Richard said:
"This is silly. Might as well just pedal. There is really no point in building high milage little coffins like this. What a waste of resources, time..." [read]
gmo free whole foods said:
"Support our GMO Free awareness campaign to tell the CEO of Whole Foods that we would love Whole Foods even more if their 275 stores were free of ge..." [read]
Ryan said:
"I swear I'm the only person who doesn't think this guy is funny...." [read]
bryan said:
"I was a happy consumer and dedicated user of anti antiperspirants for 20 years and my armpits always stank, even immediately after washing. Now I ..." [read]
said:
"I think that the problem is with USDA Organic, not with the other certifications. It would be great if it could be made more independent again. </p..." [read]
kansan s said:
"LOL the whole episode was funny. The portion on reverse discrimination was particularly biting. The NRDC is correct, the ball is in the Obama admin..." [read]
The Incredible Shrinking Sheep!
Could the changing climate be shrinking animals? That seems to be the case for the Soay sheep of Scotland. "The island of Hirta, on the western coast of Scotland, is home to a special breed of sheep. Soay sheep, named after a neighbouring island, are the most primitive breed of domestic sheep and have lived on the isles of St Kilda for at least a millennium." These sheep are already smaller on average than other breeds of sheep, but according to a recent study, they have been getting even smaller...
Taking their Chill-n-Charge tent to a whole new level, Orange has dreamed up a concept solar tent that would use flexible solar fabric and modern design to create a place to relax and charge up gear while off grid. Check out images of the concept tent and how it would work.
Dealing with your FICO score can sometimes make you see red, but the company is trying to throw in some green. They launched a Sustainable Enterprise Initiative in 2008, with the goal to reduce the company's IT energy use by 50% and paper consumption by 80% by 2010. They've already made some serious headway on that goal.
Sakarya University students with their hydrogen-powered car. Photo via SAİTEM.
Gas prices in Turkey are among the highest -- if not the highest -- in the world, a fact I was rudely awakened to last summer when some friends and I rented a car to drive from Istanbul to Edirne, a round-trip of around 500 kilometers, to watch the oil-wrestling championships. (A story in and of itself.) We paid about $100 for the gas alone, some 38 liters of it. If we'd been driving the SAHİMO, a car invented by Turkish university students, we could have gone all the way across the country -- more than three times farther -- on just three liters of fuel.
Car designer Harsha Vardhan suggests that this two-wheeler concept is the car of the future.
His Transporter TW (Twin Wheel) is a single-seater electric vehicle that uses magnetic fields for driving the car. The two gianormous wheels, suspended over a superconducting fluid, are propelled by those shifting magnetic fields. Thus the power generation, and motion of the car, is a nice noiseless and smooth ride.
We Can't Limit Conservation Efforts to Cute & Cuddly Animals...
Here's a clever ad about "Re-Thinking the Shark" by the most excellent Save Our Seas Foundation (check out their projects here). With humans killing more than 100 million sharks each year, and with many species of sharks in dramatic decline, we definitely need to re-think our relationship with sharks, something that TreeHugger has written about frequently in the past (see links below).
Obligatory Post About Green Fireworks for the 4th of July Fireworks are fun - who doesn't like explosions? - and a good excuse to get together with family and friends, but they're also not very clean. In Beijing, China, the smoke from fireworks during the new year celebrations tripled pollution levels overnight, and the toxic metals used to get the bright colorful sparks fall back to Earth, contaminating soil and water. Is there something we can do without losing the fireworks?
A patent idea from Apple bounces around the notion of "active packaging," where on-the-shelf products would be plugged into a power source so that things like iPods would be able to display videos or receive firmware updates while waiting to be purchased. Sounds like a very un-green turn for Apple.
Images via IDEA and Engadget
This solar lamp from Japan's IDEA charges up with ambient light and so doesn't need a cord, which is great. The only problem is it looks like a space-age robot eye is watching you......
Photo via photojenniLaptop Magazine has tested some of the industry's greenest notebooks and decided on the most eco-friendly in each of 4 categories, from netbooks to desktop replacements. Check out their choices. ...
