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green living, Science & Technology, Weird & Wonderful, Oct 5th, 2010,
It’s been months since I’ve written anything about green architecture, but that certainly didn’t stop people from dreaming or designing new ideas. Museums, retirement homes, shopping centers, schools and office spaces are created (or at least drawn up) all the time, but these particular designs caught my attention for one reason: they all float (or have floating-like qualities). Check them out: Xiamen Museum Designed by MAD Architects and destined for Xiamen City in China, this is one of the most unique museum ideas I have ever seen. The Xiamen Museum is an odd shaped, 3-story structure that would cover about…
Tags: China, float, green architecture, green design, hang, Italy, Ja StudioInc, MAD Architects, Michael Jantzen, orbit, Orbiting Eco-House, Slow Uprising, Xiamen Museum
Health, Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, ,
So far at least four people have died and 120 have suffered injuries after a flood of toxic red sludge covered several villages in Hungary on Tuesday. The poisonous sludge comes from an alumina plant and began spilling into the surrounding area when the plant’s reservoir failed. So far it has leaked some 1 million cubic meters of the substance into a 40 square km area. 390 residents have been relocated and 6 people are still missing. The sludge, a waste product in aluminum production, contains heavy metals and is toxic if ingested. Many of the injured sustained burns as…
Tags: disaster, Hungary, red, sludge, TOXIC
Health, Sustainable living, Videos & Documentaries, ,
According to a recent survey by food and grocery analyst IGD, 18% of consumers in Germany expect to buy more organic groceries in the future. FreshPlaza reports that despite the economic downturn of 2009, organic farming grew in the country: Taking into account the total agricultural area, the organic agriculture has a percentage of 5.6%. 5.6% of all farming companies are also organic farmers. –Freshplaza.com Since Germany’s reunification, most organic farmers – hitherto unheard of in the DDR – have moved to the former East and consumers in German cities are especially keen on buying organic. See the following Deutsche…
Tags: agriculture, Germany, grocery, organic, produce
Climate & Change, Health, ,
Floods are taking the world by storm lately–literally. We have them in the US, they’re happening over in Asia and Europe, and all of them are claiming lives. This latest report focuses on the area of West Papua, Indonesia, where at least 56 people were killed by flooding. Dozens of others are still missing and over 60 people were injured, many with broken bones and most needing to be life-flighted (transported via helicopter) to medical services. In addition to the dead and wounded, hundreds of homes were destroyed, 30 of which were completely flattened by the storm. Schools, hospitals and…
Tags: 56 dead, breaking news, damaged homes, flash floods, flooding, Indonesia, mudslides, power outages, West Papua, wounded
Business, Sustainable living, ,
A new wave of electric cars is coming to Europe in the form of futuristic bubble cars including, improbably, a two-wheeled model, which has a chassis designed along the lines of the Segway. You know, that annoying upright electric thingamajig that President Bush fell off. The new, cute, teensy vehicles are designed for the urban environment – easy to park and charge, and come with a host of high tech features such as radar, body heat scanners and automated driving based on GPS. That’s right – cars that drive themselves, talk to each other and scan your body. Run to…
Tags: bubble, car, electric, Kia, Pop, Renault, Twizy
Recycling, Sustainable living, Oct 4th, 2010,
In a quaint return to yester-year, 60 towns in France have replaced some of their recycling and rubbish collection trucks with horse-drawn carts. The ambient sound of clip-clopping hooves was surely part of the reason for this change, but the horses are more mobile in some narrow streets than the noisy and cumbersome trucks. Plus, they eat grass instead of fossil fuels and produce fertilizer for any gardener not to proud to scoop some off the street. Though there have been failures and drawbacks to these schemes, but some have been successful. A similar idea with donkeys in Italy, has…
Tags: cart, collection, France, horse-drawn, Recycling, rubbish
Conservation, Videos & Documentaries, Wildlife & Flora, ,
In terms of conservation, plants do not receive as much attention as cute cuddly animals like pandas or polar bears. Let’s face it – they don’t even rank up there with giant salamanders. But plants provide food for all living things and are essential to life on Earth. The untapped medicinal and technological resources in plant life around the world are unknown but potentially invaluable. Therefore preserving plant species and maintaining botanical biodiversity is an important, if often overlooked, issue. One fifth of the 380,000 plant species on Earth are threatened by extinction, mostly due to human activity. This month,…
