VOX Design Group, Inc.

At the Store

1. Use Reusable Bags

Each year about 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide. At over 1 million bags per minute, that's a lot of plastic bags, of which billions end up as litter each year, contaminating oceans and other waterways.

Plastic bags, like the petroleum they are made from, don't biodegrade very well at all, rather, they photodegrade. Meaning, they break down into smaller and smaller toxic bits, which contaminate soil and waterways, and enters the food chain – animals accidentally eat these bits and pieces, mistaking them for food. It's estimated that 1 million birds and 100,000 turtles and other sea animals starve to death each year after consuming plastic debris, which blocks their digestive tracts.

Paper bags are not an environmentally friendly alternative, as millions of trees must be cut down to make them each year… and the process is very energy intensive.

Carry reusable shopping bags instead; keep them in the trunk of your car, or stash a couple of the small fold-up varieties in your purse so you're always prepared. You can also use avoid plastic produce bags (put the produce right into your reusable cloth bag instead) and use reusable cloth bags for packaging your child's school lunch and snacks.

2. Choose Foods with Minimal Packaging

If you can choose foods in bulk, unwrapped form, do so. Excess packaging only adds to the waste filling up landfills, and often it's made out of toxic materials (like Styrofoam, which may cause cancer and produces hazardous waste and gasses when manufactured).

One study conducted by Portland State University Food Industry Leadership Center, for the Bulk is Green Council (BIG), revealed that Americans could save an average of 89 percent on costs by buying their organic foods in bulk, compared to organic packaged counterparts.² According to the report, if Americans purchased the following products in bulk for one year, it would save hundreds of millions of pounds of waste from going into landfills:

• Coffee: 240 million pounds of foil packaging saved from landfills
• Almonds: 72 million pounds of waste saved from landfills
• Peanut butter: 7 pounds of waste saved from landfills per family
• Oatmeal: Saves five times the waste of its packaged equivalent

3. Ditch Bottled Water

Bottled water is perhaps one of the most environmentally unfriendly industries there is. Americans consume about half a billion bottles of water every week! The environmental ramifications of this practice are enormous. The video below, The Story of Bottled Water, brought to you by the folks who created the wildly successful video The Story of Stuff, does an excellent job of illustrating the truth about bottled water. Instead of bottled water, drinking filtered tap water is a healthier, more sustainable option. (Take it with you on the go using a glass water bottled.)

4. Think About Where You Shop

Choose to purchase your food at stores that have a thoughtful selection of local and organic foods, as well as store practices that limit waste, such as putting doors on the refrigerated section or offering a recycling program. Even better, shop at Farmer's markets to support local farmers and craftspeople.

Produce

5. Get Your Produce Locally

Locally-grown produce is not only fresher, it will not have to be shipped across the globe to get to your dinner plate. Remember, food grown locally is not always organic. Though it may be grown just down the road and sold at your local farm stand, it may still be doused in pesticides and grown in chemical fertilizers, and tended by workers being paid unfair wages.

At the same time, the organic certification process established by the federal government is expensive, and some small farmers cannot afford it. This means some local foods are grown according to organic standards but are not "certified organic." The only way to know for sure is to become "friendly" with your farmer, so that you can learn about his practices.

6. Eat More Produce

If you eat meat that comes from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) (one of the worst ways to raise food environmentally), then eating more produce in lieu of it will give the environment a break. CAFOs are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and deforestation, so whether you eat more produce or choose to get your meat elsewhere, both will help to save the planet.

7. Eat Organic Produce

The fewer chemicals used to grow your food, the better for all concerned. And the only way to ensure your food is as pure as possible, outside of talking to the farmer directly, is to look for the organic seal. There are a few different organic labels out there, but only one relates directly to foods: the USDA Organic seal.

This seal is one of your best commercial assurances of organic quality, so when in doubt: if it doesn't carry the USDA Organic seal, you might not be getting what you're paying for.

Growers and manufacturers of organic products bearing the USDA seal have to meet the strictest standards of any of the currently available organic labels. Certified organic crops cannot be grown with any of the following:

• Synthetic pesticides
• Bioengineered genes
• Petroleum-based fertilizers
• Sewage sludge-based fertilizers

8. Eat Your Produce Raw

There are a myriad of health reasons why you should consume more of your food raw… but from an environmental perspective, you can save some energy by forgoing cooking and chomping on raw (or fermented!) veggies instead.

