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]
When did water fountains become more of a novelty than an expectation in urban areas? And when did their restoration become news? It seems to say something about the state of free clean drinking water in cities - perhaps we've realized we've gone too far towards bottled water and are finally, finally making our way back to the tap. Either way, London has restored a drinking fountain in famous Trafalgar Square, and hopes that it starts a trend of renovating fountains across the city, returning free clean water to citizens who are out and about enjoying their public spaces.
In Lima, Peru, more than 1.3 million people have no access to drinking water. The citizens without it are in the poorest areas, where water trucked in can cost nine times as much as it does in richer areas. So, citizens have had to either make do without running water, or, with the help of a German NGO, make dew into drinking water.
Sometimes we get so concentrated on the small (yet important) details of green we forget about the big picture. Or the news seems like nothing but bad. But there's good news, too. To combat the problem of lack of sanitation and clean water -- 2.6 billion people don't have access to toilet facilities -- the smart folks at Pee Poople will soon start distributing in Kenya and Bangladesh a "biodegradable" bag called Peepoo that has an inner lining that disinfects the poo so that bag can be help fertilize soil instead of polluting precious water supplies.
My hope is this superb documentary will shock Americans and create a surge of
urgency that stops the atrocity of mountain top removal coal mining immediately. -- Ashley Judd
I know it doesn't work as literally as this, but what would you do if you knew that ancient mountains were being destroyed and communities torn apart every time you turned on a light in your home, or flipped the switch on your sound system, or heated up water for tea?
I started in on a book about a month ago titled Heart of Dryness, which discusses how the bushmen of the Kalahari can teach us what we need to know about how to live in dry climates, something we're all increasingly finding ourselves in as we drill ourselves further into a global water crisis. However, due to political turmoil, the bushmen - the very people with all the knowledge and tools that can help billions of people cope with a growing lack of water - are a culture of people vanishing from the face of the planet. While frightening, it's a fascinating read, so I was excited to see a video interview with the book's author, James G. Workman, who discusses more about the book, the water crisis, and the quiet knowledge of the bushmen. Check out the short interview after the jump
Dear Pablo: We drink a great deal of water all day long and wondered which uses more energy: opening the refrigerator door to get a bottle of cold water or using the water dispenser on the exterior of the unit. Also, does it take more energy to get ice from the mechanical dispenser (which also uses energy to make ice) or more by opening and closing the freezer door to get some cubes?
The big picture answer is that it probably doesn't matter. Simply the fact that you are filling your own water bottles rather than buying bottled water is a much more important environmentally-friendly act. Both your refillable bottle and water that is dispensed by your refrigerator are taken from the same starting temperature to the same final temperature, so there is no difference there. Where there is a difference, however, is in the act of opening the refrigerator door and allowing all of that cold air to spill out (hot air rises, cold air falls). By using the door-mounted dispenser this loss of cold air is avoided.
Electricity gets all the attention when it comes to the smart grid, but not to be ignored is also what a smart grid can do for water consumption. Americans consume twice the world average in water, massive amounts are wasted in households, manufacturing, agriculture, and landscaping - massive amounts that could be conserved through proper monitoring and accounting. Luckily, water footprints are getting increased attention, and a water grid is being zeroed in on by businesses such as IBM who is working on boosting technology behind everything from high tech water pollution sensing to water footprint accounting. . In fact, the water grid could be the next big business concept, set to be a $16.3 billion dollar industry in the next 10 years.
Could this hidden object be the answer to California's prayers? Image via: M.Underwood
As California completes its (ongoing) third year of drought, lawmakers are wondering what do we do? As the Sacramento - San Joaquin River Delta is under increasing pressure to supply not just the farmers to the east of San Francisco but also 23 million people in that area and in the very dry south, lawmakers are unsure what to do next. Popular Mechanics reports on six of the solutions the government's task force on the issue came up with to deal with California's water crisis of 2009 (and beyond).
Turns out, while there are about 5 solutions being batted around the state legislature, late last week a bill by Sacramento Senate Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg made its way to the top and is up for a possible vote this week. Yet, many of the recommendations are things homeowners and residents can and should be doing on their own. After each solution, we'll offer a few tips for how you can get involved and make it happen without waiting for a resolution....
Image via Yanko
For dry areas, every drop of drinking water is important. Moisture collectors are a big help, and this concept design, modestly called the Savior Bud, is one idea to help gather up moisture from a tree's respiratory process and create drinking water. ...
