Photograph: Jay Westcott/Rappor
Never heard of
Stanley Greenberg? Probably means you’ve been
living under a rock for the last, say, twenty years. He’s a political mastermind – akin to being described as the world-champion of public opinion polls. His client list reads like a who’s who of domestic and international government –
Bill Clinton,
Tony Blair,
Nelson Mandela and
Ehud Barak. When the chance to talk
enviro-political shop with the Grand Pooh-bah “o” Polling appeared, it was an
easy vote of
YES WE CAN!...
photo: J. Novak
A close call in the
Tennessee legislature last week would have meant the release of more selenium into Tennessee streams. This scary bit of legislation was stridently attacked by Rep. Mike McDonald who said the measure was intended to help Knoxville-based National Coal Co. out of a pending lawsuit that centered around repeated selenium releases that were in violation of current law. Sound fishy? It should....
Photo from Casual Mafia
Green isn’t always serious business. The newest video out by
Casual Mafia called
In My Prius makes fun of the
Prius which is, well, really funny! With the looming
GM bankruptcy, a few laughs, were cars are involved, is welcomed! ...
Photo by Rafael Fuchs
Dr. Helen Fisher is the
love doctor of the 21st century. Her research is revealing why you are crushing on your co-worker to what kind of person you will attract if your index finger is longer than your ring finger. Think you know why you’re in love with your boyfriend or girlfriend? Think they are your soul mate? You should read her new earth-shaking book
Why Him? Why Her? before you go to the next level. Still trying to figure out why you can’t get any action from the opposite
sex (or
same sex, depending on how you swing)? It might be that you don’t have enough
dopamine in your system.
...
Photo by KennethMoyle
Tonic (a
media company that makes it easy to do good) has posted
50 of the hottest people making a difference for the world. These do-gooders are blazing their trail with humor, style and grace. Lots of these hotties are of the green-persuasion…maybe even more than just green-curious! The list is filled with bartenders,
designers,
fashionistas and entrepreneurs giving everyone something to look at and read about. You’ll be happy to see some familiar cuties along with other fresh new faces. Regardless, get ready to get your
eco-crush on! ...
Photo by Janet Wood
During the last weekend in April, a group of volunteers laid the final necessary pieces into Withers Estuary to reintroduce oysters to their native ecosystem. The project is part of the
Withers Estuary Community Collaborative (WECC), a
partnership of leaders in
Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina. The organization focuses on find ways to synergistically protect human and ecological networks by creating community-based solutions for preservation/restoration of local ecosystems. The
oyster restoration project is the first of many steps to accomplish this goal. ...
Photo from Caleb Kenna
The production of steel in the United States is much better for the environment than the Chinese steel when comparing the environmental footprint. From greenhouse gases to energy intensity to recycled-content to regulations, American steel is the greener option of the two. ...
The Espresso Book Machine Model 1.5 Image credit:On Demand Books
Bloomberg.com reports that this summer the New York Public Library will test an Internet-connected printing and binding machine that puts out a 200-page paperback in minutes. The "Espresso Book Machine,'' from New York-based
On Demand Books LLC, prints public domain books available online. See:
`Espresso' Spits Out Perfect Book, With Mangled Cover for details.
Does this invention represent environmental and financial progress?
...
I was recently exchanging e-mails with a dear friend, Melissa, who works in the
CSR , or corporate social responsibility, department of a major US corporation. We were talking about traditional national and global economic growth rates (which, of course, may not be achieved in times such as the current global slowdown) and how improved environmental standards could go beyond previous relative standards, but still result in cumulative negative impact. ...
Photo via unleashingmephotography
Reducing the number of colors used in printing packaging for a sliver of their products is going to save Unilever millions of dollars every year, and could save the industry as much as $5 billion annually if other companies follow suit.
Unilever took a hard look at their spreads and dressings packaging in Europe and has decided to cut down from 100 hues used in printing to just six, using a program called Project Rainbow. Other major manufacturers could save a ton of money and ink if they follow in Unilever’s footsteps....
In early 1981,
Salvadoran Civil War guerillas bombed a power plant and blacked out San Salvador. A few months later, guerillas targeted a dam that provided half of El Salvador's electricity. By November, a third of this small, Central American nation had seen its electricity knocked out. All told, in only four months, Salvadoran guerillas attacked that country's electric grid more than 150 times, blacking out some cities for as long as seven weeks....
Image source: Go Green Mobile Advertising
Maybe we'll call this an "Almost"-Treehugger. While it is a "creative" use of electric automobiles, but we're sure that adding one more car on the road, especially just to advertise, is the best use of resources. For those stuck in traffic, this is just a waste of space.