9. Eat In Season

When you choose produce in season, you can shop locally and support farmers in your area – a huge win for the environment! As a bonus, it'll taste better too.

10. Ferment or Preserve Your Veggies

If you have a lot of summer fruits and veggies that you need to use up before they spoil, try your hand at preserving them so they're available to you year-round. You can also ferment your veggies, which is absolutely fantastic for your health, and they will keep for months in your fridge.

11. Grow Your Own

Growing your own organic fruits and veggies is about as environmentally friendly as you can get. In the spring, try your hand at growing your favorites; it only takes a small parcel of land. If you're thinking of planting veggies but are not sure where to begin, visit a few local plant nurseries around your home, especially those that specialize in organic gardening. The employees are likely to be a great resource for natural planting tips that will help your garden thrive.

Even if you only have access to a patio, you can still grow some of your own veggies using containers. Tomatoes, herbs, cucumbers, lettuce, and peppers are examples of plants that thrive in containers, but the sky is really the limit.

12. Join a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) Program

With a CSA, you purchase a "share" of a farm directly from a farmer, and in return get seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season (some CSAs also include other products, like meat, honey, dairy and more). It's an excellent way to get locally-grown, seasonal produce for your family without any fuss.

Meat

13. Avoid CAFO Meats

The trend of large corporate-controlled CAFOs making up the lion's share of U.S. food production has lead to an abundance of cheap food, but not without serious health, ethical and environmental consequences. Among them:³

• Loss of water quality through nitrogen and phosphorus contamination in rivers, streams and ground water (which contributes to "dramatic shifts in aquatic ecosystems and hypoxic zones")
• Agricultural pesticide contamination to streams, ground water and wells, and safety concerns to agricultural workers who use them
• A decline in nutrient density of 43 garden crops (primarily vegetables), which suggests "possible tradeoffs between yield and nutrient content"
• Large emission of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide
• Negative impact on soil quality through such factors as erosion, compaction, pesticide application and excessive fertilization

Most meat sold in grocery stores comes from CAFOs, so avoiding this meat means getting your food from local growers or seeking out certified organic, grass-fed meat (see #17 below).

14. Buy Locally-Grown Meats

As with produce, buying your meat from local sources is best for both your health and the environment.

15. Focus on Organic Meats

Certified organic meat (and milk) must come from animals that have had access to pasture for at least four months of the year. Further, 30 percent of the animals' feed must come from this grazing time, and the animals cannot be given antibiotics or growth hormones. The most important foods to buy organic are animal products – not produce – because animal foods, which are raised on pesticide-laced feed, tend to have higher concentrations of pesticides. So when prioritizing your purchases, look for organic meats, eggs and dairy products before anything else.

16. Opt Out of Antibiotics

About 80 percent of all the antibiotics produced are used in agriculture – not only to fight infection, but to promote unhealthy (though profitable) weight gain. Feeding livestock continuous, low-dose antibiotics creates a perfect storm for widespread disease proliferation – and, worse yet, antibiotic-resistant disease. This link is so clear-cut that the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed has been banned in Europe since 2006...

Antibiotics are not only embedded in your meats, they have made their way into your produce as well, as slow-to-biodegrade antibiotics are transferred, via the manure used as fertilizer, into your corn, lettuce, potatoes, and other crops. Even eating organically may not entirely alleviate this problem, since organic crops, which cannot be fertilized with synthetic fertilizers, are the ones most often fertilized with manure.

As it stands, conventional, factory-farmed animal manure containing antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria is still allowed under the USDA organic label. However, non-medical use of antibiotics is not permitted in organic farming, so going organic is still the best choice for avoiding antibiotics in your food.

17. Choose Grass-Fed Meat

The differences between conventionally-raised, grain-fed livestock, and organically-raised, grass-fed cows are so vast, you're really talking about two different animals, and two separate industries with entirely different farming practices and environmental impacts.

The carbon footprint of conventional farming is mainly due to the unnatural feed that these animals are given, which requires lots of fossil fuels. Many don't think about this, but fossil fuels are used in everything from the fertilizers and pesticides that are sprayed onto the crop to the transportation of the feed.

