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Just the facts. . . ABC News - [In 2009] about 43 million U.S. households intend to grow their own fruits, vegetables, berries, and herbs -- up 19 percent from just last year -- according to data from the National Gardening Association. CORPORADOS TAKE OVER ORGANIC FOOD INDUSTRY GREEN BUILDINGS: FACTS& TRENDS GALLONS NEEDED ANNUALLY TO DRIVE YOUR CAR Links CLEAR
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MARCH 2010  JANUARY 2010  EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD COMING TO BROOKLYN NEW APPROACH TO USING ROOF AS SOLAR COLLECTOR DECEMBER 2009  NOVEMBER 2009 A MINI BIKE GARAGE FOR COMMUTERS  NEW APPROACH TO USING ROOF AS SOLAR COLLECTOR 25 YEAR LIGHT BULB HITS THE MARKET OCTOBER 2009 HOW TO STOP USING SO MUCH TOILET PAPER SAN FRANCISCO GETS ITS COMPOSTING BINS READY SEPTEMBER 2009 THE HIDDEN POTENTIAL OF PEE Josh Peterson, Planet Green - Many of us do not have the privacy required to dispose of our cellular waste in the out of doors. This is a shame, because urinating outside can save, on average, three gallons of water per water-closet visit. Of course, you can let your yellow water mellow, but if you eat a lot of asparagus, you might be headed for a smelly situation. You can also urinate into an old pop bottle and put the urine outside, then reuse the bottle. But that means you have to carry around a bottle full of pee. This might be hard to explain to visiting relatives. But if you are determined to pee outside, then you might as well try and put that pee to good use. Urine is mostly sterile cellular waste. It's safe to use in the garden, unless you are afflicted by a urinary tract infection, in which case, you should see a doctor and have that taken care of. Our urine is full of useful chemicals like nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. But urine contains salt, making it a bit powerful to apply directly to plants. You'll have to mix the urine with grey water at a ratio of 8 to 1. You don't necessarily have to dilute for lawn fertilization, but you need to make sure to spread the wealth around. When you use urine fertilizer in your garden, make sure to use the urine as soon as you make it. Old urine won't keep. It will go bad. Don't apply the urine to the leaves of the plants. The urine needs to go in the soil around it. If you use bottle-top funnels to save water, the urine fertilizer would be best applied that way. If you find yourself, with too much urine, you can always put the urine on the compost pile. Tree Hugger - A Brazilian environment group, SOS Mata Atlantica, [is] encouraging their citizens to pee in the shower, and save 1,157 gallons of water annually per household. And not just with a press release, but also with very cute television ad campaign. The absolutely delightful cartoon advert shows all manner people from the Statue of Liberty to Gandhi to a frog piddling in the shower. . . This 'pee in the shower'
campaign has its own website in Portuguese. But the message is
universal, which might be why the story has been picked by media
outlets the globe over. FOLDING ELECTRIC RENTAL BIKES FOR BUS STOPS AUGUST 2009 INVENTOR'S BIKE FOLDS INTO ITS OWN WHEEL  Sky News - A student has designed a bike which can be folded completely into the space of the wheel's 26in circumference. Dominic Hargreaves' bicycle takes around 20 seconds to fold down. . . The 24-year-old, from Battersea, London, said he wanted to create a decent folding bike after the one he was using collapsed. "I couldn't find a folding bicycle I liked," he added. . . Mr Hargreaves has been in contact with various manufacturers and hopes to get the bike into production soon. BOOKSHELF: EDUCATION OF AN URBAN FARMER JULY 2009 PORTUGAL PLANS 1300 ELECTRIC CAR CHARGING STATIONS STOCKHOLM TO INSTALL STREET CHARGERS  Padosa is a site for small businesses seeking to become more sustainable and helping the planet to become likewise RECYCLING CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS MAINE LIBRARIES TURNING REFERENCE ROOMS INTO CAFES Tree Hugger - Gas prices in Turkey are among the highest -- if not the highest -- in the world. . . The SAHI.MO is a hydrogen-powered car built by students from Sakarya University in northwestern Turkey. Last year, it was voted the third-most fuel-efficient vehicle in the 26th Shell Eco Marathon, an annual race across Europe. . . The SAHI.MO cost $170,000 to build and weighs just 110 kilograms. The 40-member SAI.TEM team previously created a solar-powered Grand-Prix-style race car called the SAGUAR and has also experimented with solar-powered boats. JUNE 2009   SUSTAIN YOURSELF: GOCYCLE ELECTRIC BIKE USE FOUND FOR UNWANTED CD DISCS MAY 2009 
APRIL 2009 WASHING CLOTHES WITHOUT ELECTRICITY CANNING PICKLES, FRUITS, JAMS, JELLIES, ETC. Life Hacker - Potatoes seem like the kind of plant you'd need a substantial garden for-the kind your grandparents had, right? Actually, tubers aren't all that picky, and you can harvest a whole lot from almost any yard. . . [Here's] a great tip, courtesy of The Seattle Times, on how to grow a lot of potatoes in a rather small space. The Times' guide for building a potato growing box yields up to a 100 lbs. of potatoes in a mere 4 square feet. By planting your potatoes in layers within a tall box, you're essentially building a potato growing high rise. You can wait until the fall for a full harvest or if you're getting antsy for some garden fresh potatoes you can pop a board off the bottom and steal some of the mature potatoes. Tree Hugger - Shares are now available in Milwaukee's first rooftop CSA. The extensive variety of organic fruits, vegetables, and herbs are being grown atop The Community Building and Restoration Building just south of the city's Capitol for $800 per share. The CSA season will run longer than most because of the community greenhouse also erected to continue the harvest season for tomatoes, broccoli, peppers, and cauliflower into the winter season. . . A sample CSA box would include two small heads of some combination of buttercrunch, royal red, or simpson lettuce; one bag of spinach, and one bag of spring salad mix (composed of swiss chard, kale, arugula, and a variety of baby lettuces). But as with any CSA, this changes weekly. . . Tree Hugger - With too many [Santa Monica] gardeners filling up the waiting list for community gardens, it's taking as long as 5 years to finally get a plot of dirt to grow veggies. So gardeners and city officials started a registry to connect homeowners willing to have their yards turned into gardens with the people who are willing to do the gardening. NASA DISCOVERS WHY PLANTS IN YOUR HOUSE ARE GOOD FOR YOU Utne - NASA has been researching methods of cleansing the air so that future space stations can be kept fit for human habitation for extended periods of time. Researchers have discovered that many common houseplants "scrub" significant amounts of harmful gases-such as formaldehyde and benzene-out of the air through photosynthesis, absorbing pollutants and rendering them harmless in the soil. These findings are especially relevant for inhabitants of newly constructed buildings, which are sealed tightly to conserve energy but consequently trap pollutants indoors. NASA researchers recommend that you have a minimum of two plants per 100 square feet of floor space in your home or office. Best of all, you don't need to be a green thumb to incorporate these popular, low-maintenance houseplants into your environment. Chinese evergreen. Chinese evergreens are tolerant plants that do well in a variety of settings and flourish for years with minimum care. They do best in shadowless light, such as a north-facing window. Keep the soil barely moist. Dracaena. Dracaenas grow slowly and retain their foliage for long periods of time. Plant them in regular potting mix and keep the soil moist, but don't let the pot sit in water. They grow best in bright, indirect sunlight, warm temperatures, and low humidity. Check out your neighborhood's walkability by entering your address at Walk Score. It will show how close you are to various services and how high your 'hood ranks. MARCH 2009  DIRTY SECRET: TOILET PAPER AS AN ECO DESTROYER SIGN OF THE TIMES: REUSABLE TOILET WIPES? BASEMENT APARTMENTS IN THE SKY Tree Hugger - Apartment designs are usually fixed and people have to move a lot. That is why the designs recently approved in Burnaby, BC are so intriguing; they are purported to be the first legalized secondary suites within apartments. Designed to provide housing for students, the blue zone can be "locked off" and rented out separately and has its own entrance. It's kind of like a basement apartment in the sky. . . Condos and apartments are not very good at adapting to life cycles; one starts out with a small one, moves when they have kids, then has too much space when the kids are gone. (Or you are stuck with them and have no privacy when you want it). Designs like this would let young people rent out part of their apartment until they need it, getting some extra income to help with the mortgage, and then could use the space with the family comes along. . . It isn't a new concept;
Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett talk about it a lot in their
important book Cohousing: A contemporary approach to housing
ourselves. They demonstrate how "flexible rooms or "give
and take" rooms can be exchanged between the dwelling on
either side, which is another twist.  A CRAFT MADE OF PLASTIC BOTTLES FEBRUARY 2009 Yardscaping - Reason #1: Water quality Carpet-like lawns and beautiful yet hard to grow plantings add value and enjoyment to any home. But these benefits can come at tremendous cost to our environment. Yard care practices can impact water quality. The pesticides and fertilizers you apply to your yard may wind up in our waterways. At risk are lakes, streams and eventually the ocean. Reason #2: People, Pets and Wildlife Too often people think pesticides are safe because they can be bought at the hardware store. This is absolutely not true. Pesticides are designed to be toxic--that means they kill something. If used incorrectly, a pesticide could pose risks to people, pets and beneficial creatures and plants. Yardscaping will allow you to grow lawns and landscapes that create better habitats and demand less of any chemical. Reason #3: Money A yardscape can save you money. Shrinking your lawn and growing hardy plants will reduce out-of-pocket costs: gasoline, pesticides, fertilizers, water, plants and planting materials. Plus, preserving natural resources, like lakes, from polluting chemicals will increase your property value unlike the alternative. Reason #4: Time. Growing a Yardscape, which uses low maintenance plants and has only the amount of lawn your lifestyle needs, adds up to more play time for you. Reason #5: Air pollution Think of it this way: one power mower = 40 cars. In fact, a lawnmower pollutes as much in one hour as an automobile driving 350 miles. It is estimated the average American spends 40 hours every year mowing their lawn. Reason #6: Make a statement A landscape rich in diverse vegetation is unique. It expresses a property's own character. Better yet, a lush Yardscaping property conveys an important message PRIUS DOUBLES AS EMERGENCY GENERATOR STAYING IN CAN COST ENERGY, TOO Treehugger - The City of Montreal is banning [wood stove] installation in new construction or renovation. Andrew Chung of the Star notes that using a wood stove for only nine hours, or a high-efficiency stove for 2 1/2 days, produces as much fine-particle pollution as does a car in a year, according to a study by Environment Canada. Since Quebec gets almost all of its energy from electric hydropower, in winter 47 per cent of the air pollution is attributed to stoves and fireplaces, far more than either industry sources or cars and trucks. JANUARY 2009 YOU DON'T NEED GIZMOS TO BUILD GREEN  HOTTER SUMMERS WILL DRASTICALLY CUT CROPS YIELDS Wendy Koch, USA Today - For the first time in at least a decade, builders are substantially reducing the size of new houses. "We're trending toward smaller homes," says Gopal Ahluwalia, director of research for the National Association of Home Builders. He says growth in the average size of new single-family homes, which went from 1,750 square feet in 1978 to 2,479 in 2007, is starting to reverse. His analysis of Census data shows that homes started in the third quarter of 2008 averaged 2,438 square feet, down from 2,629 square feet in the second quarter. Ahluwalia, who began the quarterly analysis in 1999, says there have been slight dips before, but the latest drop was much steeper and is likely to hold even after the economy recovers. DECEMBER 2008 PRIUS DOUBLES AS EMERGENCY GENERATOR NY Times - The Prius has a new use, and it does not involve driving. The Harvard Press - which serves the Massachusetts town of Harvard as opposed to the university ' reported that the car's battery helped keep the lights on for some locals during the recent ice storms. The newspaper reports that John Sweeney, a resident who lost power, "ran his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan and several lights through his Prius, for three days, on roughly five gallons of gas." According to the newspaper, "the device allowed the engine to run every half hour, automatically charging the car battery and indirectly supplying the required power." In fact, this development, which comes at a tough time for Toyota, which makes the Prius, may not be as strange as it sounds. Mr. Sweeney's tinkering is along the lines of the "smart grid" technology that many utility executives and other experts say lies in our future. The idea is that the battery of an electric car - a plug-in, in most smart-grid scenarios - can feed power to the electricity grid when the grid needs it. USE OF ALTERNATIVE CURRENCIES GROWING Judith D. Schwartz, Time - Beneath the financial radar, in hip U.S. towns or South African townships, in shops, markets and even banks, people throughout the world are exchanging goods and services via thousands of currency types that look nothing like official tender. Alternative means of trade often surface during tough economic times. "When money gets dried up and there are still needs to be met in society, people come up with creative ways to meet those needs," says Peter North, a senior lecturer in geography at the University of Liverpool and the author of two books on the subject. He refers to the "scrips" issued in the U.S. and Europe during the Great Depression that kept money flowing and the massive barter exchanges involving millions of people that emerged amid runaway inflation in Argentina in 2000. "People were kept from starving," he says Closer to home, "Ithaca Hours," with a livable hourly wage as the standard, were launched during the 1991 recession to sustain the economy in Ithaca, N.Y., and stem the loss of jobs. Hours, which are legal and taxable, circulate within the community, moving from local shop to local artisan and back, rather than leaking out into the larger monetary system. The logo on the Hour reads "In Ithaca We Trust." Alternative (or "complementary") currencies range from quaint to robust, simple to high tech. There are Greens from the Lettuce Patch Bank at the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in rural northeastern Missouri. In western Massachusetts one finds fine-artist-designed BerkShares, which are convertible to U.S. dollars. More than $2 million in BerkShares have been issued through the 12 branches of five local banks, according to Susan Witt, executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society, the nonprofit behind the currency. And in South Africa, proprietary software keeps track of Community Exchange System (CES) Talents; one ambitious plan is to make Khayelitsha, a vast, desolate township of perhaps 1 million inhabitants near Cape Town, a self-sustaining community. STAYING IN CAN COST ENERGY, TOO Lucy Siegle, Guardian - Hard times mean communal socializing has been jettisoned in favor of home comforts . . . You might think that from an eco point of view this could be a big win, but confining ourselves to our own four walls spells trouble. This is because, with the exception of the hospitality industry's fondness for patio heaters - one commercial patio heater can emit more CO2 than a 4x4 car - heading out means sharing resources, especially energy. Leaving the homestead also means that you are not plugged into those energy guzzling, 'luxury' appliances. While gas consumption has reputedly fallen recently by 12 per cent, courtesy of heart-stopping energy bills, electricity usage is still spiraling out of control. When it comes to 'luxury electronics', the normal rules that anybody sane would use to purchase functional white goods, such as a reasonably sized fridge - which include reliability and efficiency - go out of the window. As TV-watching hours increase, so too do screen sizes. It is almost impossible to purchase a good old cathode-ray television now, even though they consumed as little as one-third the energy of their flat-screen replacements. Meanwhile a 42in plasma television switched on for five hours a day will consume 766kWh of electricity over a year, compared to just 222kWh for a 28in standard TV. To add insult to injury, nitrogen trifluoride, a chemical used in the manufacture of a liquid-crystal flat screen emits a gas 17,000 times more potent than CO2. But challenging TVs for the crown of biggest wastrel appliance are game consoles. According to a recent US report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, if left on constantly, consume more than 1,000kWh of electricity each year, equal to the annual energy use of two new refrigerators. A Nintendo Wii is relatively efficient, using seven times less power. Around eight per cent of your energy bill goes on nothing, courtesy of the standby function. The 42in plasma TV eats 125kWh of electricity in standby. And standby power for games consoles is predicted to grow from the 43 watts average in 2005 to 105 watts in 2020. Esteban Israel, Reuters
