tom said:
"Can we start by addressing some of the Urban Legends?
Myth: CFL bulbs are full of mercury and you can't throw them away and they will kill ..." [read]
bmorningstar said:
"Just before reading this article, I had the notion that perhaps the electron transport chain of photosynthesis is less that perfect~ which I found ..." [read]
dweller said:
"32 bucks a panel? When will these be at the home depot?..." [read]
Jonathan said:
"If the Dragon station is just stealing energy from the trucks, it seems a lot more efficient to use a system optimized for the engine. A truck com..." [read]
Eric said:
"The principal does not care about the price of gas - if the cost of buses increases, they'll simply raise property taxes. It's good that these kid..." [read]
abe said:
"hey-- a simpler way to free mice from glue traps is with some water and cooking oil-- just stay away from the little guy's face, and put on some pl..." [read]
As Mike noted yesterday TreeHugger is really honored be a Webby Awards Honoree honoree this year, in the "blog cultural/personal category" (we won in that category last year). But we want spread some of the love to our pals at Discovery, who garnered a handful of Webby Awards nominations as well. HowStuffWorks.com got two (Best Copy Writing and Podcasts), Discovery Channel got three: Discovery News (News Website); Sharkrunners (Games Website); and Mike's Got Mail (Reality Video) and Discovery Networks International's I, VIDEO GAME (Television Website) was also nominated. Way to go team!
Joining TreeHugger as Webby Awards nominees are Discovery Channel's SHARK WEEK Video Mixer (Best Use of Video or Moving Image), Discovery Channel's The Buster Story Webisodes (Video, Comedy Series, Long Form or Series), and Discovery Networks International's I, VIDEO GAME (Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics). Woot!
TreeHugger is honored to be included in Time.com's First Annual Blog Index of Top 25 blogs, along with big names and heavy hitters like BoingBoing, Gawker and PostSecret. They are all great blogs and we are definitely honored to be mentioned in the same breath with them.
Time is asking readers to vote, on a scale of 1 to 10, for their favorites, and if you like what you read here at TreeHugger every day, we'd really appreciate your vote (a 10 would be best). Time's blog also has a forum to talk back about the top 25, about your favorites, about who got stiffed, etc. Click on over and please vote TreeHugger! ::Time.com
Greg Haegele directs the Sierra Club's Conservation Department, which
encompasses all major program work for the Sierra Club, including the
organizing, political and lobbying programs. Before coming to the
organization in 2004, Greg was an organizer and directed a variety of
progressive activist organizations. He also served as campaign or field
manager for a number of gubernatorial, U.S. senate, and state and local
electoral campaigns.
He attributes his love of the environment to many childhood summers spent
with his grandparents in a small cabin on an island in British Columbia.
There was no TV or radio and the days were spent "enjoying nature's beauty
and bounty," as his grandfather would say.
Citing his first electoral campaign loss years ago (a bottle bill in
Montana), Greg loves the challenge of figuring out how to combine being
right and winning. He is now both daunted by and excited about finding
solutions to one of the biggest challenges ever faced: global warming.
Greg will post weekly on Treehugger about what moves him, scares him, and
gives him hope - covering the good, the bad and the ugly from the
environmental world.
Andy is an Environmental Studies masters student at Brown University
in Providence, Rhode Island. Originally from Los Angeles, California--
that bastion of malls and sprawl--Andy has lived in Spain, and
traveled extensively in Europe, North Africa and the United States.
After completing his B.A. in Spanish Language and Culture, Andy sowed
his wild oats by traveling 3,800 miles from Virginia to San Francisco--
by bicycle. When he isn't bicycling (or thinking about bicycling)
Andy can be found cramming his brain with the latest on sustainable
development, poverty alleviation, urban revitalization and social
entrepreneurship. His particular interest in transportation stems
from the fact that he hasn't driven an automobile in 5 years, during
which time he has had plenty of time to ponder the merits of various
means of providing mobility. While unwilling to hide his predilection
for two-wheeled human transport, he is always eager to study and
report on the latest, greenest trends and technologies in cars, buses,
trains, bicycles, scooters, etc.
Alexis has always been involved in environmental protection since the end of his studies. He graduated from a French engineering school (MSc in agronomy) and from the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, known as Sciences Po.
He is now managing a french think tank and thus working on a network gathering all the main stakeholders of sustainable consumption in France, focusing on new means to promote and develop sustainable lifestyles. The partners of the think tank are well known NGOs such as WWF or international organizations like UNEP.