Grass does not require fossil fuels to grow (rotating pastures does the job instead), and other health harming practices, such as injecting the livestock with hormones and antibiotics, are also not allowed in organic farming. Grass-fed cows are also not concentrated into small spaces the way CAFO cows are, meaning their waste is easily re-used as fertilizer, rather than congregating as toxic waste. This equates to healthier meat, a healthier you, and benefits to the planet.

Seafood

18. Check for This on Your Seafood Label

I don't normally advise eating seafood, unless you know for certain that it comes from unpolluted waters and is free from contaminants. However, if you choose to, look for The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification on the label. The MSC focuses on the health of ocean stocks and how they are managed, in addition to assessing the effect of the fishery on the wider ecosystem. This includes a range of marine mammals, birds and fish.

Companies who have completed the certification can offer yet another layer of assurance to their customers. The MSC eco-label provides a guarantee of sustainable fishing practices, as well as full traceability through the chain of custody, from beginning to end.

19. Know Your Fish

Certain fish should not be consumed because they are endangered or pose too high of contamination risks. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a Seafood Watch guide to help you determine which seafood choices are better off avoided.⁴ For instance, the following seafood options should be avoided because they are overfished or caught/farmed in ways that harm marine life or the environment:

• Chilean Seabass
• Atlantic cod
• King crab (imported)
• Orange Roughy
• Farmed salmon
• Tuna (canned and Bluefin)

It is also reasonable to assume that radioisotopes from the Fukushima disaster have now accumulated in some fish that are harvested from the Pacific, as was recently confirmed in California Bluefin tuna that had migrated from the ocean off Japan.⁵ So please exercise caution when choosing your fish.

20. Avoid Imported Fish

As with all food, the farther the fish has to travel to get to you, the worse it is for the environment. More than 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the US is imported, and over 40 percent of all seafood is produced in aqua-farms in China and other Asian countries.⁶

21. Avoid Farmed Fish

It's estimated that about half of the world's seafood comes from aquaculture, which is the term used to describe industrial fish farming. Like the land-based CAFOs, industrial fish farming has had problems from the start, including overcrowded conditions, pollution and unnatural diets.

Feed has been an area of controversy, as sometimes wild fish are used to prepare the fishmeal fed to farmed fish, depleting the natural fish supply in some areas. Further, the soy industry, Monsanto, Cargill and other agribusiness giants are trying to position genetically modified (GM) soy as a "sustainable" choice for aquaculture feed. But since soy is not a natural food found in the oceans, it poses serious risks of pollution, lack of nutrient content in seafood, and contamination of the oceans with herbicide-saturated GM soy.

Dairy

22. Choose Hormone-Free Dairy

Recombinant (genetically engineered) bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is used to significantly increase milk production in cows to highly unnatural levels. Treated cows can produce as much as 15-25 percent more milk. But this increase in milk production, and hence profit, has hidden costs, namely the cows' and your health (including links to cancer). In addition, this hormone is primarily used by dairy cows raised on CAFOs, which pose all of the same environmental, health and ethical concerns as CAFOs for other types of animals.

23. Choose Local Dairy Products

Notice a theme yet? The more of your food you can buy locally, the better.

24. Choose Organic Dairy Products

Organic dairy products are important because they'll be free from pesticides and Monsanto's genetically engineered growth hormone rBGH creation. However, the real issue is not organic vs. non-organic milk, but pasteurized vs. non-pasteurized, or raw, milk (the latter is the superior choice).

25. Raw Dairy Products Reign Supreme

If you want to continue consuming milk and milk products, I suggest you get them in the raw from organic dairy farmers who are set up specifically to produce high-quality, clean, nutritious raw dairy products.

You can find milk, cheese, and other dairy products in raw form, although it may take a little searching. High-quality raw milk has an abundance of nutritional elements, including enzymes, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and natural butterfat that are destroyed or lacking in pasteurized dairy, and will not subject the environment or the cows to the horrors of CAFOs.

Conventional dairy farms are not typically set up to produce milk that is safe and pure enough to be consumed raw, whereas milk that's been produced with the intention of being consumed raw should come from a small, dairy farm that raises grass-fed cows in natural, healthy conditions.

At a Restaurant

26. Skip the Bottles

Just as you avoid bottled water at home, skip it in restaurants too (if you're worried about quality, bring your own from home). You can also save waste by ordering beer on tap instead of in a bottle.

27. Eat at Restaurants That Purchase Local Food

Increasing numbers of restaurants are supporting local farmers to find the freshest, most sustainable sources of produce and other food. Support these restaurants and their efforts to make the world a better place.