Tags: biodiversity, biological, convention, diversity, japan, Nagoya, plants, species
Climate & Change, Politics, ,
This week the final UN climate talks leading up to the summit in Cancun Mexico will be held in Tianjin, China, a large manufacturing city of over 12 million people. In the aftermath of a failed climate summit in Copenhagen last December, hope for any binding treaty between nations is slim. Kyoto part 2 seems like a politically impossible pipedream. Good news for the fossil fuel industry, bad news for most everyone else. If we believe the scientists, that is. From a Reuters article: Scientists say the world is on track for temperatures to rise well beyond 2 degrees Celsius,…
Tags: Cancun, China, climate, summit, Tianjin, UN
Health, Videos & Documentaries, Oct 3rd, 2010,
Toxics in, toxics out. Once again, Annie Leonard asks important questions about things that most people may not even consider, but are nonetheless important to the safety and wellbeing of every single one of us. Leonard, who brought us the informative films The Story of Stuff, The Story of Bottled Water and The Story of Cap and Trade, also explores the issue of toxic chemicals present in many common personal care products in her latest work, entitled The Story of Cosmetics. If you’ve ever wondered what those chemicals with long names in your shampoo, lipstick or deodorant, are and what…
Tags: Annie, chemicals, cosmetics, Leonard, personal care, products, story of stuff, TOXIC
Nature, Videos & Documentaries, ,
Like something straight out of the Bible, swarms of locusts are spreading throughout the Australian states of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. Australia’s wettest September on record followed years of drought, providing ideal conditions for a massive locust plague. It is feared that millions of euros worth of crops will be damaged in what is being described as the worst locust invasion in 75 years. From an ABC Australia report: …the Australian Plague Locust Commission is working very hard with state agencies to ensure that the resources are on the ground, and the pesticides, and the work…
Tags: australia, Australian, crops, locusts, pesticide, plague
Nature, ,
The unfiltered pharmaceutical compounds present in Doñana National Park’s waterways pose eco-toxicological risks to aquatic organisms. Wastewater treatment facilities were not designed with the pharmaceutical industry in mind, which may explain why they are increasingly incapable of filtering out the cacophony of drugs we now consume. After finding 16 different pharmaceutical substances in the waterways that flow through the Doñana National Park, scientists recommended that the surrounding wastewater facilities incorporate a tertiary treatment system in order to more effectively cleanse the water that is subsequently dumped into the Guadiamar River, Partido stream, and La Rocina stream.
Tags: Constructed wetlands, Doñana National Park, Wastewater treatment system, water pollution
Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, ,
Human beings have severely impacted 80% of the world’s rivers to the point that 5 million people, along with thousands of aquatic species, are in danger. A new global study, published in the scientific journal Nature, identifies various types of human impact on the Earth’s waterways, such as pollution, irrigation and dams, and quantifies how they affect River Biodiversity and Human Water Security. From Rivers In Crisis: The Earth’s limited supplies of fresh water and irreplaceable biodiversity are vulnerable to human mismanagement of watersheds and waterways. Multiple environmental stressors, such as agricultural runoff, pollution and invasive species, threaten rivers that…
Tags: biodiversity, Europe, rivers, security, species, US, water, wildlife
Climate & Change, Politics, Pollution, Oct 2nd, 2010,
The aborted 10:10 campaign film ‘No Pressure’ has elicited a lot of hate, anger – or at least pretend outrage – because of its questionable attempt at satire. Meanwhile, some actual, dangerous behavior is happening off the UK coast, near the Shetland Islands, in the form of deep sea oil drilling. Where is the outrage and vitriol about that? The Gulf of Mexico recently got fouled and workers died – actual people rather than pretend characters in a short film. Billions of dollars in livelihoods, an ecological catastrophe, blah blah blah… What? Oh yeah sure, go ahead and ‘drill baby…
Tags: Chevron, deep sea, drilling, government, Greenpeace, Gulf of Mexico, oil, Shetland Islands, UK
Climate & Change, Videos & Documentaries, ,
