We've just launched our latest assault on the conventional wisdom that green has got to be expensive: Earth Aid Group Buys.

We're helping folks band together to force prices ..ful green products down to unprecedented lows. We're calling this new weapon a Group Buy. Here's how it works:



A series of exclusive offers for select green products are made available for a period ranging from two to three weeks. (Our initial round is open until June 25th!) We start the product out a great price - but that's just the beginning. The price decreases over the course of the offer period as the number of folks opting-in to the Group Buy increases. Nobody is charged for their purchase (though we do verify your credit card in advance) until the group buy period closes - and then everybody receives the low group price! Your purchase ships to you shortly thereafter.

This process allows all of us to band our purchasing power together into a formidable force - which we use to drive prices down. And it works because of a very simple proposition - manufacturers can cut prices progressively for larger and larger bulk orders. What our Group Buy process does is automatically pass the savings along to everybody who purchases. Cool, huh? It gets even better:

Introducing the Conditional Order

What if you want the green product on offer only if the price drops lower than it already is? That's a fairly common aspiration - and that's why we developed the conditional order. You can make your purchase contingent on the price dropping.

For example, referring to the price table above: the price is currently at $79, or a 20% savings. If you put in a confirmed order, you're committed to purchase even if the price doesn't drop any further. 20% is a great deal - but what if it's only worth it to you at the 31% discount? You can put in a conditional order! We'll add you to our group, but you won't be committed to purchase until/unless the group reaches 51+ orders and the price for everybody then drops to the 31% discount.

Your conditional order counts because it adds to the number of people in the Group Buy. It's the combination of confirmed and conditional orders that counts towards bumping the price into the next lowest price tier.

The only risk you run with a conditional order is that you could miss out if the offer price doesn't drop to your targeted level - so, place a confirmed order right away if you want to be sure to get in on the deal. Everybody who's confirmed gets the low price reached at the end of the Group Buy period.

What We've Got: Introducing the Inaugural Round of Group Buys!

There are five separate offers combining for a total of fourteen possible purchases. Here are the deals you can get in on between now in June 25th:

Neuton Battery-Powered Lawn Mowers (greatest possible discount: $100 off)



The Neuton CE 5.2 Battery-Powered Mower is welcome relief from the arm-yanking pull-starts, the fumes, noise, and vibration of a gas lawn mower. Start it with the push of a button and mow for up to 1 hour on a single charge. It's akin to trading in for an electric car for your lawn.

Since it doesn't use gas or oil, it never needs a tune-up, and it runs clean. It produces no direct pollution or carbon emissions. Enjoy the ease and convenience of battery-powered mowing!

Malibu Outdoor Solar-Charged Lighting (greatest possible discount: 31%)



If you're paying anything for outdoor lighting, switching to our solar-charged outdoor lighting products can cut your expenditures - and your carbon footprint - on this lighting to zero. We have four sets of lights available - all are entirely solar-charged during the day; they run off their potent batteries and LEDs all night long!






Honeywell 7-Day Universal Programmable Thermostat (greatest possible discount: 32%)


These Honeywell thermostats are Honeywell's top of the line Do-It-Yourself model. They're user-friendly - featuring a large, bright screens for ease in setting up to four distinct temperature periods for each day of the week. You can set these thermostats to adjust your home's indoor temperature to maximize energy efficiency and save hundreds of dollars on energy costs every year!






SunLINQ Portable Solar Chargers (greatest possible discount: 35%)

The SUNLINQ 6.5 Watt Portable Solar Panel, featuring PowerFLEX technology, is a flexible, foldable and durable solar panel that produces enough power to charge rechargeable, flash lights, lanterns, cell phones, GPS units, satellite phones, MP3 players and portable games - just about anything that is capable of being charged through a standard cigarette lighter adapter / car charger. It's a great, small start towards bringing solar power into your life.




Earth Aid Kits (greatest possible discount: $168 off)



We've put together special configurations - and special discount levels - for Earth Aid Kits for this inaugural round of Group Buys. Every single Earth Aid Kit on offer will save you several times its cost on your energy bills each and every year. Joining our Group Buy is a great way to get an added discount on your initial investment in Earth Aid Kit energy efficiency.




We're People-Powered - Tell Your Friends!

