MRE64 said:
"i agree there are a lot of people who know nothing about computers (should these people use them at all?)
for the rest of us, just change t..." [read]
sachxn said:
"will buy one for my daughter...." [read]
Joe Wilson said:
"I have to agree with the first comment, rubbermaid containers are food safe, and alot stronger then a glass fish tank, which has to be covered with..." [read]
racetoinfinity said:
"I want to simply say, that at this late date, I can't believe the deniers of human caused climate change. Willful ignorance!..." [read]
Kylie Wrath said:
"Whether or not leather is a product or by-product is irrelevant: there are tons of people who buy it regardless. I think the fact that this company..." [read]
thespyofcharles said:
"hmm... perhaps i shall reconsider my excessive gift packaging gag i was planning... or maybe do it out of old boxes that would otherwise simply hav..." [read]
Garden centres in countries affected by draught, like Spain for example, are promoting Xeriscaping (or Xeroscaping) in order to motivate people to help save water. This technique of water conserving landscaping doesn’t refer to cactus gardens or those that are all tiled up and plantless. The possibilities of Xeriscaping are plentiful, resulting in lush and flowery garden designs. This concept of gardening has been around since the 80ies in the US. As climate patterns shift, xeriscaping is catching on in other areas and has been very popular here in Spain for the last few years. The term itself derives from the Greek word ‘xeros’, meaning dry, and the word ‘landscape’.
The idea behind Xeriscapes is to create gardens with a rational water use, to avoid any waste of water, especially in Mediterranean and warm temperate climates. Saving water however is not the only objective of Xeriscaping. It also intends to eliminate the amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides as well as petrol-driven machinery to keep the garden in shape. Plus is saves you money and maintenance.
We have droned on about the Great Lakes Compact, about how petty politics, stupidity and self-interest could kill this international coalition to protect one of the world's great resources. Others say it better; Robert Oullette writes:
"It is hard to imagine the Great Lakes being great no more—but it is possible. Just take a look at the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for an example of what havoc exploitative policies can cause on a seemingly robust ecosystem. We tend to think such savage exploitation will never happen here, but we also thought the Cod Fishery would go on forever, and Passenger pigeons were so plentiful that we could kill them at our pleasure."
Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd be hard-pressed to miss the continuous stream of news stories describing the threat posed by the world's dwindling reserves of freshwater. With some talking up the potential for water becoming the next "oil," it has become imperative for international NGOs and governments to focus their energy on forestalling a global crisis that could devastate developing countries. Fortunately, the WWF and Nature Conservancy have developed a handy new resource, the FEOW (Freshwater Ecoregions of the World) map, to help guide current and future conservation efforts.
Clap your hands and say "Yeah!" for Eric Olsen, the winner of the 2008 Metropolis Next Generation Design Prize. The architect and college professor took home the fifth-annual prize for his response to this year's theme of water.
The San Francisco-based architect was awarded $10,000 for his project, Solar Water Disinfecting Tarpaulin, which is a vessel for both transporting and purifying water that may be put to good use in disaster areas, developing urban areas, rural regions, or anyplace where clean water is otherwise difficult or impossible to come by. According to Metropolis, "It is lightweight, expandable, and comfortable to wear, allowing a greater volume of water to be carried when compared to traditional vessels."
Though the EPA has come in for a fair amount of criticism on this site - largely due to its political leanings of late - it goes without saying that its work is tremendously important and that its regular reports, on topics ranging from waste management to air pollution, are well worth the reading. ES&T's Naomi Lubick brings us word of a new draft report on the effects of climate change on water management, called "National Water Program Strategy: Response to Climate Change," which provides a valuable insight on its challenges and the potential mitigation strategies we should be considering.
Way back when TreeHugger was a babe in the woods we posted on Walden, who at the time made roto-moulded kayaks from recycled plastic. They alas closed their doors, and we found Hydra, who made a portion of their craft with recycled content. But the overall Walden idea was kept alive by Earth Friendly Kayaks. Recently the whole concept was reinvigorated by Necky Kayaks of Washington state, USA.
They make several lengths of their Manitou kayaks from 100% recycled post industrial HDPE. Interestingly they’re claiming the recycled plastic is stronger than standard materials. As well as embracing the recycle ethic, Necky also donate 1% of gross sales to the Waterkeeper Alliance, who champion clean watershed program.