- After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba planted
thousands of urban cooperative gardens to offset reduced rations
of imported food. Now, in the wake of three hurricanes that wiped
out 30 percent of Cuba's farm crops, the communist country is
again turning to its urban gardens to keep its people properly
fed. Around 15 percent of the world's food is grown in urban areas, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a figure experts expect to increase as food prices rise, urban populations grow and environmental concerns mount. Since they sell directly to their communities, city farms don't depend on transportation and are relatively immune to the volatility of fuel prices, advantages that are only now gaining traction as "eat local" movements in rich countries. In Cuba, urban gardens
have bloomed in vacant lots, alongside parking lots, in the suburbs
and even on city rooftops. . . They have proven extremely popular,
occupying 35,000 hectares (86,000 acres) of land across the Caribbean
island. Even before the hurricanes, they produced half of the
leaf vegetables eaten in Cuba, which imports about 60 percent
of its food. Dan Harkins, Cleveland Scene - On a frigid morning, the soil on the half-acre lot beside Bodnar-Mahoney Funeral Home on Lorain Avenue crunches under your feet like a hard-candy shell. Jocelyn Kirkwood, co-founder of the fledgling Gather 'round Farm, is tossing feed to 16 hens and their fat rooster prince. Shifting from foot to foot, Meagen Kresge, the operation's other half, is surveying the lot's tidy bald mounds and their promise of spring. "A farmer's supposed to be taking vacation this time of year," says Meagen, 38, with a weary roll of the head. "Ha.". . . This summer, after jumping through hoops for months, Gather 'round Farm received a land-use variance from the Board of Zoning Appeals, allowing them to keep their current chickens. It was an action that's prompted a round of new regulations which Cleveland City Council is expected to consider January 5, to give a little breathing room to those who'd like to raise bees or chickens. But it would also add limits and layers of bureaucracy where once there was open frontier. . . They have great hopes for the future. They're adding popular items like asparagus to next year's crop. More than 100 people signed in for a fall open house. The Appleseed Child Enrichment Center next door is becoming a partner. They've now cobbled together enough of a clientele to start their own community-supported agriculture business, a program that has customers paying in advance for weekly grab-bags of goodies throughout the growing season. A $5,000 grant from the Cleveland Foundation will help it get rolling. And they're already planning to expand to greener and broader expanses. Several acres behind Riverview Towers on nearby Detroit Road can't be developed because of fear they're on the verge of falling into the Cuyahoga. "Seems perfect for a flock of sheep," says Meagen on a trip around the site. . . If you're already raising chickens or bees in Cleveland, you're probably breaking the law. Any hive or coop is supposed to be at least 100 feet from adjoining properties. City Planning Director Bob Brown notes, "It would be almost impossible to find a residential lot that would allow you to place a coop or hive that far from your neighbor's property." The new law would change that, requiring just 5 feet of side setback and 18 inches of rear setback for coops and hives. But there are new constraints too: The law would limit the number of chickens to one per 800 square feet of property (that's six chickens for the average 4,800-square-foot lot) and one beehive per 2,400 square feet. Roosters would get the boot completely unless you've got a full acre. ("It's not gender discrimination," says Brown. "They tend to be noisier than their female colleagues."). . . City farmer Josh Klein
notes that in cities as large as Chicago, Minneapolis and New
York, no limits are placed on the number of chickens a citizen
may keep. Still, others like Detroit, Boston and Portland, Maine
have outright bans. (Most, like Cleveland, fall somewhere in
the middle.) "I think they're making this a little more
complex than they need to," says Josh. "Cats cause
more problems than chickens. And cats are everywhere." Karin
Wishner, a beekeeper with hives scattered across a handful of
city lots. . .  The nifty site, Optimal Home Location, allows you to compare your commutes from a number of alternative locations, compare town demographics (real estate taxes, % of homes with kids), map neighborhood attractions (schools, supermarkets, libraries, Starbucks, churches and temples), find walkable neighborhoods and smaller carbon footprint. And then print a report to discuss with family and friends. NOVEMBER 2008 FIVE REASONS NOT TO DRINK BOTTLED WATER LONDON MAYOR TO PUSH ROOF GARDENS ECO CLIPS Tree Hugger - New York City, which has been working hard to promote cycling of late, has now proposed "bicycle parking rules that could be among the toughest in the nation, requiring one secure bike parking space for every two units in new apartment buildings and one space for every 7,500 square feet in new office buildings." This comes on the heels of city-sponsored bike rack design competition, the unveiling of a new cycling master plan and several initiatives which have resulted in a rise in bicycle commuting in the Big Apple. The new proposal, if approved, would help ease one of a significant "stumbling block preventing New Yorkers from cycling to work or to perform errands": a lack of secure parking for bicycles. Both the League of American Bicyclists and Transportation Alternatives support the initiative, which would "require weather-protected, lockable bike parking spaces at apartment buildings with at least 10 units, at commercial office buildings and at stores, hospitals, universities and automobile parking garages." Food and Water Watch - American consumers drink more bottled water every year, in part because they think it is somehow safer or better than tap water. Rather than buying into this myth of purity in a bottle, consumers should drink from the tap. Bottled water generally is no cleaner, or safer, or healthier than tap water. In fact, the federal government requires far more rigorous and frequent safety testing and monitoring of municipal drinking water. In some cases, beverage companies use misleading labels, including marketing bottled tap water as spring water. In fact, as much as 40 percent of bottled water is bottled tap water. Furthermore, the production of bottled water causes many equity, public health, and environmental problems. The big beverage companies often take water from municipal or underground sources that local people depend on for drinking water. Producing the plastic bottles uses energy and emits toxic chemicals. Transporting the bottled water across hundreds or thousands of miles spews carbon dioxide into the air, complicating our efforts to combat global climate change. And in the end, empty bottles are piling up in landfills. Tree Hugger - Earth Friendly Product's 'New
Wave High-Performance Auto Dishwasher Gel' held its own against
Cascade in an independent study showing that these phosphate-free
cleaners can perform just as well as conventional cleaners. .
. Both solutions performed equally well when it came to removing
dirt and grime from dishes. Then dishes were inspected for spotting
and filming and both received high scores. THE RISE OF URBAN FARMING
 Lest you think there isn't an American precedent for urban farming, check this photo CQ's Craig Crawford found of President Taft's pet cow, Pauline, grazing next to what is now the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. Below, a more recent photo of London  Guardian, UK - Londoners will be encouraged to turn flat roofs into vegetable plots as part of a scheme to grow food on 2012 patches of land across the capital by 2012, Boris Johnson said today. The "Capital Growth" project is the first initiative delivered by Rosie Boycott since she was appointed chair of London Food by the London mayor over the summer. The former newspaper editor wants councils, schools, hospitals, housing estates, and utility companies to identify derelict land that can be turned into vegetable gardens by green-fingered Londoners keen to grow their own spuds rather than buy transported produce from the supermarket. Boycott also envisages that spare pieces of land can be found on canal banks, banks of reservoirs, and disused railway yards. Boycott said: "London has a good deal of green spaces - some derelict or underused - but not being used as well as they could be. We also have a veritable host of enthusiastic gardeners who are well equipped to turning derelict or underused spaces into thriving oases offering healthy food and a fantastic focus for the community. . . Boycott said in an interview in yesterday's Times that it was hoped that the 2012 makeshift plots could be found in time for the Olympics so that some of the homegrown food could be provided to athletes. The demand for allotments has rocketed over recent years as environmental awareness has increased. But a survey conducted by the London assembly two years ago found Londoners in some parts of the capital were waiting up to 10 years for an allotment, due to a dramatic decline in the number of available plots caused by owners wanting to put the land to other uses. . . Capital Growth - 30,000 people in London rent allotments to grow vegetables and fruit, and 14% of households grow vegetables in their garden. There are 12,064 hectares of farmland in Greater London, representing approximately 8% of London's land area. Farmland in London declined by 30% between 1965 and 1997. In a survey conducted in 2005, about 57% of farmers in and around London were either approaching or over retirement age (i.e. aged over 55); less than 1% were under 30 (about 14% in total being under the age of 44). Some of the main barriers to entry for enthusiastic younger people wanting to take up food growing are money, access to land, appropriate business support, training, and connection to strong and loyal market outlets for their food. This is one of the things that Capital Growth will seek to address - connecting enthusiastic food growers with land, skills and community, to help them establish thriving food businesses for the future. OCTOBER 2008   THE ECO APPROACH TO MEETINGS A recurrent, if lonely, theme in the Review has been this: if you want to save energy, stop moving around so damn much. For example, cities might have neighborhood conference centers where staffers working at home could meet via video with other employees of a firm. Or companies might downgrade the use of unimportant meetings. This has not been a topic of much interest in the environmental movement, which is far more concerned with improved miles per gallon, and so there has not been a lot of research. The following is a rare and important exception. Scientific Blogging - At a recent "Informatics Day at the Technopark Zurich," a Microsoft booth allowed visitors were able to test how much CO2 they would save, if any, if they replaced a "real" meeting with a videoconference. . . Example: The management of an international company is planning to hold a one-hour board meeting in Zurich, to take part in which one director must travel from London. The management would like to know which option is more environmentally friendly - a teleconference over the internet or traveling by car, train or aircraft to be physically present at the meeting. Is the difference really significant? This is the basic hypothetical scenario which Empa scientist Roland Hischier, of the institution's Technology and Society Laboratory, has analyzed. . . Microsoft provided Hirschier with a list of all the equipment which would be necessary to arrange the videoconference, such as laptop computers, video cameras, projectors, servers, routers and so on - together with details of their power consumption and other technical data such as transmission rate and necessary cooling capacity. Using this information alongside the "ecoinvent" data relating to the electronics equipment, power production, and the various travel options available, the Empa expert was able to calculate the resulting emissions of greenhouse gases, measured in CO2 equivalents. . . The results painted a clear picture. The most important factor in a real journey is the energy consumed by the means of transport, i.e. the train, car or plane. This is responsible for more than 99.8 per cent of the environmental impact, regardless of how one travels. However, a video conference over the internet also consumes large amounts of electricity, for serves, routers, laptop computers and projectors all need to be powered up and some devices need to be cooled too. Together, they are responsible for about 95 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with this option. Nevertheless, the two different scenarios considered differ decisively in the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions generated. The virtual meeting emerged with the best marks by far, producing a mere 20 kilograms of CO2 equivalent. . . The most favorable travel option, by rail (in this case taking a high speed train via Paris) causes 108 kilograms, about a five-fold increase. Travel by air or road increases equivalent CO2 emissions to 315 and 373 kilograms respectively, a 16 to 18-fold increase over the virtual meeting. Hirschier also calculated how the distance traveled affects the result. In other words, over what distance is a "real" meeting still acceptable or even better than a virtual meeting in terms of environmental impact? The results were surprising; for distances of less than 200 kilometers he found that it is environmentally less damaging when a single participant travels to the meeting by train than organizing a videoconference. "This is only true, however, when a single person has to travel this distance," says Hirschier. If two persons need to travel to the meeting then the distance is halved, to 100 kilometers. And, of course, if ten or more participants were to travel to a meeting, as is frequently the case with conferences and seminars, then a virtual meeting is many times more environmentally friendly than a real one. This is the same result as that arrived at by an older investigation, in which Hischier, together with Lorenz Hilty, the head of Empa's Technology and Society Laboratory, calculated the environmental impact of the International Environmental Informatics Symposium in Zurich, which they themselves organized. The study demonstrated that transporting the over 300 conference participants to and from the event was responsible for more than 96 per cent of the environmental effects. Particularly striking was the fact that nearly two thirds of the environmental impact was caused just 6 per cent of the travelers - those who journeyed more than 8000 kilometers. In comparison, a completely virtual conference would have caused about 45 times less impact, according to calculations based on the Empa scientist's model. Because personal contact is an important factor at meetings and conferences, and because it is the delegates' intercontinental flights which cause the greatest environmental impact, Hischier and Hilty evaluated the effect of a third option, a conference held in various different locations in parallel, in this case Zurich, Dallas und Tokyo. This approach caused the impact to be almost halved. Hilty plans to employ this trick next year during the organization of the R'09 Twin World Congress on Resource Management and Technology for Material and Energy Efficiency. This event will once again be arranged by Empa and the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences to take place in Davos, Switzerland, and also simultaneously in Nagoya, Japan, with, of course, live video transmissions between the two venues. "As a little project on the side, we also plan to investigate how easy the participants find using the new technology, and how much CO2 we save with the new arrangement," says Hilti.    