"The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind"
To most of us, old bicycle parts are mostly good for DIY furnitureprojects if they're good for anything, and windmills are best designed by people with advanced degrees.
When fourteen-year-old William Kamkwamba, of Masitala Village in Wimbe, Malawi, stumbled across the image of a windmill for the first time while pouring over a library book, he wasn't thinking like that. He was thinking of his village's lack of electricity (only 2% of Malawi is electrified) and of how electricity could power an irrigation pump, which would help his family and others cope with meager crops. If you've been reading TreeHugger, or any news really, you probably know what happened next......
Image via: One Drink at a TimeShare
There are many reasons that the hair on the back of your neck might stand up when someone says the words bottled water - all that wasted plastic, the people harmed in the making of said plastic, the communities 'losing' their water when it is bottled. But, sometimes you need portable water containers. (Okay, we admit that there are alternatives, but what if?) If that container was made from recycled paper instead, would you drink bottled water then?...
We know we all use more water than we need, and certainly more than we should be using. And we know that a global water crisis is upon us. The obvious thing to do is cut down our water consumption, right? GOOD has a great short video showing what little choices each day add up to big savings in the water department. Some of the suggestions are surprising! ...
Image via: Alaska in Pictures
Countries that have built dams as part of their "clean" energy future may have to rethink that future, thanks to climate change. As glaciers are melting faster and faster, the water just isn't there. In Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia, the UN IPCC has already identified the "the lack of water for hydropower as 'critical.'" Reuters reports that rapidly declining glaciers around the world may mean an end to hydropower and major changes for the more than one billion people who live in areas fed by glaciers. ...
Image via: WaterGeeks
This past summer, Jaymi tested a couple of filtered water bottle options and filtered them out based on price, functionality and even complexity of ingredients found in the filter. Now, WaterGeeks throws their hat in the ring with a stainless steel version of these self-filtering water bottles, but can you take it with you wherever you go?...
We reported a few weeks ago that water bottling giant Nestle plants to build a water bottling plant in Sacramento by the end of this year. While building another water bottling plant seems like a waste of space and resources, after attending an initial community meeting we find out that the project is even more wicked than initially assumed. This week you can support efforts to wrestle Nestle out of Sacramento by heading to the Crest Theater to see Tapped....
Image via: Sentrawoods on Flickr.com
After many years of hoping and waiting for this day, the Michigan government has finally finalized regulations effectively reducing mercury emissions from power plants to 90% below 1999 by 2015, reports the Associated Press. The Great Lakes (and all of their inhabitants) can now take a huge sigh of relief, as can area Michigan children....
And not just any urinals, the lucky winner is the H2Zero waterless urinal by Caroma, which beat out the competition to win this huge endorsement from one of the largest cities in the United States. Plus, green builders looking to get their permit approved now have one more ally on their side as this system has already been stamped off by the city.
In a city that has long had its battles with water conservation, this is just one more way to save lots and lots and lots of water. So just how did this "vitreous china urinal" clear all of the hurdles? Well, by making a product that outperformed the other urinals in operation, odor management, durability and waste build-up. If the city was going to approve a system that might make some people a little queasy, they had to find something that wouldn't leave a mess for anyone to have to deal with.
...
MSLK, a New York based graphic design firm, uses art to raise awareness on the consumption of plastics. Their most recent project, Watershed, has been touring New York City during Climate Week and set the scene for benefit performances by Moby, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, and a speech by Kofi Annan during the world premiere of "The Age of Stupid". Guess what the 1500 plastic water bottles used to construct this eco-installation represent? (see video and more images below)...
Winter is inching inexorably closer for our Northern Hemisphere readers, and for a few hardy souls (skiers, snowboarders, snowshoers and alpinists) this will bring with it the excitement of days and nights spent in the snowy backcountry. The wilderness may beckon, but nature also calls. What to do our human waste in these pristine environments? Because, come the spring thaw, the evidence, once hidden from view, becomes very exposed. And soon finds itself contaminating nearby waterways.
A couple of years ago the Cairngorms National Park, in Scotland, developed a rather elegant solution to the problem of winter waster or frozen faeces....
Our resident boffin John Laumer speculated late last month that plankton feeding fish off Australia's east coast wouldn't know what hit them following the massive geoengineering event (a huge dust storm) that blew across the continent recently. He was right. Researchers from the Ocean Technology Group at the University of Sydney estimate 8 million tonnes of CO2 was captured by the phytoplankton that grew as a result of the dust storm.
