New Tower Creates All Its Own Energy
Incredible Shrinking Packages
Is This What it Takes to Save the World?
Transcontinental Wildfire Emissions Monitored From Space
Learning to Love (and Value) Ecosystem Services
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(Posted by David Zaks in News and Views at 8:54 PM)
Huh? Jeff really must be working too hard… right? Well, I probably am, but the question is legitimate, according to Southern forest sustainability organization the Dogwood Alliance. While many of us greenies are focused on the environmental impact of roses, chocolate and even adult products on Valentine’s Day, Dogwood raised questions about the amount of packaging used for health and beauty products. According to their blog,
Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and Revlon are three of the biggest health and beauty companies using excessive packaging originating from Southern forests—forests with more types of plants and animals to love than almost anywhere in the world. Excessive packaging of beauty products is just plain ugly, and destructive too.
Dogwood Alliance called on Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and Revlon to reduce the amount of paper in packaging, increase post-consumer recycled fiber used in packaging, and ensure that their paper products are not coming from endangered forests.
The message is simple – forests shouldn’t be chopped down, chipped up, made into packaging and tossed in the landfill. There are simple solutions that can transform the packaging industry.
Of course, it’s not just activists asking for less packaging on products; retail giant Wal-Mart focused on packaging for some of its earliest sustainability initiatives. This seems like a hard one to argue against — do you think any company would try a variation on the standard line and say consumers demand more packaging?
If you’re interested in joining the Dogwood Alliance’s campaign, they’ve created an action page where you can express your thoughts to the beauty products makers listed above. Give ’em hell… in a Valentine’s Day kind of way, of course…;-)
Categories: activism, beauty, products, packaging, paper, waste, forests, dogwoodalliance
by Worldchanging NYC local blogger, Mark Castera: Even if you’ve read the Mayor’s amazing Sustainability Plan for New York City, you may have missed the section about creating greener jobs and manufacturing zones. That’s because there is no plan to create greener jobs and manufacturing zones. You’ll find sections about housing, trees, parks, global warming and reducing traffic, but nothing about the growing green economy. It’s really a shame. Sure, the city needs more affordable housing, and luxury condos are good for our tax base. But people also need places to work for decent pay. The truth is that the city’s manufacturing jobs pay an average of $41,000 annually, which is about $10,000 more than comparable jobs in retail or restaurants ( see this entry on Wikipedia). There are still over 118,600 manufacturing jobs in the city, but that number shrinks every year, as our manufacturing districts disappear under a rising sea of hipster lofts and glass towers. And even where these two land uses co-exist, housing usually wins out in the end — a result of skyrocketing rents and complaints from new residents who don’t like the noise and pollution of industry. But there’s hope for a revitalized manufacturing… (more)
(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 1:05 PM)
Generally not, but that could change if research being conducted by the University of Michigan and the US Department of Agriculture is successful. The task: developing flooring (and other products) from cow poop…. really!
[Researchers] say that fiber from processed and sterilized cow manure could take the place of sawdust in making fiberboard, which is used to make everything from furniture to flooring to store shelves. And the resulting product smells just fine.
The researchers hope it could be part of the solution to the nation’s 1.5-trillion- to 2-trillion pound annual farm waste disposal problem.
Yep, the poop is piling up, and ranchers who once sold it to farmers for fertilizer now find they’ve got more of the smelly stuff than they can sell. Many have turned to methane digesters as a “win-win” solution for waste disposal and energy production, and now researchers are looking at ways to make use of the solid residue that’s left after methane and liquids are extracted. While some of the “digester solids” are used for animal bedding and potting soil, some labs are testing out a fibreboard product that seems to hold up as well, or even better, than its counterpart made from sawdust.
Obviously, there will be an image problem from the outset, and a representative of the Composite Panel Association believes the concept won’t fly. Of course, if the resulting product is marketed as “Poopboard,” he’s probably right. But it’s hard for me to see this as anything more than a marketing issue: if the material is sturdy and attractive, would the manufacturer need to proclaim “Made from Cow Manure?”
Categories: cows, poop, fibreboard, methanedigester, flooring, research, michigan, us
by Worldchanging NYC local blogger, Joshua Wiese: New York City’s biggest water quality problem can be described with a three letter acronym: CSO. It stands for Combined Sewage Overflows. Combined overflows provide the much needed relief to our sewers when the city’s treatment facilities become overwhelmed by a combined overload of wastewater from buildings and stormwater runoff from the streets: they divert this flow directly into our rivers, canals and bays instead. Sewer overflows basically prevent raw sewage and polluted stormwater runoff from backing up into our homes, schools, offices, streets, and anywhere else a drain connects to the sewer — but at a steep cost for the health of the waters in and around the city. According to Riverkeeper, New York City dumps “more than 27 billion gallons of raw sewage and polluted stormwater discharge” via sewer overflows into our surrounding waterways every year. So it’s not surprising that the focus of PlaNYC’s 10 initiatives devoted to restoring the health and quality of New York City’s waterbodies (with the goal of making 90 percent of the waters safe for recreation by the year 2030) is primarily on sewage and stormwater management. In the name of full disclosure, I’ve spent… (more)
(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 1:03 PM)
 An orca calf, known as J-41, swimming with its mother, J-19, in Washington State’s Puget Sound in July 2005. ©Ken Balcomb / Center for Whale Research |
Almost everyone is familiar with orcas – those magnificent black and white cetaceans who are commonly known as “killer whales“, although they aren’t actually whales. They’re predators, who live in “pods”, have complex social interactions, and are very intelligent.
