Weekly Archive for April 15, 2007 : TreeHugger

Guest post by Carla Davis On the frontlines of the green revolution are the foot soldiers. I have become known as "the green lady" since the unseasonably warm days of mid December 2006, by selling renewable energy made from wind and water door to door to small businesses in New York City. The first people to sign up have been creative shops in areas of the Lower East Side, the East Village, Williamsburg, and Park Slope Brooklyn. Initial response to the green energy pitch can go from an excited "I didn't know I could do that!", to a sly "now, how are you going to do that...?", to confusion between electrons and energy drinks as in "we have no more space in our refrigerator", to sighs over landlords who control the utilities. Often the owners are stretched thin, and I am thrilled that so many find the time to grab the bill and make the verification call....

There's a lot of discussion on how to get into the act not just for Earth Day but for the long environmental haul. Lloyd makes a compelling argument that each step counts and that the majority of the folks "want to listen to people who tell them how to live a better and happier life" such as our own Simran Sethi on Oprah yesterday. So what are you going to do to get your voice heard? Well, you might start by plugging in the bamboo tv (having unplugged it to avoid wasting energy feeding the vampires) and then tuning the channel to the Fine Living Network tonight to get ideas from their hour-long special "It's Easy Being Green" -- a show I worked on with Summer Rayne Oakes who is the show's eco-fashion consultant. Also, actor Owen Wilson, Jesse James of West Coast Choppers, and singer Alanis Morissette are among the other eco-friendly revealing how they live green, from their cars to their clothes. Watch a clip here and get show times here. Once you're throughly inspired, we encourage you to get behind the camera yourself and share your own big idea with the world. You still have until April 30th to upload your digital film our sponsor Sundance Channel's Big Idea contest. via:: Susty.tv...

Green Drinks is making its way out west, and is alive and well in San Diego, CA. Last month’s meeting was a coordinated event between Green Drinks and the Surfrider Foundation San Diego Chapter to bring those greenies and those surfers together for their mutual love of a good drink. Roughly 100 people made it out from all over San Diego County. ...

Apparently, the Chinese people are tired of government funds being spent on official public building McMansion equivalents. In response to the many complaints incurred by "luxurious" government structures - and to central government concerns about local corruption - on Wednesday, China's leaders announced that they "will ban the construction of wasteful and extravagant official buildings." Indoor gardens, fountains, atriums, dance stages, and lobby areas higher than a single story are all on the new no-no list. Though government office buildings should still be "stately," officials are now required to "be frugal in spending public money because China is still a developing country." And what if they fail to stick to the cost limit of 4000 yuan (about US$518) per square meter that's been set for ministerial level government office buildings? Or the lower cost limits set for municipal and county-level government buildings? Or otherwise violate the new rules? The edict stipulates that excessive space can be confiscated and sold. ...

Fixing up those old but still good shoes instead of throwing them away is great way to green your wardrobe. Given that shoes have become almost a throw away commodity, with many people owning more shoes than they actually wear, its a good idea to try to extend the life of your shoes instead of buying more and more shoes. There are many standard ways of making your shoes last a few extra miles, re-soling and leather restoration adds extra mileage but what about style, when you simply get sick of how boring they have become or they start to look a little tired? We at TreeHugger are big shoe lovers, just do a search on shoes and see how many pages and pages of stories on sustainable shoes, vegan and handmade shoes there are. There are cork for shoes, worn again funky recycled shoes, check out our favourite 'green' shoes for more....

TreeHugger readers are no strangers to debate on all aspects of sustainability. If you can’t get enough of excited discussions about electric vehicles, arguments about wind turbines, or debates over airtravel (of course!), maybe you should check out the new blog over at the International Herald Tribune. Entitled Business of Green: A Global Dialogue on the Environment, the blog seems largely set up as a catalyst to spur debate. The posts are fairly short and to the point, and essentially introduce the topic, and then encourage comment. Participation levels are low at the moment, but if the list of topics covered so far is anything to go by, including ‘When Will We Panic About Climate Change?’, ‘Faster Trains to a Cleaner World?’, and ‘Who is going to solve the China Question?’, then these guys do seem intent on stirring up some serious, far reaching and comprehensive discussion. We also hope that the International Herald Tribune’s position as a major international newspaper will draw the attention of a wider range of public to environmental issues, and maybe some will even find there way over to TreeHugger. We can only encourage our ever-informed (and opinionated) readers to get involved. Just don’t forget to come back to us when you’re done! ...

Marvin: I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed. Trillian: Well, we have something that may take your mind off it. Marvin: It won't work, I have an exceptionally large mind. Trillian: Yeah, we know. Alex Steffen and Dave Roberts have big minds, and they are depressed, and not looking forward to Earth Day. Alex and Sarah at Worldchanging say that Earth Day has “become a ritual of sympathy for the idea of environmental sanity. Small steps, we're told, ignoring the fact that most of the steps most frequently promoted (returning your bottles, bringing your own bag, turning off the water while you brush your teeth) are of such minor impact (compared to our ecological footprints) that they are essentially meaningless without larger, systemic action as well." Dave at Grist is shocked, shocked that only 60% of Americans believe that global warming has begun to affect the climate and frets that most people are wary of any government effort to protect the environment by imposing restrictions on how they live, work or get around. He agrees with Alex and Sarah and says “Yup. The time for "small steps" is long past. It's time for people to wake the hell up.” ...

Via the Racine Wisconsin Journal Times:- "Community leaders launched a environmentally friendly cleaning campaign called Green Racine during a press conference Thursday at Memorial Hall. Representatives from more than 20 local institutions - including city and county government, public and private schools, businesses, churches and non-profits - signed a pledge to reduce the impact of facilities on the environment and people's health by switching to green-cleaning products and processes...The Green Racine program will track annually how many trees were saved, reductions in waste sent to landfills and in greenhouse gas put into the atmosphere as a result of the green initiative..." Because Racine Wisconsin is also the city where S.C. Johnson is headquartered they're not talking about the Pledge brand here...just to be clear. On the other hand, over at the SC Johnson website, there are indications that green cleaning has their attention in a broader sense....

Back In February Dr. James Hanson, of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, gave a seminal speech to the National Press Club about the five most critical actions needed from the US Congress in response to the risk of impending climate catastrophe. Paraphrasing, Dr. Hansen said the needs are to: 1.) place a "moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2"; 2.) put a gradually rising price on emissions"; 3.) mandate maximum achievable energy-efficiency standards on vehicles, buildings, appliances, and so on; 4.) ask the National Academy of Sciences to do a study on the risk of polar ice sheet collapse; 5.) Reform the way in which agencies of the Federal government communicate scientific characterization of risk and introduce effective campaign finance reform, so that special interests no longer have such a big influence on policy-makers. It's not long, and it's well written. Go read "Why we can't wait." at The Nation....

Do you love a good read? Does your inner bookworm compete with your inner TreeHugger: Bookworm: "I love to run my hands over the spine of a finely bound treasure, leafing into the promise of a new story." TreeHugger: "The cheap mass-produced books on the modern market don't match the aesthetic books used to have, and e-books might be the path forward. But is yet another electronic gadget good for society?" Probably, you participate in a book-swapping club such as Read It Swap It in the UK or Novel Action in the US. But in these post-Napster days, did you ever stop to ask yourself: "How does the creative artist make their daily bread when people re-cycle the story with the book?" Here is a statistic few people know: 95% of writers cannot support themselves from their craft. Clearly, the time is right for a paradigm change in reading habits. Now, Blackbetty is beating the path forward. Blackbetty has developed technology which allows a book to be ordered and delivered to your mobile phone as easily as downloading a new ring tone....

The simple fact that global automakers are throwing everything they have into two auto shows spaced just months apart speaks volumes about the former Bicycle Kingdom's appetite for the car. That the second show, starting in Shanghai on Earth Day, has gone eco-friendly is an acknowledgment of just how unhealthy that appetite could continue to be -- and a reminder of China's great opportunity to leapfrog to sustainable technologies, integrating green into its growth from the get-go. What's not helping the situation are low gas prices, which are controlled by the government (in Beijing, where over 1000 new cars hit the streets a day, a gallon of 93 octane gasoline costs a paltry $2.30). What is helping -- in spite of the upper class and government penchant for SUVs and luxury sedans -- is an ongoing push for small cars. An auto consumption tax introduced last year for instance, slashed taxes on low-emission vehicles and raised taxes on high-emission vehicles. In general, too, China's economical car culture remains stuck on smaller, more efficient models. Car manufacturers are listening. Among the show's highlights: The newest Chevy Volt, Chinese hybrids and more below the fold......

ComputerShopper magazine is currently featuring a guide on How to Buy a Green PC which was authored by Treehugger's own Jasmin Malik-Chua. The article walks readers through the most important aspects of environmental home computing. The article is broken down into six parts: Buy a smaller computer, avoid hazardous substances (always check for RoHS compliance), check for energy efficiency, get an efficient power supply, find a good multi-core processor, set your software on power-save and, finally, make sure to recycle anything that might otherwise be thrown away. As an introduction to environmental computer buying, I have never seen a better guide. See Also ::How to Green Your Electronics the Treehugger Guide...

Jeremy recently decided to dump a career in dentistry after realizing that he missed his undergraduate coursework, which focused primarily on marine biology and natural conservation, too much. Having made the full conversion to a green way of living, he's now decided to reorient his studies towards environmental science and will be attending the University of Southern California to obtain a Ph.D. in Marine Environmental Biology, with an emphasis on environmental policy and sustainable management. On his downtime, he enjoys reading about everything business, politics, science and technology and sometimes moonlights as a pundit/op-ed writer. He can be reached at jeremy [dot] treehugger [dot] com. ...

For most TreeHuggers, Earth Day is every day. So why get excited? Because there are so many fun events happening on and around April 22nd. The festivities kicked off in style yesterday. EGBNY, in collaboration with Teknion, GreenDrinks NY, and o2NY, put on Project Earth Day, an Eco Fashion show, celebrating and showcasing emerging eco-designers such as aGaiN NYC, Contessa d'Eleganza, Bahar Shopar, NaturevsFuture, Entermodal, Ekovarhuset and many more. Below the fold is a partial list of happenings in New York City. Please add your tips and suggestions in the comments section!...

A Chinese anti-pollution campaign solidifies the car’s mighty black plume… Speak up: new standards for carbon offsets are coming and the comment period is open… How many retailers does it take to give away a million light bulbs? Home Depot wants to make itself the punch line for Earth Day… Ontario is ready to ban incandescent light bulbs altogether… No more excuses: Green Cleaning for Dummies… Most Huggable is a daily roundup of some of the most tantalizing stories from Hugg.com, TreeHugger’s user-generated green news site. Why not submit your own green news? ...

A quick reminder to stop reading our Earth Day guide long enough to watch TreeHugger's resident TV star Simran Sethi on The Oprah Winfrey Show this afternoon. Simran will be chatting with Oprah about how easy it is to be green, including tips on recycling, cleaning green, having a real lightbulb moment, and more. Find out when and where the show is airing on a television near you; in the meantime, check out a pictorial sneak peek of the show's happenings, after the jump. ::The Oprah Winfrey Show...

Earth Day is really just around the corner (Sunday!), and we hope that as the day draws near, you've been thinking about what you can do to make our world a greener, healthier place. When it comes to equating everyday behavior with saving the planet, few things are as high on the list as recycling. Here are some tips and resources for incorporating recycling into your life, not just on Earth Day, but every day. 1) Recycle your stuff: it can be fun (and sexy) with the EcoPod; with programs from Dell, Apple (remember, iPod has its own program) and more, there's no excuse not to recycle your computer; the online community at Superuse has user-generated ideas, pics and descriptions to help you do-it-yourself and keep it out of the landfill; and, as if you needed more incentive, Recyclebank pays you to do it. More tips on recycling something today can be found here. 2) Get recycled and second-hand stuff: just about anything can be made with recycled content or given a new home, from toothbrushes to computers to home insulation and apparel. 3) Give recycled and second-hand stuff: 'tis better to give than receive, so rather than chucking it in the garbage, help it find a new home with services like FreeCycle, Craigslist, Material Love and Swap-O-Rama-Rama. 4) See the results: recycled stuff doesn't have to "look recycled". To wit: you can recycle a 747 into a house; build a yacht entirely from recycled materials; get a ring from recycled precious metals; create art or fancy lighting; and create a couture dress from umbrellas. The sky's the limit. For more examples and ideas, check out our How to Green Your Recycling guide and dig in to our category dedicated to recycling. Happy Earth Day!...

Picking up from my last post, this TH was part of a discussion to determine how far you could push sites such as Freecycle and Craigslist, where people give and get items for free. Would people really treasure my junk? Here's my experience; what's yours? Let's start with a Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop that I owned for about 6 years. I don't know the exact specs, but it was running GNU/Linux and everything except the battery worked. I posted it on Craigslist - I got 15 "I'll take its" in 10 minutes. The guy picked it up the next day for his ten year old daughter to use. I felt great. Next one; ten circa-1992 Thinnet repeaters with BNC connectors. For those not on the floor laughing, nowadays these are about as useful as shouting "One!" and "Zero!" into two tin cans with a string between them. Posted on Freecycle and gone in 30 minutes, to a guy right down the street from me. He needed then to run some old system that was still in use. ...

It’s getting a bit warmer here in New England which means that all of our stores in downtown Newport are beginning to open their doors from the winter. We have one in particular that we enjoy browsing in and checking out their new products. ReSails, celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, is still making the same style bag that inspired the start of the company back in 1997. We’ve seen a couple of bags recently that are similar (Sea Bags, Red Flag Design and Uncommon Goods), but ReSails was the first to rework sailcloth into something usable. We love the rugged look of the bags and how they are fully lined inside to keep moisture out. In addition to “the original recycled sail bag,” you can also find belts, wallets and dog collars. ReSails is owned by Hooley USA, whose recycled kite vest we mentioned before. ::ReSails ::Hooley USA...

Here is a great, green post-doctoral opportunity for US citizens at the US EPA’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL) located in Cincinnati, Ohio in the area of Life cycle assessment with emphasis on nanotechnology. Given the recent release of the report, Nanotechnology and Life Cycle Assessment: A Systems Approach to Nanotechnology and the Environment, which concluded that LCA is an essential tool for safe and responsible commercialization of nanotech, this post-doc is well timed for research into just that. ”NRMRL is seeking applications for the position of a Federal Post-Doctoral Fellow in the area of nanotechnology. Under the EPA Nanotechnology Program, EPA is interested in studying the following areas: 1) generating the underlying science needed to better understand and predict potential implications of nanoparticle releases, their fate and transport in the environment, and 2) identifying how nanoscience can be responsibly used for beneficial environmental applications (e.g. improved sensors, control/remediation options). In particular, ORD is interested in areas ranging from studying how the physicochemical and biological properties of nanomaterials are altered in the environment, identifying the sources of nanoparticle releases, determining the life cycle fate of nanoparticles and their daughter products when nanotechnology is used for environmental applications and potential health risks associated with both the nanoparticles and their by-products, and in finding ways nanotechnology can be used to improve techniques to measure releases to water, soil, and air and enhance the effectiveness of conventional control and remediation technology to address these releases. The duration of the project is three years.” The closing date for Applications is May 8th, 2007 and you can get additional information about this post doc here. And you can read more about nanotechnology here, here. Image credit: 21st Century.co.uk ...

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Are you the kind of person who hates eating fruit? Maybe with the help of genetic engineering you can eat less and reap all the benefits. The question is -- are you willing to trade the risks of genetic engineering for the goodness that designer fruit offers? Scientists from Ben-Dor Fruits company in Israel have unveiled a genetically- engineered plum that packs a punch of 4 times the cancer-inhibiting anti-oxidants found in pomegranate seeds. One of their plums is called the Lamoon Plum – “it looks like a moonlit lemon,” says the company website. Others are the Plumagranate or the Shark’s Tooth plum (pictured). Ben-Dor’s plums were showcased at Israel’s international agricultural exhibition Agro-Mashov this month at the Tel Aviv Convention Center. Besides the plum, other new fruits and vegetables “designed” for better health were also exhibited. Would you take a bite out of one? ::Haaretz...

