Manuel said:
"This is great news! I hope all cities pass this into law.The practice of using plastic bags just to quickly dispose of them has been going on far t..." [read]
Jay Knecht said:
"What are the performance stats for the Son of Max? ..." [read]
gazelle said:
"@ Dallas:
The book, and the supplementary videos in the "How It All Ends" youtube series, address this in detail, but I'll try to paraphrase:..." [read]
Barry said:
"Kofi Annan has about as much of a clue about electric cars and developing countries as Ann Ann the Panda.
He underestimates the ingenuity o..." [read]
JJ said:
"Very cool. I didn't thought that biodesel might be our future fuel...." [read]
Derek said:
""I guarantee you this will spark huge debates around the world," she said. "We have to delve into this in a way that hasn't been done in a long tim..." [read]
The New Year is quickly approaching and for some of us that means parties and galas to ring in 2010. And then there's the common dilemma: what to wear. If you're looking for the season's hottest couture but don't want to spend the money, look no further than Rent the Runway. Think $625 Diane von Furstenberg dresses for just $75.
Just a few months ago, we thought George Clooney's coffee choice could be better. Although fair-trade, Nestlé's Nespresso coffee capsules could not be recycled or reused- until now! At the beginning of this month, Nestlé announced in Madrid, Spain, the launch of the Nespresso Capsule Recycling Program, part of Ecolaboration, not only recycling the packaging, but also the used coffee grounds.
Community based product service systems are an excellent green product service system allowing a lot of people to use one item when they need it, rather than everyone purchasing the same product only to use it once a year. But what about creating an income based on sharing your stuff? Rentalic is a person-to-person renting service where anyone can hop online and rent their stuff - from parking spaces to holiday decorations - and bring in a little cash, while the renters can get access to things they need for a fraction of the cost of purchasing them.
We first heard about SHE: Sustainable Health Enterprises at the Feast Conference when Elisabeth Scharpf told her amazing story about how she set up this social and sustainable franchise scheme that provides women in developing countries with what should be a basic right: affordable sanitary pads, as well as a sustainable business. The Huffington Post titled their article about her work "When a Period Ends More Than A Sentence". Until Scharpf stepped into the spotlight at the Feast, we had very little idea that for millions of women around the world, having their period is a significant handicap, to their health, their income and their quality of life. And we love what Scharpf came up with to solve this problem in a way that it works so brilliantly for people, planet and profit.
Energy dashboards were a big subject at West Coast Green this year. But the buzz wasn't as much around new devices on the market as it was pondering how energy dashboards - and the simple fact of making energy consumption data available to consumers - can change our habits for the better, for good. Not just a novelty anymore but something making their way into our daily life, energy monitoring dashboards have a big role to fill, but still have room for improvement. From panels with key players like Google PowerMeter, PG&E and IBM to un-panels made up of smart meter enthusiasts, there were some big ideas about how energy dashboards will revise the way we interact with our homes and energy sources.
Social networking and social media are proving to be among our most powerful tools for mobilizing people to action. Twitter has helped groups engage followers for good causes, such as charity: water's twestival, and there are even social networks created specifically for green causes like WiserEarth and MakeMeSustainable. A new group of people are looking to make social networking key for stopping Amazonian deforestation - Team Earth.
In college I scored quite a bit of extra pocket change by collecting bottles and cans found on my way to and from classes and my apartment, and submitting them for recycling. I usually earned enough each month to buy about a week's worth of groceries (admittedly, college kid groceries, which means pasta, cheap bread, and not the most organic of veggies...). e-Cycler could have come in handy back then; it is a new website that makes the process of collecting - and having collected - recyclables look much more like a part time job than a random act of frugal greenness. It connects people who have recyclables but no recycling service with people who want to collect recyclables for profit.
Soleil Organics has put out a new iPhone app that tells you when you should dole out the extra dollars for organic foods, and when to skip it and go for the cheaper stuff. When it comes to buying organic, even if you can see a reason skip it, should you?
Photo: FLickr, CC
Investing in Mass Transit Pays
Mass transit is a great way for people to reduce their transportation footprint, especially city dwellers. But bad quality transit systems can drive people back to their cars (literally), and once a subway or bus system has acquired the reputation of being unreliable/dirty/dangerous/etc, it can take a while to change that reputation. That's why it's good news to learn that the New York City subway has been getting more reliable....
Back in March we wrote very briefly about Al Gore and other big names backing the idea of a .eco domain registration for the web. Gore and cohorts are supporting Dot Eco Ltd, an organization that wants to make .eco a domain name where companies and people can put their green info. However, they aren't the only ones applying to ICANN for the .eco top level domain. Big Room hopes to get ahold of .eco, and has some big ideas about what to with it, like, oh, change the world....
Image via Planet Metrics
Back in January we saw a company called Planet Metrics at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. They've created a software that allows companies like retailers, product manufacturers, and consumer packaging manufacturers to see their supply chain carbon emissions and easily identify ways to reduce the footprint of their products or services. The software has finally just launched and companies like Method are already taking advantage.
