John Laumer said:
"Editor's remark:
Sierra Club spokesperson has supplied the following in response to a comment...
--------------------
In answer..." [read]
Cybercat said:
"@Joe
I think they're going off the flat gas price, rather than before or after government and state taxes. I wouldn't mind seeing another ..." [read]
Cybercat said:
"There isn't a percentage for how much is generated from feeding animals other animal by-products so all the assumptions made below are part on that..." [read]
BenSchiendelman said:
"Live in cities, use the public transportation, buy fruits, vegetables and grain at the farmer's markets. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Gre..." [read]
Scott Johnson said:
"Nice house! I'm wondering just how much floor area it has. That's a lot of floors + a lot of stair climbing, but it's a very unique home...." [read]
Cybercat said:
"Killing creativity?
In what way does forcing you to do more with less kill creativity? In fact, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what PROMOT..." [read]
After numerous music bands, such as Radiohead, took on the fight against climate change and decided to go green(er), more and more festival organisers are also keen on the idea to contribute towards sustainability with their events. A great example is the SOS 4.8 festival held in Murcia, Spain, last weekend for the first time. None other than the Chemical Brothers, Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Mills, James, Digitalism and Fangoria (!) performed at the 24-hour event.
With close to 1500 people casting ballots for the schools they felt solved The Great Copy Machine Epidemic of 2008; it’s amazing that not much more than a handful of votes separated the top contenders.
But it turns out the students at Grace Hill Elementary in Rogers, Arkansas came out on top; solving the crisis by diagnosing their school’s photocopy machine with a severe case of “Carbon Footprint Swollenitis”.
Apparently, symptoms include a severe swelling of the feet; leaving a larger than life impact on the planet and contributing to global warming long after the school day is done.
In case you’re wondering what one school can do in just the span of a few short months, take a good look at the Go Green Initiative’s school of the week, Milltown Middle School in Milltown, NJ. They’ve actually earned the first year award from the Go Green Initiative for their efforts, and they’ve been making a difference by holding recycling assemblies and working to increase their efficiency at recycling plastics, batteries, ink cartridges, paper, plastic, glass and aluminum while working to start an Elmer’s Glue recycling program as well.
Making a city bicycle-friendly (Portland is a good success story, being the first major city in the US to earn Platinum Level) is not easy. There's a vicious cycle where if the city isn't bike-friendly, fewer people will ride, and if fewer people ride, politicians feel less pressure to make the city bike-friendly.
Bike to Work Day in Seattle (May 16, 2008) aims to make counting bicycle commuters easier with an impressive event that brings together about 11,000 cyclists. Such a big group can't be ignored. Strength in numbers!
The Cascade Bicycle Club, the largest in the US, says: "[Bike to Work Day's] dramatic year-over-year increases show transportation engineers and politicians that facilities like bicycle lanes and parking racks are good investments." If you are in the Seattle area and are a cyclist, we encourage you to join the club. If you want to take part in the Bike to Work Day, details can be found here. Even Lance Armstrong wants you to go!
America is eating up its forests, literally. In addition to a recent report by the non-profit Dogwood Alliance, a new campaign called No Free Refills has been launched to highlight the fast-food industry’s major role in the deforestation of the Southern forests of the US. Their eye-catching and informative website doesn’t go lightly on “DeluxDeforestation” either, stating that: “Packaging symbolizes the disposable society we have become. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the fast food industry.”
With nearly a 100 paper packaging mills in the region and thousands of restaurants worldwide, fast-food giants such as McDonalds, Wendy’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Arby’s, Quizzno’s and Taco Bell are major consumers of paper products sourced from the area. "Every year millions of pounds of food packaging waste litter our roadways, clog our landfills and spoil our quality of life. Southern forests, the jewel of the American landscape, are being destroyed to bring you fried chicken, burgers and fries, and super-sized convenience in a glut of wrappers, boxes and cups," says Lauren Barnett, the Alliance Media Outreach coordinator.
TreeHugger: You actually were not yet mayor when the tornado struck, so what were the first things that went through your mind as an ordinary citizen after the disaster?
Bob Dixson: Well just get stuff cleaned up. Concentrate on your own property and helping your neighbors and just get cleaned up and go from there. We didn’t really get an idea of what we had until we got stuff moved away, with just piles of debris all over.
TH: And what did you believe were the most pressing issues facing Greensburg the day before the tornado?
BD: I think over the years our most valuable resource that we’ve exported is our youth. They’ve been heading elsewhere to find employment. So the question has been, “How do we encourage and get businesses to come and offer employment to our younger generation and keep them in the county and town?”