Is an environmental catastrophe on its way? How would you fare in a world where ecological disaster tests the limits of your archery and tent-setting-up skills? Would you be the rugged survivalist, the cannibal or the brainy nerd in the Hawaiian shirt? Saci Lloyd and Graham Land have fun discussing climate change-induced end of the world scenarios, Gaia theory and the Dark Mountain Project. To download this podcast in mp3, AAC or Ogg Vorbis click here Join the Facebook group for El Pod of Cast Saci Lloyd’s Carbon Diaries website
Tags: Armageddon, Carbon Diaries, climate change, Dark Mountain, disaster, environment, Gaia theory, Graham Land, hexayut, Saci Lloyd, The Road
Climate & Change, Politics, Pollution, ,
Germany’s cabinet has voted to extend nuclear power use in the country by an average of 12 years. According to legislation passed in 2002 by the Social Democratic-Green Party coalition, all nuclear power stations in Germany were to be decommissioned by 2022. Not any more. German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Party, which rules as part of a center right coalition, sees the extension as a way to generate tax income, while meeting greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and transitioning to renewable energy sources. But nuclear energy is not popular in Germany and the decision to extend the…
Tags: atomic, energy, extension, German, Germany, Green, Greenpeace, Merkel, nuclear, power, protest
Sustainable living, Oct 1st, 2010,
Investment in wind turbines and solar panels has paid dividends for over 800 Italian communities, which produce enough renewable energy that they are able to sell electricity back to the grid. A survey by the Italian environmental organization Legambiente (League for the Environment) shows that small municipalities in Italy are benefiting from new renewable energy plants, which are being constructed due to the southern European country’s high electricity rates. Though Italy as a whole is behind the rest of the European Union in renewable energy production as well as on other environmental issues, some parts of the country are responding…
Tags: electricity, energy, Italy, New York Times, power, renewable, Solar, Tocco, wind
Climate & Change, Videos & Documentaries, ,
Check out ‘No Pressure’, the new darkly humorous and somewhat disturbing film from the 10:10 climate change campaign, written by Richard Curtis. Warning: If seeing a bit of blood puts you off you may want to think twice about watching it, but if you don’t mind a bit of gore, get ready for an amusing, edgy treat. Whippersnapping climate campaign 10:10 teams up with legendary comic screenwriter Richard Curtis – you know, Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill, co-founded Comic Relief – and Age of Stupid director Franny Armstrong to proudly present their explosive new mini-movie “No Pressure”. The film stars…
Tags: 10:10, climate, film, Gillian Anderson, No Pressure, Richard Curtis
Business, Sustainable living, ,
Since the human species has more or less successfully extricated itself from the food chain, death just isn’t eco-friendly anymore. The old ‘food for worms’ adage is no longer apt, since worms apparently don’t really fancy formaldehyde. Humans don’t like it in their drinking water either, oddly enough. It seems that these days dying green can be even harder than living green. The modern funeral involves deforestation (in the form of expensive hardwood coffins), chemical pollution of groundwater and both toxic and greenhouse gas emissions from cremation. According to an article in The Economist, an Australian study found that cremation…
Tags: biodegradable, body, burial, co2, coffin, funeral, Green
Ask Joanna, Sep 30th, 2010,
A: There are some tips that can help you keep your workplace eco-friendly. Plug in your computer and other devices to a surge protector and always turn them off when you’re finished working, so they won’t draw energy while you’re not using them. High-tech computers, copiers, monitors and printers have a power management function that provides an option to use up to 50% less electricity. A screensaver does not help to save energy. It is better to set your computer so the monitor turns off after a few minutes of inactivity. If you’re not going to work on your computer…
Tags: eco-friendly home, electric power, energy saving, stand-by
Politics, Sustainable living, ,
Stuttgart, Germany is a prosperous European industrial city, home to Daimler-Benz and Porsche, among others. It is also the center of a political conflict over the partial demolition of the city’s old railway system in favor of an underground rails and the construction of ‘carbon neutral’ neighborhoods. Sounds like something the Green Party would support, right? It isn’t, though Germany’s other principle political parties do back the project, as well as business groups. A large majority of Stuttgart’s population, however, does not. The project, dubbed Stuttgart 21, is not as environmentally friendly as it might sound. According to campaigners opposing…
Tags: German, Germany, Green, party, political, rail, Stuttgart, Stuttgart 21