28. Ask About the Food When You're Eating Out

It's ok, and encouraged, to ask your server or restaurant manager about where they get their food or how it's processed, and state your preferences as well. While they may be surprised by your interest, if enough people begin to inquire it could prompt them to start sourcing their foods from more natural, sustainable sources.

Eating at Home

29. Reduce Waste

If you use plastic utensils or paper plates, swap them for real dishes and cloth napkins. It's also important to cut down on food waste, which another unnecessary drain on an environmental and financial resources.

I've long stated that planning your meals is important for a number of reasons, one of which is reducing the amount of food that will go to waste, since you'll only buy what you need each time you visit the store.

30. Try Composting

Leftover fruit and veggies scraps, leaves and grass clippings (only if not chemically treated) can turn into a valuable natural fertilizer if you compost them instead of throwing them in the trash.

31. Eat Your Leftovers

Rather than simply throwing leftover food in the trash, reduce the waste and save the energy of cooking another meal by revamping them into a new dish. You can, for instance, use the bones from a roast chicken to make stock for a pot of soup, extending a Sunday roast to use for weekday dinners, or throw some extra veggies in the fridge into your juicer to make a fresh green drink.

32. Double Your Recipes

This is a great way to save some cooking energy (yours and the oven's), as you can use one batch to eat right away and put the other in the freezer for another day.

33. Cook One or More "Local" Meals Per Week

If you're new to buying locally-grown foods, challenge yourself to create one meal a week solely from these foods. You can even invite some friends or neighbors in on the challenge, and have a locally-grown potluck dinner for sustainable, tasty eating and a night of socializing!

By Dr. Mercola

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/09/10/33-ways-to-eat-environmentally-friendly.aspx

Last night I attended Agrion “Corporate Sustainability Directors’ Cocktail” at E&O Asian Kitchen in San Francisco. Agrion is a global business network for energy, cleantech, and corporate sustainability. The featured speaker was Lori Duvall – Global Director, Green Social Innovation of Ebay. Attendees at the event included San Francisco Bay Area’s leaders in sustainability. We had a breakout session in groups to answer a critical thinking sustainability question and present our answers to the group. Coupled with the great food and beverage served by our host E&O Asian Kitchen, this evening was both exciting and inspiring. With a walk score of 98 out of 100 the event location E&O Asian Kitchen was easy to access by public transportation. Their restaurant was clean, well designed, and most of all served great food.

The evening started out with time for networking, then we gathered around to listen to Lori Duvall of Ebay talk about how their company started out with a company mission of repurposing materials by use of the internet. She talked about corporate sustainability and innovations such as instantsale.ebay.com where you can sell items such as cell phones. The company will give you a price based on the information you submit and send you a packing label to ship your old phone in. Based upon their evaluation they will send you a check – keeping hundreds of thousands of cell phones out of landfill. Lori continued on to talk about companies like Patagonia, who truly have sustainability in their mission as a company. She also suggested that we read – What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers.  The talk was inspirational and very informative and Lori Duvall is to be applauded.

We then broke out into groups of five and each group had a question to answer and present. Our groups question was “How can public and private sector collaborate on driving a sustainable economy, other than through new compliance requirements?

Answers

1. Incentives, such as expediting permitting process, allowance of going beyond code options such as adding another floor.
2. Public Humiliation – a team member talked about “styrobusting” where a city has made Styrofoam containers illegal and the group would go around handing out tickets to restaurants that still used the Styrofoam containers.
3. Form collaborative groups – such as Sustainable Silicone Valley
4. Work with geographical partners – i.e. large compost facility for neighboring communities.
5. Competitions and contests
6. Shared Tools – i.e. rainwater harvesting calculator
7. Resource for gratuity – grants
8. Ice Cream Socials! (this was thought of by Elizabeth of Straus Family Creamery a sustainable conscious company)

The evening ended with more networking time and our good-bye’s. As I traveled back to the peninsula on BART I could not help to think about what a great event this was. Bringing leaders in the corporate sustainability field together like this only leads to great innovation. I have met a new set of friends and business partners – I want to thank Agrion for such a great evening and I recommend this group to any person who is a leader in sustainability. 

Today's cyclists don't need spandex and fancy gear — just a smart way to get to work

A new breed of bicycle riders can be spotted on our streets today. These younger cyclists are very different from the older generation of sport riders that has been so prevalent on the Peninsula.

