Tankless water heaters - ECOSMART® is a privately owned manufacturing, distribution and wholesale company of electric tankless water heaters with exclusive modulating technology headquartered in Miami, Florida.

Boots On The Roof – Solar Training, Solar Energy Education

Boots on the Roof, a division of Unitek Education, offers market-ready training for contractors (Electrical, HVAC, Plumbing, Roofing, General), entrepreneurs, architects, engineers, salespeople & other business professionals entering the solar energy industry.

Earth Cinema Circle

We do not necessarily support or verify anything on this site.
All information provided is by the company.

Green Washing or Green Manufacturing?

Despite the slowing US economy, the 2009 Cone Consumer Environmental Survey conducted on January 29-30, 2009 showed that 34 percent of Americans were more likely to buy environmentally responsible products and another 44 percent will not change their environmental shopping habits. Surveys like this one are causing manufacturing companies of all sizes to “go green.” The problem is some of these companies are green washing their products. This green washing makes it very difficult for consumers to know if the products are truly green or if the manufacturer is just jumping on the green bandwagon.

For 2009 Exclusively Green, LLC wanted to do something new and different to help separate the truly green manufactures from the ones who are doing green washing. Exclusively Green, LLC knows that all of the products they carry are green and better for the environment then traditional products, but they wanted to know just how green they are. In order to learn more about the manufacturers and quickly inform their customers Exclusively Green, LLC created a “green scale.” From now on, every manufacture Exclusively Green, LLC carries will have a green scale rating. This scale has a rating from 0-100.

Traditional companies will receive near a zero if they were to be graded. So, when a manufacturer receives an 80, please do not think that they have a low score. For this scale, that is a GREAT score! Where the products are made and how the employees are treated is a major part of the final grade. This hurt some of the manufacturers final grade because they do not produce their products in the USA or they do not offer healthcare to their employees. Over all this was very informative for Exclusively Green, LLC and they hope for you as well.

WeBuyItGreen

WeBuyItGreen - We provide resources for the ethical consumer & promote
eco friendly and fair trade products.

Update to a previous post

Last month we did a blog post on our search for VOC free paint. Since we had such a hard time finding VOC free paint we recently decided to add a full line of VOC free paint and stain. For the complete line please see our website. There are Wall Paints, Nursery Paints, Stains, Primer Oil, Solvent-Free Wall Paint & Tinting System Matte, Solvent-Free Wall Paint & Tinting System Satin, and Wall Glaze.

Do you wish you could save 15 rolls of paper towels?

Do you have to keep microwaving sponges to get the mold or mildew smell out? We have the perfect product, SKOY cloths. My wife would throw out sponges after a week because of the mildew smell. We have been using our SKOY cloths at home for well over a year now. Each square lasts us about 3 months and is 100% biodegradable and natural. Every night when we do our dishes, we use the cloths and use it to clean the stove and counter tops. All we do is hang the cloth over the spout to dry and we have yet to have one get a mildewy smelling.
These cloths get very soft when they are wet so you can us it wherever you would use a cloth. You can even wash your child’s face with it. If a liquid spills these are great to use to soak up the spill. Each SKOY can absorb 15 times its weight! I spilled a half glass of ice tea on the carpet and I went to get the SKOY instead of paper towels. The SKOY soaked up all of the ice tea very quickly. It would have taken three or four paper towels just to soak up the ice tea.
These great cloths are very reasonably priced. Only $6.99 not for one but for a pack of four. If you get the same use out of yours as we do ours it will last you a full year. In addition, what would 45 rolls of paper towels cost you?

Of course if you want organic cotton dish cloths we have those as well!

Energy Efficiency

I was looking at my newest electric bill last week and was shocked by how expensive it was. Part of the cost is the fact that we use wind energy for our electric. I knew that this couldn’t be the only expense so I wanted to figure our what else could be causing the increase in the cost. The first thing I did was to take out my trusty Kill A Watt and plug my computer monitor into it. When you plug something into the Kill A Watt it reads how much electric that appliance is using. I found out the monitor I have is wasting a ton of electric. It uses 120 watts where as a new Energy Star monitor of the same size will use 26 watts! After finding my actual electric costs I did the math and realized that if I just get a new monitor it will save me $6.33 per month and $76 a year!
Thanks to the Kill A Watt I can justify buying a new monitor since it will pay for itself in electric savings within 3 years. I can’t wait to see what else I can save money on.