RECYCLING EVERYTHING THING FROM A TO Z SEPTEMBER 2008 GREEN GYM RECYCLES CUSTOMERS' ENERGY New Rules - A new, independently owned grocery store has risen in the place of what had been a run-down, sparsely stocked market in the small town of Williamsburg, Pennsylvania (pop: 1,345). Two hundred miles away, another new independently owned grocery store is opening. This one is in a low-income, African-American neighborhood in North Philadelphia, which has been without a supermarket for ten years. Meanwhile, one of the oldest farmers markets in the country, which has operated in the center of Lancaster since the 1730s, recently took steps to stay in business for years to come by upgrading the systems in its 19th century building. All of these projects were made possible by the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a four-year-old, statewide grant and loan program for grocery store development. The first of its kind in the nation, the program aims to combat a problem plaguing many low-income communities across the country: a severe shortage of stores selling fresh groceries. By providing loans that commercial lenders deem too risky and grants to make up for the higher costs of developing stores in central business districts and urban neighborhoods, this $120 million investment fund is seeding a new crop of food markets across the state. To date, FFFI has made $42 million in grants and loans to finance 58 projects, about 40 percent of which are new stores and the remainder are expansions and major renovations of existing outlets. The stores range in size from tiny greengrocers to 70,000-square-foot supermarkets. About half are located in urban neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the rest in small towns across rural Pennsylvania. MORE CYCLISTS MEAN FEWER ACCIDENTS Ecomodder - It may seem counterintuitive, but according to a recent report more cyclists on the road mean fewer accidents involving cyclists and motor vehicles. . . "It's a virtuous cycle," says Dr Julie Hatfield, an injury expert from University of New South Wales. "The likelihood that an individual cyclist will be struck by a motorist falls with increasing rate of bicycling in a community. And the safer cycling is perceived to be, the more people are prepared to cycle." Also, even more encouragingly, it doesn't seem that cycling infrastructure is responsible for the change: Experts say the effect is independent of improvements in cycling-friendly laws such as lower speed limits and better infrastructure, such as bike paths. Research has revealed the safety-in-numbers impact for cyclists in Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, 14 European countries and 68 Californian cities. HOW TO REDUCE VEHICLE FUEL CONSUMPTION 75% WITH CURRENT TECHNOLOGY Low Tech Magazine - If we cut the average speed of all vehicles by half, fuel consumption would decrease by a whopping 75 percent. . . Engineers treat velocity as a non-variable, while in fact it is the most powerful factor to save a really huge amount of energy - with just one stroke, at minimal cost, and without the need for new technology. Lower speeds combined with more energy efficient engines, better aerodynamics and lighter materials could make fuel savings even larger. Air resistance (drag) increases with the square of speed, and therefore the power needed to push an object through air increases with the cube of the velocity. If a car cruising on the highway at 80 km/h requires 30 kilowatts to overcome air drag, that same car will require 240 kilowatts at a speed of 160 km/h.. . . Drag can be partly offset by better aerodynamics: a boxy car like the Volvo 740 has a drag area that is almost twice that of the most aerodynamic standard car, the Honda Insight. The Volvo needs almost two times the engine power of the Honda when driven at 120 km/h. Yet a Volvo 740 driving at 60 km/h will face less than half the drag and will need 4.6 times less energy power than a Honda Insight driving at 120 km/h. When compared to velocity, the potential of aerodynamics is limited. . . The blindness for the importance of speed leads to doubtful conclusions, like the environmentally friendly label of high speed trains. The French TGV that set the most recent speed record at 575 km/h for wheeled trains in 2007 has an engine output of 19,600 kilowatts. A contemporary "slow" train like the Siemens ES64 with a top speed of 240 km/h has a maximum power output of 6,400 kilowatts. Travelling 1,000 kilometres, the "slow" train will consume 26,240 kilowatt-hours (over 4.1 hours) while the fast train will consume 33.320 kilowatt-hours (over 1.7 hours). . . . A decrease of 75 percent in fuel consumption is not peanuts. More than 60 percent of world oil production is used for transportation, which means that total oil production would be almost http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/SmartHome/story?id=5998756&page=1halved. In combination with more efficient engines, better aerodynamics and lighter materials a 75 percent reduction of oil production is not unrealistic. Yet, when the International Energy Agency argues that the average car sold in 2030 would need to consume 60 percent less fuel than the average car sold in 2005, it claims: "With current technologies, only plug-in hybrids are capable of this". This statement is wrong.
We could lower the fuel consumption of cars (and other vehicles)
by at least 75 percent, we could do it today, and we can do it
with present technology.  JULY 2008   NEW SOLAR COLLECTORS WOULD USE WINDOWS INSTEAD OF PANELS Scientific Blogging Imagine windows that not only provide a clear view and illuminate rooms, but also use sunlight to efficiently help power the building they are part of. MIT engineers report a new approach to harnessing the sun's energy that could allow just that. The work involves the creation of a novel 'solar concentrator.' "Light is collected over a large area [like a window] and gathered, or concentrated, at the edges," explains Marc A. Baldo, leader of the work and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering. As a result, rather than covering a roof with expensive solar cells (the semiconductor devices that transform sunlight into electricity), the cells only need to be around the edges of a flat glass panel. In addition, the focused light increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell "by a factor of over 40," Baldo says. Because the system is simple to manufacture, the team believes that it could be implemented within three years-even added onto existing solar-panel systems to increase their efficiency by 50 percent for minimal additional cost. That, in turn, would substantially reduce the cost of solar electricity. LIVING IN DENSE NEIGHBORHOOD CAN SAVE UP TO $2000 A YEAR IN GAS UTAH STATE WORKERS PUT ON FOUR DAY WEEK TO SAVE GAS JUNE 2008 THE COUNTERCULTURE: GUERRILLA GARDENING U.N. CLIMATE TIPS: DRIVE LESS, DITCH ELECTRIC TOOTHBRUSH MAY 2008 EARTH POLICY The world
produced an estimated 130 million bicycles in 2007-more than
twice the 52 million cars produced. Bicycle and car production
tracked each other closely in the mid-to-late 1960s, but bike
output separated sharply from that of cars in 1970, beginning
its steep climb to 105 million in 1988. Overall, since 1970,
bicycle output has nearly quadrupled, while car production has
roughly doubled. Some notoriously polluted and congested cities are working to reap the benefits of cycling as well. Mexico City plans to have 5 percent of all trips be by bike in 2012, up from less than 2 percent today, using traffic calming methods, promotional campaigns, and bike-transit connectivity. In India, Delhi's newest Master Plan requires fully segregated bicycle tracks on all arterial roads and notes that promoting cycling will be an essential component of the city's plans to reduce growth in fossil fuel consumption Bicycle rental programs are also increasing bike use in some cities. The stand-out example of 2007 was Paris's low-cost Velib rental scheme, launched in July. Now offering 20,600 bikes that can be obtained by credit card at 1,451 stations, the program logged 6 million rides in its first three months. Analysts expect the program to double or even triple bike trips in Paris. Similar programs exist in Oslo, Barcelona, and Brussels and are planned for Washington, D.C., and central London, among other cities. While biking remains popular for recreation in the United States, it is woefully underused for transportation. Total cycling participation has declined nationally since 1960, dropping 32 percent since the early 1990s, and now accounts for just 0.9 percent of all trips. Cycling to work is even less frequent, at 0.4 percent of trips. While the bicycle is still an essential form of transportation in China, the country has recently seen a rapid decrease in bike ownership as its population becomes wealthier and turns to cars. From 1995 to 2005, China's bike fleet declined by 35 percent, from 670 million to 435 million, while private car ownership more than doubled, from 4.2 million to 8.9 million. Blaming cyclists for increasing accidents and congestion, some city governments have closed bike lanes. Shanghai even banned bicycles from certain downtown roads in 2004. This deterioration in Chinese bike culture emerges even as the country's share of world bicycle production continues to rise: China now turns out more than four fifths of the 130 million bikes produced each year. China's central government, increasingly concerned about traffic congestion, energy consumption, and people's health, has now begun calling on cities to reverse this discouragement of bikes. In June 2006, Deputy Minister of Construction Qiu Baoxing ordered cities that had narrowed or removed bike lanes to restore them. Within Beijing, bike promotion is having some visible effects as the city prepares for the 2008 Olympics. For example, after successful pilot projects, a private bike rental scheme co-sponsored by Beijing's environmental protection and security bureaus aims to provide 50,000 bikes at some 200 locations by August. Thus far, however, the recent pro-bicycle rhetoric from Beijing has not translated into much positive action outside the capital. Development projects addressing disease and poverty in Africa provide evidence that the bicycle's utility is not just limited to urban areas. In Zambia, World Bicycle Relief has partnered with a coalition of relief organizations to combat HIV/AIDS through more timely education and treatment, providing 23,000 bicycles to healthcare volunteers, disease prevention educators, and families affected by the virus. In Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Uganda, an alliance of Dutch non-governmental organizations has launched a micro-credit lending program called Cycling Out of Poverty. Through this effort, poor people can pay off leased bikes while using them to attend school or start a small business. FEW RECYCLING PLANS FOR COMPACT FLUORESCENTS MARC LEVY, ASSOCIATED PRESS It's a message being drummed into the heads of homeowners everywhere: Swap out those incandescent lights with longer-lasting compact fluorescent bulbs and cut your electric use. Governments, utilities, environmentalists and, of course, retailers everywhere are spreading the word. Few, however, are volunteering to collect the mercury-laced bulbs for recycling -- despite what public officials and others say is a potential health hazard if the hundreds of millions of them being sold are tossed in the trash and end up in landfills and incinerators. For now, much of the nation has no real recycling network for CFLs, despite the ubiquitous PR campaigns, rebates and giveaways encouraging people to adopt the swirly darlings of the energy-conscious movement. Recyclers and others guess that only a small fraction of CFLs sold in the United States are recycled, while the rest are put out with household trash or otherwise discarded. "In most parts of the country, it requires getting in your car and burning up your gas and going out of your way, a long ways, and people are unlikely to do this," said Paul Abernathy, the executive director of the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers in Calistoga, Calif. Sales of the bulbs have skyrocketed this decade -- doubling last year to about 380 million after registering just 17,000 in 2000, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Recycling efforts, though, are spotty at best. Some communities are arranging special CFL drop-off events while some city or county hazardous waste collection facilities accept them. Swedish retailer IKEA collects the bulbs at its 34 U.S. stores and manufacturer Osram Sylvania offers a mail-in program. In Nevada, customers of Sierra Pacific Power Co. can now take used CFLs to eight landfills to be recycled. A few governments have targeted retailers. The city of Madison, Wis., requires retailers that sell the bulbs to also collect them for recycling, although stores can charge a fee for it. Maine and Vermont fund programs that distribute collection bins to retailers, from neighborhood hardware stores to Wal-Marts, and get the bulbs to recyclers, either by pickup or mail. Pennsylvania spent $8,000 to distribute white plastic buckets to several dozen businesses, community organizations and local governments that wanted them. The buckets come with a seal-tight lid and the state pays the postage to send them to a recycler. URBAN FARMING GROWS INTO A BUSINESS TRACIE MCMILLAN, NY TIMES For years, New Yorkers have grown basil, tomatoes and greens in window boxes, backyard plots and community gardens. But more and more New Yorkers are raising fruits and vegetables, and not just to feed their families but to sell to people on their block. This urban agriculture movement has grown even more vigorously elsewhere. Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and other areas that, like East New York, have low-income residents, high rates of obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available, undeveloped land. Local officials and nonprofit groups have been providing land, training and financial encouragement. But the impetus, in almost every case, has come from the farmers, who often till when their day jobs are done, overcoming peculiarly urban obstacles. . . The city's cultivators are a varied lot. The high school students at the Added Value community farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn, last year supplied Italian arugula, Asian greens and heirloom tomatoes to three restaurants, a community-supported agriculture buying club and two farmers' markets. In the South Bronx a group of gardens called La Familia Verde started a farmers' market in 2003 to sell surpluses of herbs like papalo and the Caribbean green callaloo. . . The city's success with urban farming will receive international attention on Saturday when, during an 11-day conference in New York, 60 delegates from the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development are scheduled to visit Hands and Hearts, the Bed-Stuy Farm and two traditional community gardens in Brooklyn. There was not always so much enthusiasm for city farming, though. John Ameroso, a Cornell Cooperative Extension agent who has worked with local farmers and gardeners for 32 years, said that when he first suggested urban farm stands in the early 1990s, city environmental officials dismissed the idea. " 'Oh, you could never grow enough stuff with the urban markets,' " he said he was told. ' "That can't be done. You have to have farmers.' " But local officials have come around. . . On a fringe of Philadelphia, a nonprofit demonstration project used densely planted rows in a half-acre plot and generated $67,000 from high-value crops like lettuces, carrots and radishes. In Milwaukee, the nonprofit