Earth Aid Group Buys only work if we all work together - and the more of us who work together, the lower our prices get together. So, perhaps join us today and start to spread the world?

That renewable energy is the future is a fairly risk-less prognostication. Why? Well, sunshine and wind are free - not to mention the gush of rivers and oceans and the many other natural forces that can be tapped in any number of increasingly creative ways.

In contrast, fossil fuel and even nuclear-powered plants will be faced with an increasingly intractable dilemma: they require fuel, and their fuel is available only in finite quantities. This doesn't mean that we'll soon - or ever - run out of oil, gas, or uranium; but, they are ultimately finite resources that become increasingly scarce each day. As scarcity increases, so do prices. Even in the medium term, it's a difficult proposition for folks depending on finite fuels to compete with those of us leading the march towards employing infinite fuels such as sun and wind.

Once you've made the initial (albeit often hefty) investment in installing a renewable power generator unit of any sort, you've done the heavy lifting - you're making money (and energy) whenever the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, only shelling out a modest amount for regular maintenance, etc. Not a bad deal.

Nonetheless, while renewables will someday soon be the 'steak' of our energy and our economy, they're currently still the 'sizzle'. Today, energy efficiency is the steak. Why? Well, it's cheaper and - for the moment, at least - more effective.

The monumental scale of the opportunities for energy efficiency is an accidental outcome of the heretofore unsustainable evolution of the electrification of our economy. This first time around, we didn't design our fixtures and our gadgets with a significant degree of foresight. That's why we're getting stung particularly harshly as energy prices push our utility bills skyward.

What's the good news? Where pessimists and skeptics see lemons, we see particularly lucrative lemonade. There's now a whole nation of inefficient items and appliances that can be easily replaced to achieve both better performance and an impressive, quantifiable improvement in energy expenses. (not to mention associated greenhouse gas emissions!)

An investment of as little as $50 in Earth Aid Kit energy efficiency upgrades, for example, can net an average household $300 in utility bill savings each year. Unless your home is already operating at peak efficiency, these simple energy efficiency upgrades are painless changes that anybody anywhere can make - including urban dwellers who don't have access to a roof or yard in which to install renewable generation assets.

Act II - Steak & Sizzle Together: Why Efficiency is the Important Step Before Renewable Energy

Installing any sort of renewable energy asset today is a great idea, as we've discussed above. We don't encourage waiting before taking the renewable leap, but we do encourage energy efficiency before jumping right in; it's easy to see why this is a good idea, too:

It's silly to spend $6000 on installing a backyard wind turbine to generate 1.2kWh of electricity when still can spend just $47 to save that much electricity.

How's that? 1.2kWh of electricity is a significant amount. It's more than enough to power an efficient home, but it doesn't make a worthwhile dent if you're not already efficient. For example, 1.2kWh is only enough to power 12 - that's right, twelve - 100W incandescent light bulbs.

Twelve 100W incandescent bulbs use 1.2kWh (1,200 watts) each hour

Twelve 23W CFLs use only 0.27kWh (276 watts) each hour to do the same job

So, what's the lesson? The short version is that you should spend $47 to significantly improve your efficiency before you spend several thousand to start generating your own power. Once you're your own power company, you'll appreciate that your primary customer runs a tight ship - especially because you'll likely be able to sell to the big power companies any extra electricity that you generate and don't use in your own home.

The Windspire Turbine on exhibit at the U.S. Botanic Garden generates 1.2kWh under normal conditions

Thanks to the fine reporting of Shirley Siluk Gregory and associates, the Earth Aid Kit began the week featured at the top of sustainablog - a leading blog of record on all things green and innovative. Under the headline Get a Kit, Cut Your Home's Carbon Footprint, Gregory highlighted precisely the role the Earth Aid Kit is aiming to play in empowering individuals to do their part to fight global warming:

When it comes to cutting carbon emissions, a lot of things — global trade agreements, international climate treaties — are out of our individual control. One area where each of us can make a difference, though, is in our own homes. Houses and other buildings are responsible for nearly half of all greenhouse gas emissions, but they don't have to be.