In a calorie-burning 3,900-kilometre cycle journey from one end of India to another, a man plans to raise awareness and to gather pledges to plant more trees worldwide. Cycling in the wake of the United Nation Environment Programme’s (UNEP) successful Billion Tree Campaign last year will be Shrenik Rao, creator of the TreeCycle project, CEO of a media company and an avid cyclist.
We just wrote about hypermiling and mentioned that one of the tips to improve gas mileage was making sure your tires are properly inflated. Well, we weren't kidding. A study done by Bridgestone Europe found that 93.5% of cars in the European Union have under-inflated tires. "Softer tires increase rolling resistance, forcing the engine to work harder - and burn more fuel. The U.S. Department of Transportation says being down just 5 to 7 pounds per square inch can decrease fuel economy by two to three miles per gallon."
It all adds up to quite a big waste. Pretty disgusting, in fact, considering that inflating tires is the closest thing you can get to a free lunch. Bridgestone calculated the extra fuel burned to amount to 2.14 billion gallons per year, and 18.4 million tons of extra CO2. Just for Europe. Wired did some back of the envelope math and found that the numbers for the whole planet are "42.32 million tons of carbon dioxide generated by under-inflated tires, or slightly less than Connecticut emitted in 2005." So check your tire pressure, and tell your friends about it! It's also important for your safety (better handling). ::Bridgestone Europe, ::We Can Cut Global CO2 By 42M Tons For Free
America is eating up its forests, literally. In addition to a recent report by the non-profit Dogwood Alliance, a new campaign called No Free Refills has been launched to highlight the fast-food industry’s major role in the deforestation of the Southern forests of the US. Their eye-catching and informative website doesn’t go lightly on “DeluxDeforestation” either, stating that: “Packaging symbolizes the disposable society we have become. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the fast food industry.”
With nearly a 100 paper packaging mills in the region and thousands of restaurants worldwide, fast-food giants such as McDonalds, Wendy’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Arby’s, Quizzno’s and Taco Bell are major consumers of paper products sourced from the area. "Every year millions of pounds of food packaging waste litter our roadways, clog our landfills and spoil our quality of life. Southern forests, the jewel of the American landscape, are being destroyed to bring you fried chicken, burgers and fries, and super-sized convenience in a glut of wrappers, boxes and cups," says Lauren Barnett, the Alliance Media Outreach coordinator. ...
TreeHugger: You actually were not yet mayor when the tornado struck, so what were the first things that went through your mind as an ordinary citizen after the disaster?
Bob Dixson: Well just get stuff cleaned up. Concentrate on your own property and helping your neighbors and just get cleaned up and go from there. We didn’t really get an idea of what we had until we got stuff moved away, with just piles of debris all over.
TH: And what did you believe were the most pressing issues facing Greensburg the day before the tornado?
BD: I think over the years our most valuable resource that we’ve exported is our youth. They’ve been heading elsewhere to find employment. So the question has been, “How do we encourage and get businesses to come and offer employment to our younger generation and keep them in the county and town?”
...
In a calorie-burning 3,900-kilometre cycle journey from one end of India to another, a man plans to raise awareness and to gather pledges to plant more trees worldwide. Cycling in the wake of the United Nation Environment Programme’s (UNEP) successful Billion Tree Campaign last year will be Shrenik Rao, creator of the TreeCycle project, CEO of a media company and an avid cyclist....
We just wrote about hypermiling and mentioned that one of the tips to improve gas mileage was making sure your tires are properly inflated. Well, we weren't kidding. A study done by Bridgestone Europe found that 93.5% of cars in the European Union have under-inflated tires. "Softer tires increase rolling resistance, forcing the engine to work harder - and burn more fuel. The U.S. Department of Transportation says being down just 5 to 7 pounds per square inch can decrease fuel economy by two to three miles per gallon."
It all adds up to quite a big waste. Pretty disgusting, in fact, considering that inflating tires is the closest thing you can get to a free lunch. Bridgestone calculated the extra fuel burned to amount to 2.14 billion gallons per year, and 18.4 million tons of extra CO2. Just for Europe. Wired did some back of the envelope math and found that the numbers for the whole planet are "42.32 million tons of carbon dioxide generated by under-inflated tires, or slightly less than Connecticut emitted in 2005." So check your tire pressure, and tell your friends about it! It's also important for your safety (better handling). ::Bridgestone Europe, ::We Can Cut Global CO2 By 42M Tons For Free...
