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German Engineers Join Hybrid Game
Anticipation hangs palpably ahead of the Frankfurt International Motor Show: what will German engineers bring to the green table? After bucking the trend for several years in favor of the already well-established "clean diesel" technology, German car companies are promising a turn-around, starting next week in Frankfurt. But visitors in Frankfurt won't have to look far to find more green diesels either. Here is a sneak preview.Where Mercedes leads, others will follow. Out of 19 cars to be shown next week, seven are hybrids and eight will feature the Bluetec clean diesel technology jointly developed by Daimler/Chrysler and VW. The king of the road: a Mercedes S-class...

Small Steps: How A Local & "Socially-Sustainable" Plastic-Bag Alternative Begins in India
It seems that everywhere you look now, everyone is coming up with alternatives to typical plastic bags running the gamut from the overhyped to the low-key local initiatives. India is certainly no stranger to this growing anti-plastic awareness and in a country where plastic now proliferates like crazy, another no-plastic contender from a sustainable community in South India has jumped into the fray. Enter the Small Steps bag from the

Solar Decathlon Saturday: NYIT
We have already given you a sneak peak at this year's Solar Decathlon entries from the University of Illinois and the University of Cincinnati. This week, we are taking a look at the New York Institute of Technology's solar home - OPEN House. After taking home 5th place at the 2005 Solar Decathlon by showing off a "fully operational solar-hydrogen fuel cell home," the 2007 version of the Decathlon team is looking to turn the judges' heads with an electrical system consisting of an array of 35 solar panels feeding a...

Mitsubishi Unveils All-Electric Car With Solar Roof and Wind Turbines
Mitsubishi has unveiled this all-electric car concept called the i MIEV Sport. Besides being a zero-emission vehicle, the car incorporates a solar roof, two compact wind turbines built into the front grill, and a regenerative braking system. Additions like these will only modestly increase the range of the car, but they certainly contribute towards keeping the car's batteries charged. The i MIEV Sport is based on Mitsubishi's i MIEV electric car, which we featured previously. Like the i MIEV, the Sport...

The Bees Did It 3000 Years Ago
Photo credit: neteanJust in time for the Jewish New Year, we find this little nugget of news reported on CNN: Archeologists from Hebrew University unearthed what they believe are 3000-year-old beekeeping hives. They have found remnants of ancient honeycombs, beeswax and what are reported to be the oldest intact beehives ever found. We have followed the honey bee scare in the US and elsewhere here on TreeHugger and marvel that an advanced ho...

Building Green: Energy Efficiency and Aesthetics From The Same Materials (Part 20)
Last time I talked about preparing the walls for plastering. This included installing the baseboard where the walls meet the floor. Now it is time to install window seats and window shelves. A straw bale wall is approximately eighteen inches thick, which, when recessed, offers good opportunities for creating additional useable space. (Small homes need to take advantage of every square inch.) By creating seating areas below windows, the home becomes more functional and aesthetically pleasing. A window seat set into a thick wall creates a visual transition to the outdoors. It also acts as a light reflector, which helps to create a pleasant glow within the room. In the winter, th...

Retreat at TreeGap: an Eco-Journey
This lovely looking house is the starting point for an environmental and ecological journey. Megan Reynolds decided to give up her day job, move into her family's house in Woodstock, New York, and turn it into a one room eco Bed and Breakfast. She has kept an ongoing "memoir in progress" of her experiences, doubts, fears and mistakes. She undersells (typical female reaction) the extent of the project and her commitment by describing it as such: "The eco-friendly aspects of my bed and breakfast are as follows: I grow a lot of my own food; I have solar panels for electricity; I have an Airstream trailer renovated to include a composting toilet and gray water system." In fact she is very dedica...

Global Warming Could Double Heat Fatalities within 50 Years
If you thought this summer's heat couldn't possibly get any worse, you ain't seen nothing yet: according to a new study by Laurence S. Kalkstein, a climatologist at the University of Miami, global warming could cause the number of heat-related deaths in Baltimore and 20 other U.S. cities to more than double within the next 50 years.In Baltimore alone, the number of days with temperatures above 101F is estimated to rise from 6 a year to more than 16 by mid-century. This, in turn, will lead to more people dying from the additional heat from the 48 a year in the Baltimore area currently to approximately 141 a year (or 2,232 more deaths by 2050). Using the same met...

