First of all, I’d like to express my gratitude to everyone that completed the very first Frugally Green survey. Your feedback is really important to me and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that I have readers that care enough to give up some of their precious time to help this site be the best it can.  That said, here is a brief review of some of, in my opinion, the most important results:

Everyone that took the survey completed it.  This tells me that I at least formatted it right and made it easy for people to share their thoughts.

An overwhelming majority of responders said that social responsibility, sustainability, and personal development were really important to them, but only half said that personal finance was kind of important.  I never would have guessed that second part.  I’ll be doing some real brain busting to figure out what this means to me and how I can better connect with you.

I noted that I was thinking of writing an e-book and threw out a few titles for consideration.  The most popular one was A Frugally Green Reference Guide: Affordable Sustainability for Every Facet of Life. Automated Environmentalism: Set It and Forget It as well as Nature’s Money: Greening Your Finances did well also.  This will be my first big project here and I am really excited to get started.  I’ve never written an e-book before, but there’s a first time for everything.  I hope you look forward to it as much as I do.

I got some interesting responses to“What’s one burning question you have about personal finance and/or sustainability?”  I am planning to answer all of them in an upcoming post. That should be a good time!

Finally, a few of you asked some personal questions and requested feedback.  I will be following up with all of those questions over the next week.  If you ever have a question you’d like me to address, don’t hesitate to contact me.

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Thank you so much for being a part of the first of many surveys.  I love hearing about what I can do to make this a more valuable place to you. Together, we will take over the world!  Alright then, enough with the mushy stuff.  On to the cool bits around the web this week:

Helen Maynard at Affine Financial Services explains a bit about why she is a “solar skeptic” with her thought provoking post, Sustainable Energy: Solar Cell Skeptic. Helen talks a bit about the manufacturing process for solar energy and touches on some of the fuzzy science behind the real energy “break even” time on a solar panel. She says:

“I would rather use Uncle Sam’s money to figure out which of the bazillion solar cell configurations currently under development (or on university sketchpads around the world) is the best solution, rather than burn our limited fossil fuels creating thousands (millions?) of metric tons of mediocre stuff right now.

I can get behind that 100%.

Getting 133 MPG in a 1998 Pontiac certainly caught my attention when I saw it pop up on The Daily Green.  It’s an interview with a gentleman, Darin Cosgrove,  who got the itch to learn about hypermiling long before there was a term for it.  I have no qualms admitting that Darin absolutely puts me to shame.  I’m still hypermiling like crazy, but my efficiency has dropped off a bit since the colder weather kicked in.  You can point and laugh by following me on Fuelly.

Finally, a Frugally Green reader, Jen over at The ArkHaus let me know that she was working on a few frugally green projects herself.  Little did I know that what she meant was she’s building a whole stinkin’ eco-compound of off-the-grid container houses with her boyfriend and their family.  And no, they’re not huddled in the corner of some of some old rusty shipping box.  These things are chic.  Jen, if you’re reading this, I hope you see the incredible business potential!

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Here’s a roundup of blog carnivals that Frugally Green participated in this week.  Thanks to all the hosts.

Zach at Zachstocks published the Carnival of Financial Planning.

The Carnival of the Green was hosted this week by Tate over at Green Stocks Central.

Thanks to The Skilled Investor for hosting the Best of Money Carnival.

The Festival of Frugality can be found over at Gather Little by Little, hosted by Mike.

Kyle over at Amateur Asset Allocator was kind enough to host the Money Hacks Carnival.

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Surveying image by Wessex Archaeology

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