Growing Power operates a one-acre farm crammed with plastic greenhouses,
compost piles, do-it-yourself contraptions, tilapia tanks and
pens full of hens, ducks and goats - and grossed over $220,000
last year from the sale of lettuces, winter greens, sprouts and
fish to local restaurants and consumers.   FOOT PEDAL FAUCETS SAVE WATER IN THE KITCHEN APRIL 2008
WILL YOUR CANDIDATE SUPPORT BIDETS?  TREE HUGGER - Bidets [are] a key green technology, because they eliminate the use of toilet paper. They also provide important health benefits. These include increased cleanliness, and the therapeutic effect of water on damaged skin (think rashes or hemorrhoids). We use 36.5 billions rolls of toilet paper in the U.S. each year, this represents at least 15 million trees pulped. This also involves 473,587,500,000 gallons of water to produce the paper and 253,000 tons of chlorine for bleaching purposes. The manufacturing process requires about 17.3 terawatts of electricity annually. Also, there is the energy and materials involved in packaging and transporting the toilet paper to households across the country. Toilet paper also constitutes a significant load on the city sewer systems, and water treatment plants. It is also often responsible for clogged pipes. In septic systems, the elimination of toilet paper would mean the septic tank would need to be emptied much less often. Basically, the huge industry of producing toilet paper could be eliminated through the use of bidets. Instead of using toilet paper, a bidet cleans your posterior using a jet of water. Some bidets also provide an air-drying mechanism. In Japan, high-tech bidets
called Washlets are now the most popular electronic equipment
being sold -- 60% of households have them installed. In Venezuela
they are found in approximately 90% of households. NY TIMES Wind turbines, once used primarily for farms and rural houses far from electrical service, are becoming more common in heavily populated residential areas as homeowners are attracted to ease of use, financial incentives and low environmental effects. A residential wind generator that has built-in controls and an inverter. Some "plug and play” systems plug directly into the home panel No one tracks the number of small-scale residential wind turbines - windmills that run turbines to produce electricity - in the United States. Experts on renewable energy say a convergence of factors, political, technical and ecological, has caused a surge in the use of residential wind turbines, especially in the Northeast and California. "Back in the early days, off-grid electrical generation was pursued mostly by hippies and rednecks, usually in isolated, rural areas,” said Joe Schwartz, editor of Home Power magazine. "Now, it's a lot more mainstream.” "The big shift happened in the last three years,” Mr. Schwartz said, because of technology that makes it possible to feed electricity back to the grid, the commercial power system fed by large utilities. "These new systems use the utility for back up power, removing the need for big, expensive battery backup systems.” Some of the "plug and play” systems can be plugged directly into a circuit in the home electrical panel. Homeowners can use energy from the wind turbine or the power company without taking action. DAILY GREEN - A new generation has discovered the pleasure - and the power - of growing your own fruits and vegetables, Anne Raver writes in a New York Times article. Perhaps most surprising to those who don't grow their own, is the taste difference between something that's been shipped 1500 miles to reach your plate - the average distance it takes a food item to get to us - and something that has been just plucked from the ground. I've never tasted a fresher, more flavorful vegetable than the heirloom tomatoes fresh from a friend's garden. . . One kitchen gardener, Roger Doiron, started a movement, Kitchen Gardeners International, where you can learn the tricks of the trade. He is quoted in the Times talking about who his audience is: "people out there who are concerned about peak oil, or the gardening gastronomes who want the freshest food possible. Or the people who joined a C.S.A." - a community-supported agriculture project - "last year, and this year are thinking, you know what? I can do some of this myself." Doiron is trying to get one of the presidential candidates to follow in the steps of their forefathers and use the White House lawn to grow a garden. The article says John Adams grew a vegetable garden, Woodrow Wilson had sheep grazing the grounds, and Eleanor Roosevelt grew peas and carrots on the White House lawn. MARCH 2008 THE CASE FOR SEPARATED BIKE LANES NEW ENGLAND STATES CONSIDER LIBERATING CLOTHESLINES WHY DRINKING BOTTLED WATER ISN'T THE ANSWER TO DRUG POLLUTION IN STREAMS AMERICA'S WATER POLLUTED BY VAST ARRAY OF DRUGS BOTTLED WATER 'MORALLY UNACCEPTABLE  TREEHUGGER Londoner's have three free newspapers foisted on them every day in the streets. This adds up to a lot of waste and a lot of people are getting pretty upset by it. As a response to this litter, and as a political statement about "making something high-quality out of something that has no value", Sumer Erek has created a five meter high Newspaper House out of all the discarded free papers around. The house has been built in a London square. Along with numerous volunteers, he has been constructing it out of donated papers for the past five days. Using almost 150,000 discarded free papers carefully packed inside a wooden frame for the construction, people were encouraged to write their own thoughts and wishes on the paper before it was rolled into logs. GREAT PHOTOS FUEL AND LOCAL FOOD ANTHONY FLACCAVENTO, WASH POST - Of late, a number of commentators have disparaged local food economies, based on two claims: First, that shipping food long distances in fully loaded tractor-trailers is more efficient than local transactions; and, second, that consumers travel much further to buy local foods, creating more, not less carbon emissions. They're wrong. A full tractor-trailer hauls about 32,000 pounds of produce. On average, according to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, this food travels about 1,750 miles from farm to market, in trucks that get about 5.5 miles per gallon. That's 320 gallons of fuel to transport 32,000 pounds, or about a gallon of fuel for every 100 pounds of food. My farm is an eight-mile round trip from the Abingdon farmers market. Our '94 Toyota pickup gets 15 miles to the gallon, fully loaded, so my trip to and from the market uses just over a half gallon of gas. We take and sell an average of 1,600 pounds of fresh produce every Saturday morning. This works out to 3,200 pounds of food for every gallon of fuel expended. That's 32 times more efficient. Of course, not every farmer lives four miles from his or her market. But our local experience, along with studies carried out in Austin and Toronto, indicate that most farmers stay within a 50-mile radius. Assuming they carry about 1,000 pounds -- a third less than we do -- the average local food transaction delivers 500 pounds of food per gallon of fuel, five times more efficient than conventional transport. . . Though the data are a bit sketchy, two points stand out. First, in spite of the dramatic growth of Wal-Mart and other "one-stop shopping" outlets, our shopping miles are steadily increasing. As author Stacy Mitchell has pointed out, we Americans increased our travel -- just for shopping -- by over 90 billion miles from 1990 to 2001. . . Second, several studies indicate that consumers are not willing to travel more than six to eight miles or 15 to 20 minutes by car to shop at a local market, perhaps slightly more than what people will travel to reach the big-box store. . . When my wife and I get up at 5 on Saturday morning to start packing our truck, a cup of strong coffee and a glass of orange juice make it a little easier. So we're not dogmatic about local foods. But we also know, first hand, that locally produced foods are increasingly abundant, convenient and rewarding. FEBRUARY 2008 JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO TURN ON THE LIGHT PORTLAND PRESS HERALD - Compact fluorescent light bulbs that get broken release mercury that can be more difficult to clean up than consumers and government agencies have thought, says a new report from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP spent months breaking bulbs in a laboratory and experimenting with cleanup strategies before issuing its report. It also posted new cleanup advice and precautions about the spiral bulbs, and advised consumers for the first time that the popular, energy-efficient lights may not the best choice for some parts of the home, including children's bedrooms and playrooms. DEP officials said the results won't change the state's policy of promoting the bulbs as a way to save energy and reduce global-warming pollution. "We are still very much in support of CFL use," said Stacy Ladner, an environmental specialist with the DEP and one of three staff researchers who did the study. "Hopefully, people will think about where they put them" and how they clean up any bulbs that break. . . A compact fluorescent bulb contains only about 5 milligrams of mercury, enough to fit on the tip of a ball-point pen. An old-fashioned mercury thermometer, by comparison, contains about 100 times that amount. But if a bulb breaks, the small amount of mercury can create high levels of vapor in the air, the study showed. ORGANIC FERTILIZERS, COMPOSTING COULD HELP CUT GREENHOUSE GAS SCIENTIFIC BLOGGING - Applying organic fertilizers, such as those resulting from composting, to agricultural land could increase the amount of carbon stored in these soils and contribute significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, according to new research published in a special issue of Waste Management & Research. . . One estimate of the potential value of this approach - which assumed that 20% of the surface of agricultural land in the EU could be used as a sink for carbon - suggested it could constitute about 8.6% of the total EU emission-reduction objective. "An increase of just 0.15% in organic carbon in arable soils in a country like Italy would effectively imply the sequestration of the same amount of carbon within soil that is currently released into the atmosphere in a period of one year through the use of fossil fuels," write Enzo Favoino and Dominic Hogg, authors of the paper. "Furthermore, increasing organic matter in soils may cause other greenhouse gas-saving effects, such as improved workability of soils, better water retention, less production and use of mineral fertilizers and pesticides, and reduced release of nitrous oxide." However, capitalizing on this potential climate-change mitigation measure is not a simple task. The issue is complicated by the fact that industrial farming techniques mean agriculture is actually depleting carbon from soil, thus reducing its capacity to act as a carbon sink. According to Hogg and Favoino, this loss of carbon sink capacity is not permanent. Composting can contribute in a positive way to the twin objectives of restoring soil quality and sequestering carbon in soils. Applications of organic matter (in the form of organic fertilizers) can lead either to a build-up of soil organic carbon over time, or a reduction in the rate at which organic matter is depleted from soils. In either case, the overall quantity of organic matter in soils will be higher than using no organic fertilizer.   BOTTLED WATER 'MORALLY UNACCEPTABLE BRITISH ENVIRONMENT MINISTER CALLS BOTTLED WATER 'MORALLY UNACCEPTABLE' TELEGRAPH, UK - Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a government adviser. "We have to make people think that it's unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong," said Tim Lang, the Government's naural resources commissioner. Bottled water generates up to 600 times more C02 than tap water Bottled water generates upto 600 times more CO2 than tap water Phil Woolas, the environment minister, added that the amount of money spent on mineral water "borders on being morally unacceptable". Their comments come as new research shows that drinking a bottle of water has the same impact on the environment as driving a car for a kilometre. Conservation groups and water providers have started a campaign against the L2 billion industry.  METAEFFICIENT - The largest modular green roof, has been installed on top of the new "Court at Upper Providence" shopping center in Pennsylvania. The 2.3 acres green roof was constructed with Green Grid modules. These modules are made with recycled plastic, and they contain small but hardly plants like sedums. The lightweight modules are then delivered to the facility, where they are laid out on top of the roof. As many as 4,000 square feet can be installed in one day.  THAT GOT 80 MILES BETWEEN CHARGES  DESIGN WITHIN REACH - This 9'x13' structure redefines conventional prefab with its proprietary clamping system that makes installation quick, economic and practically waste-free. What also caught our attention about Kithaus is how it can tuck into any area, even remote locations, without needing ultra-heavy equipment. All of the lightweight, anodized aluminum pieces are pre-cut and drilled in Southern California and shipped to you for on-site assembly. Installation is fast, taking only a few days, and Kithaus is built with eco-friendly components. Wondering where you can use Kithaus? How about anywhere you need a fully insulated, pre-wired comfortable space. . . The complete Kithaus, including decks, canopies and louvers, is $44,900. AN ECO-TOWN IN BRITAIN  TREE HUGGER - Wintles has 12 acres of shared woodland and allotments, so that people can feed themselves, and they even bought a failed pub in town and are turning it into a micro-brewery. The houses are built in clusters of about ten to twelve homes. . . The houses are wood framed with lots of insulation, careful placement of windows for passive solar heating, with wood stoves. That didn't stop the authorities from questioning the designs; "The banks that lent the money insisted on central heating being put in, even though the homes were heated perfectly well by wood-burners. The heating engineers would not sign off the properties without insisting on radiators being installed upstairs, even though, due to the very high insulation, they were unnecessary. The water company insisted on Living Villages taking external liability for any problem with the rain-harvesting system, which caused further problems with the banks. And the council insisted on the approach road being wide enough for two refuse trucks to pass - even though this is deepest Shropshire." http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/the_wintles_bri.php  JANUARY 2008  HIGH RISE TOWN HOUSES WITH GARDENS TREE HUGGER - Rotterdam
designer Reinier de Jong notes: "Housing in big city centers
seems to consist of small apartments. High rise equals apartments.