Well folks, MTV announced yesterday that the two winners of their Break the Addiction Final Exam, which challenged college student groups across the country to submit tangible evidence of educational activities as well as policy advocacy to reduce their school's global warming pollution are Rutgers and Cornell University. So what did they win for helping to save the planet? Well, an MTV eco-renovation for their student centers worth up to $10,000 plus the knowledge that they helped educate and inspire people across both campuses to help stop global warming. As an added bonus they’ll both have representatives featured on a special edition of MTV's TRL on Monday, April 23 that will also feature an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The challenge itself was the product of collaboration between thinkMTV and the Campus Climate Challenge, a project of 30 leading environmental and social justice organizations working with hundreds of high schools and colleges to help them make their schools greener. Go Rutgers and Cornell! ...

This article is about opportunity. Problem opportunity. I usually try to write about exciting and innovative service solutions that are challenging the product economic paradigm and shifting our world into 21st century business practice. My objective is to inspire and present an alternative vision of consumption, not necessarily to critique or expose those who aren’t addressing sustainability. However, today in my article I want to ‘green bash’ a bit (ie, hit a few brands over the head with my green views because I feel so passionately there is the opportunity to do things better). I want to present some observations and problem opportunities for 21st century business. I will try to remain positive and optimistic with my tone, despite actually being quite angry and hurt by the insanity of my experiences, because I see these systemic problems as opportunities for innovation. They present a great argument for the service model – ie, looking at a closer connection with the customer to define exactly what they want and a continuous flow of value over time, which is very different to the dominant product economic paradigm that focuses on selling as many units as possible despite of my needs/motivations....

Currently in London there is a battle for commuters attention. Once upon a time there was one free newspaper, Metro. Then came London Lite and the London Paper, which weren't granted permission to distribute in train stations, forcing them onto the street. People dressed in bright purple hats and coats, thrust newspapers at anyone who dares walk within a ten feet radius. If you're already carrying a paper, they thrust one at you, if you say 'no, thanks', they thrust one at you. It's a nuisance, but the main problem is that London is almost completely coated in a blanket of low-brow celebrity gossip and offbeat news by 6PM. The council have estimated that recycling costs in the last two years have reached £500,000, and have decided that the papers should be the ones to pay. They account for 3-4 tonnes of waste daily in the city, but Westminster Council have said that, "neither has made a satisfactory offer which would significantly help meet the £500,000 set-up and running costs of a scheme to ensure the papers end up getting recycled." The problem is that both are being run at a loss in order to gain market share, so neither want to pay for clean-up costs. The environmental impact of printing 3-4 tonnes of papers daily is enormous, and something clearly needs to be done. Recently in the UK there has been legislation that will force electronics manufacturers to pay for the recycling of their goods once they are disposed, could a similar scheme work for print publishers? :: The Guardian...

We still continue to get comments about a post we ran over year ago about South African scientist Vivian Alberts of the University of Johannesburg and his thin film solar technology. The post even spurred a new page on the PESWiki for pure energy systems. At the just 2µm the film made of copper, indium, gallium, sulphur and selenium, otherwise called CIGSSe-solar, is way thinner than a human hair. Some poo-pooed the notion as just another blue-sky prototype, but Germans are generally pretty cautious and thorough folk, so when they are the ones building a production plant to manufacture the film, one suspects there is substantial meat on this skeleton. The factory is currently going up in Brandenburg an der Havel. (check out those massive timber beams, we assume them to be Glulam monsters!) The company managing the technology, Johanna Solar, are hoping to be producing 30 megawatt worth of panels by mid 2007, and then ramping this up to double by 2009. We hope some makes its way back down to South Africa to satisfy all those chafing at the bit for some renewable energy. ::Johanna Solar....

Perhaps one of the reasons that change comes slowly is that, like with apples and tomatoes, where we used to have diversity and variety, now everything is the same and we are afraid to change. We no longer understand how anything could be different because everything we live with has become a monoculture. Photographer Mark Luthringer demonstrates this with his series of "typological arrays", which have an "inherent ability to depict prevalence and repetition make it the perfect technique for examining the excess, redundancy, and meaningless freedom of our current age of consumption". There are arrays of cars, cellphones, signs, house entries (which I find the most interesting, where did that come from?) Ridgemont is his imaginary, ahistorical name for the everysuburb. See them at ::Mark Luthringer or in San Francisco May 31-June 29 at 3A Architecture.. via ::Daily Dose ...

There's good news for all you eco-design hunters at the Salone del Mobile this week - we've found some help people! The Best Up Circuit has been created to find the best eco-design exhibits during the furniture fair. Two Italian journalists, Clara Mantica and Giuliana Zoppis, came up with the idea to create a free sustainable design street map after last year's show. They say, 'after long hours spent - a little like looking for needles in a haystack - searching for “sustainable” events and products. We said to ourselves “Why not do something to raise the profile of these ventures and really value the eco-design?”' Huh... funny, I am sure we mentioned something about haystacks and needles just a few days ago! The Best Up (Beauty, Equality and SusTainability, UP is an invitation to wake up, to get moving), street map will be handed out around the city and there will also be postcards strategically placed in pubs and bars. Incase you don't happen upon any Best Up information on your chosen route, you can go to their main stand at the Fabbrica del Vapore, (the steam factory) and find them at the via Procaccini 4 entrance. Already marked on the Best Up map is our recommendation of the Sofar Sonear Showroom, but there are plenty more to check out - it seems this year those needles won't be so hard to find after all! ::Best Up...

This post is about light bulbs - the world’s first ‘carbonfree’ light bulb, to be precise, but first, let us digress. Carbon offsets tend to create a lot of tension in the green-minded community. There is even disagreement among us usually mild-mannered TreeHuggers. Mark, on the one hand, feels that offsets are basically built on guilt, while Michael Graham Richard sees them as a potentially useful tool. This author has himself agonized over whether offsets are a good or bad thing, and has come to the conclusion that they can be of benefit if, and only if, they are part of a wider emissions reduction strategy. It makes sense, for example, for Eurostar to further improve their already impressive environmental record, and then offset to take responsibility for emissions they can’t eliminate immediately, as they announced this week. It seems less justifiable, in this author's eyes at least, to launch a hugely carbon-intensive service like a business-class only airline, and then simply claim it’s green by offsetting emissions, as Silverjet have done. Of course one could argue that Silverjet, or another competitor, would have launched anyway, and it’s better to offset than to do nothing, but it still seems dangerously close to offsets providing a fig leaf for ‘business as usual.’ Anyhow, back to light bulbs. ...

One can jam solar panels onto a roof, or one can integrate them into a building in an attractive and useful manner. At the Ma Wan School in Hong Kong, the roofs have been pumping out kilowatts since 2004 and also acting as a sunshade, creating shadow and comfort on the top floor and over the atria. It has not generated as many KwHr as the simulations projected, but since opening it has supplied 72,753.464 KwHr, which you can see online on a very slow loading website that monitors performance of the building. Developed as a prototype to "understand local solar energy resources, promote school PV installations and determine the value to HK of wide-scale PV applications" ::Ma Wan School Project via ::the Sietch...

We have shown the wonderful mechanisms that Italian designers come up with to make it easy to work with beds in small spaces, all of which are very expensive to import to North America where everyone expects IKEA pricing for everything. Now a Canadian company is importing the mechanisms and building furniture around them so that we can enjoy sofas that turn into two or three beds. They also have an ottoman and a chair that fold out into single beds. None are as slick or well finished as the Italian jobs, but the prices are reasonable. Turn the sound down for the silly flash intro at ::European Ingenuity...

You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that we, like many online media outlets, regularly receive invitations to participate in press events held by businesses, non-profit organizations and government agencies. You might be surprised (as were we, quite frankly) to read that we got one last week from the American Petroleum Institute. Yes, you read that right: API invited Treehugger, as well as EcoGeek, The Oil Drum, Green Options, and Maria Energia to participate in a conference call with the organization's CEO, Red Cavaney this past Wednesday. The topic of the call: energy and the environment. Also participating were bloggers and writers from NewsWatch (the Houston Chronicle), the Wall Street Journal Energy Roundup, Fortune/CNN Money, and ShopFloor.org (National Association of Manufacturers). We accepted API's invitation. While we're always a bit suspicious about the motivations behind outreach from businesses and organizations that have historically shown hostility towards environmentalism, we also believe that open dialogue is the only way to address that hostility, and perhaps even change it. We held no illusions, though: we know the claims that have been made about API's involvement in efforts to challenge the scientific consensus on global climate change and human contributions to it. We went into the call with our radars on "high."...

National Downshifting Week is April 21 to 27 this year. It is all about “Helping you find a good work/life balance”. It is a time to slow down and smell the flowers—a time to stop participating in a consumer society, to eat well, volunteer, live more simply and less wastefully. Here is what you can do to make a meaningful change: Book a half-day off work to spend entirely with someone you love. Cook a meal from scratch, using locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, preferably organic Cut up a credit card Donate a bag of clothes, toys or useful items to a local charity shop, refuge or recycling centre Hand-make a simple card for the next birthday or event on your calendar Eliminate 3 non-essential purchases this week Plant something in the garden you can cultivate and eat and start a compost heap Tonight, turn off the television, switch on the radio, play a few games and talk Volunteer an hour of your time to a local charity shop, animal shelter, hospice etc And take the pledge:“ I hereby pledge to slow my life down a gear for the benefit of my health, my well being, my environment and for those around me whom I dearly love. " :: National Downshifting Week...

We previously posted about how if you invest in a wind turbine on your property, the tax assessor will come by and say "nice turbine, your assessment just went up." Ontario Environment Minister Dwight Duncan agreed that was dumb and appears to be fixing that; but here is another example of local idiocy. Green Limousine is a Canadian company trying to set up the " first [canadian] limo service to use only fuel-efficient, ultra low-emission hybrid vehicles." They use standard size Priuses (picture is of a stretch LA ecolimo) and have started business in Pickering, a suburb east of Toronto, serving primarily the Airport, west of Toronto. The big space in between is the City of Toronto, where they are not allowed to do business. According to Tyler Hamilton in the Star, "Prius limousines don't comply with size rules under a municipal bylaw, which considers a limo a luxury vehicle that can carry up to five passengers. The bylaw also stipulates that a stretch limo must be provided for every four sedans in a fleet." (rules brought in just two years ago because of endless taxi/limo battles) The Green Limo prez is meeting with Licencing head honcho Howard Moscoe, who says "We have to look at how it will affect the overall structure of the industry. It's like a complicated Swiss watch. If you throw a couple of pieces out, it breaks down." Right. A couple of Priuses are going to bring down the Toronto limo business. We look forward, as usual, to years of discussion. ::The Star ...

A while back we quoted Seth Godin on how the Manhattan Money is hitting the farmers markets, bringing back empty egg cartons and buying local food. Now they can go into Bergdorf Goodman and buy recycled glasses, albeit "handcrafted and mouth-blown" . What is New York coming to? Next thing you know they will be walking, taking taxis and subways instead of driving, shopping in local stores instead of going to Wal-Mart and living in dense highrises instead of single family dwellings. ::Bergdorf via ::Haute Nature...

Now, 'that's what we're talking about.' Via: BBC and RTE News- "Norway is aiming to offset all emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 with the world's toughest national target for fighting global warming. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told a meeting of the Labour Party today that he plans to make the country carbon neutral by 2050. Mr Stoltenberg..."added that the government of Norway, the world's number five oil exporter, also plans to cut emissions by 30% by 2020. That target is tougher than the European Union goal of at least a 20% reduction." Increased reliance on hydroelectric power and sequestration of C02 are two of the approaches Norway will rely on to deliver on the goal. On learning of this, the fact that Norway is the #5 oil exporter set off the "green-washing" alert bell here at TreeHugger. What good is a stretch goal at home when your downstream customers have a far greater climate impact with product end use, and no parallel mitigation goals? Good news on that front: Stoltenberg seems intent on supply chain management as well. Via China People's Daily Online:- "China will adopt on-the-ground strategies to combat climate change, with financial and technological backing from Norway. Further strengthening their relationship yesterday, the two countries signed agreements in Beijing, witnessed by Premier Wen Jiabao and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, on a three-day official visit to China. Among the three pacts is one targeting the effects of climate change, and will be jointly conducted by Norway, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and China." The ultimate national stretch goal, the one that would serve as the appropriate slap upside the head for US government officials, would be for OPEC members to match Norway's courage and put some of those princely petro-dollars to work at home and for their customers, making climate mitigation a condition of their supply contracts. Speaking of OPEC, they seem to have been rather quiet about climate issues. Hmmm. Image credit: RTE...

If you liked Dan Price’s hobbit house then you might also be intrigued by the eco-roundhouse inhabited by Tony Wrench and Jane Faith within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park of Wales. Constructed of wood, turf, straw and recycled materials it cost £3,000 (~ $6,000 USD) to build. And although having permission to exist from the landowners, it does not have building planning permits. Nevertheless Tony and Jane live the simple life, existing on around £90 a week, of which only about £15 goes toward store-bought food. They grow and preserve their own veggies, as well as harvesting fruit from trees they fertilise with compost from their toilet. Water is local, and heated with wood collected from the nearby woods. Solar panels provide the minimal electricity required. Their modest income being derived from the sale of woodturned bowls and music playing. "We are not totally self-sufficient, but we like being self-reliant." says Tony. Pictorial essay via ::BBC Online...

Intent on peddling his (hormone free) Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Stephen Colbert learns about the effects of rBGH, recombinant bovine growth hormone, which for some reason American dairy farmers are allowed to inject into cows to increase production about 15%. He compares the increase to a certain Loaves and Fishes incident that we will not go into in deference to our religious Christian readers, and derides the rest of the world for banning the stuff, based on the underlying American Principle, Innocent until proven cancerous. Evidently without rBGH we will need more cows: no hormone, more global warming. Extremely entertaining at ::Colbert Report....

Will organic-coffee lovers need a different kind of fix, soon? Earlier this month, Salon published a story decrying the U.S. Department of Agriculture's recent tightening of organic-certification requirements. The main sticking point: These revised standards could drastically cut back on the ability of small grower co-ops to produce organic coffee. "This ruling could wipe out the organic coffee market in the U.S.," says Kimberly Easson, director of strategic relationships for TransFair USA, which certifies fair-trade products in the United States. Worries that the USDA ruling will jack up costs for small-scale organic producers, and drive them back into conventional commodity markets, also abound....

This week, Simran Sethi speaks with Bob Perkowitz, a passionate environmentalist, dynamic conservative, and a serial entrepreneur. Aside from sitting on TreeHugger’s board of directors, other hats worn by Mr. Perkowitz include being the president and founder of ecoAmerica, a trustee of the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense, and managing partner of VivaTerra. He offers us a refreshing approach on spreading the green message and how different An Inconvenient Truth would have been if Arnold Schwarzenegger had been the star. Our soundtrack, as always, is compliments of Calabash Music. Catch TreeHugger Radio each week on Air America’s EcoTalk, here on TreeHugger.com, or pick up the podcast on iTunes. (listen/right click to download) ::TreeHugger Radio
(Interview conducted by Simran Sethi, produced by Jacob Gordon) ...

