Home / treehugger.com rss archive / September-03-2007


Helmet Head Resistance and New Tax Breaks For Bikers
Biking, whether it is for leisure or getting to work, is becoming a heated debate in Israel. Bike-lovers demonstrated against the government recently in the hopes that a new helmet law will be struck down by the Powers-That-Be. We enjoy us some cruising around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on our little mean green cycling machine and agree that if we had to wear a helmet we might take the heel-toe express instead. If the cities in Israel constructed bike lanes or at the very least consistently fined all the jerks who parked on the sidewalks, fewer bike and pedestrian accidents might actually happen. On a brighter note, employees who ride their bikes to work will be entitled t...

Book Review: 50 Ways to Save Our Oceans
Photo credit: openupmyheadWhether it's read from cover to cover, or browsed a tip at a time in non-chronological order, 50 Ways to Save Our Oceans ($12.95, 2006, Inner Ocean), by Blue Frontier founder David Helvarg is an optimistic, entertaining read for landlubbers and sea dogs, young and old, alike.Accompanied by humorous illustrations by Jim Tooney, the creator of Sherman's Lagoon, 50 ways is packed with practical, effective, yet easy-to-do calls to action for protect...

Are Switchgrass' Days Numbered?
Move over, switchgrass: there are some new grasses in town gunning for your biofuel crown. Researchers at the University of Northern Iowa's Tallgrass Prairie Center (TPC) are looking at ways to use the state's mixed prairie plantings as a source of renewable energy as biomass to produce ethanol or to burn for electricity. "When you hear about biomass, you usually hear only about switchgrass, but we're looking at using prairie plants including wildflowers," said Dave Williams, manager of TPC's Prairie Institute.A study conducted thi...

How To: Find Garage Sales Happening Near You
Despite the usefullness of resources like FreeCycle for extending the functional lives of our stuff, we think garage sales are still the kings of the hidden bargain, and a great way to find stuff you need but don't have, without buying something brand-new; they also help keep stuff out of the waste stream and are usually a great way to find gently-used stuff on the cheap. One caveat: they can be hard to find, or if you happen to stumble upon one in your neighborhood, all the good waffle irons might be gone. To help connect the people with the sales, a

UnTreeHugger: Spice Up Your Carbon Footprint
If you wanna be their lovers, you gotta get their friends some jets. Now that the erstwhile Spice GirlsPosh, Sporty, Ginger, Baby, and Scaryhave announced plans for their globe-trotting reunion tour, we find out that Virgin Records is donating one Lear Jet for each spicy mama and her entourage.Each Spice Girl, says the latest issue of the Natural Resources Defense Council's OnEarth, will earn $25 million, while all five jets will generate a whopping 47,500 tons of carbon dioxide. We don't know about you, but that's SO not girl power. ::OnEarth...

G-Wiz Gets Even Cheaper
Last time we wrote about the G-Wiz, it was the centre of some controversy after outspoken British motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson trashed it comprehensively. As we said at the time, many of Clarksons criticisms about the vehicles speed and size seemed a little off-base, given that it is intended purely as an inner-city commuter vehicle. While his worries about safety may be more significant, the folks at GoinGreen, the G-Wiz distributors, were quick to point out that the G-Wiz so far has an

Quote of the Labor Day: Samuel Gompers
It is a good day to remind you to but Fair Trade, products, and help marginalised producers and workers move from a position of vulnerability to security and economic self-sufficiency. Fair Trade producers move from being poor farmers working alone to organized co-ops producing better quality, getting more money and living better lives. Why organize? Samuel Gompers listed some good reasons: What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice ...

Educational Games for Kids: Proceed With Due Caution
When I posted recently about an online game released in New Zealand ostensibly with the intent of teaching kids about responsible energy use and taking proper care of the environment, I pointed out that it appeared to be a great way to teach kids about the concept. But an astute commenter pointed out that the sponsor of the game, a company called Genesis Energy, has been rated by Greenpeace as the worst offender in that country when it comes to polluting the environment. Within an hour our own Lloyd Alter popped me a quick email linking to

How Green Is Your Beer?
Ah, Labour Day, where the most work one wants to do is sit on a warm deck and lift a cold beer. But how to choose? Heidi Sopinka of the Globe and Mail tells us:Hopped up on Pesticides: Farmers are estimated to spray hops 14 times a year with an average of 15 pesticides and fungicides. One of the two primary ingredients in most beers (the other is barley), hops constitute about 5 per cent of beer's total volume and account for at least 50 per cent of the taste. Organic beers should have organic hops.Is Your Beer Vegan? Many beers are clarified with isinglass, which is not an elven village in Middle Earth but collagen made from the bladders of ...