Or so it seems. However many cities economically really need
well-to-do middle class dwellers. They flee to suburbia as soon
as salaries go up and kids arrive." "The project TUIN ('garden') combines high rise with a typical suburban housing typology: a two storey dwelling with garden. A height of seven meters and a depth of one meter of soil guarantees a true garden. Enough for sunlight, rain and wind to enter and nourish trees, shrubs, flowers and grass." http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/reinier_de_jong.php A GUIDE TO RECYCLING STORAGE CONTAINERS  FIRMITAS - This is a webpage devoted to listing as many examples of people using shipping containers as architectural elements as I can find, in an effort to embolden people to use containers in building projects, when and where doing so is feasible and appropriate. Be aware that containers are not a perfect building material, since they tend to corrode, but they have been used effectively in some cases, especially in areas near saltwater. http://firmitas.org/  DECEMBER 2007 IRELAND BANS TRADITIONAL LIGHTBULBS INDEPENDENT, UK - Ireland became the first country in the world to ban the traditional lightbulb. Householders will be forced to switch to new long-life low-energy bulbs in 12 months' time. . . As the normal lightbulb expires, householders will have to replace them with the more environmentally friendly long-life bulb which uses far less energy. Consumers will save E185m in electricity costs every year as a result of the measure. PHILLY CAR SHARING UP TO 35,000 MEMBERS On October 5th Philly Carshare signed up member number 30,000. In October they signed up a record 4,000 new members and they are now over 35,000. And 10,000 of these members have given up their cars. . . The City, the Parking Authority and SEPTA (the City's transit agency) all got on board. The city even got rid of 330 cars and started saving $7 million a year as a result. Philly Carshare management now believes they could someday get to a million members. UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PLANNING ELECTRIC BIKE SHARE PROGRAM TREE HUGGER - The University of Washington is teaming up with Intrago to create an electric bike share program for its Seattle campus. The self-rental bicycles will work much like traditional bike share programs: users are given a special pass to unlock bicycles from stations located throughout campus, and then return them just as easily. The only difference between this system and a more conventional one is that the bikes have an electric assist for hills and longer distances, circumventing one of the more common excuses for not riding a bike. It is unclear what kind of battery the bicycles make use of. . . The pilot system is being funded by a grant from the Washington State Department of Transportation in the hope that "corporate campuses, vacation destinations and high-density urban and public transit locations" will see the value of these systems. NOVEMBER 2007 A BETTER FLUSH FOR THE FUTURE CNN - [Scott Kelley's] Philadelphia company urges its customers to install high-efficiency toilets, which use 20 percent less water than the previous generation of low-flow toilets. . . Toilets built 30 years ago guzzled 5 or more gallons of water per flush, but in the early 1980s manufacturers designed new models that needed only 3 1/2 gallons per flush. Congress emphasized further conservation in 1992 when it passed the Energy Policy Act, which mandated that regular toilets made starting in 1994 use 1.6 gallons. Consumers weren't pleased with those early low-flow models. The first flush didn't always clear the bowl, and subsequent flushes negated any water savings. But the newest generation of high-efficiency toilets -- developed in the last two to seven years -- does the job on the first try and uses only 1.3 gallons per flush, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. . . One high-efficiency model that's gaining in popularity is the dual-flush toilet, in which users press one button to flush liquid waste with 0.8 or 0.9 gallon of water, or an adjacent button to flush solid waste with 1.6 gallons. The flushes amount to an average of about 1.3 gallons, complying with the EPA's definition of a high-efficiency toilet. While a water-friendly toilet can be several times more expensive than a standard one, which typically costs less than $100, consumers can expect to recoup the cost within about two years after water savings and possible rebates from the local water company.
  TRYING TO COME UP WITH A SOLAR POWERED CAR DANIEL B WOOD, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - In the local airport parking lot, Steve Titus clicks shut the lightweight fiberglass door of his fireman-yellow Solar Bug. . . Mr. Titus straddles the saddle-style seat and revs the Hi-Torque Pancake motor. It whirs away quietly, reaching a top speed of 40 miles per hour in a few seconds. On display at a recent alternative-car expo here, this is Titus's second and latest rendering of a solar-powered car concept. It gets up to a fourth of its 60-mile capacity from 200 watts of roof-mounted solar panels. . . Titus, who is based in Bozeman, Mont., has 25 years of experience bringing alternative-power products to market, working with more than a dozen businesses that range from medical equipment to lasers. About seven years ago, he got tired of driving to the gas pump, paying high prices, and watching the geopolitical clashes over oil in the Middle East. . . http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1115/p01s10-ussc.htm INDEPENDENT, UK - British shops hand out a staggering 13 billion every year. But after a decision by 33 London councils yesterday, plastic bags could be soon be consigned to history, unmourned by anyone who cares about cleaning up the environment. Eighty villages, towns and cities, including Brighton and Bath, have introduced or are considering a ban on them since shops in the Devon market town of Modbury went "plastic bag free". But yesterday represented the most significant move yet. The capital is now on board. All 33 authorities in the London Councils group voted for legislation to prevent shops in the capital handing out free plastic bags. In the next fortnight Westminster Council will present a private Bill to the House of Commons which would apply to every London shop from the humblest newsagent to Harrods. Shoppers clutching large numbers of bags in London's West End could become a thing of the past; instead they will be asked to use sturdy reusable plastic "bags for life" or cotton or string hold-alls. London's authorities said they needed to halt the environmental damage done by plastic bags, which use oil and landfill space and kill marine wildlife. . . Peter Robinson, director of Waste Watch, said: "We've seen successful action taken on carrier bags all across the world from Australia to Zanzibar, and now it's time for London to take a lead on this issue in the UK." THE PROS AND CONS OF ELECTRIC BIKES CHRISTOPHER CHERRY, LIVE SCIENCE - Electric bike users have taken Chinese cities by storm, quickly outnumbering the cars and in many cities, bicycles. Electric bikes range in style from traditional pedal bicycles powered by an electric motor to larger electric powered scooters. They are loosely restricted on speed and size, but given the same rights as bicycle users, operate in bicycle lanes, and do not require driver's licenses, vehicle registration or helmet use. Proponents would suggest that the e-bike phenomenon is a positive development; after all, e-bikes are quiet, non-polluting and provide more mobility than any other mode of transportation. Opponents charge that e-bikes are unsafe, increase congestion, and indirectly pollute the environment through increased power plant emissions and lead pollution from their heavy batteries. Several cities have attempted to, or successfully, banned electric bikes from roadways, including the mega-cities of Beijing and Guangzhou. Still, there has been little research on the true impacts of electric bikes in China. As a Ph.D. student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, I began conducting research, which led to a dissertation, on quantifying the impacts of electric bikes in China. . . I found that electric bikes travel about 35 percent faster than bicycles and have a much larger range. In the city of Kunming, an electric bike can access 60 percent more jobs within 20 minutes than a traditional bicycle. Compared to a 30-40 minute bus ride, an electric bike rider can access three to six times the number of jobs. While this increase in mobility is remarkable, this mobility does come at a cost, namely increased lead pollution from battery use. Electric bikes use one car-sized lead acid battery per year. Each battery represents 30-40 percent of its lead content emitted to the environment in the production processes, resulting in about 3 kilograms of lead emitted per battery produced. When scaled up the 40 million electric bikes currently on the roads, this is an astonishing amount of lead emitted into the environment. This negative environmental impact is countered by other environmental benefits compared to most modes, including vastly reduced energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Ultimately, the success
or failure of electric bikes as a sustainable mode of transportation
should be evaluated in the context of the extent to which they
displace automobile. They certainly have fewer negative impacts
than personal automobiles, but they currently displace mostly
bus and bicycle users and only a small number of car users. OCTOBER 2007
TREE HUGGER - [A] nifty little shed on a suburban street in Gothenburg, Sweden is filled with microbes busily eating household garbage in a pilot project to dry up compost before it's turned into methane at the local biogas plant. Brainchild of Lars Smedlund, the Somnus Hus is a system that helps remove 75 percent of the moisture, and most of the odor from compostable food waste. About 180 families in a condominium complex in the pilot will share the shed and deposit their paper bags with food scraps into the green shute (each family has a key to the shute). After the scraps are shredded, moisture is sucked away via a wet filter system filled with odor-eating bacteria. In 4-5 days the scraps resemble finely-chopped wood chips. Unlike other compost systems, which are subject to rot when too wet, the Somnus system is designed to control the humidity and smell, and the smaller resulting volume of compost only requires a pick-up once or twice a year, versus the once a week or every two weeks for food compost collection systems such as San Francisco's. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/11/the_sucking_sou.php HOW BAD IS A LIGHT BULB? [From Be Turtle] Q - Are traditional light bulbs really that bad? They're so small-- how much harm can they really do? A - If we decided to ban traditional light bulbs 5-10% of our power stations could be turned off. In the case of China, a ban on traditional light bulbs could mean that the Chinese didn't need to build 25-50 of the 500 coal power stations they are currently planning to construct over the next decade, whilst a similar ban in the US could mean that 25-50 of the power stations which already exist could be turned off. . . At the domestic level, using 70% less electricity to make the same amount of light also saves approximately L9 ($18) worth of electricity per bulb per year. An average, rather small, British house has been estimated to contain 23.5 light bulbs. While a good quality energy saving light bulb from one of our biggest supermarkets, Tesco, costs as little as 81p. This means that replacing all of the light bulbs in a typical British house, at a cost of L19 ($38), with energy saving bulbs which have a 6 years lifetime could in theory allow you to save up to L1,057 ($2114) on household electricity bills over the lifetime of all the new light bulbs. These savings are even greater if you install some of longer lasting energy saving light bulbs, which have lifetimes of up to 8 - 15 years. If you still think this is too small a saving to justify they effort, then I would like to ask for your help with identifying other politically acceptable measures which would allow us to reduce our energy imports (whilst experiencing little obvious pain), to save large amounts of money (at little upfront cost) and to cut our carbon dioxide emissions by millions of tonnes (within the next couple of years). [Dr Matt Prescott Director, Ban The Bulb] http://www.banthebulb.org
SEPTEMBER 2007   AUGUST 2007 GUIDES TO HOME ENERGY EFFICIENCY From the Rocky Mountain Institute Building Envelope. On average, a typical family can spend as much as $680 per year to heat and cool its home. This brief explains why this expense is not necessary, even in extreme climates, and can be reduced by up to 50 percent through investment in building envelope improvements such as sealing air leaks, adding adequate insulation, and upgrading window features Lighting. There are many lighting designs and technologies available today that can not only meet all your lighting needs, but can do so using less electricity. This Brief details a few steps to make your home lighting more energy efficient while maintaining and improving lighting quality Space Cooling. Space cooling typically accounts for 13 percent of total energy use, costing homeowners an average $197 per year. A well-insulated and tightly sealed home that uses the natural movement of heat and air to maintain comfortable indoor temperatures can reduce cooling costs by up to 50 percent while also saving on heating bills. This brief outlines how to first minimize the amount of heat that enters and is generated inside the home, and then, if additional cooling is still needed, take steps to increase the efficiency of cooling equipment and/or buy new, more efficient equipment. Space Heating. Space heating costs the average homeowner $480 per year and accounts for about 32 percent of the total energy bill. This brief details how a well-insulated, tightly constructed home can require little supplementary heating, and how retrofit measures that minimize heat loss can reduce heating requirements even in old, leaky homes. Water Heating. Water heating
accounts for approximately 19 percent of total home energy use
and costs an average household over $300 a year. This brief outlines
the many things you can do to cut your water heating costs, including
using hot water more efficiently, switching to water-efficient
shower and faucet fixtures, and making a few simple adjustments