Bees are so industrious when they are at the job. Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny introduces With a Little Help of the Bees in Milan. It is a vase built by bees. we quote Dezeen: "Libertiny made a vase-shaped hive that the bees then colonised, building a hexagon comb around it. The wax sheets used to make the hive were embossed with a honeycomb pattern to help the bees on their way. Libertiny calls the process “slow prototyping” - it took 40,000 bees a week to make the vase. Since the bees get aggressive when they are interrupted, Libertiny had to guess when it was time to remove the vase." The artist told Dezeen: “To give a form to this natural product it has occurred more than logical to choose a form of a vase as a cultural artifact. Beeswax comes from flowers and in the form of a vase ends up serving flowers on their last journey." More from Milan 2007 from ::Dezeen...

Just in time for Earth Day, TreeHugger's own Simran Sethi will be joined by Matt Damon, Sheryl Crow and others on tomorrow's Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss "Going Green 101". The show will focus on why it's cool to be green, along with info about how to "join forces with Oprah for changing the way we live on our earth. It is our step-by-step action-plan. From cleaning your house to grocery shopping, find out what families like yours are already doing." Simran was on Oprah's show last year talking about how TreeHuggers do Christmas, so we'll look forward to seeing her in the green spotlight tomorrow. Check out Oprah's site for more info on the show and find out when and where to find Oprah's show near you. ::The Oprah Winfrey Show...

Yesterday we wrote about a Business Week article that discussed the possible decline in Wal-Mart selling organics. Because of this, TreeHugger received a note which included a Letter to the Editor written by Karen Burk, a corporate communications professional at Wal-Mart. Since we are all about reporting what we know, we felt our readers should hear both sides of the story. Ms. Burk’s letter follows: April 13, 2007 Dear Editor, Pallavi Gogoi's article, posted April 12, 2007, on Businessweek.com is an erroneous and inaccurate representation of Wal-Mart's commitment to providing our customers with affordable access to organic products....

"This is not your parents' energy crisis, [...] what is going on today is something fundamentally new and different and requires us to think about and redefine the term 'green'". This is New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman speaking at the annual mass media and technology conference Pop!Tech. He goes on to talk about energy, global warming, how to help the Green Movement become mainstream (something we, at TreeHugger, know about...), etc. Of course, Friedman being Friedman, there's also a good dose of geopolitics (be warned). We recently wrote about Friedman's recent "green" NYT column and it generated some nice discussion in the comments. Check it out. ::Video of Friedman at Pop!Tech...

Sundance Channel was nice enough to send us an exclusive clip of "Build", to be aired on The Green on April 24th at 9 PM (see the schedule for more details). “Build”, which airs April 24th at 9pm, is about visionary architect Michelle Kaufmann builds a Glidehouse, an ultra-sustainable modular prefab dream home, for a couple looking to enjoy life off the grid; architect Carlton Brown defies all odds and builds a low-income sustainable housing project in Harlem; and MIT genius Mitchell Joachim demonstrates his Fab Tree Hab living house made from intertwined trees, creating a spectacular living space of the future....

Now that we've wrapped up the Convenient Truths video contest here at TreeHugger (congratulations to the winners!) let's take a moment to rest...and done. Okay, now we'd like to draw your attention to the Sundance Channel's What's the Big Idea? video contest (we mentioned it before). They're looking for a one minute film about one big idea to improve the environment -- change a bulb, compost your waste, that kind of thing -- and to the winner go the spoils: a one-year lease of a Lexus hybrid and $10,000 to turn your big idea into reality. Entries are accepted through April 30, and completed videos can be uploaded directly to the site, where you can also learn more about the contest and watch some inspirational sample entries. Good luck, everyone; now get out there and record your big idea for everyone to see! ::Sundance Channel's What's the Big Idea? Contest...

English supermarket chain Sainsbury's are boycotting disposable plastic bags for one day, and give out free reusable bags instead. The chain normally charge 10p for these, and have estimated that the scheme, running on Friday next week, will cost them £700,000. Sainsbury's bags have been in the news recently, in September they changed their design to include one third recycled materials. The store also began awarding loyalty points for every bag that customers avoided using at stores. Although how this was measured I don't know; I can see how you count bags that people do use, but not how you could count the bags that they don't. On their website, Sainsbury's offer an explanation as to why they don't charge for bags all year round;

"We did a 'pay-for' trial some years ago where we did charge the cost price for carrier bags to our customers, but our customers where not happy and complained. From these trials we decided to stop charging our customers for carrier bags and fall in line with other retailers."

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There may come a time where you will have an extra computer or two lying around. In fact, that time is probably now, as about 75 percent of used computers are currently stockpiled in storage (read, your basement). What to do, what to do - you don't want to turn them into eWaste. Well, here are two methods that produce good results, let's call them the 'Joy' method and the 'Profit' method. With the 'Joy' method, you give a gift (which is fun), someone receives one (which is also fun), and you both share the joy of giving the computer an extended life (more fun). One way is to use the 'free' section of Craigslist - just post your equipment, and folks will email you if they want it. The gift getter usually picks up the equipment; it will usually be gone within minutes, no matter what it is. You can also try freecycle as well; their motto is 'changing the world one gift at a time'. Make sure you use your local group, there are a lot of them....

Drive one day less and look how much carbon monoxide you'll keep out of the air we breathe. (WWF) Updated 1.7.2009 | If China saw the car the way it increasingly sees, for instance, coal plants, industrial pollution and ungreen buildings -- that is, as dangers to the country's environmental and social stability -- we might have cause to breathe a little bit easier. But as the country races down the road of western-style consumption at the rate of 11% GDP growth per year, it's like the '50s all over again: the car is at the top of everyone's wish list. After giving a lecture to a group of environmental science students in Beijing last year, Lester Brown asked how many hoped to own a car: all hands went up. And China's got a lot of hands. But whose hands are on the wheel? With about 500,000 new private cars hitting China's roads every month in 2007 (and over 800,000 vehicles per month in the first nine months of 2008), national and sometimes local governments have been experimenting with ways to address the car problem, which is hurting not only the environment but, due to endless gridlock, crippling the basic productivity of cities like Beijing. (Not to mention that cars are responsible for 100,000 deaths in China a year, more than anywhere else.) As the huge Shanghai Auto Expo opens this week, many challenges remain, not least the dependence of the government on its booming car industry: even as it snarls traffic, causes respiratory problems and ruins the air, the largely state-run auto industry employs 1.7 million workers....

As “Chicago’s Conscious Caterer” Greg Christian puts it, “The pizza served in my elementary school was a chewy rectangle of dough…” Well, it seems he must have had similar experiences to all of us! But he’s stepping up to the plate to help change all that by pioneering the Organic School Project (OSP). It’s a non-profit, pilot program in the Chicago Public Schools that engages parents, school employees, professors and healthcare professionals to help instill healthy eating habits in children.The curriculum at three schools has so far included gardening, mindful living classes, and yoga. The most recent news is that they’ve begun feeding kids organic, sustainable food in these public schools. And while yoga and organic food may be readily accessible in charter and private schools, the OSP is now exposing low-income students to sustainable living practices that they might never hear of otherwise. And the really great news is that they've also just signed a contract with Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality, the powerhouse that feeds the Chicago Public Schools. OSP is the first of its kind in the country to partner with a foodservice company working in a public school to provide an organic menu, which is inspiring news to me! Though now I start to worry a bit… I’m a teacher who’s actually grown accustomed to chewy, cardboard tasting pizza for lunch on occasion. How would I ever cope with such great tasting organic school food?...

For the last four and half months, we've encouraged you to both reduce your personal carbon footprint, and to participate in Treehugger and Seventh Generation's Convenient Truths video contest. Today, we're pleased to wrap up the contest by announcing the winners. The Top Ten finalists were chosen by you and our expert panel of judges, and the Grand, second and third place prize winners were chosen by guest judge Ed Begley, Jr. In addition to prize packages described below, each winner's video will be featured on a DVD by Ironweeds Films, and also showcased at the Weather Channel's Forecast Earth climate change site. The winners of the Treehugger and Seventh Generation Convenient Truths contest are:...

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We TreeHuggers just love new, funky, green developments like BedZED, Greenbridge and these plans for Toronto’s Portlands redevelopment. But the fact remains, new build can only accomplish so much. Most of us will be living in buildings, and communities, that already exist now for many, many years to come, and few of these were built with anything approaching sustainability in mind. All is not lost however, there is lots that can be done to move even the most unecological settlements towards a better, greener future. Bioregional Development Group (the folks who brought us BedZED) and WWF, have published a report entitled ‘One Planet Living in the Suburbs’ – Greg Searle, the head of One Planet Living North America, mentioned it in his interview with TreeHugger here. A summary of the report can be downloaded here, and the full 116 page version can be found here. The idea behind the report is to look at recommendations for actions that national governments, local authorities AND individuals take to move towards creating a more sustainable suburban lifestyle. The report’s authors propose the One Planet Living framework as the method for achieving change, and ecological footprinting as the tool for judging success. The report looks at a typical British suburb - Solihull, on the outside of Birmingham, and seeks to address every aspect of sustainability. The report’s recommendations are separated into the familiar One Planet Living categories that include: ...

Lloyd's survey from today asks if we think there is sufficient evidence, via the recent "surge" of green slathered glam-mags, that our favorite topic is mainstreaming. There's corroboration on the real estate development end. Via David Burn Architectural Blog:- McDonald's Corp., Oak Brook, Ill., has opened its first-ever McDonald’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified restaurant. "The McDonald’s features large windows that allow daylight to reach 75 percent of the interior of the restaurant, reducing lighting costs. The restaurant also boasts bike racks, preferred parking for hybrid vehicles, porous pavement and a white roof." The store is located in the LEED-certified Abercorn Common retail development in Savannah, Ga. The Common features "a cistern that harvests rainwater for irrigation; waterless urinals; energy efficient heating and air-conditioning systems (30% more energy-efficient than a typical center); and a white roof coating to reflect heat." Giving new depth to the old ad charge "where's the beef"?...

Common Ground: Carnival of the Green 73 by Enrique Gili "The taskmasters over at Treehugger Inc., entrusted me to edit this week's issue of Carnival of the Green. Weekly gleanings of all things green from around the blogosphere. Passing the torch from Philobiblon, on the week leading up to Earth Day." DH Love Life: Solar Science by Daryl Hannah Daryl pays a visit to the solar scientists at California's Institute of Technology. They show her the project they are working on: an affordable and easy to install solar technology - solar paint. Daryl then learns how to make her own solar cells - cool!...

Since global warming entered the global lexicon, the scientific community has concluded that deforestation is one the primary causes of climate change. Subsequently, significant efforts to reduce or reverse warming trends have focused on reforestation throughout the world. However, a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and reported in the Economist, suggests that these efforts may not result in the desired outcome. According to Dr. Govindasamy Bala of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, planting trees everywhere might actually increase the earth’s temperature. Conversely, removing all the world’s trees could lead to global cooling....

Been a while since we dropped by the Worn Again site, so we missed their foray into leather, or E-leather as they call it. We are told that it’s fabricated from the leather shavings which normally make up 30% of a tannery’s waste. Normally it gets landfilled, but Worn Again found a supplier who interlinks the fibres of these shavings, without reverting to adhesives, to make a shoe grade reconstituted leather that is sold by the roll. Apparently this allows for less cutting wastage (~5%) when compared to traditional hides (18-40%). And what’s more the production process is almost a closed loop, retaining 95% of its process water and even feeding its energy needs with converted waste. E-leather is found in the Womble sneaker, seen above, which also reuses t-shirts and jeans, together with a recycled rubber for the sole. ::Worn Again....

When the French do something, they do it in style and make an impact. Some things like the Concorde suck a bit too much gas and don't quite work out as planned, but when they decide that they don't want to suck gas, they go out and buy ten thousand electric vehicles to deliver the mail. “There has never been such a big order [for the vehicles] in the world,” said French Industry Minister Francois Loos. “According to our tests, it is six times cheaper to run an electric vehicle than a diesel vehicle,” said La Poste chairman Jean-Paul Bailly. La Poste believes the change will also cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) by four tonnes per vehicle annually. France introduced Minitel , a phone based computer system, way back in 1982, and continues to update its public computer networks that everyone has access to; I am surprised that they still have mail. ::Celsias ...

Hanging out day is fine for those in houses, but what about in apartments? In Singapore, people in apartments put their laundry on a bamboo pole and stick it on the balcony; it is quite colourful, but landlords and condo corps don't seem receptive to this in America. In Europe they have this all figured out and sell wonderful systems that drop from the ceiling like the Stewi Lift. It is up and out of the way until you need it, then drops down to a convenient level. Available in North America from ::Stenic Products. A more economical version from a North American source is the Laundry Lift, an $80 stainless steel number that can hold 30 pounds of laundry and is raised and lowered by cords. Thats a tenth of the price of a dryer, uses no electricity and you will never need a humidifier again. ::Laundry Lift...

If Hugg is the definitive user generated green news site, then the newly reworked SustainLane looks as if it wants to become the user generated green products location. You may recall that we took an earlier peek at SustainLane when it was clearinghouse for US local and state government sustainable initiatives and policies. That’s all still there, linked to this new Web 2.0 interactive user experience. According to an interview they had with Green Wombat (I unfortunately saw two dead real wombats the other day), the revised site kicked off with 3,000 reviews and 10,000 green business listings. We dug around the reviews semi-randomly to get a feel for the site. We noted that most of the reviews were generally pretty positive, which is a great thing for the credibility of green products. But also observed the usual issues with user generated sites, such a duplication. One brand of clothing had three individual reviews for basically the same product, when it would’ve been more useful for them to all be under the one title. But this does happen too. Take for example ......

The Soil Association has announced the winners of its annual awards for best organic and natural beauty care products. And the list is a great introduction to some new products with excellent pedigrees and the highest recommendations. A good lip balm is something to be cherished all winter long, and the winner of the best product award is Rose Geranium Face Balm by Balm Balm. Smelling sweetly of rose geraniums, it is soothing and completely natural and organic. The best organic textile award was given to Ardalanish Organic Farm and Weaving Mill for their organic tweed. Located on the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, the black wool of the sheep on this farm is used to create designer tweeds, in a range of black and white herringbone and hopsack patterns. Best organic restaurant is in Coventry, Garden Organic Ryton; it is part of a ten acre organic nursery so the produce is super-fresh and very local. They hold monthly gourmet organic dinners as well. Best large organic shop is As Nature Intended, with three locations just outside of central London. Best small shop is Judges Bakery, run by none other than the former owners of Green & Black chocolates. Best Organic Internet/Delivery Service website is Howies but check out the second place--a small organic vodka and cheese company that was shocked and delighted to be nominated. :: Soil Association...

New Hampshire USA's first green co-housing community, Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm, features renewable energy ready and energy efficiently designed residences. The 29 total units include 7 single-family homes, 7 duplex units, and 2 quad units on a total of 5 acres (4.05 Km2). The homes will be sided in red cedar and supplied with a centrally located pellet boiler using a locally produced biomass fuel to provide heat and hot water. Clustered on a 70 acre plot in Peterborough, New Hampshire, the homes will feature south-facing roofs. A portion of the undeveloped land includes an organic farm. The development is 'wired internally' for prospective on-site wind or water power. The homes, office space, and organic farm will meet high standards for energy efficiency, with homes outperforming Energy Star-rated homes by 15%. Residents share communal carports located on the perimeter and have access to a building that can accommodate private parties and overnight guests. The website includes several links to other recent press coverage. ...

When we last posted on Eurostar, the train company that operates between London and Paris, and London and Brussels, they claimed to produce 10-times less greenhouse gases than airlines on the same routes. They even had independent research to back it up too. Well this doesn’t seem enough to satisfy their environmental consultants, as Eurostar has now announced that it is aiming to cut emissions by a further 25% by 2012. According to a report over at the ever informative Guardian, the company is looking to reduce energy consumption on trains, make better use of operating capacity, and to source more energy from low carbon sources as part of their Tread Lightly commitment. Now we can’t find any mention of whether low carbon sources would include nuclear, a prominent power source in France, but any reduction in consumption and support for renewables must be warmly welcomed. A spokesperson for the group told the Guardian that it was time for the travel industry to take responsibility: ...

