SalvaEco

Itchy, formless, paired with tie dye shirts – hemp isn't known for being comfortable or stylish. Durable and versatile, industrial hemp used to be the first choice for many productions from canvas (derived from the word cannabis) and carpet to paper and rope.

Though still illegal to grow in the United States, we are the purchaser of over 60% of the internationally available industrial hemp, mostly for grown in Europe and recently Canada. Based on a quiet island in British Columbia, Rawganique is one of the most diverse online stores featuring hemp products.

We are 100% committed to the environment. We believe that hemp clothes & footwear, and other hemp products, raw veganism, sunshine, pure air, pure water, positive thoughts, and ahimsa awareness can transform the world and make it a safer, happier, and better place for us and our children to live in. We aim to do all we can to help make hemp and raw veganism mainstream, so that the world's economy thrives on sustainability and renewal rather than terrorism, fear, and depletion. Rawganique.com was created with love to make sure we're doing the best we can to stop disintegration and to build trust, peace, love, and health for all, one ever-widening circle at a time.

Image source: Washington University

Washington University in St Louis has made a $55 million dollar investment in sustainability, focusing on the development of the International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES). the university annouced Monday.

I-CARES will foster "institutional, regional and international research on the development and production of biofuels from plant and microbial systems and the exploration of sustainable alternative energy and environmental systems and practices." The center will also focus cleaner processes for utilizing Missouri's abundant coal resources, as well as improved combustion processes and emission reduction.

I-CARES will create five new endowed professorships to attract top-tier research leaders in energy, environment, and sustainability. Research will also include international partner universities, all of which recently issued a "call to action" on energy and sustainability.

Posted by Dave (in Anchorage, Alaska)

Well, it looks like we’re smack bang in the middle of conference season. Some delegates from the IWC in Anchorage barely had time to pack their Alaskan souvenirs before they were on planes again, jetting off to the Hague for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species conference (CITES). Damn – even conservation creates a carbon footprint…

So, less than a week since I wrote a blog called “Commercial whaling ban reinforced at IWC in Anchorage“, parties to CITES have sucessfully rejected an effort by whaling nations to undermine a related ban on the international trade in whale products.

Continue reading No whale trade: CITES keeps ban in place…

Uber-Eco-Towers: The Top Ten Green Skyscrapers
New Device Turns Waste Heat into Electricity
Sooty Vessels Try to Turn Green
Eating Radiation: A New Form of Energy?
Building Better Biofuels

(more)

(Posted by David Zaks in News and Views at 6:49 PM)

Image source: AWEA

Editor's note: Since David was only able to spend one day at WINDPOWER 2007, we asked Jessica Jensen, co-founder of Low Impact Living, to offer her take on the rest of the conference. Here are her impressions of Day 2.

Day 2 at WINDPOWER 2007, the national wind energy expo hosted by the National Wind Energy Association (NWEA) continued to be exciting. With over 400 companies exhibiting and 6000+ visitors, this is by far the largest wind energy conference in the U.S. Yesterday's events focused on the small wind energy market. Small wind is defined as systems producing < 100 KWs. Home wind-power systems typically require 1-10 KW (generated by one turbine) and farms and small businesses can use anywhere between 10-100 KW.

The day started with an excellent session on "Growing the Market for Distributed Wind Energy." Trudy Forsyth of the National Renewable Energy Lab spoke both of very encouraging growth in the small wind market but also about the obstacles to greater growth. Certain states– including California, New York, Vermont and Massachusetts offer strong financial incentives for investment in wind systems and also make the permitting processes navigable.

After writing an article a few weeks back about a city in China where almost every roof is covered in solar, I've come to realize that we're obviously not taking advantage of the square footage above our heads. Everything from collecting rain to growing produce to harnessing the sun could be achieved using our roofs. We're not there yet, but I'm hopeful that change is in the air.

Helping my optimism along is a recent article of a firm in California attempting to take single-purpose parking garages and turn them into functional structures that harness the power of the sun. Already having raised $600,000, Envision Solar plans to take advantage of wasted space above these structures and line them with solar panels. That energy could then be used to either power a nearby building, fed into the grid, or leveraged to charge electric cars. Tesla Motors, makers of the upcoming Tesla Roadster all-electric super car, are also petitioning for a similar setup. Go figure.

One the easiest ways to give your place a facelift is to slap on a fresh coat of paint. But beware of that new paint smell – it can do more damage than you think, even after it's dry. Here's a few things to consider if you're thinking about throwing some color on your walls.

The old standards on the paint market are normally oil based or water based (latex) paints. Latex paints, most common for DIYers, are made up of pigments, binder, additives and water. There are also solvents and biocides (to prevent bacterial growth) that aren't always listed. All these things can add up to one giant headache – literally. When you get a headache or nausea from wet paint aroma, that is the VOCs affecting you (volatile organic compounds).

Image Credit: USDA/Wikimedia CommonsAmericans eat a lot of corn. Sure there's cooked corn and corn chips and corn flakes and cornbread and the myriad other varieties found in the average American market. And, with the arrival of summer, there is now corn-on-the-cob (though here in the upper midwest: the sweet corn at the local supermarket right now is trucked in from Florida, not locally grown).

But in addition to its recognizable forms, where the corn is recognizable as corn, there are untold numbers of additional places where we don't recognize it, but where corn forms the substance of our diet. And most of that has been highly processed.

I've been reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan recently, and it has been a very enlightening read. One of the most shocking things to discover was just how much corn is suffused throughout the typical American diet.