One especially fascinating fact about orcas is that they rely on their own complex sonar to locate food, and to basically “see” what’s around them. So, you can imagine the horrible effect on the orcas’ lives if this system were to be disrupted. And we all know that humans make a lot of noise in the ocean…
Continue reading ‘A shocking eruption of sound’ : US Navy sonar and Puget Sound orcas…
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An orca calf, known as J-41, swimming with its mother, J-19, in Washington State’s Puget Sound in July 2005. ©Ken Balcomb / Center for Whale Research |
Almost everyone is familiar with orcas – those magnificent black and white cetaceans who are commonly known as “killer whales“, although they aren’t actually whales. They’re predators, who live in “pods”, have complex social interactions, and are very intelligent.
One especially fascinating fact about orcas is that they rely on their own complex sonar to locate food, and to basically “see” what’s around them. So, you can imagine the horrible effect on the orcas’ lives if this system were to be disrupted. And we all know that humans make a lot of noise in the ocean…
Continue reading ‘A shocking eruption of sound’ : US Navy sonar and Puget Sound orcas…
Three Filipinas are attempting to be the first Asian women to reach the Everest summit. They’re delayed by the weather at the moment, but are determined to continue. From their blog:
The Kaya ng Pinay Everest Team support group has reached Chinese Base Camp here in Tibet. We’re all here preparing to go up to Advanced Base Camp to meet the women and the big buzz here is our Filipina climbers because of the record that they’re about to set.
The women, Carina Dayondon, Janet Belarmino and Noelle Wenceslao, will be traversing Mount Everest, meaning they will be climbing from Tibet and going down in Nepal. This has never been done by any woman so the three women will be setting a world record by doing just that. So a lot of people are talking about that here at base camp.
As you can see from the banner, they are also calling for action on climate change.
Separately, a Greenpeace sponsored expedition to photograph evidence of glacial melting in Himalayas recently had to turn back when they found the mountain path ahead had been wiped out – update from that team here. Millions in China and India depend on the water from Himalaya glaciers.
Three Filipinas are attempting to be the first Asian women to reach the Everest summit. They’re delayed by the weather at the moment, but are determined to continue. From their blog:
The Kaya ng Pinay Everest Team support group has reached Chinese Base Camp here in Tibet. We’re all here preparing to go up to Advanced Base Camp to meet the women and the big buzz here is our Filipina climbers because of the record that they’re about to set.
The women, Carina Dayondon, Janet Belarmino and Noelle Wenceslao, will be traversing Mount Everest, meaning they will be climbing from Tibet and going down in Nepal. This has never been done by any woman so the three women will be setting a world record by doing just that. So a lot of people are talking about that here at base camp.
As you can see from the banner, they are also calling for action on climate change.
Separately, a Greenpeace sponsored expedition to photograph evidence of glacial melting in Himalayas recently had to turn back when they found the mountain path ahead had been wiped out – update from that team here. Millions in China and India depend on the water from Himalaya glaciers.
New polls show the vast majority of Australians and Americans to be concerned with climate change. Bipartisan majorities of Americans (90% Democrats, 80% Independents and 60% Republicans) say “the heating of the earths atmosphere is having serious effects on the environment now or will soon and think that it is necessary to take immediate steps to reduce its effects”. And more than 90% of Australians believe “climate change is a vital issue” — perhaps not surprising given the climate induced “big dry” drought [search] that is decimating the Australian continent and may be the first large scale planetary climate emergency. Yet the executive leadership in both countries continues to stonewall even modest Kyoto emission reduction goals, and the opposition parties offer tepid alternatives that are nowhere near as robust as necessary to solve the problem. For the planet’s atmosphere to continue operating we need an urgent and dramatic decarbonization of the economy [search] including dramatic emissions reductions of at least 80% asap; an end to coal power to be replaced by renewables such as solar, wind and local biofuels; a significant global carbon tax and well-regulated carbon market to clearly set a price on and reduce carbon emissions; and major efforts to increase energy conservation and efficiency. This as well as addressing underlying problems causing global heating including over-population, militarism and terrorism, lack of global equity and justice, and over-consumption by many as others starve. Change your light bulbs, drive a hybrid if you can, and take countless other personal actions to reduce you carbon footprint, but without these grander societal changes truly adequate to protect the biosphere and atmosphere in particular, the human family is toast.