From Toilet to Tap
I wanted to highlight this article, which talks about Orange County’s Jan 25 ’08 unveiling of their poop processing plant that converts CA residents’ turds to potable water. This is the first of its kind (in the US), given that previous attempts had been stomped by what I like to call the “yuck factor.” It’s cheaper, greener, and, I must admit, grosser than traditional reclamation methods, but maybe worth the sacrifice given the problems CA faces when getting drinkable water to its citizens.
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Whale hunting... err... researching game
“Whale numbers seem to be decreasing in this area. We need to kill more whales to determine the cause of this decrease.”
That’s the kind of ironic humor that laces Harpooned, the Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator. Playing off of the Japanese insistence that they are only doing innocent research on whales despite continued whale hunting, this game puts you in the captain’s seat of a Japanese “research vessel” collecting whale meat and avoiding protesters. This game is hilarious, and though most of it is covered in the preview video embedded below, it’s well worth playing yourself.
Previously featured on Duenos:
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Student housing with old shipping containers
Leave it to the Dutch to make this amazing piece of student housing out of old shipping containers. The company, called Keetwonen makes these 40 square meter rooms with running water, internet and sexy style. Just another reason to think about moving to the Netherlands.
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Plastic bag leadership nowhere to be found
When I was in South Africa a few summers ago I was really happy to notice that the stores charged extra for plastic bags. The result: everyone had re-usable cloth/thick plastic bags to carry their shopping with them. Since then I’ve learned that they were just one of the first to start the ball rolling on something most of the world has now taken on, the banning of the disposable bag.
Environmentalist uber-blog Inhabitat has a great article about the move away from throw-away plastic in Africa and I’m just left wondering, outside of San Francisco where is this movement in the United States. Like a lot of environmental movements, we in the States are in a great position to take the helm on this and yet we sit with our heads so firmly stuck in the sand I’m not even sure we can feel the winds of change blowing around us.
The above picture is taken from an awesome contributor-based photography site called the Plastic Bag Gallery. Individual credit goes to Jessica Backhaus from the UK.
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Brad Pitt and others to sustainably rebuild New Orleans
Maybe it’s too little to late, but as Mr. Pitt said in his phone interview with the New York Times, “they’re coming up on their third Christmas… people are needing to get back in their homes.” Pledging $5 million himself, as well as commissioning 13 sustainable designs from nationally recognized architects, Brad Pitt sees himself as leading the way to a green reconstruction of the 9th Ward.
Some of the designs are really out there, like this grounded houseboat from Morphosis but the overall concept is really inspiring. As Pitt says, “[sustainable architecture] has got to work at all levels for it to be viable.” For more information see the NYT article or the Flash-bloated homepage
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Cash for Poop
Oberlin College has a new program going on right now that might be the perfect way to make a little extra something on top of the usual check from the ‘rents. Apparently every time between now and Friday that you poop in the Adam Joseph Lewis Center (Environmental Studies building) the department will give you a quarter. The money is to be distributed at the “Low on Cash, High on FIber Bash” on Friday night.
Lucky enough to be there? Here’s a link
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Water Bottle Tax
I give a lot of credit to Mayor Daley of Chicago for his most recent environmental move, a tax on water bottles. According to this article from the Sun Times, taxes of 10 – 25 cents will be added to every bottle of water sold. Go Mayor Daley!!
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Surfboards from grass
Some time ago I posted about people who made their own surfboards, skis and snowboards. In those cases, the materials were still conventional if the methods were anything but. This company, Greenlight Surfboard Supplies, offers surfboard-making supplies made from eco/sustainable materials. Corn, bamboo, and sugar cane (all grasses) provide the main building block for Greenlight board materials and so, on the off-chance that you took the last post about home-building to heart, they’re apparently a good source of materials.
Previously featured on Duenos:
- Build your own skis (and snowboards, surfboards, etc…)
- Surfing goes nuclear
Via Treehugger
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An aquatic canary
Coal miners used to carry canaries with them down into the mines as a sort of warning device of bad air quality. Because canaries are so much smaller than humans, they would die from breathing the toxic air way before the miners were in any danger. That served as inspiration for artist Marei Wollesrsberger whose BioSafe Habitat concept involves aquatic plants or fish serving the canaries sacrificial function. In reading about the project, I discovered a fascinating (and patented) species of fish called GloFish. These modified zebrafish literally glow when exposed to water contaminants. They’re also the only genetically modified organism to be legally sold as a pet.
Pictures courtesy of the artist and Wesley Tyler’s Flickr stream
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CD hovercraft
I was reading a Treehugger post about the recyclability (if that’s a word) of CDSs and found this cool compilation of other uses for CDs. It turns out that while they technically can be recycled, it’s a pretty intense process. BUT, if you have an old CD lying you must try this, turning your CD into a hovercraft:
Make A Mini Hovercraft – video powered by Metacafe
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Smokey the Bear website
This may not be new but it’s new to me. The National Forest Service and Smokey the Bear have a website dedicated to Smokey’s message that “only you can prevent forest fires.” It doesn’t cover everything, although I suppose it would be a little more complicated message if they had to go into the global climactic changes behind the desertification of California and the resultant fire-friendly conditions. Still, for a kid-oriented conservation page it’s not too bad, and you can always join Smokey kids or play campfire games. Regardless of what you do on the site, be sure to catch the creepy intro video on the main page and remember, only YOU can prevent forest fires.
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Permafrost no longer
Like most people living all over the world, I don’t live on the front lines of climate change. If there has been any change in Paris’ climate it’s for the better as the winter is shorter than normal and the weather generally nicer. It’s easy to forget that there is disaster looming large over our heads like the Sword of Damocles. It’s easy to forget that there are many places where the cut of climate change is felt every day, each season a little worse than the last.
In the Arctic north, the permafrost line is receding as polar temperatures increase. This article from today’s New York Times highlights one of those towns on the edge, Newtok Alaska. Newtok used to be just another small Arctic outpost but now it’s an island, cut off from the mainland by erosion. The residents of Newtok have an important story to tell about what it’s like to live on the edge. It’s a story we should hear.
Photo courtesy of Greenpeace.
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The great bee caper
If you haven’t heard this news story, it’s a big one. All over North America and Europe honeybee colonies are collapsing. While it might seem like this is just another species going extinct in a world of death, this has serious human implications. Most of our fruit crops are naturally fertilized by wild bees. It’s a process we haven’t had to worry about for centuries but all of a sudden the bees are disappearing into thin air.
The phenomena is officially known as colony collapse disorder and it could be devastating. The biggest problem is that we can’t even reach a conclusion as to why so many bees are deserting their hives, but since 1971 half the bees have disappeared in North America alone. A simple Google search yields 100’s of causes and solutions. Some of the leading causes could be pesticides, genetically modified crops, or even cell phone radiation.
The solutions being offered are not very impressive in that their scope is wide and various, but this article in The Guardian is the most recent. It suggests that bees should be kept by city dwellers to foster a greater “bee friendly” landscape. Of course at this rate we may have to find a whole new solution. Nanobots?
Image from EncinoMan’s Flickr! stream.
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Apple starts recycling program
We previously covered Apple’s last place environmental record, and then the subsequent green statement from Steve Jobs, but it seems there is more. Apple announced last week that they were to start a school computer recycling program. Any school (k-12, University, College, etc…) with more than 25 computers to recycle, Macs or PCs, could sign up. After scheduling a pick-up, the rest of the work would be done by Apple who are, it seems, asking for nothing in return. There’s more about this story at The Apple Insider.
Via The Inquirer
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Dissolvable Plastic
One of my favorite podcasts, 60-Second Science (available at Scientific American and iTunes), spoke about research being conducted by the University of Southern Mississippi to make stretch wrap plastic that is dissolvable in saltwater. In a nutshell, by incorporating hydrophilic molecules like carboxylic acid into the plastic, the saltwater can break it down within 5 months to CO2 and water. The US military is funding the project so that on-board storage of plastic waste can be reduced by safely dumping it overboard after some minor preparations. For a more complete run-through of the application and hurdles of this research, please check out this article from sciencefriday.com.
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Green web hosting
This website along with my personal domain, is hosted by Dreamhost, which, I was pleased to learn is completely carbon neutral. It turns out there there a number of green hosting options out there, and Dreamhost is just part of a growing number of tech companies (see recent post about Apple) with ecological aspirations. Check out Dreamhost’s green credentials or look at all the other options at Treehugger.com.
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Chinese green policy
One of the first articles to run on duenos.net was this story about officials in Fumin, China who went about greening the countryside by spray-painting a bare rock cliff with green paint. At the time the news was so recent that there were no pictures to be found, but here I was combing the Treehugger pages and I found one. I just thought I’d post it in the interest of all things funny (in a sad, destructive kind of way).
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A Greener Apple
This is a slightly older story, but I felt I needed to update everyone on Apple’s reaction to the perception that they are the least green computer company. A few weeks ago, Steve Jobs published a position paper laying out Apple’s environmental measures and aspirations. It turns out that, at least according to the very biased CEO Steve Jobs, Apple is not the 5th horseman of the ecological apocalypse. Jobs asserts that Apple is actually leading the way in terms of reducing heavy metals use in computer manufacturing. Apple’s recycling program is also supposedly world class, and the only one to use only US-based facilities for the job.
Is any of this true? I don’t know, but it seems like there’s a lot more research to be done to reconcile Jobs’ vision of his company with Greenpeace’s.
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Governments shame property owners for heat waste
Hotmapping is a company that uses spy-plane infrared technology to conduct surveys of municipalities looking for buildings that are losing heat. They have been hired by a number of local governments in the UK to create maps of their areas that they then have posted online in an effort to publicly shame property owners into not wasting heat energy. This article for more about one government’s efforts to make their more wasteful residents accountable and also offer energy saving ideas and advice. People don’t often know when or how they’re going wrong when it comes to waste, so I think this program could produce some good results.
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One man's journey to see the results of his actions
Fred Pearce, senior environmental correspondent for the New Scientist is calculating his footprint. Unlike the increasingly popular “footprint calculators”: found online, Pearce is actually going around the globe and visiting the source of the gold in his wedding band, the jeans he wears, and his favorite coffee. In this amazing series, the audience discovers, along with Pearce, just how connected the world it is. What we do and buy right here instantly (and sometimes catastrophically) effects people in as far off places as Dhaka, Tanzania and the South Africa.
Also featured in the ongoing series “Fred’s Footprint”: Fairtrade cotton, prawns, recycled mobile phones and computers and green beans. Follow Fred’s Footprint as it’s revealed at the New Scientist environmental blog.
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