Now that governments are banning incandescent lights, we offer this solution to everyone who ~~whines~~ is concerned about Compact Fluorescents' colour balance or dimmability. As your last incandescents burn out you can convert them into these very warm, very dimmable lighting units, just adjust the length of the wick. Additional benefits include the ability to go completely off the electrical grid, and to keep old lightbulbs out of the landfill sites. If you do not want to make your own, the unit shown is the Edisun Lamp from Opossum in Germany, designed as an homage to Thomas Edison, which you can buy from Singulier for 65 euros. ::NotCot 3926...

Yikes! So many Competitions, nobody is going to get any paid work done if they enter Ample Sample, Design Boom's Living Simplicity, Asics Fill the Box and now MujiAward 02. The theme is "RE: which stands for the reinvention of everyday life. "Re-think, Re-design, Re-use, Re-fuse... Show us how you can discover and conceptualize RE in a familiar, everyday thing...Anyone may apply regardless of whether they are corporate or private individuals, freelance designers, in-house corporate designers, students etc. Entries are restricted to new domestic or international designs. We are not asking for any particular genre, it could be anything from furniture, stationery and office equipment to everyday household items." Which is rather open-ended but sounds like fun. ::Muji Award via ::Desain ...

Via Financial Times:- "China and an alliance of developing countries yesterday launched a concerted attack against the right of the United Nations Security Council to debate climate change. The move came at a landmark meeting at which the UK had sought to cast global warming as a threat to international peace." China and a list of other developing nations, including Cuba and Pakistan, insisted that climate change had nothing to do with security. The money quote:- "Vitaly Churkin [pictured], the Russian ambassador, dismissed the sense of urgency and issued an "appeal against panicking and over-dramatising the situation"." Not being adept UN watchers we're not sure what the developing nation strategy is, but this development does smack of the old "you got your's and now we're going to get our's and you can't stop us" approach. We wonder, also, if the news about the latest IPCC report is really making it to the developing world audience, whether citizens and leaders have even have full access to information. Inconveniently enough, Inconvenient Truth is English-only. As for our headline, here's what the Competitive Enterprise Institutes latest work product has to say on Mr Gore: "Nearly every significant statement Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or just plain wrong."...

Vanity Fair. Elle. Canadian House and Home. Azure. The list of special green editions that we have covered barely scratches the surface of what is on the stands, coming in the mail, or that we wouldn't touch, like this fishwrap that says "Eco Chic: Its fabulous being green" on the cover and has 2/3 of a page on makeup, thats it. Vanessa at Greenasathistle says "Seriously, if I read the word “eco-chic” one more time, I’ll jab my eyes out with my biodegradable pen.....Plus these magazines are all so redundant. I mean, enough with the Top 10 Things You Can Do to Help the Environment — Wait, let me guess, drive less and screw in a CFL light bulb? Whoa, never would have thought." Does the wisdom of this crowd say that we have reached the tipping point?

View MicroPollWeb SurveyFree Web Polls

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Inspired by Jasmin's recent post on the Asics Fill The Box design competition, we think it's great idea to let you know about competitions which, as Jasmin said, don't "have an ostensibly green angle", but which we think you can bring your own eco-sensibilities to. One that has recently landed in that catagory is the Premio Vico Magistretti, just launched by Design Boom in collaboration with Italian design company DePadova. The design award is named after the famous Italian designer Vico Magistretti who passed away last year. DePadova say that this competition is an invitation to develop a project in the spirit of his work. He said, 'simplicity is an essential quality of good design and it is one of the most complicated things in life, because you have to take away, take away...it is the start from a precise executive and functional concept, and the designer should be able to explain over the phone why his object is designed in a certain way and how it ought to be made - so simple that it endows the object with a distinctive character.'...

The most familiar plea made by environmentalists warning us of the immanent disappearance of this or that species is a question: how will we explain the absence of the polar bear, or the manatee, or a certain species of eagle, to our children? It is certainly a haunting prospect, imagining a world without a host of creatures, and describing things that are familiar to us in terms that will seem to children as fantastic as the creatures of their imaginations, or as strange and wonderful as the species that our ancestors hunted to extinction long ago. It’s an effective argument, because when we imagine the absent animals and the wide-eyed kids, we also imagine ourselves as sad and remorseful....

LOT-EK are among the best of the small crew of architects working with shipping containers, which are rarely seen in the urban context. However it is coming to Chinatown in NYC as they build this 19 storey artists loft building with a commercial base. The developer. According to Curbed: Mr. Woo of Young Woo & Associates said that he had become very interested in plans developed by Lot-ek (which stands for "low-tech") employing large metal shipping containers. He said he considered their use in residential construction "fascinating" and "environmentally friendly."... ...

The ethanol bottle is getting passed around and the country is getting tipsy… Of course you’re afraid of mildew, but are you even more scared of the stuff people use to get rid of it? See spot eat organic. Recent events have pet owners going for the organic chow… SustainLane dishes out the top ten cities for renewable energy advancements… The Department of Defense is testing out a new biodiesel/ethanol blend made by O2Diesel... Most Huggable is a daily roundup of some of the most tantalizing stories from Hugg.com, TreeHugger’s user-generated green news site. Why not submit your own green news?...

The Government of Ontario just banned incandescent bulbs, albeit not completely until 2012. Energy Minister Dwight Duncan and Environment Minister Laurel Broten announced today: "It's lights out for old, inefficient bulbs in Ontario," Duncan said. "By making this one small change, we can all make an enormous difference in the way we use electricity." They say that Replacing all 87 million incandescent bulbs in Ontario households with CFLs would save six million megawatt hours annually - enough to power 600,000 homes. Everybody is cheering:"Friends of the Earth congratulates the McGuinty government on their important decision to ban inefficient lighting," said Beatrice Olivastri, CEO, Friends of the Earth Canada. "A regulation for the ban plus their commitment to immediately cease provincial government's purchases of out-dated bulbs is a recipe for success - good for energy conservation and good for fighting climate change." Even GE Canada jumped in: "We support the government's initiative to improve the efficiency of all lighting," said Elyse Allan, President and CEO of GE Canada which has a lamp manufacturing plant in Oakville. "By encouraging the use of high efficiency lighting, at home and at work, all of us will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions."...

What’s the Big Deal?

A wedding is one of the most important days in a couple’s life. If you care about the planet, why not integrate your principles into your big day? With the average cost of a US wedding running at around $20,000 it seems obvious that weddings have a huge footprint, both ecological and economical. Going green doesn’t mean you have to compromise on your big day, though. By taking a look at the bigger picture, you can move beyond the usual decadence and consumption to create a truly personal, moving, and sustainable celebration that people will remember for years. You may even open a few eyes in the process…

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Meetings - by phone, email, in person, or virtually - are all about communication, and almost anyone that deals with people regularly, as part of their job, will tell you that nothing beats face to face communication; you establish the relationship, pick up on the non-verbal cues, etc. The problem, of course, is that hauling bodies around the world is expensive, and it's getting more so. So, is webconferencing or videoconferencing the solution? Not according to James Murray, a writer for Green Business News who cranks out a lot of insightful green IT commentary. This piece on webconferencing struck home, where James probes the murky depths of what it has to offer to the planet. In particular, he wonders why so many presenters go to the trouble of using it, when most just make a Powerpoint presentation of their ideas, then run through it via virtual meeting. As James says, the only collaboration happening is on the associated phone call, and that's just to make sure he is on the right slide and not surfing the web. Ha ha, the truth hurts, and it's funny too....

We recently covered the story of Llyod Godson, who was planning to spend two weeks living in a sealed underwater vessel to investigate sustainable living. We're pleased to announce that after two safe, sub-aqua weeks he has now returned to the surface. He used a bike to generate electricity, and was able to grow algae to provide some of his food and oxygen. It's not yet clear exactly how well the experiment went, or how much food and oxygen had to be added to what was produced. Godson said, "we were constantly making improvements to things that were going on down there and trying to optimise my living conditions." By tweaking the conditions, and adding extra fans, the oxygen output of the algae was increased, which could lead to a longer experiment in the future, or one with more inhabitants. :: ABC News...

Eugenia Beirer is the coordinator of a group of artists collaborating in the UK called 'Beyond The Free Market' (BTFM), they launched the Free Market Kitchen in Chelsea, challenging global issues of waste, capitalism and globalisation by scavenging food, and setting up a cooking co-op where anybody can join in and share in the wealth. We at TreeHugger admire those who take part in such waste prevention activities. Call it what you will food foraging, gleaning, dumpster diving, freeganism or fallen fruit, its free food that would otherwise be going to waste. Find out more about the collaborative kitchen and 'skipping' tours after the jump....

We’re all aware that people with allergies to nuts must be particularly careful around them because they can prove to trigger a fatal reaction. In fact, the kids in my school have a designated “Peanut Free” table just to keep them from any possible danger. But did you know that the number of young children with peanut allergies literally doubled between 1997 and 2002, according to a survey conducted in 2003? In fact, there are about 2.2 million U.S. school-age children who have food allergies, and roughly 1 out of 17 children under the age of 3 has a food allergy as well according to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network. And it’s not just in the U.S. either, as children's allergies across the board from asthma and allergic skin diseases to hay fever and allergies to eggs, wheat and dairy products have increased worldwide according to a survey released in August 2006 that looked at more than 700,000 children in 56 countries since 1991. Now that’s comprehensive! And while the reasons for the troubling increase are unclear for the moment, there are a number of ideas about the ways in which humans are impacting our environment that could be to blame......

This is a good news item about US corporations doing the right thing without waiting to be told to do it by the government; for example, Wal-Mart and Proctor and Gamble, respectively, have pushed for and made cleaning product formulation changes for the benefit of the environment and human health. What motived these changes? Via NewsDay:- "Scientists are suggesting a common cause for two seemingly unrelated events, the feminization of fish in Jamaica Bay [New York and Long Island USA], where the former 50-50 male-to-female ratio has all but disappeared, and enlarged breasts in young boys. The common factor: endocrine disruptors, chemicals found in detergents, cosmetics and household and [commercial cleaners]. The laundry detergent additive [NPE] belongs to a family of "surfactants," chemicals that lift dirt and help detergents and cleaning agents do a better job of stain removal. Makers of domestic and industrial cleaners say NPEs are virtually unbeatable in the way they remove dirt...But, support for NPE-containing products is eroding... Wal-Mart Corp., for example, is discouraging the use of NPEs in cleaning agents it sells and has asked suppliers to find alternatives."...

In the developed world, we perceive renewable energy technologies as the means of moving us away from pollution-spewing sources of electricity generation. In many parts of the developing world, though, renewables often provide the most efficient means of producing power in places that have never had it. In the Comunidad Nueva Alianza, a small village in El Palmar, Guatemala, the recent installation of a micro-hydro system now provides electricity to 40 households for the first time ever. The project was completed by XelaTeco, a business incubated in 2005 by the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group. AIDG points to XelaTeco as their first success in supporting the creation of a business in the developing world that "...[provides] the rural poor with renewable energy and clean technologies that meet their basic needs." According to AIDG's press release,...

As Earth Day draws ever nearer, we'll focus on ways to save the planet some trouble with some of the things that we all use just about every day: personal electronics. Computers, batteries, radios and the like can really add up when it comes to energy use and e-waste; here are some ways to keep connected while keeping your gadgets' footprint small. 1) Check out our top five tips for reducing computer energy use; if you're shopping for a new one, take a peek at Asus' bamboo notebook (the greenest laptop yet?) and watch for RoHS and EPEAT certifications, and when your through with your 'puter, be sure to recycle it. 2) When it comes to batteries, rechargeables are the way to go for alkaline; read this guide to learn more about caring for other rechargeables (like the one in your cell phone). 3) Crank power can replace many common plug-in chargers; we picked a handful that include wind-up cell phone chargers, remotes, flashlights and radios. XM is reportedly working on a wind-up satellite radio , and some even combine functionality, like this cell phone/flashlight combo. 4) For greener listening, speakers like these hemp cone jobs, Panasonic's bamboo speakers, Pioneer's reclaimed whiskey-barrel speakers and these crazy gourd speakers are just a few of the options available for the discerning green music fan. Check out our guide to How to Green Your Electronics for more tips on green gadgetry, and stay tuned for more ideas for a greener life in preparation for Earth Day....

The announcement came a year ago that Wal-Mart was going organic. There was much controversy around the issue and many of you wrote in to tell us your thoughts. Now it seems the retailer may be taking a step backward and a number of organic farmers across the country say that Wal-Mart has backed off of aggressive plans to offer more organic foods. "Is organic really compatible with the Wal-Mart approach? We're finding out that it's not," says Jim Riddle, organic outreach coordinator and guest lecturer at the University of Minnesota. From the article in Business Week: “The retailer's existing customers tend to be very price-conscious and may not be willing to pay a premium for organic foods. On the other hand, consumers who go to stores like Whole Foods and Wild Oats are less price-sensitive and may not be lured to Wal-Mart with low prices. ‘The Whole Foods customer is walking in there to buy organic and is more concerned about how the fruit was farmed,’ says Peter Ricker, and apple farmer in Maine, ‘but the Wal-Mart customer is used to shopping with a calculator.’” Farmers like Ricker are now dealing with the fallout from Wal-Mart's faltering demand. He has decided to pare back his organic apple farm, from 150 acres to 120 acres. Read more at ::Business Week...

Attention interior designers: the Ample Sample 2007 design competition is coming, and with it, an opportunity to turn unused carpet samples into something a little more useful. Tricycle has teamed up with Bentley Prince Street (featured here and here on TreeHugger) and Floor Focus magazine to sponsor the design competition, which challenges designers to use some of the 700,000+ carpet samples that will ship this year for something other than a dust collector after they've helped an interior designer or architect pick the perfect carpet. In every interior design firm's resource library, a shelf is overflowing with carpet samples. Rethink these beautiful, fashion-forward textiles... they aren't trash, destined for the dumpster: they're design materials. Entrants are challenged to create a design that will transform these textiles into a beautiful and/or functional fixture, piece of furniture... or any interior product you dream up. The winners will be promoted at NeoCon World's Trade Fair in Chicago (in June -- see our coverage of last year's event here), in Floor Focus magazine, and have blueprints of their design posted for free download by forward-thinking designers around the world. Better hurry, though; all designs must be received by May 15. ::Ample Sample via ::Core77 and tipster Andrea...

Many years ago I took the architects grand tour of Europe and ended up in Barcelona with a week to go before my plane out, sixty bucks in my pocket and no credit card. I spent fifty for a week in a cheap hotel with breakfast, five on an old penguin of War and Peace, and headed off to Antoni Gaudi's Parc Guell to read and pass the time. When I read Megan Prusynki's wonderful post at Green Options it all came back to me. I knew nothing about green then, yet everything she says seems so obvious and true when looking back at the days I spent poring over every inch. Megan says

Like many other structures in Gaudi's work, the organic forms all over Park Guell were inspired by nature. The bench on top of a room of columns undulates like ocean waves. Arched pathways throughout the park are shaped like cresting waves with columns that look like tornados, and they utilize the area's stones and clay in their construction . Gaudi used local materials in the construction of the park's paths and columns, and also kept as much natural vegetation in the park as possible. He was very interested in integrating the park's structures and pathways with the surrounding natural environment, and seems to architecturalize the natural environment and blend the man-made and natural elements together, much like his other works naturalized the urban landscape.

Gaudi dressed shabbily, walked everywhere, and ultimately was hit by a steetcar and died in a paupers hospital because nobody recognized him. So green architects and bicyclists everywhere, carry ID. Green Options...