to your existing heater. Electronics Home office equipment, audio and video systems, and miscellaneous electronics consume almost 20 percent of all electricity used inside the average home and can cost as much as $175 per year to operate. This brief shows that while buying more efficient electronic devices can save some of this energy and money, changing how you use the equipment is more effective. Kitchen Appliances. Having an energy efficient kitchen means understanding the energy consumption of the appliances in your kitchen, the energy life cycle of the food that comes into it, and all of the wastes that leave it. No matter what your lifestyle is, there are numerous energy efficient practices that you should consider. The options in this brief range from locating your refrigerator away from heat sources, to sizing appliances to match the job to be done, to considering your food disposal habits. Whole System Design This brief introduces the powerful tool of whole system design within the context of the building envelope - introducing the synergies that exist between thermal mass, windows, and other components of passive solar design. Whole system or integrated building design actively considers the interconnections between systems, occupants, and the environment, and uses these connections to develop single solutions to multiple problems (shelter, energy savings, aesthetics, natural daylight, indoor environmental quality, affordability, etc.) http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid119.php LIVING OFF THE GRID IN BRITAIN NICK ROSEN, GUARDIAN - I reckon there are 75,000 people living in nearly 25,000 off-grid homes in the UK. These are homes not connected to mains gas and electricity, water and sewage or even the phone lines that bind the rest of us into a system that wastes energy transporting it around the country, and loses up to 30% of water through leaks. To get some idea of how many are living this way, I traveled round the UK for most of last year researching a book, How To Live Off-Grid. I met some of the thousands of normal families living this way, in everything from brick houses to yurts. . . Perhaps the nation's off-grid housing stock can be classed as an investment in a carbon-free future. Every off-gridder automatically reduces their energy and water consumption by up to 90% compared with a typical household. . . The figure of 75,000 is only those living off-grid all year round. It does not include part-time off-gridders - the winter renters who go out in their vans or take to their yurts and caravans. This triples the winter numbers. http://environment.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,,2134370,00.html PARIS RENTS 45,000 BIKES A DAY IN NEW PROGRAM MARJORIE MILLER, LA TIMES - Paris is awash in two-wheelers, thousands of taupe bicycles that are part of a plan by City Hall to get people out of their cars and onto more eco-friendly transportation. The bicycle rental service still has some kinks to work out, but the first week of the Velib program was a big hit with Parisians. City Hall reported 45,000 rentals a day and counting. . . . Mayor Bertrand Delanoe launched the program to alleviate traffic jams and parking problems. The city has placed more than 10,000 bicycles at about 300 stations around the capital. Riders can buy an annual pass for 29 euros (about $40) or pay a euro on the spot to use a bike for half an hour, which is long enough to get almost anywhere in central Paris and park at another station. The price goes up with time - another euro for an additional half-hour, two euros for the third and four euros for the fourth. The idea is to keep the bikes in circulation as transportation. . . Management consultant Jean Marc Baron, 50, rented a bike to go out for drinks with friends in the 17th arrondissement the other night. When they finished, he said, "there weren't any bikes to ride home and we all ended up walking." Graphic designer Olivier Patte lives at the top of hilly Montmartre, and his station is often empty when he goes looking for a bike.. . . Another problem, Patte said, is taxi drivers. "The taxis really don't like us," he said. "They stick close to us so we can't turn right or left. We are in their bus lanes and they don't like it." JULY 2007  MAY 2007 YELLOW BIKES FOR RIDERS IN DOWNTOWN LEXINGTON, KY
"Basically it's a free or nearly free bike program designed to get more people out of their cars and onto bikes," said Lexington developer Phil Holoubek, a member of the board of directors of Yellow Bikes LLC, which oversees the Yellow Bikes program. Holoubek, the developer of Main & Rose Lofts and Nunn Building Lofts, and four other sponsors -- BB&T, 500's on Main, Gray Construction and South Hill Group -- each chipped in $2,500 to get the program off the ground. They have purchased 80 yellow bikes; 28 are to arrive soon. . . Yellow Bikes riders are encouraged to ride the bikes just in the downtown area. When they're finished riding, they're supposed to lock up the bikes again at downtown racks. The bikes have baskets so riders can carry purses, briefcases and packages. . . The University of Kentucky has had a similar program, Wildcat Wheels Bicycle Library, since the fall of 2004. The bikes can be checked out by any UK student, faculty or staff member with a valid ID for a 48-hour period. http://www.kentucky.com/211/story/73075.html YELLOW BIKES  MARCH 2007  NEW TRICYCLE GIVES BIKING A DIFFERENT FEEL TREE HUGGER - Mechanical Engineer Stephen Coates thought that traditional bikes has limitations when it came to balance, comfort, storage and joint-friendly leg action. He has developed the [three wheeled] hiker, and says that he "has done away with the inefficiencies of both traditional bicycles and recumbent bicycles - tricycles. For starters, the seat is at standard chair height and does not require a complicated movement to get onto and off of. The revolutionary tangent lever design abolishes circular pedal travel in favor of a simple leg extension for forward movement. Due to the versatility of this design, all that is required is a simple internal 3-speed hub to ensure optimal gearing with minimal changes. As for steering, all that's required is an intuitive lean, thanks to the new center-pivot steering ." http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/hiker_sitdown_t.php JANUARY 2007  TOP RIGHT: Vienna's free bike system. Users can register directly at the terminal or at the site. . . TOP LEFT: An electric bike that has enough mileage on it to make it a feasible alternative to the urban car. . . BOTTOM RIGHT: Built in France in 1875, the Cynosphere was driven by two caged dogs. The Society for the Protection of Animals thought the idea inappropriate and further development was abandoned. . . BOTTOM LEFT: A hyperbike featuring speeds up to 50 mph, full body workout and two independent brake systems. The driver twists his torso, contracts the stomach and back muscles, and alternately extends the arms up and down as in a foot pedal motion, while coordinating with the legs to get the best push and pull from the lower pedals. NORWAY'S BIKE LIFT TRAMPE, NORWAR - The inventor of the Bicycle Lift and the owner of the company Design Management, Jarle Wanvik, is a true bicycle enthusiast. He always finds an excuse for parking his car and using his bicycle instead. In daily transport to and from work, to the shopping center etc., it is uncomfortable to be too warm and sweaty. In 1992, Wanvik got luminous visions about a bicycle lift that could carry cyclists uphill. Inspired by the ski lift technology, he visualized a lift design by which the cyclists could be pushed uphill without having to descend the bicycle. Wanvik's home town is Trondheim, the third largest city of Norway, housing 150 000 inhabitants and 30,000 students. Trondheim is characterized by the old town center down by the seashore with a surrounding, terraced landscape formed back in the ice age. On the banks of these terraces, 100-300 m above sea level, we find most of the living areas, each of them with 20-30 000 inhabitants. On top of one of these terraces is the University of Trondheim. To increase the usage of bicycles in Trondheim, the Municipal of Trondheim has through the recent years invested in building multiple, connected bicycle roads. Due to topographical height differences, however, there is limited bicycle commuting to and from the town center. In job/school commuting or shopping the last thing you want to be is sweaty, and climbing the hills to the top of the terraces in Trondheim will guarantee copious amounts of perspiration. After having simulated the basic principle of the new product - pushing the cyclist by his backwardly stretched foot, the Public Roads Administration was convinced. In November 1992, Design Management AS was asked to deliver and install a prototype of the lift at Bakklandet, situated close to the town center and consisting of a commonly used hill leading to the university campus. Normally, there are 20-30,000 trips per year. 220,000 have taken Trampe since the installment in 1993. http://www.trampe.no/english/history.php 
A FEW POWER CUSTOMERS CAN FIND OUT THE CHEAPEST TIME TO DO THEIR WASH DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, NY TIMES - Most people are not aware that electricity prices fluctuate widely throughout the day, let alone exactly how much they pay at the moment they flip a switch. . . Participants in the Community Energy Cooperative program, for example, can check a Web site that tells them, hour by hour, how much their electricity costs; they get e-mail alerts when the price is set to rise above 20 cents a kilowatt-hour. If just a fraction of all Americans had this information and could adjust their power use accordingly, the savings would be huge. Consumers would save nearly $23 billion a year if they shifted just 7 percent of their usage during peak periods to less costly times, research at Carnegie Mellon University indicates. That is the equivalent of the entire nation getting a free month of power every year. Meters that can read prices every hour or less are widely used in factories, but are found in only a tiny number of homes, where most meters are read monthly. The handful of people who do use hourly meters not only cut their own bills, but also help everyone else by reducing the need for expensive generating stations that run just a few days, or hours, each year. Over the long run, such savings could mean less pollution, because the dirtiest plants could be used less or not at all. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/business/08power.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print ABOUT SOLAR HOT AIR SYSTEMS DON CHIRAS, H20POWER - Solar hot-air systems capture sunlight energy and use it to heat incoming air. Heated air is then transferred into your home, often with a small electric fan. The solar energy costs what it always has cost - nothing. Solar hot-air systems can help alleviate homeowners' worries about rising fuel costs and provide years of inexpensive, maintenance-free comfort. They can heat homes, offices, workshops, garages and barns. All solar hot-air systems rely on hot-air panels or collectors. Collectors are typically mounted on south-facing walls, roofs or even on the ground, if it's unshaded during the heating season. Some commercial systems are simple thermosiphon collectors that rely entirely on convection to distribute hot air, but most use fans or blowers controlled by relatively simple electronics. A temperature sensor mounted inside the collector monitors internal temperature. When it reaches 110 degrees, it sends a signal to a thermostat mounted inside the home, which turns on the fan if room temperature is below the desired level. When the temperature inside the collector drops to 90 degrees, or the room reaches its setting, the thermostat turns the fan off. Solar hot-air systems actively produce heat only in the daytime, but some of that heat is absorbed by the building's thermal mass: drywall, tile, framing lumber, etc. At night, the heat stored in the thermal mass radiates into the rooms. The more thermal mass, the greater the nighttime benefit http://h2opower.blogspot.com/2006/12/buyers-guide-to-solar-heating.html ROTTERDAM INTRODUCES SUSTAINABLE NIGHTCLUB SPRINGWISE - Kicking off in Rotterdam's Off_Corso is the Sustainable Dance Club. . . Enviu, an environmental NGO for young people, is working together with architectural firm Döll to create a truly sustainable nightclub. The club [features] energy-generating dance floors (excellent way to extract kilowatts from energetic clubbers), toilets that flush with rain water, walls that change color as a reaction to temperature changes, a rooftop garden and other elements . . . Some 80 Enviu volunteers (young professionals and students) have developed the concept over the last 8 months. http://sustainablerotterdam.blogspot.com/2006/10/sustainable-dance-club-what-night.html VIDEO THE LIST Household Power Usages 45W - Outside Christmas
Lights http://www.yafla.com/dforbes/2006/12/28.html  ARCHITECTURAL RECORD - KTA's Loblolly departs most wholly from past prefab models through its innovative component-based design, in which KTA minimized the number of parts. "We want materials we can take apart like used auto parts, as opposed to ending up with rubble," Kieran says. Unlike many houses, even those built with sustainability in mind, Loblolly's components, or elements, as the architects call them, could be unbolted and reconfigured at another site for a different house or, as the architects like to demonstrate in their public lectures, sold off in pieces on Ebay. . . The architects divided the chain between three tiers of suppliers and a final assembler, much in the way automotive companies outsource major components of each car with final assembly at factories throughout the world. DECEMBER 2006 SURVEY FINDS BUYERS RESPOND TO THINK LOCAL CAMPAIGN NEW RULES - A three-year-old campaign to encourage people in northwest Washington state to "Think Local First" is having a dramatic effect on spending behavior, according to a recent survey. The survey of 300 people in Whatcom County found that 69 percent are familiar with the Think Local First campaign and 58 percent are making a more deliberate effort to patronize locally owned businesses than they did before the campaign started three years ago. "These results are phenomenal," said Dr. Pamela Jull, the lead researcher. "Normally, if 1 in 5 households claim familiarity with your program, and change their behavior because of it you would consider it a success. To have nearly 3 in 5 households attributing a behavior change to this program shows an amazing impact." They survey also found that 86 percent respondents are spending the same or more money at locally owned businesses than they did before the campaign. Only 12 percent reported spending less. http://www.newrules.org/retail/news_slug.php?slugid=349    BIKE PORTLAND - Bob Crispin sent in these photos after seeing this wayward pedaler on the streets of Northeast Portland. Amazingly, the guy claims to have ridden this contraption all over the U.S. and down to Mexico. "He said his design was inspired by the moon rovers and the moon landing vehicle, the super structure and the shiny panels. The interior was sweet too, looked comfy, and had a map holder and lots of neat nooks and crannies to store stuff.". . . The craziest thing is that despite days of torrential rain, Bob said it was dry inside the cabin. NOVEMBER 2006  THE ECOCITY FARM TREE HUGGERS - The developers of the Ecocity Farm reckon all you need is a standard urban house block. They've come up with a commercial aquaponic system that effectively recycles its own water and waste, while being space efficient due to it's vertical stackable design. Barramundi fish are harvested alongside vegetables. Waste from the fish is reduced, via a biodigester, to water soluble feedstock for the hydroponically grown plants. Plans are even afoot to prototype a process that converts human food scraps into fish meal. According to the designers the concept can produce 12 times the quantity of food from conventional farming. And the idea is develop the system to a complete all-in-one, out-of-the-box unit that can be franchised worldwide. Traditional farmland is preserved as the package can be used in urban blocks or even on building rooftops. Farmers will then be able to service their customers with minimal transport and energy costs. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/11/ecocity_farm.php#perma OCTOBER 2006
