Air Date: Week of December 7, 2007

Life in a bubble might be good for climate change. Listener Alan Turner of Wilmington, Delaware uses bubble wrap on windows to keep out the cold.

Transcript

GELLERMAN: Brrr. It’s cold out there. It’s winter and one of the biggest places you lose heat in a home is through your windows. A third of that expensive warmth goes out the window—through the panes and cracks. So don’t forget to putty up those leaks! And as for the glass—it can be a real pain in the wallet.

Listener Alan Turner of Wilmington, Delaware has a trick he learned in horticulture school to keep the heat in, and fight climate change. Here’s Alan’s “Cool Fix for a Hot Planet.”

[COOL FIX THEME]

TURNER: In the greenhouses we used to take bubble wrap and we’d get the glass wet and then we’d stick the bubble wrap to the glass, flat side down and the moisture just makes it stick. If you have single pane windows or even with storm windows, just take a spray bottle and spritz the glass with water, stick the bubble wrap up, flat side to the glass, and it sticks there and makes a huge difference in the heat. And it still lets the light in and it’s cheap. And it has all those little tiny insulating cells that do a good job. And stay warm!

GELLERMAN: And you thought bubble wrap was only good for—

[SOUND OF BUBBLE WRAP POPPING]

GELLERMAN: And for your cool fix, Alan, we're going to send you a Living on Earth tire gauge. Use it to keep your tires correctly inflated and it could save you as much as $432 a year. That's according to a study from Carnegie Mellon University.

And if you have a Cool Fix for a Hot Planet, let us know. If we use your idea on the air, you too will get an LOE tire gauge. Call our listener line at 800-218-99-88. That's 800-218-9988. Or email coolfix—all one word—at loe.org. That's coolfix@loe.org.