But in the bigger picture, is software like this still too simplified to help make the complicated decisions around sourcing goods? While companies get a helping hand with software like this, two big issues arise. One is that the information is still not detailed enough to be the be-all-end-all for supply chain decisions for the lightest footprint. And the second is, how will consumers know?...
Photo via Cleantechnica
Back in May we talked about Earth 911's iPhone app that helps make local recycling really easy. Then last week we talked about San Francisco cracking down on recycling, and even implementing fines for improper composting or recycling. For those residents who want to avoid that fine and like the sound of an iPhone app to help, you've got one!...
photo: N_Creatures via flickr.
One of top things you can do to make your life a bit greener is cut down on stuff. Limit your purchases to things you really need, really use and will last a while. Making it more difficult is that some of the things that are really useful only get used every so often. Why buy something you're only going to use once or twice a year, or perhaps seasonally but then have to store the rest of the time? You can now easily rent cars by the hour, and more cities are establishing bike share programs, but programs to rent smaller items aren't as prominent, nor as convenient. This may be a very personal list, I admit, but here are five things that I wish I could rent more easily: ...
A picture is worth a thousand words, and that's the case for maps too. Turns out, using some visual mapping helps groups show people their purpose and get the support they need to accomplish their goals. The map above is from Friends of the High Line, and was used - successfully - to show how preserving the structure of the elevated rail line in Manhattan and turning it into a park would benefit local wildlife. That's just the beginning of the potential visual mapping holds....
What is Maker Faire without people encouraging others to fix their own gadgets, appliances, automobiles and, well, anything else they own? The iFixit Global Repair Community provided just such a resource, helping people learn how to fix just about anything. ...
Image via GreenMap
We've been watching the development of Open Green Map for awhile now, and the eco-minded mapping system is finally gearing up for an official world-wide launch on World Environment Day (June 5, in case you forgot). Click through for why you need to have this bookmarked when you travel. ...
Image via GoingGreenToday
A new website hopes to help budding greenies put their good intentions into action by providing a daily action plan and reminder system. It customizes a plan based on a user's daily routine, so they don't have to go out of their way to take simple green actions....
Image via Earth911
Earth911 has put out a neat iPhone app that makes recycling locally super simple, telling you exactly what you can recycle and where to take it when you're ready to send it off. ...
Image via GreenDaily">GreenDailyGreenDaily has launched a handy dandy toolbar for your PC that'll help you green up not only your computer settings, but also your printing and life in general. ...
Image via UNEPandYou
Twitter is getting to be a great resource for charities and eco-activism, proven by the success of charity:water's twestival, earthtweet, and tweeting congress. Here's another great chance to use Twitter as a force of good. Plant trees with it!...
Lately, individual car ownership has become less and less attractive in cities, whilst carsharing services have become more and more inviting: more commodity (no need to hunt for parking spaces, less bills,…), less expensive and greener. Gulpshare is a new European carpooling platform launched in Portugal (see ad below), by the oil company Galp Energia....
Big box store Target has launched a charity campaign on Facebook, selecting 10 charities that will compete to receive a chunk of $3 million. You and your Facebook profile could help make some dreams come true, including for one charity in particular - the National Park Foundation. ...
Image via Shaspa
OpenShaspa Home Energy Kit is a cool new tool coming out today from Shaspa that allows you to monitor and control your home's energy use while roaming around a virtual world. It's an online gamer's dream way of making sure their home is energy efficient - much like Stanford professor Byron Reeves has predicted, and hopes will catch on. However, when virtual gaming uses a huge amount of power to keep people online, does it really present an option for significant energy savings?...
Image via WiserEarthWiserEarth users have taken it upon themselves to spread the word about green social networking by launching a campaign to help create opensource software that will make the resources found on WiserEarth viewable any website. It's an effort that will help more people and organizations connect with each other to do good green work. ...
Image via Greenpeace
Mobile phone apps that help consumers make more eco-friendly choices are coming out right and left, like 3rdWhale, Good Guide, and Locavore. But what if you just want to know about...paper? Greenpeace decided to hop on the app bandwagon and fill this little shopping niche. ...
In March we talked about Green My PC, a Facebook app that had some potential for saving energy by automatically setting your PC's power options for better consumption, and then making a social networking challenge out of it. We were a bit ho-hum about the app, but it turns out 300 people did use it during a 30-day Earth Day Countdown to a Healthier Planet challenge, and it got some results worth noting. ...
Photo via SolYoung
So what if you could become a citizen scientist simply by using your iPhone? Scientists are working on an app that would let users simply snap photos of a plant's leaves and automatically upload the information to a central database where it could be accessed for research, helping scientists follow what's happening with our natural world as the climate changes. ...
Image via SonicWALL
We at TreeHugger often make the point that telecommuting makes green sense in many situations. The trouble is convincing business managers of this. A new calculator by SonicWALL could help turn more managers on to allowing employees to telecommute once they see the financial and environmental benefits. ...
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 12.17.09
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Lately, individual car ownership has become less and less attractive in cities, whilst carsharing services have become more and more inviting: more commodity (no need to hunt for parking spaces, less bills,…), less expensive and greener. 
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