RON SCHERER, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - A model home here that gives Katrina's displaced an alternative to trailer living is starting to take the country by storm. The Katrina cottage - with living quarters about the size of a McMansion bathroom - is now appealing to people well beyond the flood plain. Californians want to build one in their backyards to use for rental income to help with the mortgage payment. Modestly paid kayakers in Colorado see it as a way to finally afford a house. Elsewhere, people envision building one so a parent can live nearby. Flying in the face of a "big house" trend, designers of these tiny abodes seem to have found a new housing niche. Some experts cite an interest by some Americans in downsizing their habitats, a reaction to the supersized home, and note the challenge of heating and cooling a big house at a time when family budgets are flat. Others note that changing demographics - more empty-nesters and single adults - may mean a timely debut of the Lilliputian homes. . . Commercialization of the concept is limited - but that is about to change. Late this year, perhaps as soon as next month, Lowe's, a national hardware and building-supply company, intends to begin selling the plans and materials for four models in 30 stores in the Gulf Coast region. The "Lowe's Katrina Cottage" offerings range from a two-bedroom, 544-square-foot model to a three-bedroom, 936-square-foot house. The cottages will cost $45 to $55 per square foot to build, Lowe's estimates, meaning the smallest would run about $27,200 and the largest $46,800. Estimates do not include the cost of the foundation, heating and cooling, and labor. www.cusatocottages.com http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1002/p01s01-ussc.html ENERGY FROM MELON RINDS MICHAEL KANELLOS, CNET - University of California, Davis wants to light the world with old melon rinds. The university will show off an experimental facility that takes wilted lettuce, fish heads and other leftover food bits and turns it into biogas, a combination of natural gas and carbon dioxide. Separating the CO2 leaves commercial grade natural gas. The technology, called an anaerobic phased solids digester, has been licensed from the university and adapted for commercial use by Onsite Power Systems. In the digester, microbes eat the garbage and give off valuable gases. Several companies are experimenting with figuring out ways to exploit waste products as an energy source. Natural gas releases fewer pollutants than coal or car gas. And the fuel stock costs little to obtain and has little independent value. Who wants a chewed up piece of meat that got spit out into a napkin, after all? In fact, garbage costs money to get rid of, so using it as fuel can cut other operational costs. http://news.com.com/2100-1008_3-6128182.html?part=rss&tag=6128182&subj=news BEFORE YOU GET A GREEN ROOF, FIGURE OUT HOW TO MOW IT TREVOR MARTIN, DAILY RECORD, UK - Bosses at the new Scottish Natural Heritage HQ are facing a L5000 bill every time they cut the grass - on their roof. The L13 million centre, which has won acclaim for its eco-friendly credentials, includes a roof garden. But health & safety regulations mean scaffolding and other safety measures must be installed when people are working above ground. . . Local councillor Jimmy MacDonald said: "It seems the extra costs to cut the grass will make this building not as eco-friendly as first believed." An SNH spokesman said: "The roof was chosen due to its low-maintenance regime, which is why it is so popular for green roof projects." ETHANOL HIGH COULD RAISE FUEL ECONOMY PLANET ARK - Injecting small quantities of ethanol into car engines at moments of peak demand -- such as accelerating sharply or climbing a steep hill -- could improve the fuel economy of gasoline engines by 20 percent to 30 percent, a scientist said. A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working on the system, which scientists say would allow carmakers to use smaller engines in their vehicles, reducing weight and improving fuel economy at a lower cost to consumers than by adding a hybrid engine. . . He estimated that adding the ethanol injection system to a car would cost about $1,000 and that cars using the new system could be in mass production by 2011. http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/38678/story.htm THE BOTTLED WATER LIE MICHAEL BLANDING, ALTERNET - The corporations that sell bottled water are depleting natural resources, jacking up prices, and lying when they tell you their water is purer and tastes better than the stuff that comes out of the tap. . . In the past decade, the bottled water market has more than doubled in the United States, surpassing juice, milk, and beer to become the second most popular beverage after soft drinks. According to a 2003 Gallup poll, three in four Americans drink bottled water, and one in five drink only bottled water. Together, consumers spent some $10 billion on the product last year, consuming an average of 26 gallons of the stuff per person, according the Beverage Marketing Corporation. At the same time, companies spend some $70 million annually to advertise their products. Typical are Aquafina's ads advertising the beverage as "the purest of waters," Dasani's ads contending the water is "pure as water can get." In fact, says Kellett, not only does tap water often taste the same as bottled water, but it is also often safer to drink as well. "They are spending tens of millions of dollars every year to undermine our confidence in tap water," she says, "even though water systems here in the United States are better regulated than bottled water." That's because tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, which imposes strict limits on chemicals and bacteria, constant testing by government agencies, and mandatory notification to the public in the event of contamination. Bottled water, on the other hand, is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which according to federal law is technically required to hold itself to the same standards as the EPA. The devil is in the details, however, since FDA regulations only apply to water that is bottled and transported between states, leaving out the two-thirds of water that is solely transported within states. http://www.alternet.org/stories/43480/ SEPTEMBER 2006 GREEN CONDOS UTNE - A 10-unit condo in the Bankers Hill neighborhood of San Diego [will get] up to 70 percent of its energy from solar panels. In addition, the project will use chemical-free building materials, wood discarded by lumber companies, and a landscape of fruit trees and herbs. Developer Craig Brod [said] that environmentally sound condos are worth the 3 percent to 5 percent extra in building costs, adding that, "[t]he majority of builders in America are creating a travesty. They're charging people a lot of money for a product that is basically inferior to what it could be." Though a green condo may be more expensive than its conventional counterpart, buyers can walk away with a satisfaction that's more tangible than the warm and fuzzy feeling of shrinking their eco-footprint. This' Saunders points out that since much of the work goes toward making buildings more energy and water efficient, the savings from reduced bills will add an extra layer or two to owners' wallets in the future. Some developers are going a step further, combining green living with green transportation. Saunders writes that designers often incorporate ways to minimize gas usage, like constructing condos a walkable distance from amenities and cultural centers or including a membership to a co-op car in the condo package. In Dallas the purchase of a "Buzz" condo comes complete with an electric moped. Residents can recharge in the garage using wind-powered electricity, writes Christine Perez of the Dallas Business Journal. http://www.utne.com/webwatch/2006_268/news/12281-1.html THE HIDDEN DANGERS OF BIOFUELS JEFFREY A MCNEELY, BBC - The grain required to fill the petrol tank of a Range Rover with ethanol is sufficient to feed one person per year. Assuming the petrol tank is refilled every two weeks, the amount of grain required would feed a hungry African village for a year Much of the fuel that Europeans use will be imported from Brazil, where the Amazon is being burned to plant more sugar and soybeans, and Southeast Asia, where oil palm plantations are destroying the rainforest habitat of orangutans and many other species. Species are dying for our driving. The expansion of biofuels would increase monoculture farming If ethanol is imported from the US, it will likely come from maize, which uses fossil fuels at every stage in the production process, from cultivation using fertilizers and tractors to processing and transportation. Growing maize appears to use 30% more energy than the finished fuel produces, and leaves eroded soils and polluted waters behind. [Jeffrey A McNeely is chief scientist of IUCN, the World Conservation Union, based in Switzerland] http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/sci/tech/5369284.stm FREE OR LOW COST WAYS TO GREEN YOUR KITCHEN AND LAUNDRY [From Consumer Reports] Run the dishwasher and the washing machine only when they are full. Don't prerinse dishes before loading the dishwasher. You'll save as much as 20 gallons a load, or 6,500 gallons per year. Our tests show prerinsing doesn't improve cleaning. When your dish load is small, fill the sink or basin and wash dishes by hand. Place soapy dishes on a rack, and spray rinse. Wash vegetables and fruits in a bowl or basin using a vegetable brush; don't let the water run. Use recycled water on plants. Sources: water left from boiled eggs, tea kettles, and washed vegetables; dehumidifier condensate. Investigate using waste water from the washing machine, bathtub, or sink on outdoor, inedible plants. States vary in their approach to so-called gray-water use. . . Steam vegetables instead of boiling. Besides using less water, you'll retain more vitamins in the food. Chill drinking water in the refrigerator instead of running the faucet until the water is cold. Defrost food in the refrigerator, not in a pan of water on the counter or in the sink. Besides saving water, it's less likely to breed bacteria. SHOULD YOU OBSERVE 'USE BY' LABELS ON FOOD? LUCY SIEGLE, OBSERVER, UK - According to a recent report, 70 per cent of produce is dumped by producers and retailers before it even gets to the store. . . One quarter of all the food waste that goes into British landfill is reckoned to be edible, and a sizeable portion of that will be food with highly conservative end-of-life dates. Whether you observe dates depends on whether you view them as labels that protect our health or as a ruse to get you to buy more. If it's the latter, you'll appreciate the freegan movement, which throws all culinary caution to the wind by advocating urban and rural foraging - from dumpster diving and skip harvesting (rooting in bins outside restaurants and supermarkets) to plate scraping (going into restaurants and scraping the leftovers straight from diners' plates - you can't be shy in this business). I am yet to find one freegan who admits to ever having had food poisoning. Noticeably, if you buy produce unwrapped from a farmers' market it comes without a directive on when to throw it out, requiring use of eyes, nose and common sense to judge when food is dangerous. These are the kind of sustainable talents worth fostering. http://environment.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,1880427,00.html GREEN GIZMO UPDATE JUSTIN MCCURRY, GUARDIAN - Heated seats and computerized bidets are practically standard in modern Japanese toilets, but what greenie points the country's WCs lose in electricity consumption, they try to make up for in water savings. The addition of a tap and basin on top of the cistern - so that, when you wash your hands, the water from the basin then re-fills the cistern - seems a far more elegant solution than any of the electronic add-ons. . . Most feature handles you can turn one way for a big flush, the other for a smaller, less wasteful one. Modern Japanese homes are designed so that the washing machine is installed just a few meters from the bathtub - and with good reason. Many households now save water by feeding it from a pipe placed in a tub of used bathwater into the washing machine. . . Philips has come up with a new light bulb design that may eventually replace the compact fluorescent light bulb as our best green lighting option. Based on light emitting diodes, the bulb is said to use far less energy even than CFLs. In the meantime, ponder the thought that, if every household in the US replaced one traditional (incredibly inefficient) incandescent bulb with a CFL, it would be the equivalent of taking one million cars off the road. . . Samsung has created a prototype widescreen LCD television that consumes only 80 watts. . . http://environment.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,,1876043,00.html SOLAR REFLECTIVE PAINT TREE HUGGER - One of our very early posts was on the enviro benefits of Green Roofs. . . But if you have some deep seating aversion to growing grasses and strawberries on your upstairs, you might alternatively be curious about Texcote. It claims to be 10 times thicker than normal paint, and to be infused with a special reflective pigment. Now your house, or commercial premises, unlike a Stealth bomber, may not need to reduce its radar signature, but reducing roof temps by 40°F is a practical application of the technology. Apparently the US govt think such energy reduction possibilities might have merit, so are said to be researching just what the savings could be. And the stuff is robust, in some instances not needing a repaint for 40 years. Yet for all this heavy-dutyness, it is said to have a low volatile organic compound emissions. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/texcote_solar_r.php#perma LONDON SUBWAY CARS BEING RECYCLED AS WORKSPACES TUBE LINES, UK - A new charity is helping Tube Lines, the company responsible for rebuilding the Tube's busiest lines, to recycle obsolete Tube carriages which have been lying disused for years. Over the weekend six old Jubilee line carriages were removed from sidings in Uxbridge and taken for cleaning up before being turned into workspace for start-up creative businesses by Village Underground, a new charity which supports new small companies. Typically carriages which no longer serve the traveling public are taken to pieces, the metals separated and the various parts disposed of, some into landfill http://www.tubelines.com/news/releases/200608/20060803a.aspx TREE HUGGER - California-based Phoenix Motorcars is in the game to mass produce full-function, freeway-speed electric automobiles; their first model was a reproduction of a 1937 Ford Cabriolet, but they've moved on to light pickups, small vans and a mid-size SUV coming in mid-2007. With a minimum range of 120 miles per charge and max speed of 95 mph, the vehicles compare favorably with most other electric vehicles in production. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/09/phoenix_motorca.php#perma TREE HUGGER - Hertz is this week launching its "Green Collection" of rental cars (with USEPA ratings of 28+ mpg, highway). "More than half of the 35,000 vehicles are Smart Way certified, the highest EPA marks for limiting air pollution and greenhouse gases. Travelers can reserve one of 42 types of cars, including the Toyota Camry, Ford Fusion and Buick LaCrosse, at 50 airports around the country". http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/09/hertz_fearturin.php#perma AUGUST 2006
COMPACT FLUORESCENT BULBS: UGLY BUT THEY WORK ALICE HILL REAL TECH NEWS - Like most people, I hated the compact fluorescent bulb or CFL when it first came out, and to be honest, for some time after that. They were priced high but packaged in a gimmicky way that made me suspicious. Most hotels used them and it felt like it took five minutes for the light to come on and when it did, there was not much light, and it was not a warm looking lighting color. And then the price - at double or even three times the cost, who would take the chance on a bulb that would last years when there was little known about them? So I stayed away. How wrong I was. Here is a great round-up of facts from Fast Company that may change the way you think of these bulbs. - If every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. - Compact fluorescents emit the same light as classic incandescents but use 75% or 80% less electricity. - A $3 swirl pays for itself in lower electric bills in about five months. - Compact fluorescents, even in heavy use, last 5, 7, 10 years. Years. Install one on your 30th birthday; it may be around to help illuminate your 40th. - The single greatest source of greenhouse gases in the United States is power plants-half our electricity comes from coal plants. One bulb swapped out: enough electricity saved to turn off two entire power plants-or skip building the next two. - In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads. - Last year, U.S. consumers spent about $1 billion to buy about 2 billion light bulbs - 5.5 million every day. Just 5%, 100 million, were compact fluorescents. - A 60-watt classic bulb and a 15-watt swirl are identically bright-the swirl just uses 45 fewer watts. http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/3433#more-3433 FAST COMPANY