Before, Alexis participated in the CO2 emissions report for a National Bank and he produced (with others) a report for UNESCO on public-private partnership within the framework of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. He has also worked for a year as a communication consultant on environmental matters.
Within the framework of his job, various congresses and personal interest, he has travelled to different countries, the United States, Canada, Trinidad&Tobago, Thailand, Mexico and all across Europe.
Alexis is deeply committed in consciousness-raising on how to protect the planet in every-day life and is particularly interested in the role of medias in driving sustainability mainstream.
Jesse Fox is originally from the States, but he has lived in Israel for most of his adult life. He has held all kinds of jobs, including working in a chocolate milk factory, providing late-night customer service at an internet casino and being an activist at an urban environmental NGO. A veteran backpacker, his travels have taken him to many a far-flung corner of the globe. He especially loves the tropics. Somewhere along the line he realized that development could be sustainable, and soon thereafter began his affiliation with the green movement. Jesse is especially interested in environmental planning, green building, sustainable transport, Latin American social movements and the politics of green. He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in urban and regional planning at the Technion in Israel. He can be reached at jesse@treehugger.com
Summer Rayne Oakes is a model, media host, speaker, writer, and brand strategist.
She heads up SRO, a strategic consulting company focused on sustainable business strategies, market research, advertising and environmental communications.
An entomologist and environmental scientist by training, Oakes graduated from Cornell University as a Udall Scholar and NWF Fellow. During college she linked her environmental studies with her unique platform of cause-related modeling, which she has largely become recognized for.
John could never work out why people threw good resources away, and
still can't. An empty Fanta can: all it took took to make an
environmentalist of (most of) him.
After a trip overland to India, he 'studied' student politics, cycle
maintenance and orchestral conducting at the University of Oxford,
and came away, bewildered, with a Bachelor's in Oriental Studies
(Sanskrit/Buddhology). After consulting with Nigel Tuersley (one
founder of modern environmentalism, along with with John Elkington),
he walked into a job with the UN Environment Programme after Oxford,
and came out four years later as author of their policy on
sustainable consumption/production, 'Consumption Opportunities' and Principal
Expert of their SCOE programme. Bewildered, again, but this time a
touch disappointed.
Since 2003 he has been consulting independently, via his own Resource Vision consultancy,
for such as The Eden Project, The CarbonNeutral Company, WWF, SEI;
'studying' for a PhD in product-service systems/sustainable design
with Tim Jackson; and teaching/lecturing/collaborating on sustainable
resource consumption, consumption systems, sustainable design at
institutes such as the Architecture School of the Royal College of
Fine Art, Stockholm.
He pines for more visionary and effective government and science
(what happened to the spirit of the 70s?), and believes design, in
particular service design, is a maybe the best way to channel the
market towards society and sustainability. He skis but does not
drive; flies, but does not lie (...about that).
April is a former bilingual cocktail waitress who left the warm beaches of Hawaii to pursue an upstanding career as reporter on the new and exciting digital world for MacWEEK magazine in San Francisco. When she finally couldn't stand the thought of writing about one more wireless local area network router, she recast herself as an environmental and sustainability journalist for Tomorrow magazine in Stockholm, Sweden. A few years later, she escaped the Scandinavian chill to become editor of Sustainable Industries magazine in Portland, Oregon. But eventually, the lure of endless months of darkness and sleety rain beckoned her back to Gothenburg, Sweden where she today is a freelance writer and Hatha yoga teacher forever on the lookout for a good/local/organic/sustainable/fair trade Swedish burrito....
Ben Jervey is a freelance writer, environmental consultant, and ecopreneur who has been working towards a more sustainable life in New York City for years. He recently released a book to help others do the same--The Big Green Apple: Your Guide to Eco-Friendly Living in New York City. Mr. Jervey writes regularly about environmental issues for National Geographic's "The Green Guide," Good Magazine, NRDC's ItsYourNature.org, and Worldchanging, and has also contributed to Men's Journal, The New York Daily News, Men's Vogue, and many other online and print publications. Mr. Jervey is a founder of Evolvist.com, an online directory and resource for smarter, sustainable urban living. He works at times for Solar One, a non-profit renewable energy, arts and education center committed to inspiring New Yorkers to become more environmentally-aware urban citizens. Before moving to The Big Apple, he lived in Vermont, working in carpentry and lumber salvage after graduating from Middlebury College, where his interest in urban environmental issues began. He sat on the school's Environmental Council and studied Environmental Studies,Literature, and Geography, eventually presenting a thesis on Green Cities, a concern that brought him to Curitiba, Brazil-the "ecological capital of the world"-where he spent months researching and working with the municipal planning board, gathering urban ecological solutions and ideas from this model green city. A bicycle enthusiast, Ben has ridden across the United States and through much of Europe....
