MeterRead (http://zerogate.com/) is a money-saving, eco-friendly iPhone app that makes it easy to read a home’s electric meter and provides feedback on energy use with each reading. Monitoring the kilowatt-hours of power that have been used since the last reading will encourage homeowners to save power and money. It’s $2.99 well spent.

RadioShack’s online electronics trade-in program allows customers to exchange used, portable electronics for a RadioShack gift card. Accepted items include GPS devices, MP3 players, notebooks, and game consoles. Visit http://radioshack.cexchange.com/online/home/index.rails to learn the trade-in value and download the prepaid shipping labels. Gift cards arrive within 10 to 14 days.

Who needs a decorative pail on the counter to collect compost—and odors—when you can use a castoff container, such as a margarine container or a cardboard milk carton? Put the container in your freezer, add kitchen scraps until full, dispose scraps (and milk carton) on the compost pile, and repeat. No odors.

Forget about clipping coupons and go paperless. Coupon Sherpa (www.couponsherpa.com), a new iPhone app, allows shoppers to access in-store coupons for more than 100 retailers on an iPhone or iPod Touch. Available for $1.99, the Coupon Sherpa app offers discounts for more than 100 participating retailers including Bloomingdales, GNC, JCPenney, Kmart, Office Depot, TGI Friday’s, [...]

Want an alternative to using disposable batteries, which leak toxic wastes into landfills and ground water? USB Cell produces rechargeable AA batteries that do not require adapters or cables, but instead can be inserted into your laptop’s USB port, or other USB port, and be recharged hundreds of times. Visit http://usbcell.com/ or http://www.terrapass.com/green-store/gadgets-chargers/ for more info.

Here are five things that, according to earth911.org, will contaminate or thwart paper mills’ attempts to recycle paper and cardboard: – Oil and water don’t mix. That large pizza box with the oil imprint will become recycled paper with an oil stain. – Did your napkin or paper towel blot up a water spill or [...]

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are emitted by a wide array of household products, some of which may have short- and long-term adverse health effects. Examples include: paints and lacquers, paint strippers, cleaning supplies, pesticides, building materials and furnishings, office equipment such as copiers and printers, correction fluids and carbonless copy paper, graphics, and craft materials, [...]

Ever feel like you’re literally throwing away money when you print from a Web site and discard those annoying extra pages containing a Web address or footer information? GreenPrint’s patent-pending technology automatically eliminates these pages (and waste) by analyzing each page of every document sent to the printer by searching for typical waste characteristics (pages [...]

Idling computers left on 24/7 gobble up electricity: the equivalent of a barrel of oil every 90 days. Fifteen perpetually idling computers in your brokerage are equivalent to the gas consumption of one car. That’s why UniblueTM Research Labs released LocalCoolingTM, a free power management tool that automatically optimizes your PC’s power consumption via a [...]

Al Gore’s documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” raised awareness of the correlation between global warming and carbon dioxide gas, the main culprit of global warming. The film pointed out that global warming can be halted or reversed by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, that is, by reducing our collective and [...]