AU - Please note that water restrictions are in place across most (if not all!) of Australia right now. These tips are about saving water when caring for your lawn, but you should check what restrictions are in place in your local area!

Spring is upon the northern hemisphere (AU - and down under we're living with water restrictions!), and with a little know-how, you can water your lawn more smarter this year. Tutorial site wikiHow offers strategies to reduce your water usage while maintaining a healthy, hearty lawn. For example:

Water deeply to encourage deep root growth. Frequent shallow waterings encourage weed germination, and they also cause the grass plants' roots to grow shallow, leaving the plant more susceptible to drought and to certain diseases. Watering only when your grass really needs it encourages the roots to grow deeper

The article is full of other smart watering tips—like watering early to avoid evaporation—that are worth a read before you put out the sprinklers. Photo by Finstr.

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Here's a competition which looks right up Lifehacker's alley. As part of a honours course at Swinburne uni, a group of students are creating a book called "101 things to do with 'old' technology" and they're running a competition to get ideas from the public.

Get creative and make us your own little sketch of what you'd do with an "old grey box". You can be as serious, as funny, or as strange as you like with your entries. All entries will be published in the book for our Swinburne University Honours project, and your name will be published with it too, if you wish.

Entries are in the form of black and white line drawings - head on over to the post at Melbourne Maniacs for further details on how to enter. Entries close on May 26.

Competition: 101 Things to do with Old Technology [Melbourne Maniacs]

Even if you only have a few battery operated devices at home, it can feel like you're always buying new ones. As an example, Wii remotes are terrible power suckers - make sure you take the batteries out when you're not playing. So would it work out cheaper to buy rechargable batteries?
The Simple Dollar blog has helpfully crunched the numbers on whether investing in rechargable batteries makes financial sense.
Assuming a use of 10 AA batteries a month, the rechargables worked out cheaper over two years, saving around $US75 per year after that. Of course this will depend on the quality of the batteries and recharger you buy, but it's worth checking out the article and comparing your own situation.
And of course, switching to rechargables would save sending piles of batteries into land fill!
Got any tips for getting the most out of your batteries? Share in comments please.

Are rechargable batteries really cost effective? [The Simple Dollar]

The EcoGeek blog spends a lot of time looking at environmentally friendly cars - so much time that as a public transit enthusiast, it often leaves me a little cold. But they had a very interesting post today on the array of hybrids and electric cars that are approaching the retail horizon over the next few years. It's worth a read if you're considering buying a greener car in the next couple of years.
The bad news according to the Ecogeek is that you're better off waiting for the next gen options to hit the road:

"Even if you don't have a hybrid, you will save so much more gas with the next generation plug-ins and full-electrics that it really isn't worth upgrading now."

We should be seeing the next gen Toyota Prius by 2010 (or perhaps 2011 in Australia?) and apparently Mitsubishi's got a hybrid in the wings as well.Of course, it remains to be seen how many of the cars it mentions will actually make it to our shores.
In the meantime, walking or public transport remains far more environmentally friendly. :)

Why you should wait until 2010 to buy a new car [EcoGeek]

Wise Bread offers up a couple of ways to save money on petrol - and the big one is just slow down your driving speed.

On highways, the "sweet spot" for fuel efficiency is 55 miles per hour, or 90 km/hour. In fact, due to wind resistance at speed, you may use up to 20% more fuel if you speed up from 90km/hour to 120 km/h, according to figures the article quotes from Eartheasy.com.

Even on city streets, there are some ways to increase fuel efficiency - learn to take your foot off the accelerator when you can see you'll need to slow down or stop. Accelerating burns fuel - so it's wasteful to accelerate up to a red light, then hit the brakes.

Looking for other ways to save on petrol? We previously told you how to shop around online to find the cheapest petrol. Got any other tips for saving on petrol? Share in comments please.

