Green Living

I was researching last week and came across two articles, one was regarding PG&E’s plans to buy 800 megawatts of solar power, the other was Southern California Edison just signed a 20-year contract for 909 megawatts of wind power. I believe that both of this companies are doing this in an effort to meet the state’s renewable portfolio standard.

For SCE it will provide more than 10% of its renewable power. As for the PG&E’s plans it should provide electricity to at least 239,000 homes and hopeful that it would increase their renewable energy to 24% by 2013. Since they are required to have at least 20% of their electricity come from renewable energy sources by the year 2010, these two deals should help them reach that goal.

So what happens when you take a famous rock star and pit him against one of the top rappers in a battle to see who can be the most green? Well to find out you need to be watching Battleground Earth on Planet Green (part of the Discovery Channel Networks) where rocker Tommy Lee is battling Ludacris to see who is the most green.

I’ve seen several of these episodes and it’s a great show. Every episode features an assignment they must complete. Along they way they pull in celebrities and friends to help out. Each show features a different way you can be green.

To check it out go to channelfinder.net or check with your local cable or satellite provider to find out where you can find Planet Green then follow along as Tommy Lee and Ludacris prank, tease and taunt each other while helping spread the word that “little changes add up to big savings”.

So, I have 20 days until I leave for my cruise to the Caribbean. I am slightly nervous about the sun exposure, because to be honest… my legs have not seen the sun in a good three or four years. How scary is that?!? I know that I am going to need an exceptionally awesome sunscreen, but which one is going to protect my sensitive skin the most from harmful UV rays? I came across a website called SkinDeep, which is run by the Environmental Networking Group. On their site, I came across a section on sunscreen. It has a list of the top 10 best sunscreens, along with field that you can search for certain brand names. Most of the names on the top 10, I did not recognize. I decided to do a search for some of the more popular name brands that are available in local drug stores (i.e. Banana Boat). I was shocked to see that the lowest risk of hazard score was a 3. The sad part is that only 6 of their 41 products have the 3 ranking. The majority of them have a ranking of 7, which is considered to be a high hazard risk.

I even decided to check out my daily moisturizer that has SPF 15 protection in it. I was amazed to see a full ranking on the specific moisturizer with UVA and UVB ratings. It had listings of what ingredients in the product could be harmful and why. It was awesome to find all this information out! I will definitely be using that site in the future to find out which products are going to protect my skin the best. I personally want as little age spots and skin cancer as possible. I know our grandparents and even our parents generation could not really avoid the sun exposure because there was little education available to them and they just did not know better. In these times, we have so much knowledge about harmful things that we are exposed to daily, in order to protect ourselves. So get out there and buy some SUNSCREEN!