pointed out there hasn’t been much in the way of updates. Well, here you go!

One of the nice things about IGBA’s certification process is that they accept different types of verification to prove you have fulfilled particular requirements. Pretty much anything except anecdotes and rumors. So I’ve been busy taking photos of seemingly random items at the Taylor Studios offices. Take a look at this beauty:

Hey, the use of a window and a pretty ingénue makes this one practically a Vermeer! What this photo actually captures is how our staff makes use of natural lighting and task lighting instead of the (admittedly, harsh) overhead lighting. That and we don’t believe in carpet. Or insulation.

And this is one of the interesting ones. I’ve got the sink, the water cooler, bushes, the company Prius, dishes drying by the sink, you get the idea. Luckily, Anthony Santarelli, the IGBA director who deals with certification, is a very nice guy with more patience than me. He really knocked it out of the park with a dandy spreadsheet that helps me track what requirements we’ve completed. It’s got a great, information-dense format that makes it clear, breathtakingly clear, how far we have to go.

I know what you’re thinking, “If these are his updates, let’s get back to the fun stuff!” I agree, but before I go, I’d like to give a plug to IGBA about a neat program they’re involved in with Ameren to install free faucet aerators for businesses that are Ameren customers. Take a look and give ‘em a call!

If you are a central Illinois business person, have you heard of IGBA? If you’re outside the region, is there a similar type of organization where you work? Let’s spread the word!

If you are the one who buys the light bulbs in your household, you may be well aware that the days of 100-watt bulbs are numbered. Since they can’t be manufactured to use 25% less energy (as required by law), they can’t be sold or imported into the US after January 1st. Some consumers are stockpiling them, since you can use them for as long as you have them, but if you have an eye to keeping down your power bills, I doubt you’re getting too weepy right now.

While I applaud the urge to save energy, I don’t think alternatives for the 100-watt bulb are going to be wholeheartedly accepted by consumers. CFLs are much more expensive per bulb, and their longer life is easy for people to discount. Coupled with the dangers inherent in breaking a CFL and the effort required to dispose of it properly, I see CFLs as a compromise no one truly likes.

Fortunately, we are in a transition phase. LED bulbs are appearing all over, and companies are working overtime to make them cheaper, brighter, and just the right shade of creamy white we are used to with incandescent bulbs. That’s the upside. The downside is cost. LED bulbs are expensive. The cost will come down, but not to incandescent bulb price levels. Of course, only those of us born before 1990 will remember the days of cheap bulbs, so that’s something you can look forward to. Sitting in your rocking chair, waxing nostalgic for incandescent bulbs and music on CDs.

I think LEDs (by themselves) are amazing. They get to me on that ‘Gee whiz!’ level common to 2nd grade boys. If you look at an LED when it is off, it’s just a little square of light yellow. No matter how many times I read about how they work, it doesn’t click. I’m still thinking in terms of electrical resistance through a filament creating light and heat, but LEDs are something else entirely. And then there is the free-for-all in bulb design. The early days of incandescent bulbs saw all sorts of strange shapes fighting it out. Now, LED bulbs have the slogan, “The bulb of tomorrow, today!” They look like spaceships, not bulbs.

We use a lot of LEDs in exhibits, mostly for lighting artifacts, since they run so much cooler than incandescents or halogens. Some of our favorite products have LEDs wired onto a flexible ribbon that can be bent any which way.

Home improvement stores stock quite a few styles of LED fixtures and bulbs. Companies have created LED ‘bulbs’ that can replace fluorescent tubes, Exit sign bulbs, or just about any style of incandescent or fluorescent bulb you can think of. A couple of good places online include LED Fixtures & Bulbs and Super Bright LEDs.

New cars are using LEDs for almost every light, and industrial trucks have them for brakes and turn signals. Most municipalities have replaced their old incandescent traffic lights with LEDs, making them visible for miles.

Have you or your company used LEDs? What’s your favorite product?