If you're a great, green middle school teacher with an idea to help inspire students to live a greener life there just may be a grant with your name on it coming from GM and Discovery Education.
In fact, they'll be handing out 40 of the $1K grants along with a healthy dose of online professional development and a free digital camera to to the teachers who come up with the best ideas so they can implement and document their projects and share the magic with the rest of us.
...
When I called Principal Randy Fulton and asked for an interview he was as busy as any Principal might be on any given school day; particularly if they were in the process of planning the new high school to be built to LEED platinum standards and the President was scheduled to visit in just a few short days to give the commencement address at graduation not so long after the entire town had been swept away by a huge tornado.
But he closed the door and sat down for a few moments to give me his insights into the process of rebuilding Greensburg High School, the effect it’s had on his students, and the simple truth about how he copes with the enormous task of rebuilding not only his own life but that of the school as well.
TreeHugger: Where did the desire to rebuild Greensburg High School in a green fashion come from?
Randy Fulton: Well, once the disaster happened one of the things the governor of Kansas has really stressed is building back in an environmentally sustainable manner, and I think that’s where that came from. And the leaders and commissioners and administrators, all of us got together and said “Let’s do this right. Let’s build back a town that is green and takes care of the environment.”
...
“Go easy on me,” Tommy Lee said in a whisper. “You know I’m a green virgin.”
“Sorry Tommy,” I said with a smile. “I like to go deep.”
Earth Day celebration in San Francisco is probably the perfect place to give Tommy Lee and Ludacris the Green 101. The artists, (both who are participants in Planet Green’s Battleground Earth), paid a visit to the Bay Area during the Green Apple Festival. They may have well been on another planet though, because you know how freaky cool San Francisco can get around Earth Day *wink, wink*.
Warning: The video has incredibly annoying popup ads that you have to shoo away throughout.
We love Andrea Zittel and have even called her our role model. We wrote earlier: "she lived six months in one dress; designs remarkable furniture; has created a series of intricate folding living units that challenge every notion about multifunctional furniture; has created living pods and stations on her property that blow away most of our beloved modernist prefabs." Her work from over 16 years is on display at Schaulager in Basel, Switzerland; the video provides good coverage of the contents and her press conference. ::Vernissage via ::Dezain...
Photo courtesy tanakawho via flickr
Ironic that the Japanese originally started making those flimsy, break-apart disposable wooden chopsticks as a good way to deal with wood scraps. Now the nation goes through 24 billion pairs per year - 63 million pairs discarded per day. If you're really thrifty you can glue them together into a chopstick canoe.
Otherwise there's a growing trend in Tokyo and other cities to B.Y.O.C - bring your own pair of personal "hashi" or chopsticks. Now the Marche restaurant group is offering a reward system for people who bring their own - one point for each restaurant visit where you BYOC - 10 points equals a 500 yen ($5) discount on a meal. There's even a "chopstick keep" system where regular customers can store their chopsticks (they'll wash them) at the restaurant. A popular lunch buffet called Yokohama Cruise Cruise is giving a 300 yen discount on their 2100 yen ($20) buffet price for BYOC customers. Of course, you've got to have a pair to carry - here's a pair of rice-based biomass and polypropelene plastic chopsticks. Via CScout Japan
See also: Carry On Eating: Bring Your Own Chopsticksand Bring Your Own Chopstick Movement Gains Traction In Asia...
Laura in Venice, Italy 2004
In his post Fight For Your Right... to Dry, Sean challenged readers to "take artistic photos of outdoor clotheslines that show both beauty and vitality." On National Hanging Out Day we upped the ante by adding a coveted copy of Jim Kunstler's World Made By Hand as a prize.
Our esteemed judges, Graham Hill and Meaghan O'Neill, have chosen Photo Unrest's shot of a clothesline in Venice, Italy as the winner. Send us an email and we will send you the book!
...
If you haven’t had the chance to vote yet for the school that you think solved The Great Copy Machine Epidemic of 2008 there’s simply no time left to wait. With just a few days left to cast your ballot and help determine which disease it is that’s been causing school photocopy machines everywhere to chew up trees and contributing to global warming in the process.
For while we all know that the paper industry uses tremendous amounts of energy and causes deforestation as well, few realized until recently that there just may be a strange, contagious disease to blame for the tremendous amount of paper used by school copy machines.
You know those giant, devilish, tree-eating machines that lurk in the bowels of virtually every main office or back room in schools across America?
...
Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Workweek, has a really cool idea and TreeHugger is helping to spread the word; it's a contest to help enable more effective electronics recycling, with the help of the big-time companies who design and manufacture the phones, provide cell service, or help both ship these phones around the world. Stay tuned for more; for now, take it away, Tim!
Boba Fett was always my favorite Star Wars character. Here’s your chance to emulate him and become a bounty hunter. Prizes go to the bold.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than 125 million cell phones are thrown away each year, which amounts to about 65,000 tons of waste. That’s just in the U.S....
He’s a high school student from the town of Greensburg Kansas, and his enthusiasm for the green movement and the amazing things it’s doing for his town after the devastation caused by the tornado that leveled it are an inspiring look at the future of green in America.
After spending close to an hour speaking with him by phone I realized precisely why the rebuilding of Greensburg can become an uplifting model for us all. I trust you’ll enjoy his insight and enthusiasm as much as I did.
TreeHugger: What do you believe made the people of Greensburg decide to rebuild the town in a green fashion?
Taylor Schmitt: Well after at least 96% of the town was destroyed there has obviously been a massive need for rebuilding, and the town has come together as a big family, really, and it’s been one joint effort to rebuild the town better than it was and more sustainable and green than it was. So we’ve really been learning a lot about what we need to do to keep our town from dying again. And we’ve been learning about building and going green and implementing a lot of green into our rebuilding efforts.
...
The New Environmentalism Is About Issues in Addition to Eco-Tips
We're heartened to see a shift in environmental focus taking root around the past Earth Day. This Enviro New Wave is committed to supplementing eco-tips and individual action by tackling the issues facing life on Earth through a whole-systems approach. This includes nurturing local action as well as doggedly advocating for large-scale political shifts in policy....
When the students and staff in the Go Green Club at Putnam Valley Middle School held a community meeting back at the beginning of the school year to help educate other students and staff about the importance of composting and recycling there’s a very good chance they didn’t know how far their efforts to green the school would take them…...
We tour the booths at the Green Living Show. Image credits: Emma AlterThe Hästens $ 60,000 sleep
It is, of course, all natural horsehair and cotton and flax and pine and down. "Horsehair comes with its own, extremely effective, built-in ventilation system. Moisture passes through the hollow strands so quickly that if you wet horsehair with water and give it a shake, it dries straight away." This particular mattress also costs $ 60,000. Did it feel it? VP Sandy McDermid had to pry me off it. Unfortunately my credit card limit kicked in and I had to take a pass. ::Hastens...
The Lower East Side Ecology Center and Tekserve Team Up For Electronic Recycling of iPods, Computers, Batteries and More
New York City area residents can properly recycle their electronic waste free of charge on Saturday and Sunday, April 26th & 27th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Monday, April 28th from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. The collection point will be at 119 West 23rd Street in front the Tekserve store. To celebrate the event, anyone bringing electronics to be recycled can register at Tekserve for a raffle to win a MacBook Air or one of three 16GB iPod touches. All participants in the event will also receive a $25 discount on a new computer purchased within 30 days after the event....
The Discovery Young Scientist Challenge is back, and they're looking for a few good students and teachers. The premier national science competition for students in grades 5 through 8 (and their teachers) is accepting entries through June 15, so if you are (or know) a student interested in science, create a short (1-2 min.) video about one of this year's scientific topics -- The Science of Space is the theme -- and you could win a trip to Washington, DC to compete in the finals later this year.
Here's how it works: create a video that demonstrates the student's understanding of the scientific concepts explained and his or her comfort level discussing science in general. Between June 15 and early September, judges from Faraday Studios will review the submissions and choose 51 semifinalists: one from each state and the District of Columbia. Students will be judged on the scientific merit of their video and, just as importantly, on their ability to communicate science. Keep reading to learn how entering the challenge might get you an appearance on Discovery Channel's Mythbusters TV show....
If you’ve ever wished you could play outside all day, running through forests and playing in the mud until the sun went down you just may be fascinated to learn that there are kindergarten schools in Germany that now eschew classrooms in favor of the forest floor, and head outside to learn all day, come rain or shine....
It makes sense to use one of the world's most energy-efficient vehicles to spread the word on climate change: That's why we are excited to hear about Climate Ride 2008, a new initiative bent on raising awareness for positive climate change and renewable energy legislation. Participants will bike for five days -- that would be a total of 320 miles -- from New York City to Washington, D.C. Each rider will raise $2250 to support educational organizations Clean Air–Cool Planet and Focus the Nation. ...
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!