Photo via Yahoo!Carbon offsets have their place in the scheme of reducing carbon footprints of energy intensive businesses. But they shouldn't be used instead of actual reduction of carbon emissions, especially when it comes to data centers that need to be made radically more energy efficient. Yahoo! seems to agree, or so their latest move in the race to to create the greenest data center run on renewable energy would imply. The company is working to build a super efficient data center, run on power generated by Niagara Falls along with other green bells and whistles, such that carbon offsets won't be part of the plan. ...
To the surprise of nobody who lives there, Canada has come in dead last on a climate report card prepared by the World Wildlife Foundation. The US is close behind, but at least is going in the right direction.
"Nowhere else on Earth do fewer people steward more resources, yet Canada now stands dead last among the G8 nations in protecting our shared home from the threat of dangerous climate change," said foundation spokesman Keith Stewart....
Photo: Michael Graham Richard
This Loophole Seriously Reduces Incentives for Production Electric CarsPlug In America (we recently wrote about their EV & plug in hybrid tracker) is asking the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to modify its regulations concerning zero emission vehicles in California. The problem is that their requirement that automakers put 7,500 ZEVs on the roads of California doesn't specify a minimum timeframe for compliance. This means that BMW is getting the same credit for converting 500 MINIs into EVs and leasing them (for $850/month!) for a year as another automaker would get for actually selling production electric cars. This could also lead to a repeat of the EV1 story... And we know how that ended....
Photo via moria
About a week ago, we caught word from 3r Living, an eco-friendly home decor and lifestyle store and website, that they're having a real problem with tightened regulations from the Department of Transportation on shipping batteries for recycling. The stricter regulations include that each individual battery must be either placed in its own plastic bag or have both terminals taped off. This makes battery recycling an expensive hassle, especially when companies like 3r Living are collecting large numbers of batteries from their customers to send in for recycling. 3r Living is unhappily planning to stop sending batteries to their primary recycler, Battery Solutions, and possibly stop collecting and recycling them all together. And they fear many other companies will be doing the same. So we got ahold of Battery Solutions to find out exactly what's up with the new rules. The news isn't good. ...
Photo: Photos by keki & subtilen"Surface is very smooth hydroisolation coating, so perfect for riding."
A lot of us treehuggers are cyclists, and I bet most of us have a dream place they wish they could ride in. For some, it might be the quiet Scottish countryside during the summer... and for others it might be the empty accumulation pool of a hydroelectric pumped storage power station!...
Sputnik Inc, a group that documents contemporary culture through video interviews with the world's top thinkers, has recently launched its site, providing videos previously unavailable to the pubic, and giving a resource to viewers who like to ponder the fringe ideas and innovations driving our world forward. It's a bit like TED, but in a more intimate interview setting, with great minds talking about everything from biology to architecture to renewable energy. ...
Photo: Emdesa.com.ar.
Even though this would be obsolete if smart grids and smart meters were extended worldwide, truth is in Latin America and in many developing countries those things are far from becoming a reality.
So meanwhile, in places without smart energy regulation or without the money to install smart meters, alternatives as the Cilicon electronic controller can be an option to control power consume. When installed in a household energy grid, this simple device cuts the supply when the amount of watts you've specified is finished, and gives it back after a period of time (after you've switched something off). It was designed by a group of Argentine scientists and is currently being used to regulate the power used by poor households, La Nacion newspaper informs.
Keep reading for details on how it works....
photo: Dave Bezaire & Suzi Havens-Bezaire via flickr
There's no doubt that Arctic permafrost stores a huge amount of greenhouse gases and as the planet warms and the permafrost thaws the climate change impact could be huge. Well, according to a new study in Global Biogeochemical Cycles (via Reuters) we may be seriously underestimating the impact. In fact the amount of carbon stored in permafrost is double previous estimates:...
Image via Greenpeace
HP, Lenovo and Dell are in the hot house with Greenpeace, who shows them as failing to make any real improvements since the last go-round on the group's greener electronics guide. They each get slapped on the wrist for backtracking on their commitments to eliminate PVC plastic and brominated flame retardants from their products by end of this year. However, there is good news for a few other big names in the electronics game. ...