They have no interest in fancy new ultra-light bikes. They don't where logo-studded Lycra. They don't drive to work and then spend their off hours riding the hills.

Rather, they are smart urban hipsters tooling around the flatlands. They can be found riding old steel bikes with big baskets. And they have the ultimate in bragging rights in the new world order: the carbonless commute.

In the process of going green, they have discovered the joys of biking.

The bicycle is a simple, robust and elegant machine. The kinks were worked out of it long ago. It has no yawing hole requiring $4-a-gallon gasoline. In fact, biking is the most energy efficient form of travel, beating the car, the train and even walking.

Car-commuting types cannot understand why these riders would subject themselves to such an exhausting and frightening form of travel. How do you pick up the kids? How do you go shopping? But bike commuters are undaunted by the sclerotic concerns of the SUV set — they follow the new arithmetic of biking. Here's how it works:

1. Zero Carbon Commuting: Zero carbon — zip, nothing. What could be more elegant?

2. Community: Talking to this new breed of bikers, one gets a sense that they feel like they have a more intimate sense of community than the four-wheeled set. They are not separated from their neighborhood by the glass walls of the automobile. They stop by the corner store to shop. They teach their children to ride bikes, and train them on safety. They say hello to their neighbors because they travel at human-scale speeds. Their windows are never closed.

3. Outdoors: The outdoors is not a 30-second sprint between a building and the car. The sun does not only shine on parking lots. Bikers can tell you when the creeks are running and when the frogs have arrived. They can tell you what trees are in bloom. They listen to birds calling. Soon they know which birds are permanent residents and which are just passing through. They are tan from sun. They feel connected to their environment in a way the glass box commuters cannot understand. Many say that biking changes commuting from a daily slog to a time of wonder and connectedness. They sleep better by biking than they ever did on Xanax.

4. Fitness: People are lazy. That is probably why we went wild for the internal combustion engine in the first place. Most of us now realize the lack of activity in our regular workaday lives must be augmented with regular exercise. Most folks buy a gym membership and try to solve the problem by adding another thing to their busy schedules: a workout. They hope to fit in a few of these every week but rarely do. But bike commuters kill two birds with one stone. Exercise is not shoehorned into a busy life; it is part of their regular rhythm.

5. Time Saving: Everyone knows cars are a lot faster than bikes. How can cycling save time? Firstly, commute traffic is virtually nonexistent for cyclists. They move through gridlock like a hot knife through butter. During commute hours, a trip of 10 miles can be as fast by bike as by car. The savings comes when you factor in the gym. They don't need the extra time for a workout, and skip the guilt of not fitting it in.

6. Economy and Simplicity: No auto insurance, no oil changes, no transmission jobs, no car cleaning, no gasoline. Life on a bike is simple. Repairs can be made in the garage. Oil wars are not their fault. Traveling by bike, one finds joys close to home. Make friends with the local shopkeeper. Life's rhythm is simple.

Forrest Linebarger - CEO VOX Design Group Inc.

Last night I was invited to a TEDx Mission conference at Madrone Studios in San Francisco. It was an independently organized TED event about artistry, green technology, architecture, science and ecology. My cousin John Flores of Studio SQ in San Francisco was part of the production team. I was originally taken aback that the event was set to run through 11:00 pm, but it turns out I had a hard time pulling myself out of the chair to catch my train back to the peninsula.

If you have never been to a TED event I highly recommend it – TED is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment and Design. With a venue of well educated speakers, short video’s and live music, this was truly an inspirational night to remember. There was healthy food and drink, a great mix of people and an abundance of enthusiasm. Close to a BART station this venue was easy to access by public transportation and the interior architecture of the building had a beautiful industrial look. This was the first TED event that this production team has put together and they did a great job.

While all the speakers were wonderful, I’d like to share with you a few that truly stood apart from the rest.  The first that really caught my attention was Jason Aramburu of re:char. He and his team have developed the first carbon-negative replacement for soil, a blend of compost, coconut coir and biochar. Re:char helps farmers in developing countries to enhance their crop yields and supplement their income, and at the same time trap atmospheric carbon and enrich depleted soils. The team builds an economical kiln that burns the farm debris at a high temperature and reduces oxygen to form a charcoal. This charcoal is then blended to make biochar, which will have increased nutrient/cation availability and water retention ability making it ideal for use in agricultural soils.