TREE HUGGER - A British engineering firm has put together a high-performance hybrid version of BMW's Mini Cooper. The PML Mini QED has a top speed of 150 mph, a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds. The car uses a small gasoline engine with four 160 horsepower electric motors - one on each wheel. The car has been designed to run for four hours of combined urban/extra urban driving, powered only by a battery and bank of ultra capacitors. The QED supports an all-electric range of 200-250 miles and has a total range of about 932 miles. For longer journeys at higher speeds, a small conventional internal combustion engine is used to re-charge the battery. In this hybrid mode, fuel economies of up to 80mpg can be achieved. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/the_hybrid_mini.php    JULY 2006 SOLAR POWERED TRASH COMPACTORS MATT VISER, BOSTON GLOBE - They're boxy and green and, at first glance, don't even look like garbage cans; as Mayor Thomas M. Menino demonstrated their use yesterday, some people downtown mistook them for mail drops or traffic-light switch boxes. They are Menino's latest idea for keeping the city litter-free: solar-powered, self-compacting trash receptacles. Delivering a rant about overstuffed trash cans, while trying to scrape gum off the bottom of his shoe at a Downtown Crossing unveiling, Menino described the virtues of the new devices. They need emptying only once or twice a day, not the 15 or more sanitation worker visits required by some downtown trash cans. They don't spill. They smell less. And, they hold some 150 gallons of trash, about five times more than a standard city receptacle. Developed by a Jamaica Plain inventor, they are powered by photoelectric panels, which supply power to motor-driven compactors inside. Workers extract neat, 40-pound trash bricks instead of trying to manhandle the messy contents of an overflowing can. The city has placed 50 of the $4,300 machines in neighborhoods and hopes to buy more as it gauges how much it can save in labor costs. The 4-foot-tall containers announce "TRASH" in four places and feature several images of a person tossing an item into a can. Even so, some passersby cast quizzical looks yesterday at the machines, which could easily be mistaken for drop boxes for library books or postal packages. "We don't want people putting their tax forms in there," joked Timothy McCarthy, an aide to the commissioner of public works.  JUNE 2006 COLLEGE STUDENTS DESIGN CAR THAT GETS 3,145 MPG PHYSORG - A team of engineering students from The University of British Columbia has built a vehicle so efficient that it could travel from Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon of gasoline. The futuristic-looking, single-occupancy vehicle won top prize at a recent international competition, marking the UBC team's fourth win in as many years. The Society of Automotive Engineers Super-mileage Competition took place June 9 in Marshall, Michigan. Forty teams from Canada, the U.S. and India competed in designing and building the most fuel-efficient vehicle. "We achieved this level of efficiency by optimizing many aspects of the vehicle design, including: aerodynamics, light-weight construction, a small displacement engine, and conservative driving habits," says Team Captain Kevin Li. The UBC design, which required the driver to lie down while navigating it, achieved 3,145 miles per US gallon - equivalent of Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon of gas -- costing less than $5 at the pump. . . Universite Laval took second place this year with a score of 1,823 mpg. http://www.physorg.com/news70040977.html CHECK OUT THE WINNERS, which include five high school teams that got better than 200 mpg. http://www.sae.org/students/sm2006results.pdf GERMAN FARMER USES GRAIN TO HEAT HOUSE
MAY 2006 HOW TO GET HALF AS MUCH MILEAGE OUT OF THE SAME CAR PORTLAND PRESS HERALD, ME - Wearing a fleece slipper on her right foot, Beth Nagusky eased the 2006 Chevy Malibu onto the interstate. Slowly and smoothly, she brought the vehicle up to highway speed. "I'm feeling the pedal," she said. "I am one with the pedal." Nagusky, who heads Maine's Office of Energy Independence and Security, was driving a 30-mile loop between Richmond and Brunswick. Her mission was to coax the best gasoline mileage she could from the state-owned vehicle. That explained her Zen-like mindset and the bedroom slipper. An hour later, Ted Hunter got behind the wheel wearing fire-resistant racing shoes. Tires squealed and rubber smoked as he hit the on-ramp. Hunter owns TNT Drag Racing in Brunswick. His idea of fun is to see how fast he can propel a 1994 Camaro Z28 over a quarter-mile. On this day, his task was to get the worse gasoline mileage he could, while staying within the legal speed limit http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/060528gas.shtml CUBA GOES FOR SMALL-SCALE, ORGANIC FARMING    CONTAINER CITY Container City is a versatile system of stylish but affordable accommodation for a range of uses made from shipping containers. The concept was devised by Urban Space Management. Container Cities offer an alternative solution to traditional space provision. They are ideal for office and workspace, live-work and key-worker housing.Container Cities do not even have to look like containers. It is a relatively simple matter to completely clad a building externally in a huge variety of materials. Short-life sites can have Container Cities that simply unbolt and can be relocated or stored when land is required for alternative uses.  ARCHITECTURE FOR HUMANITY - Kathy Everard lives in Waveland, Mississippi. She uses a walker and is living in a small FEMA trailer with her 17-year-old granddaughter, and all their belongings. Their home was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. She, like many residents, has been fighting with insurance companies and expects it will be a year to 18 months before they can rebuild. In February, members of the New York City Fire Department came to Waveland to volunteer their time. To alleviate the Everard's cramped quarters, the firefighters offered to build the family a small wooden storage shed and laundry room. Architecture for Humanity and students of University of Minnesota College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture came to their assistance, designing and building a small facility that includes a refurbished washer - dryer and storage space to be sited next to the family's trailer.   APRIL 2006
MORE USES FOR DUCT TAPE NEWS STAR, MONROE LA - On Christmas night several years ago while at "Grandma's House" in Shreveport, the festive mood of the evening was interrupted by our teenage daughter calling from the back porch, "Daaaaaddy!" What seemed like the whole extended family charged from the den only to find my husband's beloved Labrador Retriever, HRCH Phoebe, bleeding profusely from the end of her obviously shortened tail, and our daughter blubbering that she had accidentally closed the storm door too quickly when they came in the house together. After a trip the emergency vet's that night and surgery the next week in West Monroe, Phoebe was recovering well. But this mishap happened right smack in the middle of duck season, the time of year for which she and her master live. When the vet said that Phoebe's tail, which was now 4 inches shorter, had to be kept dry at all times, there was only one solution. Tommy covered her bandage with duct tape (now fondly referred to at our house as Duck Tape) and off to the blind they went. - Norma Johnson, West Monroe I know of a waitress in a restaurant of a neighboring town who uses duct tape to enhance her figure. She takes the excess "rolls" of flab around her waist, rolls them up and tapes them flat to her belly. I guess you could say it's a "redneck tummy tuck!" -Jason Ashley When my son was born in 1983, I had to go back to work when he was only 4 weeks old. My husband and I agreed we would take turns at night getting up with him. . . At 5:30 a.m. when the alarm went off, I could not believe he had actually slept for an hour and a half. I got up, got in and out of the shower, and he still had not cried. I then could not believe I was going to have to wake him up to get him ready for the day. I walked into my son's room and looked over into the bassinet. There I saw him lying on his back, eyes wide as marbles, happy as could be, sucking his pacifier which was duct taped in his mouth from ear-to-ear. - Melinda Bonnette, West Monroe About three years ago, I had a peach limb break while full of peaches that were not quite ripe. I decided to put the duct tape around it. The peaches ripened, and for the last three years, they make as though it was never broken. I have a small peach orchard, approximately 100 trees, and I'm never out of duct tape. - Fred L. Kennedy, Marion My daddy . . . cut his hand one time and put WD-40 on it and wrapped it with duct tape. - Sandra Rowton, Jena I coordinate the girls ministry at Highland Baptist Church. Our ministry is called G.R.A.C.E. - Girls Reaching and Changing Eternity. Each month, we have what we call Grace nights - nights where we girls get together for food, fellowship and fun. Our November Grace night had a duct tape theme. We called it Duct Tape Fest. All of the games and activities we played centered on duct tape. The funniest game was the Duct Tape Challenge. Our girls got into teams of three and I gave each team three rolls of duct tape. They had to tape the smallest of their team members to the wall. The team whose taped member held the longest won. It was pretty funny watching them slowly come untaped, and it was even funnier to watch them try to get all of that duct tape off of themselves. We ended our gathering with a Bible study about how Jesus holds all things together, even when we may feel like everything's falling apart. - Stefanie Cox, Monroe Green duct tape was widely used by our unit in Vietnam in l963-64 to cover up bullet holes in our airplanes. . . Most of our planes were speckled with green tape by the end of my tour. - Don Hoyem, Monroe My husband decided that three Friday night visits for stitches (in three weeks in a row, nonetheless.) to the St. Francis Emergency Room was a bit much, so when our 5-year-old son (once again) had a cut on his chin that needed to be "put back together," off I went to retrieve the "skin super glue" from the office. (My husband and I are both physicians). Upon arriving back home, glue in hand, my surgeon-husband announced, "glue and/or stitches not necessary." Lo and behold, that adorable 5-year-old chin was held together by a piece of duct tape. -Tara Mercer, Monroe FEBRUARY 2006 HOW
TO BUILD A GEODESIC DOME OUT OF CARDBOARD RECYCLING CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS DECEMBER 2005
SAM BROOKS - The debate surrounding school modernization has, for good reason, centered around the source of the funding and the structure, management, and scope of the project. Yet it's worth pausing for a moment to give attention to a topic I've hardly heard a word about from city leaders. Not only does school reconstruction present an incredible opportunity - utilizing green roofs could yield numerous benefits to the city, not the least of which is long-term cost-savings - but it also speaks to the short-sighted public policy that can plague our city. For those who don't have
a clue what I'm talking about, here's a quick definition from
Google: "A green roof is a roof of a building which is partially
or completely covered with plants." The rationale behind
incorporating green roofs into new - and existing - buildings
is straightforward and well-documented: Green roofs effectively
insulate buildings and, as a result, reduce energy consumption;
they reduce storm-water runoff; they improve air quality; they
can last twice as long as traditional roofs; if enough were utilized
in a given city, the so-called 'urban heat effect' could be substantially
reduced. Now, some forward-thinking locales are beginning to include them in public projects. Chicago, for instance, recently installed a green roof atop its City Hall; the project is part of a city-wide plan to vastly increase the number of environmentally-friendly roofs in the city. Mayor Richard Daley, who is spear-heading the effort, has estimated the city could cool by up to 4 degrees if enough city buildings used green roofs. Toronto has gone even further. The Canadian city has made green roofs a city priority, with a city website even devoted to the issue, in the hopes of reaping the many potential environmental benefits. A green roof project would yield long-term cost savings to the city. The added insulation provided by green roofs is especially pronounced in low-story buildings with extensive, flat roofs - which is typically the structure of a public school. An academic benefit is clear as well: a school could easily incorporate the environmental design of its roof into the curriculum. And, finally, if we incorporate a green roof project into what might be the reconstruction of scores of schools, economies of scale could help reduce the up-front costs. TORONTO'S GREEN ROOF WEBSITE
GREEN ROOFS SPEECH BY CHICAGO MAYOR
RICHARD DALEY AMERICANS TURNING TO CORN BURNING STOVES NOVEMBER 2005  OCTOBER 2005 THE ECONOMICS OF A PERSONAL WINDMILL BALTIMORE TO OFFER PARKING DISCOUNTS TO HYBRIDS SEPTEMBER 2005. . . COUNT FOOD MILES AS WELL AS CALORIES EUROPEANS CONSIDER ELEPHANT GRASS AS ENERGY SOURCE  AUGUST 2005. . .  JULY 2005. . .  MICHAEL BLUEJAY - I've moved several times entirely by bicycle. Usually I've used a Worksman trike pulling a large 4'x3' trailer. I've hauled huge things with the Worksman, including couches and washing machines. It's funny how people tell me, "Oh, I wish I'd known you were moving, I have a car." As though we could fit a couch or a washing machine in their car. With a large trailer, I'm actually more mobile than I would be with a passenger automobile. SUSTAINABLE BUILDING IN WASHINGTON MASSACHUSETTS GETTING INTO GREEN CONSTRUCTION MAY 2005. . . BAY AREA OFFERING FREE TRANSIT ON SMOGGY DAYS NEW POWER STATION RUNS ON GRASS CITIES EYE OCEAN WAVES FOR POWER SUPPLIES STRAW BALE HOUSING WE RECENTLY MENTIONED STRAW BALE HOUSES. Here's are a few of the advantages: Straw is abundant and renewable. Straw is a waste product of a basic food source Straw bale walls exceed building insulation requirements. A typical rendered straw bale wall has an R-value of 4.9. Straw bales produces no waste. Any excess straw on site will be utilized in the gardens. Fire resistant properties. A rendered straw bale wall provides a 2.5 hour fire wall. Durability. Houses dating back to the early 1900's are in excellent condition. Straw is termite resistant to most termite species. Acoustic properties. In demolition straw walls can be added to the garden rather then landfill. |
KATRINA
EMERGENCY COTTAGE SEEPING INTO MAINSTREAM
HYBRID
MINI-COOPER HAS MOTORS IN EACH WHEEL
Rudolf Diesel, the inventor of the diesel
engine, designed it to run on vegetable and seed oils like hemp.
In fact, when the diesel engine was first introduced at the World's
Fair in 1900, it ran on peanut oil.
THE
CASE FOR GREEN ROOFS