Australia has been in the grip of a one-in-a-thousand-year drought. A while back we looked at how this was affecting the ability of cities to provide basic drinking water services and what it meant for agriculture. Then we perked up with stories on how individual Australians and their municipalities have again embraced rainwater harvesting. With gusto. (Governments have even being giving rebates for tanks.)
Unfortunately new report somewhat rains on that parade. According to a study released last week a third of the Melbourne suburban rainwater tanks studied had heavy lead levels, above the Australian drinking water guidelines. Researchers from Melbourne Monash University and the CSIRO also found traces of heavy metals such as cadmium. Damn.
We've oohed and aahed at the Lifestraw, the cigar-sized personal point-of-use water filter produced by Vestergaard Frandsen. While it certainly has the potential to provide clean drinking water to a lot of people, a family of five would potentially need five Lifestraws to insure access to clean water. That's why they developed the Lifestraw Family, a water filter system designed to filter enough water for an entire family.
The size of food product packaging may have to increase, not contract, if recent thinking on providing more information on environmental impacts was to be enacted. We’ve heard about carbon labelling for food in the UK, now an Australia academic is proposing also adding water impact labelling to the mix.
Speaking from last week’s Water Down Under conference in Adelaide, James Hazelton, a senior economics lecturer from Macquarie University, floated the concept of packaged food carrying a label indicating how much water was used in its production....
The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
The Earth's environment has limits. Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has long recognized that those limits can ignite economic growth and ecological prosperity at the same time. Earth: The Sequel written by Krupp and Miriam Horn, a journalist and staffer at EDF, begins with a case study of how we can solve global warming and improve our economy by addressing the need for limits.
In the early 1980's sulfur dioxide emissions from coal fired power plants caused acid rain, damaging forests and aquatic life. We had reached the limits of how much sulfur dioxide we could pump into the atmosphere. The knee-jerk reaction to this problem was to create strict 'command and control' regulations that required adding expensive scrubbers to smoke stacks. But this solution was not addressing the problem......
Photo credit: Getty Images
Here's an interesting new way to think about energy efficiency: a study done by researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University revealed that it takes between 3,000 gallons and 6,000 gallons of water to power a 60-watt incandescent bulb for 12 hours a day over the course of a year.
The researchers -- Virginia Tech professor Tamim Younos and undergraduate student Rachelle Hill -- are crunching the numbers to determine the water-efficiency of some of the most common energy sources and power generating methods. The most water-efficient energy sources are natural gas (though we may be just about out of it) and synthetic fuels produced by coal gasification; the least efficient are ethanol and biodiesel -- the biofuels just can't catch a break these days, can they?...
High Bridge Aqueduct, Harlem River, New York City. Edwin Levick, Hulton Archive, Getty Images
Delivering safe, healthy water has been one of the main functions of government for as long as there have been governments, building aqueducts in Roman times and more recently across the Harlem River. Water is also political, as we have seen from Atlanta to Wisconsin this year. But that hasn't stopped our current governments from letting the infrastructure fall to ruin.
Two hours north of New York City, there is a lovely stream and marsh where people come to drink the cool, fresh water; in fact is is a leak of 36 million gallons a day from the Delaware Aqueduct, a billion gallons a month. (nor is this news, Andy Revkin wrote about it in 2002)
...
You may not be in the market for a supercomputer any time soon, but IBM's Power 575 is still impressive for both its computing speed and also its use of basically a system of water-filled copper pipes to cool down those hot processors. IBM says that means 80 percent less air conditioning and 40 percent less power required than older generations of comparable computing might.
Developed at IBM's Zurich lab, the system actually starts with fairly hot 45C water, running it past the blazingly hot microprocessors to bring them down to a (still toasty) 85C operating temperature, which then heats the incoming water beyond 50C, making it hot enough to be used as waste heat for building warming or municipal use. While water cooling in computing isn't a revolutionary concept, its now considered more cost effective and is being revived by IBM as energy costs for data centers spiral upwards. Via ::IBM Zurich Research
See also: The Problem Is Us: U.S. Data Center Growth Spawning Climate Disaster...
A colony of seahorses has appeared in the Thames River. The short-snouted seahorses were first seen in the river about eighteen months ago, but their presence was kept secret until new laws came into force to protect them from aquarium collectors of exotic fish . Environmental Agency representatives say "We're not quite sure why they're here, but the river water has been clean enough for seahorses for some time." An increase in plankton due to climate change and warmer sea temperatures may be the explanation for the arrival of the seahorses, usually found around Africa and the Mediterranean. Their appearance could be ascribed to better monitoring of the river's species. Others say that it is the result of the loss of more industry along the Thames, thus making the water cleaner.