Eliza Barclay is a freelance journalist based in Washington, DC specializing in health and environmental issues in Latin America and Africa. She can frequently be found jetting east or south on assignment and hopes the airline industry will get cracking on its carbon footprint to assuage her guilty conscience. She has written about Latin America and Africa for a variety of publications including The New York Times, Slate, The New Republic Online, Business Week, National Geographic News and The Lancet. In 2007, she was awarded a fellowship from the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies with which she traveled to Tanzania and Kenya to report on malaria, climate change and illegal logging. She graduated with a B.S. in Conservation and Resource Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. Eliza can be reached at eliza@treehugger.com.
...
Ok, ok. Not quite.
Close to four years ago, TreeHugger was founded with the goal of helping to push
sustainability into the mainstream. Today, as an award-winning Top 20 blog having served over 50 million pages, we like to believe that we've played a part in pushing green towards its tipping point. Today, we are proud to announce another big step toward that goal; Discovery Communications has acquired TreeHugger.
We suspected that at a certain point in TreeHugger's life that we would need to
attract significant investment or partner up with a large media organization if we
were to really take our message to the masses and fulfill our mission. Over the last year, we were approached by over 15 large companies interested in playing this role. We had many conversations and concluded that we needed a partner with a sizeable, international audience, a kindred brand and a high level commitment philosophically and financially to green.
Discovery fits these criteria to a T.
* They reach 1.5 billion (yes, billion!) cumulative subscribers around the world with top quality, often nature related non-fiction content
* They have commitment from the top of the company for over $50M to create content including programming for the world's first 24 hr green channel and in addition have allocated significant budget aimed at building the leading green web portfolio on the Internet
* They already have web properties serving hundreds of millions of pageviews per month
* They are looking to the TreeHugger team to help drive the direction of their green efforts online
We are honored that upon surveying the potential acquisition candidates or the option of building internally, Discovery elected to pursue making us a core element in their overall green strategy. We believe that this combination will allow TreeHugger to go much further and faster than it would have been able to alone or with another partner. If you believe what the world's scientists are saying, and I do, we have but a few years to make major changes in our relationship with nature. By teaming up with Discovery, we believe we can more effectively play a critical role in this mission.
We're bringing 2 premiere brands together, one with the largest broadcast, one with the largest online audience in this area. And then we're making the largest financial commitment towards green yet. Nice, no?
More after the jump...
...
Here's a video from the recent Postopolis! event, that saw New York City-based designers, architects and bloggers come together to forge a greener future over a chat. Included on the panel are TreeHugger's fearless leader Graham Hill as well as Metropolis magazine Editor Susan Szenasy, Jill from Inhabitat and Allan Chochinov at Core77, and the topics include sustainability, design, green building and urbanism and more. If you find this clip as interesting as we do, there's more that digs further into issues of sustainable consumption and role of new media, among other topics. Thanks to Jill at Inhabitat for helping coordinate everything! ::Postopolis! via ::Inhabitat...
We have recently heard from a few readers of TreeHugger that they experienced an aggressive popup ad while visiting the site. We have not found the source of the popup on our servers, and are now working with the various third party ad services that partner with TreeHugger to try and isolate the issue.
In the meantime, if you have been affected by these ads, and are concerned about malware resulting from them, please use the following instructions to remove any malware from your computer:
How to Remove DriveCleaner (Security Response from Symantec)
How to Remove SystemDoctor (Security Response from Symantec)
Wikipedia entry on this family of malware (including section on removal)...
TreeHugger is growing fast and we are hiring. We need a bookkeeper / administrative manager to maintain our financial records and run our other administrative systems. This is a full time position approximately half the time would be bookkeeping, the rest general administration.
Primary responsibilities would include:
* Maintenance of accounting records using Quickbooks
* Bank reconciliations, bill payment, payroll management
* Coordination with our accountant to manage the accounting system and provide required tax filing and other information.
* Ongoing interaction with advertisers including preparation of quotes, billing and collection.
* General administrative responsibilities.
This person should be motivated by a concern for the environment. We are looking for someone with good organizational, communication and interpersonal skills. The position is virtual, but will ideally include face to face contact about once a week in either Manhattan or Northern New Jersey. The ideal candidate will be comfortable working from home and have high speed access and computer equipment. Computer literacy, familiarity with Quickbooks and understanding of general accounting concepts are a must.