The scientists stick their neck out even further and say, according to ABC Online, the findings validates plans to increase fish stocks to feed some of the world's poorest people using ocean fertilisation....
Ducks swimming in Clear Lake. Image via: denjones on Flickr.com
This just in, Clear Lake, located in northern California (and for that matter, several other lakes in that region) is quite possibly the most mercury polluted lake in the world, reports the Associated Press. A history of silver mining throughout the area has left many of the lakes polluted and the fish highly toxic, if consumed. And it gets worse, the people most affected are some of the poorest in the area. ...
A worker inspects a large mirror that directs the sun's energy to water-filled troughs at a solar thermal plant in the Israeli desert. Photo by Steve Jurvetson via Flickr.
If you thought there were water wars brewing before, just wait. The sun is often touted as a fantastic source of energy, which it is, but there's a hitch: Many solar projects consume enormous amounts of water. How much water are we talking? According to a recent New York Times article, proposed plans for two solar farms in Nevada would gulp up 1.3 billion gallons of water annually--or 20 percent of the area's available water. And the worst thing is this heavy water use in renewable energy projects is all about the bottom line....
An EAR on the reef in Kimbe Bay. Credit: Mark Eakin, NOAA via Nature Conservancy
Putting EARs in the water among the bustling life of coral reefs could help us monitor the health of coral reefs around the worlds. EAR is an Ecological Acoustic Recorder, a device developed by NOAA and the University of Hawaii, listens in on the sounds of coral reefs and helps determine the overall health and changing status of reefs. It looks to be a promising technology, and the first one to be deployed in the Coral Triangle has just been installed. ...
Image via: andy_eggenberger on Flickr.com
In a recent update to a study on water resource availability in South Africa, scientists are now warning that previous estimates were off and that there is even less water available than previously estimated, reports the Cape Times. With 98% of surface water already accounted for, what is this nation to do?...
Image via: CanonFire09 on Flickr.com
That's right, reports the Sacramento News & Review, - Nestle Waters North America has pulled out of its bid to get water from McCloud, near Mt. Shasta and instead is setting up shop in Sacramento. We reported just this year that this area is the #1 most threatened river basin, so why would a water bottling company come here of all places? Is there anything you can do? Click through the jump to find out more....
In this video, Mother Jones interviews scientists from the recently returned Project Karsei, a ship sent out to explore ways of cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the twice-the-size-of-Texas-gyre in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where much of the world's plastic garbage collects. If you were waiting for good news from the field, you might not want to watch the video. ...
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 11.20.09
I know it doesn't work as literally as this, but what would you do if you knew that ancient mountains were being destroyed and communities torn apart every time you turned on a light in your home, or flipped the switch on your sound system, or heated up water for tea?
Credit: Dave Askins, 
Could this hidden object be the answer to California's prayers? Image via: M.Underwood
As California completes its (ongoing) 
Image via 
"The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind"
To most of us, old bicycle parts are mostly good for 
Image via: 
We know we all use more water than we need, and certainly more than we should be using. And we know that a global water crisis is upon us. The obvious thing to do is cut down our water consumption, right? 
Image via: 
Image via: 
We reported a few weeks ago that water bottling giant 
Image via: 
And not just any urinals, the lucky winner is the 
Image credit: Photo of mountaintop removal coal mining at Kayford Mine, West Virginia. © 2006 B. Mark Schmerling, courtesy Sierra Club Library
A new award-winning film 
Winter is inching inexorably closer for our Northern Hemisphere readers, and for a few hardy souls (skiers, snowboarders, snowshoers and alpinists) this will bring with it the excitement of days and nights spent in the snowy backcountry. The wilderness may beckon, but nature also calls. What to do our human waste in these pristine environments? Because, come the spring thaw, the evidence, once hidden from view, becomes very exposed. And soon finds itself contaminating nearby waterways.
A couple of years ago the Cairngorms National Park, in Scotland, developed a rather elegant solution to the problem of winter waster or frozen faeces....
Our resident boffin John Laumer 
Ducks swimming in Clear Lake. Image via: 
A worker inspects a large mirror that directs the sun's energy to water-filled troughs at a solar thermal plant in the Israeli desert. Photo by 
An EAR on the reef in Kimbe Bay. Credit: Mark Eakin, NOAA via 
Image via: 
Image via: 