Not sure how to start? Earth Aid Enterprises, a new venture in Washington, D.C., is offering Earth Aid Kits to get you started. ( read the full post here! )

Other prominent blogs picked up the story, Crave - cnet's hip gadget blog - called the Earth Aid Kit the "Gift for Mother Earth." Elsa Wenzel wrote,

What do energy hogs deserve for the holidays? Earth Aid Kits are a not-so-subtle hint to those who leave the lights on when they leave the room and the faucet on while they brush their teeth. ( read the full post here! )

Both Gregory and Wenzel took note of Earth Aid Enterprises' energy savings and emissions reduction calculations - emphasizing that folks who build their own Earth Aid Kit finish off each year with more money in their pocket and a much cleaner conscience. If enough folks install Earth Aid Kits, we'll all be breathing much cleaner air too.

Thanks to Gregory and Wenzel, several other blogs around the web have also discovered the Earth Aid Kit - including Apple Review and ecoyear. We're always happy to hear that people are writing about us. Let us know if you see anything, and let us know if you'd like to write about us too!

The Washington Post, NPR, AP, and many others report today on the Center for Global Development's launch of a brilliant new website: CARMA - Carbon Monitoring for Action.

CARMA is meant to inform and empower citizens to take action to reduce our reliance on dirty energy. That's just smart. Why? You can't effectively address global warming unless you know whose door to knock on to start demanding change. CARMA provides you not only with the addresses, but also the maps, the satellite photos, and a whole bunch of other fun facts.

Global warming is one of those funny issues, though - you can protest until you're blue in the face (and bear in mind that you're likely to get bluer quicker if you're close to a coal power plant), but the power plants won't change their ways unless you do your part at home. The United States is building 83 new coal-fired plants in the next decade. New power plants are an absolute necessity so long as our electricity demand continues spiraling out of control - if the energy industry doesn't keep up with individuals' energy use, it'll get awfully dark during the frequent brown-outs.

What's so silly about this is that so much of the spiraling demand isn't energy we need to do what we want to do. We can still do almost everything we want to do while using far less energy. How is this possible? There have been tremendous advances in energy efficiency in recent years in some of the more mundane areas of life. Did you know that you can replace your light bulbs and shower heads with newer more efficient ones that actually cast the same light and actually improve your shower? You can also upgrade to a programmable thermostat or appliance timer to make sure your heating and cooling are only using energy when there's someone around to benefit from a warmed or cooled room. After all, if a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody around to hear it, does it matter what the temperature in the room is? You get the idea. The point is that making a few small changes at home can make dramatic cuts in your energy waste while improving (far from sacrificing) your quality of life.

Big changes would be great. After all, we don't want to end up like China - where they're building 199 new coal-fired plants in the next decade. Beijing is hosting the Olympics in 2008 and, if it wasn't bad enough that the Olympics have been given to a government lending support to genocide in Darfur among other abuses, there are serious concerns that the air pollution in Beijing is so bad that it will be infeasible for "Olympic athletes to run a marathon through streets where respiratory particulate levels average 3-4 times U.S. safety levels."

So, big changes must be pursued. The good folks at CARMA and the League of Conservation Voters have some great suggestions as to where to get started on your advocacy to get others to make these necessary changes - but we humbly suggest that you make sure to pair your advocacy with action, such as by getting and installing your own Earth Aid Kit. (or by giving an Earth Aid Kit to a Habitat for Humanity family, if you have already upgraded your own energy efficiency.)

If all of us take some small steps to make a sizable individual and collective reduction in energy waste, the existing power plants can safely reduce their power production and we can render unnecessary the construction of new coal plants - we may even be able to keep energy demand in check to the extent that all new power plants built to replace older plants being decommissioned will be powered by renewable energy. Our site calculates for you how much emissions you're reducing through the use of new energy efficient products, and reductions achieved through purchases on our site are added to the collective achievement of our Million Car Carbon Campaign - an initiative to produce an annually recurring reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking one million cars off the road.

Fighting global warming, dirty energy, and dependence on foreign sources of energy begins at home - and the big changes that we make on a national (or international) level may not be enough unless you do your part. Success - averting catastrophic climate change and just generally enjoying breathable air - depends on all of us simultaneously pursuing both advocacy and action.