How to save $0.54 per gallon on gas [Wise Bread]

Trying to cut back on your use of that energy sucking air conditioner (or maybe just don't have one)? A tipster at the Natural Living blog suggests this simple hack to get the most out of your standing fan instead:

"You need a fan, and a plastic bottle of water.
Fill the 3/4 of the bottle with water and put it in the freezer.
Once deep frozen, put the plastic bottle in front of the fan, and tadaa! Fresh air!"

Given that it's been a bit on the chilly side in Sydney for the past couple of days, I haven't tried this tip myself, but I reckon it's worth filing away for those upcoming hot summer days!

Climatization replacement [Natural Living]

If turning the lights off for an hour for Earth Day last week was your version of a big effort for the environment, may we tempt you with some more low effort ways to make a difference? The delightfully titled "The Lazy Cheapskates Guide to Saving the Planet" offers up a few tips for the well meaning but lazy. I've cherry picked the ideas that seemed most practical.

• Make sure the seals around your windows, doors and heating ducts are intact - otherwise you're wasting power and money on inefficient heating/cooling
• Turn down your water heater (they recommend 120 F which is about 49 C) and always wash your laundry in cold water. Washing in hot water is usually unnecessary, expensive and chews through power.
• Use cruise control when driving (I didn't know that it's more fuel efficient, but then my car doesn't have CC)
• If washing dishes by hand, *don't* do it under running water. Fill the basin, then wash.
  
• If you have a dishwasher, make sure you only run it when it's full, and skip the prewash if possible.
  

I'd add - hang your laundry out to dry! Dryers chew up power and in our fairly mild climate they're just not necessary. Get a laundry drying rack for indoors if you don't want to wave your smalls at the neighbours. Got any other tips for easy greening? Share in comments please.

The Lazy Cheapskates Guide to Saving the Planet [Fivecentnickel.com]

Talk about your green-friendly mashup  - mybabytree.org lets you can sponsor a tree planting through WWF (World Wildlife Fund) - and then lets you see the exact area of forest your tree is growing in, thanks to Google Earth.

Trees cost $US5.50 (about $6) each to sponsor via PayPal. The trees are being planted in Indonesia as part of a venture by WWF. Once your payment is processed, you get an email informing you that your tree will be planted in a few days: "Once that is done, we will mail you the exact location and you will be able to see your tree on Google Earth."

The Ecogeek blog pointed out that while the resolution in Google Earth isn't quite good enough to be able to make our your particular tree, "even now the context is nice". This idea is geeky, I like. :)

Buy a tree and watch it grow thanks to Google Earth [Ecogeek]

Yahoo Green covers several low-cost methods of reducing your water use at home intended to save you money and save your planet. The quality of the tips vary, but the article includes a lot of tips that anyone can implement for free. For example, to minimise appliance water consumption, the article suggests:

• Fully loaded: Dishwashers and clothes washers should be operated when full for optimum water conservation. If you must wash partial loads, adjust the water levels as appropriate.
• Scrape, don't rinse: Pre-rinsing dishes before loading the dishwasher is unnecessary. Scrape off food and then trust that bad boy to do its job.

Your mileage may vary with some of the tips, but it's at least worth finding out, for example, if you can get away with scraping rather than rinsing. Thanks Ellen!

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Sci-Fi blog I09 wanders into eco-utopia today with its To-do list for Futurists. Inspired by novelist Ernest Callenbach, it lists five practical things you can do, including recycling the waste you produce, and repurposing an old machine which you were going to throw out.
It also encourages people to reach out and work together:

"Spend one day volunteering with an organization or getting together with friends to help your community produce less environment-damaging waste. Think broadly about what it means to produce less waste. It could mean everything from cleaning up garbage in natural areas, to helping someone else refurbish their old computers. The point of this item on the to-do list is to work with other people (even if it's online) to reduce polluting waste, because you can't change the future all by yourself."

It also recommends a book called "Collapse" by Jared Diamond - which is about how societies destroy themselves by misusing natural resources.

To-do List for Futurists [I09]