Photo via Fermion
During the month of July, the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) is going to start up "cyberwar games" with utilities to test out the security of the power grid in general, with an eye on security issues for the smart grid. There are already concerns that spies have been able to hack into the power grid. Getting Ender's Game with the grid will help determine how vulnerable computer networks running our power supplies are, and how breachable the smart grid may be. ...
Image via Chinavision
Ok. Let's get down to a problem issue in green tech: Designing and manufacturing ugly junk that no one will buy, unless as a novelty and then never use. And what's worse, is making it seem like it'll even function. Say for instance this highly unattractive and downright lame solar vest. ...
Nuclear Sticker Shock: "It's just ridiculously expensive."
Whether you think nuclear power is a good or bad idea, one thing is certain, it's expensive. Very expensive. And that's before the almost inevitable cost overruns... This is what the Canadian province of Ontario seems to have realized. It's canceling plans for 2 new reactors because of sticker shock and out of "responsibility to Ontario taxpayers". And while everybody's talking about money, what I'm really wondering about is: What is Ontario's plan to clean up its power grid?...
Photos: Flickr, CC & Flickr, CC
Add it to Asthma, High Blood Pressure, and Cardiovascular Diseases
Did we need one more reason to to fight against smog? I don't think so, but we got one anyway thanks to a study to be published in Environmental Health Perspectives and covered by Discovery News. A team from the University of California, Irvine, has shown that pregnant women living within 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) of a major roadway in Los Angeles are 128% more at risk of giving birth prematurely. "Moms-to-be were also between 33 and 42 percent more likely to develop preeclampsia, an affliction characterized by high blood pressure that often forces doctors to induce premature birth in order to save mothers' lives." More details below....
From cows to pigs to chickens to people, there's a lot of solid waste that gets dumped, landfilled, flushed, or otherwise disposed every day. Happily, we've discovered the mighty power of poo; here a just a few ways we've seen to turn poo into power.
...
Photo via New Scientist
We design solar cells based on the functions of plant leaves. What if we designed gadgets based on the functions of carnivorous plants? That's what a few artists have come up with in their gadgets and appliances that feed off the pests in our homes in order to gather a charge. Check out a video of how they work....
This cool design by Min Kyo Choi revamps power plugs for UK outlets into flatpack structure, making them super space savers until you need to plug it into the wall, and then it's just a quick twist to turn it into the right shape for the outlet. ...
Well, our extended coverage of Peak Water ends, anyway. The water crisis itself is, unfortunately, still a very real issue. This month we've explored many of the complexities and interconnections of fresh water, and our growing shortage of supplies globally. Water is a precious resource we simultaneously exalt and abuse; and from wars to art, from conservation to making your own, we pondered what our relationship to water is all about. Here's a look at the politics, innovation, beauty, and danger lying just beneath the surface. ...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the weekly archive if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 07. 3.09
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To the surprise of nobody who lives there, Canada has come in dead last on a climate report card prepared by the World Wildlife Foundation. The US is close behind, but at least is going in the right direction.
"Nowhere else on Earth do fewer people steward more resources, yet Canada now stands dead last among the G8 nations in protecting our shared home from the threat of dangerous climate change," said foundation spokesman Keith Stewart....
Photo: Michael Graham Richard
This Loophole Seriously Reduces Incentives for Production Electric Cars
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Sputnik Inc, a group that documents contemporary culture through video interviews with the world's top thinkers, has recently 
Photo: Emdesa.com.ar.
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Nuclear Sticker Shock: "It's just ridiculously expensive."
Whether you think nuclear power is a good or bad idea, one thing is certain, it's expensive. Very expensive. And that's before the almost inevitable cost overruns... This is what the Canadian province of Ontario seems to have realized. It's canceling plans for 2 new reactors because of sticker shock and out of "responsibility to Ontario taxpayers". And while everybody's talking about money, what I'm really wondering about is: What is Ontario's plan to clean up its power grid?...
Photos: 
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