Compensation flexible and commensurate with experience.
Please send resumes to: shayne at treehugger.com ...
You all probably already know Simran from TreeHugger TV and TreeHugger Radio or her appearances on Martha Stewart or Oprah Winfrey's Show. Well, Simran never stops! She was recently interviewed by Common Ground Magazine and by The Keeper (audio interview with a text summary on the site - but this interview is from December so some stats about TreeHugger are no longer up to date). Keep up the good work, sister!...
TreeHugger is really excited to announce the launch of our new blog over at the Sundance Channel's beautiful new website. In support of the network's newest franchise, THE GREEN (something we mentioned here and here), and the mini-site that will accompany it (scheduled to launch later this month, on March 26. Stay tuned for more info!), the blog will be updated daily and will feature a mix of exclusive and shared posts that examine all things green, from design and architecture to eco-friendly products to grassroots activism. So far, during the first week, we've been busy laying the foundation, giving the blog's visitors an idea about what to expect, and explaining what's so great about bamboo, why we like biodiesel, what FSC-certified means, and why breathing VOCs isn't a good thing; starting next week, we'll being covering some more specific topics that put the ideas we've been mentioning to work. Stay tuned for more great stuff from Sundance Channel and THE GREEN, and check out the new blog for more green. ::TreeHugger's blog at Sundance Channel...
TreeHugger wants to cross-pollinate the globe with green. We´d love to get passionate, talented, driven writers that are experts in in various fields to highlight the latest in green (see below for a list of what we're looking for). Sound like you or someone you know? We are also offering a $200 referral reward if you connect us with a successful long-term hire! ...
Summer Bowen is a lifelong environmentalist who studied Sociology and Conservation & Resource Studies at UC Berkeley. She thinks living green should be fun, which is why she’s often spotted riding her bike to Los Angeles social events, wearing the latest in eco-fashion, and drinking organic brown ale.
When she’s not painting the town green, Summer spends her hours as Founder and CEO of BTC Elements, a lifestyle store for green and socially conscious products. She currently resides in an urban dwelling in Santa Monica, California with her musician husband and two cats....
Matthew Sparkes is a freelance journalist based between Amsterdam and London. He studied at the UEA in England, where he received an undergraduate and postgraduate degree in computer science. He now writes for numerous publications, as well as TreeHugger. His personal website can be found here: Matthew Sparkes....
Throughout our look at domino magazine's expansive Green List, we've been concentrating on products that can help you go greener, like furniture, fashion and fashion, but how does a real TreeHugger go green every day? domino followed TreeHugger's Graham Hill through a typical day, including his time in a nearly-paperless home office, "if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down" and local beer from Brooklyn Brewery. Graham's got all the right gear (Loomstate & Van's organic cotton shoes and Voltaic's solar backpack) and all the right moves (unplugging to avoid phantom power, riding a bike and the subway instead of driving around New York) to be a green guru and "eco entrepreneur"; you'll have to click over to dominomag.com or flip to page 56 of the print version to see what Graham eats for breakfast, what he washes his hair with, and what time he goes to sleep. ::domino's Green List: Eco Entrepreneur Graham Hill...
Mark has been in IT for over a decade, working for leading universities and in the environmental consulting space. He is convinced that the only viable future - financially, socially, environmentally - for every business is one that is bright green. Mark is the founder of a Boston-based consulting firm New View Data Solutions, that helps companies reduce technology-related costs, ensure environmental compliance, promote social responsibility, and take advantage of the exploding opportunities in green tech....
[Last day to vote! This post will stay on top of the frontpage for the day. -Ed.] TreeHugger is honored to be nominated for a couple 2007 Bloggie Awards -- a huge thank you to everyone who nominated us! We've been nominated as Best Topical Blog and Best Group Blog this year, and we'd love your support to get to the winner's circle for the first time. Click on over to 2007.bloggies.com; about 3/4 of the way down the page you'll find the Best Topical category, and Best Group is five categories down from there. Along the way, we encourage you to vote for our pals at Gizmodo & Lifehacker (who we're up against for Group Blog -- may the best blog win!), as well as any other favorites you see on the list. Voting will be open until next Friday, February 2, at 10:00 PM EST; as before, please be sure to confirm your ballot via email, and vote wisely, because you only get one crack at it. The winners will be posted on Monday, March 12; we've got our fingers crossed! Thanks again for your amazing support!...