Architects are getting better at rainwater collection, but this house on a drought-stricken Washington ranch has been designed by Peter Macapia, the principal of Brooklyn-based Design Office for Research and Architecture (DORA), to be a water collection machine. There is a lot of snow in winter but long, hot and dry summers, so the house is built into the side of the hill, with a system of rock and aggregate filled watercourses that end up on the roof, which acts as a catchment system and filter before the water is stored in tanks beneath the house. The tanks act as storage, and as an evaporative cooling system in summer. ::Ranch House, one of a series of unbuilt houses online at ::Architectural Record. The Record Houses, including the ::Loblolly House and ::Christ Church Tower are now available online as well. ...

We have a such an embarrassing long backlog of posts that many just get left behind. But here’s one that popped its head up for a second attempt. Lloyd alluded to it earlier by referencing Joel Makower’s take. Basically, Timberland earlier this year announced that they would be rolling out a Green Index label for their footwear line, along the lines of food nutrition labels. At this stage only 2 models of shoe are rated, though all footwear (and clothes) are scheduled to be labelled by 2009. The Greenscape sneaker [shown above right] scores 3.5, where 1 is ‘ideal pupil’ and 10 might infer ‘disruptive student, needs to apply himself more.’ The Green Index is a aggregate of Environmental and Community Impact, plus Manufacturing location. While the company liken their rankings to the Energy Star ratings, this has been treated with circumspection by various commentators, because that energy scheme helps compares models across many brands, whereas the Green Index only rates Timberland product. Although last month, when it won Backpacker Magazines’ 2007 Editors' Choice Green Award, the company said, “Our hope is that other like-minded companies will join us in developing an industry-wide index for comparing the environmental impacts of our design choices and we also hope to inspire consumers to ask questions, and make informed decisions about their purchases.” ...

Junk mail has that name for a reason; TreeHugger definitely thinks that it's earned the moniker for repeatedly showing up in mailboxes everywhere without permission. For Earth Day, why not pledge to stop it? It's easy to do with organizations like 41pounds, who pledge to cut your junk mail back by 80 - 95%. Why the name 41pounds? Because that's how much junk mail the average adult receives each year, from the credit card offers to the sweepstakes entries and catalogs, and it really adds up; in wasted time, paper, water and energy. More than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail, and 42% of timber harvested in the US becomes pulpwood for paper. More than 62 billion pieces (4 million tons) of junk mail are produced each year, wasting 28 billion gallons of water between production and recycling. After all this, 44% of it goes to the landfill unopened. Somewhat similar to greendimes, 41pounds offers to help cut back on all this waste by contacting 20 to 30 direct marketing companies and catalog companies and instructing them to remove your name from their distribution lists. This includes almost all credit card offers, coupon mailers, sweepstakes entries, magazine offers and insurance promotions, as well as any catalogs you specify (and, because some direct marketing companies require your original signature on the unsubscribe request, they send you several stamped, pre-addressed postcards that you sign and mail). A $41 subscription gets you five years of freedom from junk mail; if it should start showing up again while your subscription is still active, just let 41pounds know, and they'll take care of it, free of charge. By signing up for their service (and ditching junk mail for five years), they figure you'll conserve 1.7 trees and 700 gallons of water, and prevent 460 pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. "More than 1/3" of the fee goes to support a non-profit of your choice; included on their list of supported organizations are American Forests, Trees for the Future and Friends of the Urban Forest, along with more tree-friendly and other green and community nonprofits. Learn more about their service, and sign up, at their website. ::41pounds...

Just back from the natural products europe and organic products europe fair and feeling sick. Everyone was offering samples of their wares and this treehugger tried most of them--in the interests of research, of course. Several emerging themes were evident and organic chocolate making was a big one. Started off with chocolate covered pumpkin seeds, soya beans and raisins by the Organic Seed & Bean Company--a yummy dark chocolate treat, then there was Nourish ( filled with Omega 3--and odd tasting), New Tree(very good), Booja Booja, Chocolate Alchemist, Biofair--you get the picture. There are quite a few new interesting rice crackers with different spicy flavours, one of the nicest, Clearspring, gave out a nice wooden spoon as well. A new (to me) grain, Kamut, popped up in several stands. It originates from an ancient Egyptian grain, is related to durum, and is used in cake, bread and cookies. Grown in Saskatchewan now (far from Egypt), it tastes bland but bread-like. Sharyn Wortman from Today Was Fun Tea was manning her booth herself, which is pretty impressive for a busy businesswoman and she was charming. Finland was there with lingonberry and cloudberry jams. Wales had organic milk, butter and cream and Holland had strange “meats”. There were too many different face creams and cosmetics to begin to describe and or figure out. Suffice to say that all of them promised the world… Ditto the natural medicines and vitamins. Organic cotton towels and sheets were popular. Liv had beautiful organic sheets and pillow cases from India. Just looking at True Earth’s organic lavender eye pillows was sleep inducing. Children’s clothing is big: the Germans had some adorable brands; there were sweet little booties made out of vegetable tanned nappa leather and tons of organic tee-shirts and dolls. Best booth, pictured above, by Viridian Nutrition, had all the shelving, chairs and tables made of cardboard. And for the dog lovers: heart-shaped organic dog biscuits. Truly something for everyone at the fair. :: natural products...

It is easy to have a smaller footprint on this planet when you live in a small space, but it sometimes gets crowded. For those short on space but long on bucks, We offer the Obelisk stackable chairs, made from aluminum and woven polyethylene. "This five piece set includes four cushioned chairs and a table that can be stacked to form an 8 ft. obelisk that you will want to keep on display at all times." Well you really have no choice, where would you put it? Available from ::Janus et Cie through ::HGTV marketplace for only $ 8,922. Via ::Splurch and ::uber-review...

It appears that this author’s prediction for 2007 may just be coming true. More and more community groups are springing up to take on the environmental challenges that face us, certainly if the UK is anything to go by. We’ve already heard about the residents of Chew Magna, and their efforts to ‘Go Zero’ here and here, and about the growing trend of Transition Towns that are aiming to wean themselves off fossil fuels. Now we hear from the BBC about a conference of community representatives from around the country, who are looking to learn from the example of Ashton Hayes, a community which we also covered here, and which is aiming to be Britain’s first carbon neutral town. Groups represented at the conference ranged from the Brilley Mountain eco project in Herefordshire, representing a community of just 330 people, to Going Carbon Neutral Stirling, which is applying for a £1m grant (approx. US$2m) to tackle the carbon footprint of Stirling’s population of 90,000. The BBC’s David Ward described the scene as being not unlike a ‘polite revivalist meeting’: ...

Eurolaces, out of California, believe they are the first company to offer 100% certified machine-made macramé style organic cotton lace trim for apparel, curtains, etc. Strong organic cotton thread is sewn to a cellulose backing, which is later melted away by the application of hot water. Normally backings are removed by boiling, but this method requires the threads to be protected from the extremes of heat with additional chemicals. The Eurolaces process, adopted by their family run factory in Slovenia, avoids such additives ensuring the cotton remains organic from seed to finished product. Especially as they have set aside a special production room for the organic line, so it does not bump into the chemical residues found in their lines of polyester lace. Although provided in its natural ecru colour, the lace is suitable for dyeing, or hydrogen peroxide bleaching. ::Eurolaces....

I love Modern Mechanix, the site that digs through all those old Pop Sci's and Pop Mechs and finds cool things that resonate today. Here is a 1932 idea for electricity free cooling that might work in Canada and the northern states, now it would be called "Geothermal Cooling." "A COUNTERWEIGHT on one end, and a cylindrical container on the other end of a steel rope running over two pulleys supported on a pole, makes up the major portion of an ingenious contrivance for cooling foods. The container, shown in the accompanying photo, fits loosely into a seven-foot hole in the ground lined with a steel casing. It has three shelves, and a door closes it off from the outside. Three iron rods about four feet long run from the top of this “cooler” container to the sustaining end of the rope or cable. At the point where these rods are connected there is a large circular cover securely fastened. As the cooler is eased downward into the casing in the ground this cover settles over the brim of the casing, and closes it off from the outside. The photograph shows the cover within a few inches of the brim, the cooler being inside the casing. This cover and the fact that the container is suspended by it several inches above the bottom of the hole, keeps rodents, dirt, and water out of the cooler. The counterweight keeps the device stationary at any level it is moved to." ::Modern Mechanix...

Japanese retailer UNIQLO has joined the small band of companies showing some producer responsibility and is taking back used clothing for reuse and recycling. Since 2001 they have been collecting fleece wear and converting it into fuel for power generation; now they are accepting everything, twice a year at season change. In the trial, 140,000 items were collected, 92% was suitable for additional use and donated to refugee camps in Thailand and Nepal, 6% was converted into fuel for power generation and 2% was recycled into insulation and work gloves. We hope they will do the same thing at their new Soho Store. PDF with more detail here via ::Japan for Sustainability...

Organic veggies make us all happier. They're safer, use fewer petrochemicals and have a smaller carbon footprint. But how do we know that vegetables with that organic label are truly organic? Well, generally some government employee goes to a farm every once in a while and makes sure that the producer is following all the organic standards. Generally, the system works pretty well. But if there's concern that a producer is only following organic protocols occasionally, there aren't many ways to catch them in the act. Researchers at the University of East Anglia in Norwich have created a new test that can detect very subtle differences between vegetables grown organically and non-organically. The test actually detects nitrogen isotopes within the plant, so there's no way to wash off the evidence. The process isn't meant to replace inspection, but it is a great backup is fraud is suspected. And as the market for organic products grow, it's important to be able to detect the differences between conventional and organic produce. Because a few perfectly beautiful apples covered in petrochemical pesticides can ruin the whole bunch. ::Discovery.com...

Remember, you read it here first. ::DK report via ::Desmogblog...

It seems like we're over the hump when it comes to convincing influential consumers that green is sexy. You know about all of the green magazine issues and green fashion events. Now we're at that critical point where "green" needs to become integrated into our life-long consumer expectations, have actual meaning, and avoid becoming a passing fancy. This is why features like Style.com's spring Earth Friendly Guide to Green Fashion make me nervous. For fashion in particular, until we have a common vocabulary and system of standards, we have to go by what's not green. For instance, adding wooden stones to a leather clutch? Doesn't make it green. Canvas tie-back wedges? If the canvas comes from conventional cotton: not green. We love seeing organic Linda Loudermilk and Levi's, but a lot of the rest leave giant questions marks. Keep your eyes open as editors cast a wide, green net, and look for help from our How to Green Your Wardrobe. ::Style.com 50 Ways to be Green...

Last week we mentioned that looking for eco design at the Milan Furniture Fair might be like looking for needles in a haystack. However we didn't say we weren't prepared to look for those needles! After recommending the opening of the Sofar Sonear showroom during the Salone, we have found another exhibit that should be worth a browse. Shunju Primaverautunno is, according to my terrible translation from Italian, a show featuring 50 new eco-design products to furnish your home. One of the most intriguing products is Ecocarat, a sustainable ceramic tile from the Japanese company Inax. They are said to be the first breathable tiles which can absorb smells, toxins and maintain the humidity levels in a room. Other products include the Adacto radiant heating system from Project Climat and a recycled denim and rubber inner tube upholstery project from 2CWorkshop. My limited Italian won't stretch much further than this I am afraid, so if anyone in Milan can go along and find out what the other 47 new products are we'd love to hear about them! The opening party is tomorrow night from 6pm. Shunju Primaverautunno: Spazio30, Viale Vittorio Veneto, 30, 10.00 - 22.30 daily....

The Gray Lady is now the proud operator of a Sprinter plug-in hybrid from DaimlerChrysler, the first medium-duty plug-in vehicle to get fleet testing on the East Coast. As part of a joint effort between the Times, DaimlerChrysler, the New York Power Authority, the Electric Power Research Institute, and Con Edison, this big plug-in will run routes between a printing press in Queens and headquarters in midtown, as well as trips to Jersey for fresh air and exercise. For those that aren’t familiar, a plug-in hybrid vehicle is like a typical hybrid, but has a beefed up battery pack that allows it to travel a certain distance on electric power alone (this is what you probably wish the Prius would do during those few blissful seconds of acceleration before the gas motor kicks in). The Sprinter will run in electric mode for about 20 miles, after which it will start behaving like a regular hybrid with its battery pack and diesel motor working together. ...

Question: I need to paint the inside of my house, but don’t want to use the traditional paints, which I know have many chemicals. Are there chemical-free alternatives? Response: Traditional household paints contain many chemicals, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are a large group of carbon-based chemicals that are volatile, meaning that they like to exist as a gas. The type and amount of VOCs in a household paint generally varies with the type and brand of paint, but traditional household paints generally contain many VOCs, including benzene, formaldehyde, and toluene. Some of these VOCs have been linked in scientific studies to bad health outcomes, including eye, nose and throat irritation, nauseau, headaches, and even cancer. Because VOCs are volatile, they can “off-gas” from the walls into the air as the paint is applied or as it dries. This, combined with the fact that the paint is usually applied to a large area, can cause people living or spending time in these freshly painted homes to have exposures to VOCs that are much greater than normal – as much as 1000 times greater. These potentially large exposures – and resulting smells, headaches, and other potential health effects -- cause many (including you!) to look for lower VOC or chemical-free paints. ...

The upmarket London department store, Harrods, have begun offering a gardening service for allotment owners who don't want to get their hands dirty. If you're unfamiliar with allotments, they are small patches of government owned urban land that are rented to the public for a small monthly cost. People can use these areas to grow their own fruit and vegetables. Like most things at Harrods though, this service is not cheap. A £300 initial consultancy is required, and further work starts at £1100 ($600 and $2200 respectively). You can also buy tools there, should you want to get involved yourself, with their £780 ($1560) sterling silver garden fork a particular bargain....

Dave Douglas (TH interview here), is the VP of eco-responsibility at Sun Microsystems and was recently featured on CNN Money as well. Sun is one of those vendors that everyone has heard about but no one outside of IT really knows what they do; this is primarily because they have not catered to the consumer market (although they do have desktops for sale, some of them using the power of a night light). It's unfortunate because they have had a great green computing program for some time. Sun's position on green computing is well thought out and deep - read their sustainability paper to get a sense of their profound strategy. They invented novel items like the black box, a trailer full of servers that you can cart around and provide computing where you need it. Sun also bought a tape archiving company a few years ago, based on the (very practical) fact that tape is far more energy efficient than digital archiving. And 55 percent of their employees don't even have an office, which saved them 67.8 million in real estate costs in 2006. Add those items to the fact that Sun recycles 99.7 of all their returned product materials in California, and you might get the sense that they are really doing something new. ...

Photo credit: Getty Images Humans tend to forget that we're one in a million—one in a million species on the planet, that is. A six-year-old international scientific effort to catalog every known living organism, has already passed the 1 million mark. The 3,000 scientists involved hope to complete their listings by 2011, with an anticipated 1.75 million species described. Even after two centuries of work by biologists, and vigorous biodiversity conservation efforts, there is currently no "comprehensive catalog" of all known species on Earth, according to Thomas M. Orrell, a biologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Considering that we're in the middle of a mass-extinction crisis, let's hope this comes to pass before the scientists have almost zilch to catalog. (Fossil species from the past are not included in the project.) :: USA Today...

Thanks to the Green Apple Music and Arts Festival, thousands of Americans in New York, San Francisco and Chicago will celebrate Earth Day weekend with music! Join artists such as Dave Matthews, Willie Nelson, The Decemberists, The English Beat and the Kaiser Chiefs in what promises to be the biggest Earth Day party in the nation for the second year running. Treehugger will be in all three cities and we'd love to meet you so come check us out! With hundreds of live acts to choose from you'll be sure to find something to get into the Earth Day spirit! Among the free events on Earth Day, April 22, are performances in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park by legendary Grateful Dead vocalist Bob Weir and his band Ratdog, and Stephen Marley featuring Junior Gong and The Greyboy AllStars. At Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo performances by kids are planned including one by The Blisters, featuring Sam and Spencer, the children of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. In New York's Central Park, children's act The Laurie Berkner Band with Susie Lampert and Adam Bernstein are slated to perform. ...