Buns of Corn: SkirtSports and Sorona
If youve been reading about textiles fashioned from corn or PLA (polylactic acid) youve probably been hearing plenty about Cargills NatureWorks Ingeo.* It is about to joined by a newish product, that we hinted at around a year ago, is soon to be seen in womens sportswear. Its Duponts Sorona, also made with a corn feedstock. Dupont figure that using a renewable compared to their usual fossil fuel based nylon reduces greenhouse gas emissions 60% and uses 40% less energy, equating to an annual energy savings equivalent to 36 million gallons (~136 million litres)...

Rock and Ices Sprout Awards
Rock and Ice is a climbers magazine, as its name might suggest. They recently scribed: Its no secret that the future could be hotter than a two-dollar pistol firing uphill unless we check up and start respecting Mother Earth. The next generation is facing new challenges brought on by our shortsighted use of resources. On the plus side, theres a sea change occurring as individuals and companies address the imbalances affecting our planet and the people who live on it. Sure, there is a long way to go before weve solved the problems, and todays solutions are simply the first steps toward sustainability.Like TreeHugger, Rock and Ice figured there was merit...

Quote of the Day: Chris Hume on Pleasure
Toronto Star Architectural critic Christopher Hume on embracing gratification in urban affairs:As the late, great Jane Jacobs wrote in her seminal study, The Death And Life Of Great American Cities. "Dull, inert cities...contain the seeds of their own destruction. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves."Lively, diverse, intense...these are all code words for pleasure..... In our fixation on the home and the individual, we tend to overlook the communal pleasures so essential to the civic enterprise. And let's not forget that the public rea...

Return of the Scythe
Treehugger has noted that gas mowers put out as much smog as 40 new cars; we encourage the use of reel mowers and unpowered garden tools. Peter Vido goes even further, and as Alex Roslin of the Globe and Mail notes, uses a 1,000-year-old implement that is also handy for peasant uprisings or if you happen to be the Grim Reaper: the scythe. Vido is an organic farmer in New Brunswick, Canada, makes custom scythe handles and manages an international campaign to revive the scythe through his website, ::Scytheconnection"The modern version of scything is very ergonomic," said David Patriquin, a biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax who sw...

Win a Trip to Tokyo With Your Climate Friendly Ideas
It's hard to lose "green" in translation, especially in Japan, which is basically a country-sized treehugger. The Eco Business Creation Association, along with the awesome newsletter Japan for Sustainability and the Japanese telecom company NTT Resonant, is calling for ideas from around the world for reducing CO2 emissions for their Cool the Earth contest. Better hurry though -- deadline's September 5th. The plan is for the best ideas to be turned into prototype projects in Japan and show...

Wake Up to Organic
The theme of this year's Soil Association Organic Fortnight is "Wake up to an Organic Breakfast" and schools, restaurants, businesses and communities across the country are holding organic breakfasts and related events. Organic is big here; the annual Organic Market Report issued to coincide with the two week celebration of all things organic found that retail sales of organic products through organic box and mail order schemes and other direct routes increased from 95 million in 2005 to 146 million in 2006 - a 53% increase. Organic health and beauty products are booming too--there was a 30 per cent increase in the number of products licensed with the Soi...

Emotional Ecology and Philosophy for Countrymen at LNRs Green Special Issue
Following a growing fashion on green-issues from major publications (which only has recently started in Argentina), La Nacion newspaper had its Sunday magazine (LNR) dedicated to environmental issues yesterday, under the line Do we care about the planet?. With a critical tone, the magazine took on eco-conscious celebrities, green-products consumption, global warming and endangered species; but it also had two interesting approaches to the subjects of the environment and responsibility. First was an interview with Merce Conangla and Jaume Soler on their concept of Emotional Ecology; and the other was a talk with philosopher Santiago Kovadloff about his upcoming speech...