Soon after Jason’s talk we were watching a video of Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world. If you have not seen this talk I highly recommend it – what an amazing man.  One of the things he talked about that blew me away was the fact that you can germinate a mound of contaminated soil with mycelium and it will end up growing green vegetation.

After some great live music by Martin Luther  we ended with the night with a talk by Dr. Richard Rowe. He introduced us to the Open Learning Exchange which opens up education to children in the word that are deprived of the basic human right to learning. Their mission – to guarantee every community the capacity to assure quality learning for all their children. With the use of high-tech low cost technology they provide an e-library via inexpensive tablets. The server can be powered by a car battery or by solar panels. This really touched my heart because one of my core causes is children’s education.

Great job to Madrone Studios and Studio SQ for the production of this event. The speakers where great and the evening was inspirational. Again if you have never been to a TED event I highly recommend it…you will be inspired.

A study concluded that air conditioners were increasing the outside air temperature in Tokyo by two to four degrees Fahrenheit. The study was conducted by Dr Yukitaka Ohashi of Okayama University of Science and published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.

The temperature increase was not merely due to the transferring of hot air from inside buildings to the outside, but also to the large amount of heat created during the consumption of electricity. Air conditioners have long been known for their huge power demands, but the heat generated thereby, and its ramifications, are just beginning to be understood.

The additional heat caused the air conditioners to use more energy. In fact, an extra four degrees Fahrenheit of ambient outside temperature in Tokyo alone means an additional 1.6 gigawatts of power is expended to run the air conditioners.

It is a vicious cycle.

To put 1.6 gigawatts into perspective, the largest power plant in California, Duke Energy plant at Morrow Bay, produces 1.2 gigawatts of power. In other words, it takes almost one and a half extra power plants just to cover the energy required to cool Tokyo's buildings the four degrees caused by air conditioners in the first place. This energy, 1.6 gigawatts, is enough power to run 1.2 million households in the Bay Area.

Why do we care about Japan? Well, air conditioners in Japan are not much different from the ones we have here. The U.S. uses more electricity than any other country in the world. The average U.S. household uses 2.4 times the energy of a Japanese household.

In temperate climates like the Bay Area's, air conditioners were rarely installed until recent decades. They are fast becoming ubiquitous. According to the California Energy Commission, air conditioners use approximately one third of the state's total electrical demand on hot days, 16 gigawatts of electricity — the amount of power produced by 15 large power plants.

Air conditioning is also changing where we live. The availability of air conditioning has added more housing in the hottest parts of the state, most notably in the scorching Central Valley.

Most of this extra energy is being produced by coal and natural gas power plants, both prodigious producers of greenhouse gases. If your head is beginning to spin, it may be because you're jumping ahead and completing the circle: Greenhouse gases add to global warming. Global warming increases air conditioner and therefore electricity use.

There is one wonderful way to stop this vicious cycle: stop using air conditioning.

Today we can design green homes that cost the same as traditional homes but provide amazingly comfortable natural cooling without the use of air conditioning. Even if you don't live in a fancy new green home, you can you can apply many natural cooling principles in your existing house.

The use of generally lighter-colored materials for roofing, exterior paint and paving surfaces will cool your environment. The greater solar reflectivity a material has (also known as its "albedo"), the better it diverts heat away from your home. Absorption of solar radiation by dark materials has been shown to raise temperatures in cities across America in a process called the heat island effect.

Vegetation also provides cooling though a process called evapotranspiration. This is a fancy name for the water that evaporates from plants through the pores in their leaves. The water draws heat as it evaporates, and cools the surrounding air in the process. A single mature, properly watered tree with a crown of 30 feet can evapotranspire up to 40 gallons of water a day. This is equivalent to removing all the heat produced in four hours by an electric space heater.

You can also use whole-house fans in your attic to circulate cool air into your home in the cool morning and evening hours. If you keep your house closed in the midday, usually the cool air introduced during the night can keep a home cool all day. If you don't have a whole-house fan, window fans or swamp coolers will also do the trick.

Most people find naturally cooled air to be more comfortable. In fact, studies have shown that people feel comfortable across a wider range of temperatures when exposed to natural, non-conditioned air.

Keep cool this summer, the natural way.

Forrest Linebarger - CEO VOX Design Group