STOSS INC./Brown + Storey Architects/ZAS Architects For a century Toronto has worked hard to lay tracks, build walls of highways and condos, pave airports and leak oil, anything that can be conceived to destroy the waterfront and the harbour. Now they are trying to fix this, and a series of competitions have been held to deal with different parts of the waterfront. The latest, the Don Portlands, was unveiled last night. It is exciting to see two hundred people come out to look at architecture and design, in one of Toronto's most spectacular spaces, the Galleria designed by Santiago Calatrava. Then we got to see four schemes that any TreeHugger would love; they all clean the river with natural remediation; green roofs and water reclamation on every building; parks, bike trails, playgrounds but also people, dense urban development, places to live by the water. They also all have people in canoes and Gordian Knots. Four teams had been short listed from twenty-nine entries and they chose very well....

A gentle reminder for green entertainment enthusiasts: put a post-it on your TV, set your TiVo or call a friend with cable, because Sundance Channel's The Green is coming to a television near you ~~tomorrow~~ today, Tuesday, April 17 at 9 pm. Reflecting the current tipping point in public awareness about ecological issues and the trend toward environmentally sustainable approaches to modern living, the block of programming is a television first and promises groundbreaking programming about green living and working in a wide range of industries, from the original series, "Big Ideas for a Small Planet," to documentary television premieres and to ECOISTS and ECOBIZ (bite-size profiles on eco-conscious celebrities & entrepreneurs). For a free sneak peak, you can get a free download the first episode of "Big Ideas for a Small Planet" on iTunes until the show airs ~~tomorrow~~ tonight. Visit The Green minisite to learn more about what you can watch every Tuesday, and read TreeHugger's Sundance Channel blog for daily green tidbits. Remember: Tuesday night (that's tonight!), 9 pm, Sundance Channel; we'll be watching and we hope you will, too. ::Sundance Channel's The Green minisite Update: TreeHugger's own (and co-host of The Green) Simran Sethi will be chatting on Sundance's Second Life island each week at 10 pm EDT/7 pm SLT (Second Life Time). This week's topic (along with The Green television programming) is Fuel: How can we cut back on carbs (carbon emissions)? Take a peek at the Sundance Channel Second Life Island for more. Update #2: Wow, Simran is everywhere this week. She'll be on Oprah this coming Friday, April 20, to chat about The Green. Tune in to Oprah's website to learn more about the show and to see when it's on in your viewing area....

Al Gore's got an Oscar. More than 1,000 groups across the country rallied for Climate Change awareness this past Saturday during the grassroots Step It Up 2007 campaign. Earth Day is right around the corner. What better time to run an updated version of the Slate/TreeHugger Green Challenge? If you're new to the idea of a carbon diet, welcome. If you participated in the Challenge last fall, welcome back. We know our first effort wasn't perfect, and thanks to your feedback about the first run, we've made some changes. This time, the Green Challenge will take place over seven weeks, with brief weekly quizzes (and no monster exams at the beginning or end). You'll still of course have the chance to shed carbon pounds by making pledges to reduce your footprint, and at the end of the Challenge, we'll compile your overall results. You can think of the new and improved Challenge as a diet--if you've got a heavy carbon load--or as an upkeep program to keep you committed to staying slim. The Green Challenge Starts again today, with our Transportation segment. We hope you'll cruise over and check it out. ::Slate/TreeHugger Green Challenge Intro ::Transportation...

Cleaning products are everywhere in our homes, and get everywhere when we use them; on our dishes, countertops, floors, hands...the list goes on and on. They're so pervasive that we follow this general rule: if you don't want it on your skin or in your body, don't use it. Thankfully, there is a large (and growing ever larger) contingent of green cleaning products, strategies and ideas to help you keep your house clean and green. 1) Products from Seventh Generation, Method, B_E_E and Ecover are just a few that eschew toxics and nasty chemicals in favor of essential oils and earth-friendly ingredients. Actor Ed Begley even has an eco-friendly cleaning product worthy of the prestigious Cradle to Cradle seal of approval. 2) If you don't have time to clean up yourself, we've seen a growing trend in eco-friendly home cleaning services that clean your house without leaving toxics behind. 3) These natural scrubbers take a tough, green approach to cleaning dishes and last longer than their plastic counterparts. 4) Taking a DIY approach to cleaning clogged drains could save you from busting out the caustic drain cleaner. 5) When it comes to dry cleaning your clothes, there are greener alternatives that stays away from the standard solvent in favor of liquid carbon dioxide and other less harmful cleaners. Learn more at TreeHugger's How to Green Your Cleaning guide, and stay tuned for more tips to help you go green and get ready for Earth Day....

Global Warming seems to be everywhere these days, with more information reaching more people (thanks to audiovisuals like An Inconvenient Truth and sites like TreeHugger), and moreover, scientific consensus (check our coverage of the IPCC report here, and here on Latin America) that the problem is real and happening as we speak. Well, in this case it got to the most southernmost city of the planet: Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. In that place, from March 30th until April 29th more than 100 artists from 25 countries have gathered under the theme Circularity of Time and its Metaphors, Ecological Emergencies, Urban Topographies, and What Other World is Possible? “This inaugural edition brings the Argentine Patagonia to the forefront, and questions the future of regions such as Antarctica or Greenland, which can no longer be seen as utopian places”, say the organizers. “It is not by chance that the 1st End of the World Biennale takes place at the South Pole: from the last city of the planet, it looks at the rest of the earth from a privileged point of view, opens the way for new stances and promotes a deeper understanding of the natural world”. Check what the work shown above means and the list of artists participating in the extended....

May is kitchen month at House & Garden magazine, and nestled between style ideas from Giorgio Armani and Isaac Mizrahi are some pretty good ideas for healthy kitchens and green style at home. The "Eco Chic" column (page 66) features ideas to cook green, save energy and reuse as much as possible; while most of the tips (like saving water with smart dishwashing, saving energy with smart appliances and giving organic waste a second life with composting) won't be new to dedicated TreeHuggers, it's a good collection of ideas for those just started going green in the kitchen. Sue Halpern and Bill McKibben offer the solar oven/solar cooker option (page 68) as a summer alternative to the wall oven that's becoming increasingly mainstream because folks are discovering that cooking with the sun rewards patience with intense (but not overpowering) and fresh flavors that traditional cooking simply cannot deliver. Page 142 offers some trade secrets for maximizing space in small kitchens, including Joe Colombo's MiniKitchen, and page 176 offers a beautiful example (and some handy tips) to organic gardening, including when to plant, where to plant and how to keep things growing while keeping the planet's needs in mind. There's lots more in the print version, and more green can be found at the Green Living section of houseandgarden.com. ::House & Garden magazine...

Announced a while back and due to be available by about June 07 are Osprey’s Resource series of packs and courier bags. 100% recycled PET (polyester) fabric from the likes of recycled drink bottles is utilised for the main body fabric, binding tape, webbing and mesh pockets. The mesh on the back panel is 60% recycled, while the plastic buckles are made of recycled post-industrial (factory production) waste. All up this gives the bags a recycled content of some 70% and roughly 80-85% by weight. In one review it was hinted Osprey were almost able to include recycled zippers but maybe the quality was quite there yet. This is the first time Osprey have endeavoured to produce a whole line with high recycled content but they have been using recycled HDPE plastic (the stuff in milk jugs) for their internal framesheets for over a decade. As well as sewing ‘Leave No Trace’ principle tags into their backpacks. In a related move, the company has teamed with Mountain Fund, a group seeking to reduce the poverty of mountain communities around the world, to create the Pass on the Passion program. Donate your old pack so it can be used by a variety initiatives like women’s training in Nepal or Uganda, porters in Tanzania, urban youth at risk outdoor programs in the US, or even boy scouts in Mexico. Aside from doing good, you score a 10% discount on a new Osprey pack purchase. ::Osprey. ...

We picked up the new issue of ELLE Magazine only to find that it was yet another “green issue” to hit the newsstands. But one thing that ELLE decided to do this month for their second annual "green issue" that others haven’t, in honor of Earth Day, is to begin their own “Green Awards.” Recognizing people like Al Gore, Heidi Cullen and Linda Loudermilk, the awards also include Yale University (“for practicing what it teaches”), the CF Bulb (“for evolving”) and the SOS/Live Earth concert (“for rocking our world”). With Laurie David and Danny Seo as guest editors, the May issue of ELLE also includes environmental topics, eco fashion and beauty tips, interviews with celebrities such as Sheryl Crow (promoting her Stop Global Warming College Tour with David) and features on Orlando Bloom and Julia Roberts. We love that “green” is hitting the mainstream media and how readers are catching on. And with so much “green” information to write about, many other awards to be given (ahem) and so much more that is sure to come in the upcoming year, we’re asking these glossies: why not make “green” a regular column in your magazine? ::ELLE Related: John Hardy is Offsetting Print Advertising, Vanity Fair, Outside, Domino, Glamour...

What to do when you recognize the fact that the world’s understanding of sustainability is changing much faster than the curriculum being taught in it’s schools? Well, starting a non-profit that focuses on the issue is what some folks have done by putting together The Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation. Their vision is to bring about enduring institutional change to education by promoting sustainability as a core K-12 learning framework. Hmmm… sound like a “bright idea” to anyone? They go on to say that through early education they believe we can equip students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will lead to a sustainable future for everyone. Currently focused in New York State, they go about the process by collaborating with school districts and teachers to raise awareness of sustainable development and to help incorporate it into K-12 education programs. According to their website, “Sustainability education (SE) infuses curriculum and instruction with concepts that link economic prosperity, ecosystems restoration, and social stability.” So what exactly are they currently working on? How about the 2007 Annual Students for a Sustainable Future EXPO being held next Thursday, April 26, 2007 at Pace University in Pleasantville, New York. The event already has over 850 students scheduled to attend, and the final count should be well over 1000 which sounds like it should make for an action packed event. And with last years EXPO featuring people like Summer Rayne Oakes(pictured above) and Dr. Paul Mankiewicz of The Gaia Institute along with everything from solar and wind specialists to groups concerned about fair-trade agriculture, organic clothing lines, and even a presentation on Eco-Investing by a representative of Smith Barney; I’m betting that the kids headed to EXPO 2007 are in for an eye-opening experience!...

Q Collection, featured here, here and here as one of TreeHugger's Best of Sustainable Designers, has always been on of our favorites when it comes to combining sustainability and design. Their ability to combine a modern sensibility with materials that consider the health of the planet and the health of consumers has always impressed us, so it's exciting to hear that they'll be launching a line of furniture and bedding for little TreeHuggers next month at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF). Q Collection Junior will be produced with the same rigorous attention to eco-details given to their current products, including zero- or low-VOC finishes, non-toxic, water-based, formaldehyde-free glues, low-impact, non-toxic, heavy metal-free fabric dyes on 100% organic cotton. They'll use Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified or locally-sourced solid hardwoods, and everything will be handmade in the US at a price point that's on par with other US-made children’s furniture. We're excited to see that there will be a new healthy, green option for families, because it's never too early to start kids living green and looking good. Stay tuned for more info (and images) coming next month; to get more details from Q Collection as they become available, register for updates on their splash/registration page. ::Q Collection Junior Update: hit the jump for more details on the look and feel of the line....

Whole Foods, the huge American organic supermarket chain, is coming to London and the knives are out. Located in a former art deco department store (pictured), their 80,000 sq.ft Kensington shop is in the midst of an area littered with green celebrities ( Stella, Gwyneth and Sienna). Many North American corporations, CEO's (and ex-pats) have learned to their dismay that while english is spoken here, the words don't mean quite the same. The British are more indirect than we are, it is quite a closed society and they are charmingly cynical. The word is that the Americans are coming in with a big bang but the organic community is not welcoming them with open arms. The English supermarkets have been cultivating their organic farm connections for years and have sealed up contracts with them. There is already a shortage of organic food to go around since the existing demand is growing by 25% a year. Meat and dairy are already hard to find and the organic industry here is small and very local as opposed to the mass-production in the US. British organic standards are higher than those in the US so some UK organic farmers do not want to jeopardize their purity and there are some foods sold in the US that wouldn't qualify as organic here. Supposedly Whole Foods plan to ship what they can’t get here from the US but this is denied. Whole Foods insist that they are sourcing everything locally. However, one report says that they consider a 200 mile radius to be local—which could mean France. One final problem: Tesco has already copyrighted the name “Wholefoods” and launched their own range of food. So Whole Foods will have to sell their own brand food as Fresh & Wild instead. Yankee go home or sour grapes? Time will tell—the store opens June 6. :: Evening Standard...

There is so much in the Azure Green Revolution issue that we just have to stop. The Towers of Wind Power covers buildings like Miami's COR, China's SOP Pearl River Tower, London's Alsop Palestra, and Paris' Mayne Phare. All wind powered and all seen in TreeHugger. Throw in "Any colour you want, as long as its green" about cars and its Material World pages which are a great directory of sources for photovoltaics, wave and tidal power, solar water heating, geothermal and wind power. Must have issue from ::Azure...

Talk about tough acts to follow. Raymond Moriyama designed the first building here in 1964; it held up so well that it won a 25 year award from the Ontario Association of Architects. Jerome Markson added on on in 1976; Now Montgomery Sisam Architects has planted a LEED silver addition. Pamela Young in Azure says "Montgomery Sisam has reshaped the complex and grafted new construction onto it in ways that eloquently embody the institution's empahsis on education, inclusiveness and sustainablility." Its got a big green roof with native vegetation, special fritted glass that screens out 70% of the heat gain, water conserving fixtures and energy efficient lighting. It scored right off the LEED chart for minimizing construction waste- "We diverted 90% of the demolition materials from landfill sites" says David Sisam. "We reused most of it, and much of what we didn't reuse went off to recycling"::Toronto Botanical Gardens via ::Azure...

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We spent quite a lot of our time spreading the word about Step It Up 2007, so we figured we'd best show up ourselves. In the end, over 1400 events were held across the country to put pressure on congress to cut CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050. While the turn out at many events was perhaps surprisingly small, given the huge nature of the problem, the collective numbers must add up (we are yet to see an estimate), and we were proud to have played a part. The decentralized, community focussed nature of these events also lead to huge amounts of coverage in the national, local and regional press. Pictured here are TreeHuggers Celine Ruben-Salama, Graham Hill and Olga Sasplugas, and they are blessed with the company of the one and only Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. These guys met up to attend the Sea of People event in NYC, where over 1500 people turned up. Bill Mcgibben and Congressman Anthony Wiener spoke. Elsewhere in the country there were hikes, talks, sales of compact flourescent lightbulbs, and even an under water protest by scuba divers. A growing list of action reports can be found here. TreeHuggers were to be found at plenty of other events around the country too. Details below the fold. And don't forget to use the comments box to tell us about your experiences! ...

Over at Inhabitat, Bob Ellenberg, an experienced builder and contributor, asks the question. He expresses "frustration with all of the prefab housing companies jumping on the eco bandwagon and claiming their products are green simply because they are prefabricated" and "some of the claims I see being made relative to overall sustainability of prefab houses are overstated and might even be considered “Green-Washing.” At Green Options, Philip picks up the story and asks "How "green" is prefab building, and should it be embraced by those who want a greener building?" Preston of Jetson Green responds with "The other thing we can't forget about prefabs is that they look great. There's a segment of the population that likes the modern look and wants them to be green in a big way." Here is my contribution to the debate: 99.99% of prefab buildings look like crap, are wall to wall vinyl, use unsustainable materials and leak energy like sieves. From Fort MacMurray to New Orleans, prefabs provide substandard housing for millions who deserve better. ...