Titled the Go Green Billboard, the mobile signs are mounted on 100% electric, no-emissions trucks, and decked out with the logo or advertisement of your company. There are several vehicles and several size banners that you can choose from, as well as you can map your own route. Lighted signs will also be available in the future to add onto your package. While yes the car/truck is 100% electric and thus non-emitting, the electricity is generated somewhere (usually from coal). Removing mountaintops just to drive around mobile advertising? Not exactly going green....
Organic veggies on the honor system.
Stephen Brooks is the co-founder of Kopali Organics and a correspondent for Planet Green’s G Word .
It absolutely blows my mind how cool it is to be green these days. Was it Al Gore’s
An Inconvenient Truth? Or could it be the rising fuel costs? I mean didn’t you know that
Cameron Diaz has “gone green”. Or maybe the time has just really come and people are really starting to wake up all at the same time? Oooh that’s deep! Do all these steps we take to walk lighter on the Earth actually matter?...
Image source:
Deploy Workshop
While the materials may not be organic,
Deploy Workshop has attempted to create outfits that you can mix and match and reuse over and over, regardless of season. With strategically designed snaps, "a dress becomes a skirt, or a blouse becomes a dress." Consider it recycling fashion....
We all miss those vacations where we did nothing but leave the windows open to the beach and gazed longingly into the lapping surf, or slept under the stars while camping and listening to the crickets, or sang Christmas carols in front of a crackling fire. Ahhh, vacation. But, having an entire channel of background ambiance just to try to recreate that 'on vacation' feeling sort of misses the mark.
...
If you needed another reason to hit up
Citysol, New York's free sustainability-themed art and music event, here it is:
Dan Deacon, the inimitable surrealist trash-synth community-building music man is playing tonight. He punctuates
a weekend of concerts, comedians, green art installations and panel discussions.
For instance,
at 6 tonight, there's a discussion on sustainable design with the chief of design for NYC parks; tomorrow, two discussions will will turn toward solar and the meeting of grassroots advocacy and interactive design. Sitting on that panel will be artist Eve Mosher, whose work
Insert _Here, along with other artists' eco-minded art, will be appearing at the event all weekend. Mosher's work asks participants to use small yellow signs to identify sites in need of a bit of greening ("insert solar here," "insert a garden here," etc), and upload photos of the place to the web. From there, Mosher or another artist renders the photo in order to show how the site might look if re-mediated. The idea is to capitalize "on community awareness of place/environment and optimism in the face of climate challenges.”
Also lighting your compact-florescent fire this weekend in NYC:
Figment, a multidisciplinary Burning Man-ish party at Governor's Island, the
Buckminster Fuller retrospective at
the Whitney Museum, and Olafur Eliasson's awesome
Waterfalls.
Citysol: Stuyvesant Cove Park, near the East River and 23rd Street. Map and directions
here. via
Papermag...
J.R. Watkins’ new line of natural home care products brings the fresh-scented carefully crafted quality of their natural body care line to your spring cleaning routine. You might be wondering: “A body-care line that also makes natural home cleansers?” But once you think over it a bit – the concept makes perfect sense.
Both types of products are coming under greater scrutiny as we learn about the risks we take by applying toxic ingredients to our skin and using caustic chemicals to clean our homes. For too long we’ve made a Faustian bargain with the products we use in our personal and home care – accepting that to be effective they must also be a bit (or a lot) dangerous....
Is it art or is it leftovers? This picture is made entirely of food: broccoli trees with added peas, bread mountains with a white sugar waterfall, cauliflower clouds, a vanilla pod ladder, herb foliage and a path of cumin. The artist (?)
Carl Warner was inspired by healthy eating campaigns. He assembles these foodscapes from fresh fruit and vegetables and photographs them. He shoots them in separate stages to stop the food from going bad, and puts them together digitally. For those who want to try it, he visualises the scene as a regular landscape, then he works on substituting food for the components. That's the fun part. An Italian scene has pasta fields, mozzarella clouds and a lasagna cart.
To give a realistic three-dimensional feel to the photographs, each still life is composed on a table measuring 8ft by 4ft. The foreground is only about 2ft across. There is no word whether he uses organic vegetables but the broccoli forest (pictured) is his favourite. A tip: salmon makes a very
good sea. ::
Daily Mail
...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 10.14.09
Photo from 
TreeHugger Alan bravely struggles to his computer to let us know that Portland, Oregon is absolutely buried under five inches of snow. Electrical power is intermittent, so the new survivalists are stocking up with supplies. Overheard at the 7-11- a woman talking to her son:
