We survived Common Ground Fair! We had a great time and met many, many new customers. If you're new to our mailing list after visiting us there, welcome!
Please join us at 7 pm on Thursday, October 11 for our next Sustainable Living Talk, "Energy Savings: The Real Payback and Incentives" by Stephen Carr of WydeVue Residential Energy Services.
Read on for more about that and other happenings in the world of sustainable living.
Warmly,
Fred Horch, Founder
Energy Savings: The Real Payback and Incentives
Join us for "Energy Savings: The Real Payback and Incentives", our next Sustainable Living Talk from 7:00 to 8:30 pm on Thursday, September 13th.
WydeVue's Stephen Carr will help you understand the various programs related to home energy savings. When you decide to buy a vehicle, you need to know all your options and package deals the dealership can offer you. The same applies to energy savings.
Knowing where to look for the information is the most challenging. What are the different programs related to energy savings? How do they affect the monetary payback and what are the incentives that coincide with the programs? WydeVue Residential Energy Services is looking forward to answering those questions for you.
Free informational handouts will be provided. Seating is limited, so if you are interested in attending please reply via email or call the store at 729-4050 to reserve a seat.
Our Sustainable Living Talks are on the second Thursday of each month at 56 Maine Street in Brunswick. November's talk will feature Mike White of Island Carpentry, speaking on the topic of zero energy homes.
News from EnergyworksMark your calendar for the Solar Home Tour this Saturday, October 6!
Are you interested in learning more about a solar hot water or solar electric system for your home? This fall the American Solar Energy Association is sponsoring their annual National Solar Home Tour. The date is set for October 6th, 2007 from 10-4pm. This is a wonderful opportunity to view houses with installed solar systems. It will give you the chance to see what a residential solar system consists of, while receiving feedback from the homeowners who live with them. For more information regarding the tour, please contact Jen at Energyworks South LLC. jen@energyworksllc.com or 221-6342
In the meantime, if you have any questions or projects, call Energyworks North (in Liberty, Maine) at 1-877-enworks or Energyworks South (in Portland, Maine) at 221-6342. Or visit their web site at www.enworks.net.
With the leaves falling and the city of Bath moving to a pay as you throw trash fee, we're still selling plenty of composters. Although outdoor composting will soon come to an end with colder weather, now is a great time to consider starting an indoor composting system. Worms will eat your kitchen scraps all winter long. If you get started now, you'll have great compost in time for spring! Drop by the store to learn more and see worms in action.
Our product focus is now shifting from garden and composting to energy conservation. We recently prepared an Energy Saving catalog featuring products such as our Kilowatt meters, which are a neat gadget that can help you pinpoint which electric appliances are costing you the most to operate. We also carry a full line of other energy-saving products, including heavy-duty wooden drying racks (one of our best sellers at Common Ground Fair). Drop by the store to pick up your copy of our catalog and take a look at some of the ways we can help you conserve energy -- and save money -- this season.
As you prepare to spend more time indoors this fall and winter, it's a very good idea to think about indoor air quality. We sell a full line of products you can use for home improvement and house keeping that won't offgas toxic fumes. Next time you're in the store, ask for a copy of our Paint & Finishes and our Green Cleaning catalogs.
What's Happening in the Local Environmental Scene
We enjoyed this year's Common Ground Country Fair. What a crowd! If you went, we hope you had as much fun as we did.
Here's Brett from our store holding forth on the virtues
of vermiculture at the 2007 Common Ground Fair.
The Brunswick Sustainability Group welcomes the public to attend the group's monthly meetings on the third Monday of each month. October's meeting will be at 7 pm on Monday, October 15th, in the 11 Pleasant Street Arts Center in Brunswick. For more information, visit www.BrunswickSustainability.org.
Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick will be holding a brown-bag lunch discussion of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change as part of its Cornerstones of Science series. Faciliated discussions with faculty from Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, USM and the US Army Corps of Engineers will take place in the Morrell Meeting Room on Wednesdays from 12:15 to 1:15 pm throughout October and into November. For more information call 725-5242.
The GrowSmart Maine 2007 Summit will be held on Friday, October 19, 2007, at the Augusta Civic Center. The keynote speaker will be Professor Ronald Heifetz, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. For more information, call 847-9275.