We always say that the key to sustainability is living with less, and that good design is the key to doing it happily and comfortably. As proof, we turn to Apartment Therapy, which runs a competition with prizes from Design within Reach, for the smallest, coolest apartments. Maximum size is 650 square feet and the contestants have to have designed it themselves, though as an architect I have learned that the client designed every house I did that turned out well and I designed every one that was a bust. Last year the winner popped out at you- David and Im's onespace was just spectacular. (it is in Dwell Magazine this month, coverage coming soon) This year nothing quite has the instant wow. I have looked at them all and like Eric and Ammo's 390 square foot Hollywood studio apartment with its very obvious bed in the living room, no pretence of grandeur here, but l like the furniture and the scrabble wall. Gregs west village modern has great furniture and is truly over the top, and Victor and Soeun built a great loft bed with office and storage under. But nothing jumps out and hits me over the head. Go and vote at::Apartment Therapy...

We knew that biodiesel would come to be viewed as a key US national security solution, on a par with ethanol, and on a scale as has already been achieved in Europe. Apparently enough regulatory and market incentives are now in place, encouraging a major oil company to find a way to capture the biodiesel genie that Willie Nelson and his merry band of Tree Huggers set loose. With animal fat diesel almost ready to hit the road...chicken pork and beef fats are soon to be Texas oil refinery bound..it still seems a surprise. Via Wall Street Journal (subscription only):- "ConocoPhillips and Tyson Foods Inc. say they plan to make diesel fuel from animal fat,...[under an agreement in] which Tyson will send beef, pork and chicken fat from a food-processing plant in Texas to a nearby ConocoPhillips refinery to make diesel...using much the same chemical process that turns crude oil into motor fuel. It will come out of the refinery as part of the regular diesel-fuel mix, distributed through existing pipelines and sold as regular diesel fuel." (Lloyd covered this months before from an historic perspective.) Immediate question: will breathing diesel fumes become a problem for strict vegetarians? Oops....

They might be small acts of do-goods but together America’s citizens are making a difference. Green is the new and growing movement many people choose to join. And this is what Edens Lost & Found, a multi-part PBS series, are highlighting. Local efforts of simply making cities more beautiful by creating communities, planting a wildflower oasis, converting rooftops into gardens, better transportation systems or Wifi for everyone are all local actions taken in a single city block. ‘But make no mistake about it’ says Van Jones in his foreword of the book Edens Lost & Found. ‘The true implications of their efforts are not just local. They are global’, he continues. The book is full of real-life stories of how ordinary citizens are setting up projects to make America’s cities more sustainable. The examples prove that environmental solutions can cost less instead of more and that they do trigger growth. Apart from the four example cities (Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Seattle) and its green projects, the book features a ‘Path to Sustainability’ with explanations and tips for Wasted Energy, Urban Forestry, Mass Transit or Pedestrian-Friendliness. Clear and simple tips into how Green Roofs work or how to build a Rain Garden can be found throughout the book. DVDs and individual books about each documented city are also available. Edens Lost & Found by Harry Wiland and Dale Bell is available through their web site and costs $30 USD in hardback. If you’d like to get involved, are looking for teaching material or would like to know how green your city is, just dip into the web site for a start. But be aware that just reading the enthusiastic and refreshing stories may inspire you to knock on your neighbours’ doors and get them to join you to grow a vegetable garden and cover your building with solar panels … ::Edens Lost & Found Thanks Mira & Todd for the tip! ...

Commencing this evening is the first of a series of episodes of inspiring television. Sundance Channel and Robert Redford are presenting a new weekly primetime slot dedicated entirely to the environment. The program will be adressing some of the most important issues facing humanity, using interviews with forward-thinking designers, and features on green products and alternative ideas that are hoped might transform everyday lives. The lead episode tonight at 9pm E/P looks at fuel. You’ll get to see drag racing fuelled by the vegetable oil from a fried-chicken tailgate party; a national fleet of bio-diesel cars; and an Indy pro test driving his race car running on 100% ethanol. (sneak preview available on US iTunes - follow next link). In future weeks the program, known as More Big Ideas for a Small Planet, will ponder the many aspects of greening one’s live, from sport through work, and even onto prayer. As Robert Redford says “Tune In. Take Action. Let’s Commit to that.” Accompanying each program is Your Guide to Greener Living. Presented as both an online version, and downloadable PDF, this guide offers viewers further information and links on the topics raised by the TV episodes. The guide has been prepared in partnership with TreeHugger....

The government of the United Kingdom has decided that people should know how much energy they're using all the time, and which appliances are the biggest draws on their power. The U.K. will soon be giving a free real-time energy meter to any household in the country that requests one. The initiative is part of the United Kingdom's commitment to cut CO2 emissions 60% by 2050. The ability visualize energy use, in kilowatts, pounds of carbon, and pounds and pence is vital to decreasing household carbon footprints. These real-time monitors are simple to install and easy to use. Of course, there's no guarantee that the devices will be of high quality. In order for consumers to really use these they have to provide meaningful information, namely, the amount of money being spent and saved. Some worry that electric companies will provide households with tiny and difficult to decipher meters that will, in effect, just be another lousy piece of plastic in the junk drawer. It will probably be another year before citizens are able to ask for the meters, but by 2008, the U.K. should be the first country who's citizens always know what's going into their houses. ::BBC...

We've covered water on two occasions before in our Earth Day guides, and today we'll concentrate on being smart with the water we drink. 1) Bottled water is tremendously wasteful -- prepare to catch your jaw as it drops when you see the final numbers -- so we recommend staying away from it, when at all possible. 2) Aside from having a terribly high ecological cost, it can have some pretty strange stuff in it, like stuff to make you skinny, infused with good intentions, and gold. 3) Though some bottled waters like Biota and Jivita are being bottled in biodegradable, compostable plastic, they aren't recyclable and chances are they won't break down in your backyard compost heap. 4) Other companies like Ethos and HtoO are using their bottled-water monies for good, but there's no escaping the fact that it's a huge waste. 5) TreeHugger's advice? Drink tap water, which is cleaner and healthier than bottled in a surprising percentage of locations (learn more at the National Tapwater Database); if you're on the go, plan ahead and fill up a durable, non-toxic container to take with you. Get more water-efficiency tips in TreeHugger's How to Green Your Water Guide and stay tuned for more tips in preparation for Earth Day. ...

This week is Carnival of the Green # 73 and it's being hosted by Common Ground! So, head on over to this week's Carnival to check out a round up of last week's green news and events, submitted by other bloggers and green sites. To learn more about Carnival of the Green, where it will be and how to host (hurry, we're now booking into 2008!), please click here to link to our previous post. ...

Ever on the cutting edge of global design, the folks at Wallpaper* magazine have put together an exhibition to coincide with Milan's Salone del Mobile. EcoEdit is a showcase of "101 beautiful, innovative but environmentally friendly designs - from the worlds of architecture, beauty, fashion, food, packaging, product design, transport and travel - from all over the world.” Faithful TreeHugger readers will recall seeing several of the recognized designs, including Kuyichi and Ciel in fashion, the ENV fuel cell motorcycle and BMW's Hydrogen 7 in transportation and the biodegradable tableware available at Branch. Citing what they call "the most important debate in contemporary design", the exhibition is an attempt to answer the questions: "Can environmentally friendly design be good design? Or rather, can design that doesn't have environmental impact as a key concern ever be considered good design?", and their conclusion is a resounding YES! To help the exhibition walk the green walk, it is only being shown at wallpaper.com, so as to avoid flying the designs around the world, or sending photographers off to shoot them; instead, original illustrations are used to represent each design. As they note in the exhibition intro, "Eco-brilliance is flourishing. Enjoy the show." We definitely recommend it. ::Wallpaper* magazine, ::EcoEdit via ::dezeen...

Laptops, printers, iPods, cell phones, and other electronics are an integral part of the lives of many a busy citizen. These gadgets allow us an unprecedented amount of flexibility and mobility. But what happens when they break? Full of hazardous materials, toxins and heavy metals, machines that once were indispensable become potential toxic waste. Valuable resources in every scrapped product are being trashed in rising volumes worldwide. Unscrupulous treatment of e-scrap leads to serious environmental problems, especially in developing countries. The coming week offers New Yorkers the opportunity to learn more about the e-waste problem and also a chance to recycle their once beloved but now defunct electronics. Drop off your unwanted or broken electronics for recycling this Earth Day, April 22nd at Union Square North Plaza from 8am-2pm. Clothing and linens will be accepted as well. For more info on this event visit NYCWasteLe$$ or call 311. On April 19th from 2:00pm - 5:00pm the United Nations University in partnership with HP, Dell and several other technology companies and UN agencies is hosting an event to introduce a new global public-private initiative “Solving the E-Waste Problem (StEP)." Goals for StEP include, standardizing recycling processes globally, in order to harvest valuable components in electrical and electronic scrap, "e-scrap," extending the life of e-scrap products and markets for their reuse, and harmonizing world legislative and policy approaches to e-scrap. You can register for this event and others here. :: United Nations University :: StEP :: NYCWasteLe$$...

The EPA has recently released several draft task reports on data center and server energy efficiency. The reports are posted on the Energy Star Web site and make for some fine, if technical, reading. The neat thing is that you can comment on these reports. The consumption of energy in data centers is a growing concern among industry and government officials; it's a regular black hole. In 2005, for example, U.S.-based data centers consumed 4.5 billion kilowatts hours, using over $3 billion in energy. This is according to a study funded by Advanced Micro Devices that was released earlier this year. This is real democracy in action; if you are knowledgeable about these issues, EPA welcomes you to help populate this report. You can contribute data or information to this effort by contacting Eric Masanet at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The commenting period is relatively short (under two weeks) as the final report is due to Congress in June 2007, and according to Andrew Fanara, the program manager for EPA Energy Star, the team is not looking for a line-by-line critique of the draft. They want to know “if we missed anything significant, or caught or appreciated [all] the dynamics inside data centers that need special attention,” he said. Check it out, and see if they did....

We first spotted the work of artist Miwa Koizumi in the last issue of Surface magazine; digging a little deeper, we found that she is now selling digital photography prints of her work. The series she entitles "PET project" is a clever collection of #1 plastic bottles (Polyethylene terephthalate, better known as PET) recycled and melted, cut and otherwise altered to look like sea creatures, mostly jellyfish. Says the artist, "I love the idea of using liquid containers to make water animals. Contained/containing, trash/not-trash, like the jelly-fish or anemone: Living/non-living. And I wanted some pets...I have as much material as I want just by fishing in the garbage." While it is a cool way to reuse some old San Pellegrino water bottles and the like, the real charm of the project is the trash-to-art process, and though it's fairly easy to see that the new jellyfish is really old plastic, it's cool enough to not really matter. Check out more at the PET project website. ::Miwa Koizumi via ::MoCo Loco...

The Washington Post frequently hosts "Live Discussions" - public chats on the internet - on various topics. On April 18th (this Wednesday), two TreeHugger writers, Jacob Gordon and Collin Dunn, will answer questions from Washington Post readers on the subject of: "How to reduce your impact on the environment." We encourage you to drop by and submit your questions. Here is the schedule: The discussion will start at 2 PM Eastern Time on April 18th. Mark your calendar....

Computer scientists at the University of Edinburgh are using clever software to improve the efficiency of a wave-powered generator. The machine consists of four tubes connected by hydraulic rams, which generate up to 750 kilowatts when extended and compressed by the movement of the water. When the speed and frequency of the waves changes, the machine doesn't adapt particularly well, and this is what the researchers are focusing on. By using genetic algorithms which model evolution and natural selection, they have been able to 'breed' more efficient patterns of movement. This has been extremely successful, increasing the frequency of compressions and extensions over 6 times. Three of these 'Pelamis' generators are installed off Portugal, and another four will be installed off Scotland next year. Hopefully this new research will be able to improve the output of the devices, and encourage more installations. :: New Scientist...

The blame game can be fun when you're playing with your sibling or your significant other. But nobody wins when big greenhouse gas emitting countries play the climate change blame game. Last week, a well-known Indian environmentalist accused the US of using India and other emerging economies - China, for example - as an excuse for not cutting CO2 emissions. The Bush administration has opted out of the Kyoto Protocol on grounds of unfairness: if developed countries that sign on have to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, powerhouse developing nations should be required to make commitments, too. But "[f]or America to say they won't move unless India does, that is ridiculous," said Maneka Gandhi, a parliamentarian, former Indian environment minister, and tree and bear hugger. "They should do it anyway. You move because you need to save the world." The US is currently the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, and on a per capita basis, America's CO2 emissions are about twenty times higher than India's. But India's electricity demand is expected to double by 2015, and the vast majority of that power will come from dirty, greenhouse gassy coal. China, meanwhile, despite policies promoting energy efficiency and renewables, is poised to surpass the US as the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter any day now. All this posturing about who's to blame is leading up to a major conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, where an international framework will be created for controlling CO2 emissions post-Kyoto. Hopefully the romantic atmosphere will inspire some international political kissing and making up - for the future of the planet. Signs seem good. Last week, in the wake of the release of the latest IPCC report, China made its first commitment to anything to do with limiting CO2 emissions. And there's always the hope that more countries will follow in the EU's small footprint leaving footsteps. ::Associated Press Image of Maneka Gandhi courtesy of the UN Environment Program (UNEP)....

As retired U.S. Generals put it in a recent report, global warming poses a "serious threat to America's national security" and that most likely the U.S. will be dragged into fights over water and other shortages in the not too distant future. They go on to point out that over the next 30-40 years wars over water, food supplies, and instability from increased occurences of disease along with rising sea-levels and climate refugees will further promote instability around the world. That can only mean one thing, which is that the U.S. kids pictured above face serious consequences if we continue to do nothing to stop global warming in a big way. In fact, as I reported in a recent post, a recent report by Save The Children UK indicates that kids are already facing the brunt of global warming around the world because they lack the economic strength to adapt. Kids in poor countries are affected most already, particularly due to the fact that they already face the toughest challenges. But I went on to argue that this was no cause for complacency to those of us in the First World, because instability in the Third can only mean the disruption in supply of consumer goods on which we are so dependent. Now these retired generals point out that "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism." The reason given? Well, because "Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations," as former U.S. Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan told Associated Press Radio. Ultimately he points out that the Pentagon is "Paying attention to what those security implications are," which I find encouraging, but as the saying goes "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Perchance an age-old saying has some current value? ...

When it comes to implementing major sustainability projects on campus, colleges and universities encounter one of the same dilemmas as individuals and families: how to pay the often substantial upfront costs. Sure, renewable power technologies, energy-efficient transportation and campus conservation programs will pay for themselves over the long run, but administrators may still balk at the initial outlay required. Last week, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education published its how-to guide, Creating a Campus Sustainability Revolving Loan Fund: A Guide for Students, in order to show student leaders a powerful means of overcoming the funding challenge. The guide, written by two sophomores at Macalester College, draws on their experience creating a revolving loan fund. According to AASHE's press release,...

TreeHugger has discussed EMF before and even had some April Fools fun with it. We have also discussed the baffling loss of honey bees in America and now in the UK and Europe.Some think they are related; the theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Apparently "a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause. Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real." Given that CCD started in America which is a lot less dense than Europe, with lower cell phone use and where many aviaries probably don't even have cell phone coverage, and that the article continues with "blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives." We are not making little tinfoil hats for bees yet. Strange stuff from the ::Independent Read also the ::Register...

It's so wonderful to see everyday here on TH another post about how people are getting involved in events to celebrate Earth Day this coming Sunday. Do check out the TH Earth Day guide to find out what's happening near you. The online eco-fashion store Beklina have just let us know that they will be celebrating Earth Day by donating $5 of every Stewart+Brown purchase to their local green charities. They will also be putting some of their best sellers on sale. So if any of you girls need a new eco-outfit to wow the crowds at your Earth Day event check out the Stewart+Brown collection at Beklina. We particularly love the Eyelet Tank Dress pictured above. ::Beklina...