Updated: VOC Free Paint

When my wife became pregnant, we knew that we needed to paint the nursery. I did a lot of research to try to figure out what was the best kind of paint to use. There are the traditional paints, low VOC paint, no VOC paint, and Old Fashioned Milk Paint.
Since I knew the dangers of traditional paint I wanted to make sure that we only used no VOC paint. I did not want the baby or my pregnant wife having to breath in the fumes. We first went to the local chain paint store where the sales rep tried to tell us not to use the VOC paint they carry. He claimed that it was very streaky and did not cover very well. Even if it did not cover as well, I still did not want the toxins in the nursery. My wife’s and babies health was much more important. We took swatches home but decided to go to a different store to buy the paint.

Once we decided on a color we needed to go buy the paint. So the day before we had people coming over to help us do the painting we went to Home Depot to get their Freshaire Choice paint. This paint is great because it does not contain any VOC’s in it. One of the down falls of no VOC paint is that as soon as it is colored the tint will add some VOC into the paint. So, when you are looking for VOC free paint make sure that the tint is also VOC free. When we got to Home Depot, we looked around the paint department but could not find the Freshaire Choice paint. We asked the sales rep and he claimed that they do not carry anything like that. So, off we went to yet another store in our search for VOC free paint.

This store carries two lines of VOC free paint. Not only is the paint VOC free but so is the tint! We wanted to try a paint called BioShield Paint since it is pre colored and is Zero-VOC and Solvent-Free. Unfortunately, they only had a very little bit in stock and it was not the colors that we were looking for. They also had something that is called milk paint from the The Old Fashioned Milk Paint Co., Inc. This product was very interesting to me since it is all natural and it is the kind of paint that people have been using for thousands of years! One nice thing about this paint is that since it is in a powered form you can literally make any color from it that you want! The problem we had is that we never mixed paint before and did not want to experiment with the baby’s room. We also had to pre and post treat the walls in order to make sure that the paint looked it is best. If we sell our house or need to do any painting, we will definitely try out these paints.

Lowes was about our last hope. We knew that my dad and step mom were coming the next day to help us paint so we needed to have paint for them to use. Lowes has a zero VOC Olympic brand paint. The sales woman was very helpful so this is the paint we used. Unfortunately, we needed to add the tint to the paint so it is not perfect but it worked well. The paint might have been slightly thinner then traditional paints but it covered great. Even with putting two coats on the room, the odor was minimum. If you were in the room or just out side the room, you could tell we were painting but the rest of the house had zero smell.

I would recommend this paint but if you wanted a truly zero VOC paint one of the other ones listed above or in this list would be what you want. In addition, if you do want a truly zero VOC paint I would make sure you get it early. I would hate to see you have to drive all over looking for your Zero VOC paint.

Keystone Edge Article

On January 22nd we were featured in Keystoneedge.com. It was a very good article written by By: Joe Petrucci. From the article:

Going Green and Making Green: Educating Consumers for a New Industry
Montgomery County entrepreneur Tom Ambler's online startup, Exclusively Green Market, offers a host of green goods from shoelaces to shower curtains. The hard part, he says, isn't finding earth-friendly products to sell; it's getting consumers to understand why they are better--and why they cost more. Read the rest of the article

Earth Love'n Paper Products

Earth Love’n Paper Products – recycled gift wrap and cards printed on 100% post-consumer waste, processed chlorine-free premium quality paper. No new trees! Designs for all occasions.

Here is some information about our company:

Earth Love’n Paper Products is committed to creating a more sustainable world though the increased use of recycled paper. Our products are printed on 100% post-consumer waste, processed chlorine-free paper which is made from previously used home or office paper. No harmful bleaching compounds are used in the paper making process. By using our products instead of traditional stationery products, no new trees are cut down, less energy and water are used, and less pollution is produced. Earth Love’n Paper donates 1 tree for every 10 packages of gift wrap sold to Trees for the Future an organization that helps thousands of communities improve their livelihood through tree planting.

All of our products are made with Forest Stewardship Counsil (FSC) certified paper. The paper is made in the U.S. with certified wind energy. Our products are printed in New Jersey and are packaged at the KenCrest Facility in Pottstown, PA, which is a facility for adults with developmental challenges.

Other "Green" businesses in Philadelphia

Earth Love’n Paper Products