As though averting catastrophic climate change and being able to breathe the air in your community weren't already exciting enough, don't forget that there's some money in this for you. If you use less energy at home, you're polluting less. So if you're polluting less, you're paying lower energy bills. So make the mundane changes today to start saving energy, to start saving on your energy bills, and to start making a dent in global warming and pollution. Our website will calculate for you approximately when you can expect your energy efficiency upgrades to pay for themselves. (usually within two or three months!)

When asked why a gentleman such as himself would spend time trying to make simple improvements to the efficiency of Philadelphia's street lamps, Ben Franklin.. replied, Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding... [but remember that] human felicity is produced by little advantages that occur every day. We couldn't agree more.

He said it, not us.

We're proud to support Habitat for Humanity of Washington DC by providing - entirely free of charge - complete Earth Aid Kits to every new Habitat house built in Washington. We're starting right now by fully equipping four new homes that will open soon on 55th Street NE. All the showerheads, thermostats, light bulbs, and more are on their way to 55th Street now - and their installation will save the new Habitat homeowners over $800 each year on their utility bills.

We're already psyched to do the same for every house that Habitat for Humanity builds from here on out in the District of Columbia.

But what about the houses that have already been built? Well, that's where you come in.

Habitat for Humanity of Washington DC has built nearly 100 houses in the past decade, and we're mobilizing people (and companies) like you to help equip every single one of them with a customized Earth Aid Kit.

Do you want to help make a big difference? Every Habitat Earth Aid Kit will save its homeowners over $800 each year on utility bills - and every single Earth Aid Kit will offset more than one car's emissions each year, again and again. With your help, we're going to help these Habitat houses make simple energy efficiency upgrades to save significant amounts of money and to collectively achieve an annually recurring reduction of well over half a million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

Visit our Habitat Campaign homepage at habitat.earthaidkit.com to learn more and get involved. You can give a full kit, half of a kit (we'll pair your gift with another), extra energy efficient lighting, or a new 7 day programmable thermostat.

We'll send a special card to you or to whomever you're giving in honor of to acknowledge your generosity and what it's achieving.

All carbon offset programs are great, but we do like to think that helping out here is a little more satisfying - all at the same time, you can help Habitat for Humanity homeowners economically, and all of us environmentally. You can click here to learn more.

	One Complete Earth Aid Kit	1.33 Cars	Saves $800 Each Year	Give it for $125!
	One Half Earth Aid Kit	0.67 Car	Saves $400 Each Year	Give it for $62.50!
	Energy Efficient Lighting	1/5 Car	Saves $80 Each Year	Give it for $35!
	7 Day Prog. Thermostat	0.5 Car	Saves $390+ Each Year	Give it for $70!

Over the next few days, this blog will be introducing the Earth Aid Kit. We'll show you what we've got, why you should use it, how you can get it, and how you can help make a dent in global warming and dependence on foreign energy with your Earth Aid Kit.

The Earth Aid Kit™ is a fully customizable collection of products that any American can easily install in his or her home to immediately achieve an appreciable improvement in energy efficiency - having replaced older and inefficient fixtures with more modern products, you'll experience a notable improvement in quality of life too.

If you don't mind paying for your shipping, you can purchase individual energy efficiency products from us at already excellent prices.

If you show us that you mean business in the steps you're taking towards energy efficiency, we're happy to reward you for it! All it takes is four different products from four distinct categories of efficiency for you to "make it an Earth Aid Kit". We double your discounts (usually to 30% off or more!) and we'll FedEx your Earth Aid Kit to you for only $5.

We only carry the best products, so you know you won't find flickering lightbulbs or drizzling showerheads - the Earth Aid Kit only offers premium lightbulbs that cast the same light but just happen to save you lots of energy, and advanced self-pressurizing oxygenating showerheads that save you money while increasing your water pressure and rejuvenating your skin with extra oxygen.

While you shop, our site calculates for you how much you can expect to save on your energy bill - and what reduction in greenhouse gas emissions you can expect through the use of your new energy efficient products. We'll even automatically add your achievements towards achieving the goals of our Million Car Carbon Campaign - an initiative to create an annually recurring reduction of the emissions equivalent of over one million cars.

You can get started right now on our home page. And be sure to stay tuned to the blog to meet the Earth Aid Kit, product by product, starting today!