That's what my 3rd grade son asked me last week. I have a gut instinct that his grade school teachers are avoiding the climate subject, knowing full well it could set off an emotional and political upheaval in the same way that sex education does. But climate can't be ignored, nor can it be made illegal to teach. While the generation leaving high school may have asked Mom or Dad "did you smoke pot when you were in college," it's certain that graduates a decade or so from now will instead be asking "Mom, did you drive an SUV when you were younger?" So, how is a parent to respond now? Let's hold off on best way to teach the formal science to kids - an acceptable school curriculum must be developed for the young ones; and, TreeHugger's Kenny Luna is focusing on that. As a parent, I definitely would not say "turn off your bedroom light or the polar bears will die." (That'd be like the "Duck and Cover" propaganda film made in the 50's to teach kids how to shelter in a nuclear holocaust: even 3'rd graders then understood how illogical the idea was and knew that they, unlike their parents, would not be stupid enough to produce such drek when they are older. Plus, missing one flick of the switch could create a serious guilt freak-out.) The meta-topic, as our editor Graham pointed out, is that parents and teachers must decide which social mores need reinforcement, much as in the 70s when littering was frowned upon. Although its just a distraction from adult responsibilities that matter far more, which toys to buy as presents for children will no doubt get media attention (as pictured). Understanding which positive mores and values should most be reinforced is something society is only now beginning to coalesce around, as is discussed at length in this Washington Post article. ...

Not that kids these days need much prompting to rouse on their parents for doing the wrong thing environmentally, but you ever needed a a fun way to get them engaged, consider PlanetSlayer. It is a curiously irreverant online project from Australia’s national broadcaster. Hip, young thing Greena, the Worrier Princess and her faithful sidekick pooch, lead kids through all manner of eco adventures via cartoon videos, games, factoids and even greenhouse gas calculators. The site is so chock full of eco infomation it would make a small head spin, or a grown-up one for that matter. Like the annual phantom energy used to power appliances on ‘standby’ mode would be sufficient to run a fridge for year. Or how an 100 watt incandescent light bulb generates a kilogram (2.2 lbs) of greenhouse gas every 10 hours it runs. Not sure about the shoot-em-up space game, but maybe that’s what you have to do to hold young boys attention these days, especially when the resident hero is a girl. ::PlanetSlayer. ...

(Picture: An image of the 2005 Amazon drought, when lack of rain caused rivers and lakes to dry up completely) Repercussions to the Working Group II (WGII) Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, titled Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, gained strength in Latin America last week, as several gatherings took place to discuss the effects Global Warming could have (and apparently is having) in the region. According to the release, “by mid-century, increases in temperature and associated decreases in soil water are projected to lead to gradual replacement of tropical forest by savanna in eastern Amazon”, while “in drier areas, climate change is expected to lead to salinisation and desertification of agricultural land” causing “productivity of some important crops to decrease and livestock productivity to decline, with adverse consequences for food security”. Not only food, but also water supply is threatened: report warns “changes in precipitation patterns and the disappearance of glaciers are projected to significantly affect water availability for human consumption, agriculture and energy generation”. The document also states, “sea-level rise is projected to cause increased risk of flooding in low-lying areas”, a reality already if you check disasters like Santa Fe province flooding in Argentina. Regarding species, the report warns that “increases in sea surface temperature due to climate change are projected to have adverse effects on Mesoamerican coral reefs, and cause shifts in the location of south-east Pacific fish stocks”, and that “semi-arid vegetation will tend to be replaced by arid-land vegetation, with risk of significant biodiversity loss through species extinction in many areas of tropical Latin America”. Read the local professionals conclusions and forecasts that are already happening in the extended....

Observer Woman Magazine, the thinking woman’s tabloid, is having an "ethical chic special". With a quiz on whether you are a hip guerrilla shopper or an old cynic (you will eat "pretty much anything grown in a poly-tunnel and picked by illegal immigrants"), profiles of Katharine Hamnett and Stuart Rose (the head of Marks&Spencer), the issue is packed full of eco-fun. Don’t miss the rating of celebrities in varying shades of green. Prince Charles comes first, in royal green, and Stella McCartney in chartreuse, Al Gore is amazon-coloured, Lucy Siegle is electric and the Queen is emerald. Apparently HRH recently offered £13,500 to someone who will "help phase out the use of pesticides from the Palace's gardens" and “maintain a new organic vegetable garden". Naomi Campbell gets lime pulp for "recycling her mobile phone for use as a weapon" and Mick Jagger is moss-coloured for off-setting his recent tour. Our favourite is Keeley Hazell, last seen green and topless in the Sun, who recommends making love by candlelight to save the world. Going up in the ecometer: Woody Harrelson, Sting who claims not to use soap, shampoo or deoderant, Leonardo diCaprio and Cate Blanchett. And Angelina Jolie who apparently tries to fly commercial when shopping for the kids. As for the baddies: David Beckham owns 15 vehicles, Tom Cruise is known as “emissions impossible” for his love of Learjets and of course Liz Hurley for her week-long wedding on two continents. :: Observer Woman...

NYC%20Drinking%20Water%20Sampling%20Station.jpg

It may come as a surprise to readers, that New York City’s water supply is unfiltered. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that it would extend the city’s current exemption from filtration requirements at least until 2017. Currently 90 percent of the one billion gallons used in the city each day comes from a system of reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains, while 10 percent is drawn from reservoirs in Westchester County. ...

It's the kick off to a big green week in celebration of our precious planet, so while planning the festivities, you may want to include Reyka Vodka on your shopping list. TreeHugger's Graham Hill first heard about this new spirit from our friend Kimberly Oliver at the Eco Salon where the folks from Reyka had donated enough for everyone to try it out -- let's roll the digital film.

Reyka Vodka is the only distillery in the world that uses Geothermal Energy (a 100% clean energy), the steam drawn from local Icelandic hot springs. All the houses in the village of Borgarnes where the distillery is located are heated with geothermal water, and the CO2 levels in the area are actually falling. We'll raise a glass to that!...

According to Bill McKibben, "On this historic day, Americans called on their leaders to act immediately to stop global warming. In all 50 states, at more than 1400 iconic places across the nation, we have united around a common call to action: "Step It Up Congress: Cut Carbon 80% by 2050."

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...

We’ve covered compost before. We would, we’re TreeHuggers. Collin gave us an excellent overview of compost-related posts here, and we’ve even covered Ethical Man’s musings over how to compost his corpse here. Now we’ve come across another great resource for would-be rotters – the UK-based Community Composting Network (CCN), an organization dedicated to promoting “the community management and use of waste bio-degradable resources.” The group provides information and support for community-based composting projects, it acts as an advocate for community-composting at the local, regional, national and European level, it offers a consultancy service to members who need more than just information, and it serves as a hub for a network of initiatives around the country. The groups website also includes a new section entitled 'Hot Rotters', which aims to challenge the perception of community composting as simply small-scale management of garden waste by highlighting groups taking on bigger projects, and a wider range of waste materials. ...

That is what Vanessa at Greenasathistle calls sustainably grown and butchered meat as promoted by the Meatrix people at the Sustainable table. If you are not going to go vegetarian, the next best thing is to at least get your meat from contented cows. Industrialized meat production is a disaster, but there are farmers out there raising animals without hormones or cruelty. Yet we learn from NPR that "large-scale agriculture has nearly eliminated small slaughterhouses from many states. That's a problem for the farmers trying to fill the growing demand for naturally raised, local meat products, especially in New England. Small farmers must often drive for hours to get their animals to slaughter." It is also a big deal for the local food movement- you do not want to be eating a burger that has travelled halfway across the country. Listen to ::NPR UPDATE: the take on meat from the 100 mile diet people coincidentally published today. ...

The video is in Hebrew (and yes we have many Israeli readers!), but TreeHuggers can get a general feel for the early beginnings of Jerusalem’s community garden Bustan Brody -- a rare and wonderful treat for Israelis walking through the footpaths of the Rahavia neighbourhood where this TreeHugger now lives. Here is a small story on the formation of the garden and since its early days a few years ago, volunteers now come once a week on Thursdays to tend to the fruit trees, shrubs, veggies and herbs which are all free for the taking. As we speak, I am sipping on Moroccan-style tea with a sprig of the garden’s organic sheba (wormwood) herb brewing inside. All organic. ::YouTube...

He says in the New York Times:

I want to rename “green.” I want to rename it geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century. A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism.

and that all our problems can be solved if we are weaned off fossil fuels, although we suspect Terrror-free Oil would be OK. We just have to do seven simple things: ...

Funny how things merge and morph. In days of yore we told you about the :Bakfiets cargo from the Netherlands that can also transport kids around. And in the some month we highlighted the Stokemonkey assistance motor for Xtracycle. Last month the two became one. Well, sort of. Cleverchimp, who made the Stokemonkey have gone into partnership with one of their customers for that product, to form Clever Cycles, and together they are importing the Bakfiets to the USA. They plan to open a store in Portland Oregon next month. As Todd of Cleverchimp puts it on his blog “We all want our children to see and understand what we do for a living, to understand that turning 16, or 21, or 42 doesn’t mean you need, or need aspire to a car (if it will even be an option in 2020, 2025, or 2045), and to build a business they can someday run, if they choose. We’re doing something that’s either unprecedented, or whose previous attempts to do in this era, in this country, have failed in silent obscurity. We’re selling bicycles designed squarely to replace car trips, or render cars entirely spurious within town, even for larger households, as a matter of pleasurable, enlightened self-interest instead of frugal compulsion, hairshirt eco-guilt, or body-sculpting fantasy. Exclusively."...

The Green Living Enterprises Empire, already encompassing Green Living Magazine, the upcoming Green Living Show, green investment company Investeco, the Green Toronto Awards, and Eco Options, expands again with Green Living Online, a new website that

"promotes sustainable and healthy living in a hip, upbeat and informative manner. We are committed to raising public awareness of the ecological issues, innovations and solutions facing us today."

Which sounds vaguely familiar but you can't have too many green lifestyle websites! Congratulations to ::Green Living Online Thanks, tipster Lee...

Image: "Pediastra, a flat colony of green algae", Wim van Egmond Scientists at Berkeley report a breakthrough in the riddle of how bacteria can convert sunlight to energy at efficiencies nearing 100%. And the answer is more elegant and amazing than you will believe. Imagine your favorite Sci-fi character trapped in a maze. The future of the planet depends upon finding the fastest way out. Utilizing their quantum super-powers, they run all possible combinations of the maze simultaneously in parallel universes, calculating the best path before committing to any. Hurrah, the planet is saved! The truth behind quantum physics is always more complex than the sci-fi version, but reality is not too far off. ...

We just found out that Steve Shriver, avid athlete and founder of one of our favorite organic lip balm companies, Eco Lips, is running an Organic Endurathon. What does that mean? It means that Steve is running across the state of Iowa in ten marathons, in ten days, all while being fueled by 100% organic food and beverages and wearing nothing but 100% sustainable performancewear! The 260-mile run wraps up in an Earth Day celebration in Iowa City on April 22nd but along the way, Steve and his team are making stops at schools, organic farms and stores to educate people about organics and the benefits of a sustainable lifestyle in Iowa. The Organic Endurathon is as much a call to action for agriculture producers as it is about promoting the benefits of choosing organic products. Currently,100,000 acres of Iowa farmland are being farmed organically, which is only one percent of Iowa's total farmland. From Steve’s blog: “The act of running 260 miles requires the wise investment of resources to sustain the effort and ensure success. The same requirements are needed to build a truly sustainable organic economy, farming operation or business.” Go Steve! Check out his day-to-day status at Nomadik. Via ::One Shade Greener ::Organic Endurathon ...

Katharine Hamnett is quite seriously back in fashion. It might seem odd to say this about such an influential designer, but as an interview with Hamnett in the Observer today points out, after 15 years or so in fashion's shadows Hamnett is now very definitely back in the spotlight. On TreeHugger we have recently reported about her shining presence at the Esthetica show at London Fashion week, her new range of ethical jewellery and now we can report that she has succeeded in producing a range of organic cotton clothing for the enormous supermarket chain Tesco. Many people may ask where has Katharine Hamnett been since making all that noise in the 1980's with her contraversial protest slogan t-shirts? The answer is: working hard! It has taken 17 years of working from deep within the fashion industry to produce an affordable line of clothing that is completely ethical, from the organic fabric, to the recycled metal zippers, to the palm nut buttons and even the recycled and recyclable coathangers. ...

It seems we aren’t the only ones to stir up vehement debate every time we mention the growth of aviation as a climate risk. The Guardian is once again covering this issue, with John Vidal, the paper’s environment correspondent, attacking Ryanair’s plans for cheap transatlantic flights costing as little as £7 (US$14). Vidal also criticizes the UK and EU governments for failing to address airline growth while claiming to be serious about reversing climate change. Meanwhile Jeremy Leggett (whom we interviewed here), explains why he is asking his employees to boycott Ryanair:

“If by 2010, knowing what we know now about the climate change threat, airlines are allowed to grow to the point where under the "open skies" agreement there are cheap day trips to Manhattan, we can forget about our children enjoying anything approaching civilisation. Global warming will be on course to wash across economies and ecosystems like a host of invading armies. Indeed, our species may end up deserving a very scathing headstone from any future space traveller who happens upon the rubble. Airline emissions may be small now, compared with all the other sources. But even if we succeed in cutting emissions from power, land transport and all the other big sources, projected airline growth drowns out a good deal of the benefit.”

...

A team of French scientists has developed a method of making flat shapes form themselves into 3D shapes by simply adding a drop of water in a carefully designed spot. Flower patterned shapes become spheres, a cross shape becomes a box. They envision manufacturing microscopic 3D structures like those used in ink jet printers and video projectors. We imagine downloading designs that print out and then fold themselves. ::New Scientist...

Even after all our interminable rants about the silliness of ethanol from corn, we have found yet another thing to complain about. It seems that besides fossil fuel, pesticides, and corn, making it also uses a lot of water, 4.5 gallons per gallon of ethanol produced. There are concerns that this is not being taken into account when planning ethanol plants. Richard Cruse, director of the Iowa Water Center at Iowa State University, pointed to potential conflicts when the ethanol industry seeks to use the same pure water that people drink and give to their livestock.

"I'm not suggesting they're maniacs running wild not thinking about water, But with the industry growing so fast and drawing so much water, it can become a risk issue. When we go for three, four or five months with shallow aquifers being drawn down to the point where we have to limit or ration high-quality water, who has the priority?"

::St.Louis Dispatch read more ethanol rants here here and here. ...

Pretty soon it will be big news if we find a magazine that does not have a green issue on the stands. Latest up is Canadian House and Home, which has an excellent introduction to residential green roofs, great pictures of Dean Goodman and Janna Levitt's house which we covered here, John Hix's Puerto Rico House (covered here) as well as the home of the owner of Grass Roots, a source of many posts. Toss in a few articles on how to re-use older pieces: " In our consumer culture its tempting to rush out and buy all new pieces....There is something so satisfying in unearthing treasures languishing in junk shops and relatives' attics, and its not just the earth that benefits, but the pocketbook as well." Not online yet at ::House and Home...

When we covered the concept of Permaculture here, Warren described it as ‘biomimicry for food’. While some commenters did point out that permaculture can be utilized way beyond food production systems (it is a big influence on the Transition Towns movement, for example), it seems fair to say that gardening, agriculture and food production are still a central focus of what permaculture is all about. We have just come across a great practical example of how permaculture models nature in the form of an article in Innerchange Magazine. The author, Will Hooker, is a permaculture activist and Professor of Lanscape Design at NC State University. He lives on 1/5 of an acre in downtown Raleigh, NC, yet manages to grow a staggering amount of food. Part of his garden design includes an ingenious system for a partially self-feeding, self-cooling chicken run. Details over the fold. ...

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Entries for April 15, 2007 - April 21, 2007

Total this week: 154

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by Mark Ontkush, Boston, Massachusetts, USA on 04.18.07