The river is getting cleaner and cleaner due to environmental regulations being enforced since 1970. At that time the dumping of raw effluent into the water was stopped and tighter regulation on riverside industry was introduced. More than 100 species of fish, dolphins, seals, porpoises and the occasional whale have reappeared over the past decades and is clearly something to celebrate. Recent surveys have found bass, flounder, salmon and Dover sole, as well as the lamprey eel in the river's still murky waters. :: Guardian
...
From the "That's one way to handle it" files: today, FIJI Water announced that they've done a lot of research and ready to fully disclose the carbon footprint of its products. They've joined the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration, and launched a new website at Fijigreen.com in support of their efforts to become carbon negative. That's right: following the notion that measurement is the first key step to managing emissions, a bottled water company is branding itself green.
But, as we've seen time and again, bottled water is not green, from the humongous carbon footprint to the tremendous amount of unnecessary waste it creates to the world of reasons not to drink it. Even if there are pharmaceuticals in your water, its not a better choice. So what is FIJI Water trying to pull?...
It is the coolest looking water butt we have seen yet.
David L'Hôte on his Rainpod: "People usually water their plants and garden with tapwater although rainwater is free...Rainpod is a standalone rain collector. Its three legs are made of local wood trunks which makes each unit unique and reduces transportation impact. Its high placed tank delivers rainwater under pressure for easy watering, thanks to gravity." ...
Image courtesy of Mathieu B. via flickr
Move over, Richard Branson: Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, has just announced the Saltire Prize, a £10m (or $20m) award aimed at jump-starting research in marine renewable energy. Entries will need to be commercially viable and demonstrated in Scotland, whose seas are thought to have the capacity to produce 25% of Europe's tidal energy - and 10% of its wave energy....
Soil bacteria have thumbed their ‘nose’ at antibiotics this week. A surprising study in the journal Science shows that soil bacteria can thrive on antibiotics alone. The bacteria apparently have no problem using our most trusted weapons against them as food. What is worse, these close relatives to human pathogens might serve as a reservoir of resistance to the bacteria that plague humanity.
We are in an expensive arms race with bacteria. Developing new antibiotics that rapidly become useless, only to develop more. But the race with bacteria costs more than just money, it is a life and death situation, and one we are rapidly loosing. Antibiotics, from soap to feedlots are showing up in our water and soil, causing unknown environmental and human health issues in the process. It’s time to stop thinking of our relationship with bacteria as a war, and look for a different approach....
Swing by the Mississippi River a few years from now, and you may be surprised to see hundreds of thousands of miniature electric turbines dotting the fast moving river's bed. All the electricity generated by this massive "in stream" hydrokinetic project - around 1,600-MW - would be enough to power up to 1.5 million homes, according to Daniel R. Irvin, the chief executive of Massachusetts startup Free Flow Power Corp.
The company's goal is to install several hundreds of thousands of turbines at 59 sites along the river; each turbine would be attached to pilings in the river bed and would be made of a lightweight composite material like carbon fiber. If all goes according to schedule, Irvin is confident his turbines will be ready to begin producing electricity by 2012. ...
In the UK a lot of people are fighting to stop new coal burning power plants which promise Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). However it has not been figured out and even the Energy Minister says "“CCS is as yet unproven technology and we have to acknowledge there is some risk that safe and reliable CCS for power generation might not be proven or deployable at scale and at reasonable costs.”
Launched on April 1, Ev-eon water is a new CCS idea: capture the CO2 from coal plants and use it to carbonate bottled water. As long as you don't burb, the carbon dioxide is nicely sequestered. Unlike most April Fools gags, this one has a serious message. Great video at ::Ev-eon Water via ::Smartplanet News
...
The carcass of an albatross on the beach; birds and sea mammals mistake plastics for food then inevitably starve to death. This is the bird’s actual gut sample. Photo courtesy Algalita.org.
Traveling the open oceans is not for everyone—sea mist, salt spray, tossing rock-a-bye-baby waves, and Dramamine days. Some people, though, were born for it. Case in point: Captain Charles Moore, third-generation resident of Long Beach, California and founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. Now just more than sixty years of age, the weathered seafarer is the principal researcher on the ocean studying the pelagic plastic phenomenon in the Pacific. I recently had the privilege to head out on one of their research trips on behalf of Planet Green to understand the issues that are at hand. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/great_pacific_garbage_patch.php...