Kathreen Ricketson, lives and works in Canberra, Australia, and is currently the designer for a leading Australian Art magazine and a mother to two small children. She runs a couple of websites: whipup.net - a handcraft portal and selfportraitchallenge.net, weekends are spent developing a low water usage garden and enjoying the bread that her husbands bakes in his mud oven. She is interested in design, art, family and how this all fits into living a sustainable life....
Sami Grover is a committed environmental activist, and Director of Sustainability at The Change, a company offering brand strategy and design for good-for-the-world businesses and non-profits. Originally from the UK, he has over a decade of experience in working voluntarily with environmental organizations, especially focussing on community-based environmental change. He has worked in academic publishing, specializing in issues related to sustainability, and he has also been published in Permaculture Magazine. He believes passionately that everyone has a role to play in creating a better, fairer, more sustainable world. He once vowed never to fly again, then he fell in love with someone on the other side of the Atlantic....
Helen Suh MacIntosh is an Associate Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Exposure Assessment at Harvard University’s School of Public Health. She is a world recognized expert in environmental exposure assessment, with her research focusing primarily on air pollution and its impact on cardiopulmonary health. She has directed numerous environmental and epidemiological studies, with findings from these studies used to set national and international air pollution standards. She speaks often at conferences, symposiums, and seminars about environmental health issues and advises local, state, federal and international agencies and organizations on the measurement and assessment of health impacts from pollution. In addition, Helen is committed to teaching and education, both in the classroom and as an advisor and mentor. Her environmental outreach and advice can also be found on her personal website.
...
Update: Today is the last day. Please vote if you haven't!
The 2007 Bloggie Awards are here, and TreeHugger needs your help! If you like the site, and enjoy reading what we have to say each day, please nominate us for a 2007 Bloggie Award. We'd be flattered to be nominated in the Best Group Weblog, along with Best Topical Weblog, Weblog of the Year, and, with the our sexy new design, Best Designed Weblog. Like last year, there are some specific rules to follow in order to submit a valid entry. Only one nomination form and one finalist voting form may be submitted per person.E-mail addresses are required to vote, and you must use your own address and confirm the validation e-mail. If you attempt to submit a second ballot, your first one will be replaced. Also, please be sure to nominate at least two other blogs in other categories -- otherwise, the entry won't count. The deadline for nominations is next Wednesday, January 10, so hop to it! Thanks very much for your support! ::2007 Bloggies Awards...
Rachel M. Wasser traces her twin passions for the developing world and the greening of development to six months of rural research and antelope observation in Botswana. These passions have led her to China, where she currently works for ::IUCN-The World Conservation Union. Though Beijing’s gritty streets are a long way from Botswana’s open skies, Rachel continues to keep an eye on what’s happening in Southern Africa. She loves innovative win-win solutions to environmental problems – and sharing them. You can reach her at “rachel at treehugger dot com”....
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!
Ok, ok. Not quite.
Close to four years ago, TreeHugger was founded with the goal of helping to push
sustainability into the mainstream. Today, as an award-winning 
TreeHugger is growing fast and we are hiring. We need a bookkeeper / administrative manager to maintain our financial records and run our other administrative systems. This is a full time position approximately half the time would be bookkeeping, the rest general administration.
Primary responsibilities would include:
* Maintenance of accounting records using Quickbooks
* Bank reconciliations, bill payment, payroll management
* Coordination with our accountant to manage the accounting system and provide required tax filing and other information.
* Ongoing interaction with advertisers including preparation of quotes, billing and collection.
* General administrative responsibilities.
This person should be motivated by a concern for the environment. We are looking for someone with good organizational, communication and interpersonal skills. The position is virtual, but will ideally include face to face contact about once a week in either Manhattan or Northern New Jersey. The ideal candidate will be comfortable working from home and have high speed access and computer equipment. Computer literacy, familiarity with Quickbooks and understanding of general accounting concepts are a must.
Compensation flexible and commensurate with experience.
Please send resumes to: shayne at treehugger.com ...
You all probably already know Simran from 
TreeHugger is really excited to announce the launch of 
TreeHugger wants to cross-pollinate the globe with green. We´d love to get passionate, talented, driven writers that are experts in in various fields to highlight the latest in green (see below for a list of what we're looking for). Sound like you or someone you know? We are also offering a $200 referral reward if you connect us with a successful long-term hire! ...
Throughout our look at domino magazine's expansive 
[Last day to vote! This post will stay on top of the frontpage for the day. -Ed.] TreeHugger is honored to be nominated for a couple 