About 15 million people in Africa are without adequate access to drinking water, and Emily Pilloton is doing something about it. As the founder of Project H Design (and Managing Editor of Inhabitat), she's been busy proving that design can make a difference with the Hippo Roller project. We first spied the project back in 2006; since then, we noted Emily's campaign to sponsor Rollers for use in South Africa and just received word that the first 75 were successfully delivered (including the one that TreeHugger Lloyd sponsored) this past weekend. Hit the jump for a quick account of the delivery from Emily and a story through pictures of the event....
We don't usually find much of interest for TreeHugger readers in the Globe and Mail's Report on Business magazine, and their content is usually behind a stupid subscription fence. However this month they have three important articles on water, declaring it "The Decade's most important business Issue."
John Lorinc (known to TreeHuggers for The New City) writes The Battle of the Bottle - "Critics decry water bottlers' use of a public good for private profit. The industry would just like to offer a new flavour to you. And to your child. And to your dog" He describes some of the battles over local water and continues "The water critics accuse the big bottlers of siphoning off natural resources, as at [local source] Aberfoyle. But the rap sheet also includes the various ways that bottled water turns the natural into the unnatural, adding packaging waste (about half of all sales are in single-serving bottles); greenhouse gas emissions (for instance, from shipping millions of bottles of "natural artesian" water from Fiji to the United States); and health risks." ::ROB Magazine...
Dano, Creative Commons, Flickr
You can stay in the worst fleabag motel with dripping taps and electric baseboard heaters, but it will have a "save our planet" sign when all they really care about is saving on their laundry bill.
Yet in fact they work, and can be made to work even better. According to the New York Times, the Journal of Consumer Research examined how often people follow the requests of such cards, and why. It also found that we are sheep. 37.2% of guests “help save the environment” by returning their towels to the rack with the traditional sign. But when the sign said "“75 percent of the guests who stayed in this room had reused their towels" the rate went up to 49.3%.
A good lesson for laying out environmental campaigns. ::New York Times via ::Green Daily...
Take two essential household appliances and stick them together, and what do you get? This entry to the Greener Gadgets Design competition: the Washup washing machine-toilet by Sevin Coskun. With a space-saving design that includes graywater recycling, the wall-mounted Washup stores water used in the washer in the toilet, to be reused for flushing. As the washer is located above the toilet, loading can be completed without awkward back bending. Another plus? The Washup's positive message about graywater recycling, which is usually not so visible. via ::Core77 Also see ::the Greener Gadgets Wrap-up Video ::the Greener Gadgets Design Competition Winners ::Chris Jordan on Greener Gadgets
Image courtesy of Core77...
Deep, rich, black soil is a farmers dream come true. Healthy soil is full of life, with entire communities living just below our feet. Healthy soil can retain and purify water, provide an abundance of food, and even act as way to sequester carbon dioxide. One key to getting there is amending soil with biochar. Biochar is what you get when biomass is heated in the absence of oxygen through a process called pyrolysis. When incorporated into soil, biochar provides the structural habitat needed for a rich community of micro-organisms to take hold. Incorporating biochar into soil can also act as a way to sequester carbon.
Carbon dioxide sequestration was not likely the original goal of biochar, or terra preta, developed thousands of years ago by the Native Americans in the Amazon region. But today, as we recognize the cost of emitting green house gases, we also recognize the wisdom of using biochar as micro-habitat to improve our soils. Biochar is a classic win-win scenario, a solution that can provide us with a valuable tool for fighting climate change, world hunger, poverty, and energy shortages all at the same time. Sound good? ...
Images courtesy of Philippe Rekacewicz
Seeing as how yesterday was World Water Day 2008, we thought it'd be appropriate to post on a few visual representations of the state of usable water today. For some perspective, the above image, created by Philippe Rekacewicz with data from the WHO and UNICEF, shows the proportion of the world population with access to drinkable water in 2004....
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.
TreeHugger breaks it down for you in a series of in depth how-to articles that will help you green your life. No time like the present!
image credit: Suzie Gibbons/Getty Images
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The size of food product packaging may have to increase, not contract, if recent thinking on providing more information on environmental impacts was to be enacted. We’ve heard about 
The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
The Earth's environment has limits. Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has long recognized that those limits can ignite economic growth and ecological prosperity at the same time. Earth: The Sequel written by Krupp and Miriam Horn, a journalist and staffer at EDF, begins with a case study of how we can solve global warming and improve our economy by addressing the need for limits.
In the early 1980's sulfur dioxide emissions from coal fired power plants caused acid rain, damaging forests and aquatic life. We had reached the limits of how much sulfur dioxide we could pump into the atmosphere. The knee-jerk reaction to this problem was to create strict 'command and control' regulations that required adding expensive scrubbers to smoke stacks. But this solution was not addressing the problem......
Photo credit: Getty Images
Here's an interesting new way to think about energy efficiency: a study done by researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University revealed that it takes between 3,000 gallons and 6,000 gallons of water to power a 60-watt incandescent bulb for 12 hours a day over the course of a year.
The researchers -- Virginia Tech professor Tamim Younos and undergraduate student Rachelle Hill -- are crunching the numbers to determine the water-efficiency of some of the most common energy sources and power generating methods. The most water-efficient energy sources are natural gas (though we may be 
High Bridge Aqueduct, Harlem River, New York City. Edwin Levick, Hulton Archive, Getty Images
Delivering safe, healthy water has been one of the main functions of government for as long as there have been governments, building aqueducts in Roman times and more recently across the Harlem River. Water is also political, as we have seen from
A colony of seahorses has appeared in the Thames River. The short-snouted 
From the "That's one way to handle it" files: today, FIJI Water announced that they've done a lot of research and ready to fully disclose the 
It is the coolest looking water butt we have seen yet.
David L'Hôte on his Rainpod: "People usually water their plants and garden with tapwater although rainwater is free...Rainpod is a standalone rain collector. Its three legs are made of local wood trunks which makes each unit unique and reduces transportation impact. Its high placed tank delivers rainwater under pressure for easy watering, thanks to gravity." ...
Image courtesy of 
Groovy Green found an odd article on a 
Soil bacteria have thumbed their ‘nose’ at antibiotics this week. A surprising study in the journal Science shows that soil bacteria can thrive on antibiotics alone. The bacteria apparently have no problem using our most trusted weapons against them as food. What is worse, these close relatives to human pathogens might serve as a reservoir of resistance to the bacteria that plague humanity.
We are in an expensive arms race with bacteria. Developing new antibiotics that rapidly become useless, only to develop more. But the race with bacteria costs more than just money, it is a life and death situation, and one we are rapidly loosing. Antibiotics, from 
Swing by the Mississippi River a few years from now, and you may be surprised to see hundreds of thousands of miniature electric turbines dotting the fast moving river's bed. All the electricity generated by this massive "in stream" hydrokinetic project - around 1,600-MW - would be enough to power up to 1.5 million homes, according to Daniel R. Irvin, the chief executive of Massachusetts startup Free Flow Power Corp.
The company's goal is to install several hundreds of thousands of turbines at 59 sites along the river; each turbine would be attached to pilings in the river bed and would be made of a lightweight composite material like carbon fiber. If all goes according to schedule, Irvin is confident his turbines will be ready to begin producing electricity by 2012. ...
In the UK a lot of people are fighting to stop new coal burning power plants which promise Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). However it has not been figured out and even the Energy Minister says "“CCS is as yet unproven technology and we have to acknowledge there is some risk that safe and reliable CCS for power generation might not be proven or deployable at scale and at reasonable costs.”
Launched on April 1, Ev-eon water is a new CCS idea: capture the CO2 from coal plants and use it to carbonate bottled water. As long as you don't burb, the carbon dioxide is nicely sequestered. Unlike most April Fools gags, this one has a serious message. Great video at 
The carcass of an albatross on the beach; birds and sea mammals mistake plastics for food then inevitably starve to death. This is the bird’s actual gut sample. Photo courtesy Algalita.org.
Traveling the open oceans is not for everyone—sea mist, salt spray, tossing rock-a-bye-baby waves, and Dramamine days. Some people, though, were born for it. Case in point: Captain Charles Moore, third-generation resident of Long Beach, California and founder of the 
About 15 million people in Africa are without adequate access to drinking water, and Emily Pilloton is doing something about it. As the founder of 
We don't usually find much of interest for TreeHugger readers in the Globe and Mail's Report on Business magazine, and their content is usually behind a stupid subscription fence. However this month they have three important articles on water, declaring it "The Decade's most important business Issue."
John Lorinc (known to TreeHuggers for 
Dano, Creative Commons,
Take two essential household appliances and stick them together, and what do you get? This entry to the 
Deep, rich, black soil is a farmers dream come true. 
Images courtesy of Philippe Rekacewicz
Seeing as how yesterday was 