A Clean, Green, Killing Machine? Special Operations Units Test Electric Vehicles
Were into electric vehicles here at Treehugger, but even with the likes of the Tesla Roadster and the Vectrix beginning to appear, there is still a preconception among many that they are, well, a little bit like sexed-up golf buggies. That doesnt seem to bother the Special Operations unit of the US Air Force, however, who according to a report over at Wired have just announced that they will be testing an extremely mean looking golf buggy known as the CERV (Clandestine Elec...

23% of Brits Would Rather Drive
What Car conducted a survey on the travel habits of Brits, and I have to say that I'm disapointed at how lazy they we to be. I can only assume that the survey was coducted amongst the magazines readers, who will obviously be more biased towards taking car journeys rather than walking. Anyway, the results show that 23% would choose to drive a distance of 1,000 meters, rather than walk it. ...

Taipei's Ghost Festival Goes Virtual
Old habits die hard: although Taiwan has risen over the past few decades to become one of Asia's most modern and technologically advanced countries, folk religion and superstition have continued to remain integral components of the culture. Every year, during the seventh month of the lunar calendar, many Taiwanese citizens both young and old give offerings to the souls of the dead who, according to traditional beliefs, return to roam the world of the living. The Ghost Festival has become a surprisingly large source of air pollution due the massive amounts of paper money burned throughout th...

Windspire: 1 kW Wind Turbine for Your Backyard
With its sleek, bladeless design and capacity to produce nearly 2000 kilowatt hours per year, the Windspire might just inspire some YIMBYism -- that's Yes, In My BackYard -- about wind power. At 30 feet tall and 2 feet wide, the propeller-less design is bird-safe, relatively quiet -- it produces about 25 decibels of noise at five feet, roughly equivalent to the average noise of a residential neighborhood at night -- and doesn't take much breeze to get it spinning; it fires up at 8 mph, and is rated to survive 100 mph gusts. It comes with a wireless modem that connects to your computer, so you can sit back and watch the energy in action at any time.At about $4,000,...

Quote of the Day: Thom Hartmann on Trees for Beef
Photo credit: arkntina According to a 1996 report by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, funded by the World Bank and the United Nations, 72 acres of rainforest are destroyed every minute, mostly by impoverished people who are cutting and burning the forest to create agricultural or pasture lands to grow beef for export to the United States.This 38 million-acres-per-year loss will wipe out the entire worlds rainforests in our childrens lifetimes if it continues at its current pace. ... ...

Ref-use Chair by Thomasson vs Edwards
Named for what it's made from (but also for it's attitude -- it refuses to be thrown away!) the Ref-use Chair by Thomasson vs. Edwards Design takes reclaimed plywood scraps and cobbles them into a pretty slick chair. In a style somewhat reminiscent of Scrapile's recycled designs, the Ref-use chair shows off its "recycled-ness" in a way that doesn't give it away; "It's cool to be recycled," it seems to say (and we agree). It comes in lots o...

A Picture is Worth ... What Kids Learn From Bush
Click here for full picture[Via Digg]...

The Future of Prefab? Move the Whole House
A big limitation of conventional modular prefab is the limitations set by transportation- you have to get down the road and under bridges. But if you are a major builder and control the roads, you can ignore those restrictions and build the entire house inside.That is what Mattamy Homes did in Milton, Ontario; they built a factory to supply a 1,000 unit subdivision, and have created a warm, secure working environment. "The chandeliers are hanging, the tiles are grouted, the hardwood is shined up," says Ron Cauchi, president of Mattamy's Stelumar operation....

One Year Ago in TH: Prius Fever, eGo Cycle Reviewed, Naked Energy + More
One year ago at TreeHugger, we had a touch of Prius fever, as the 2007 Touring Edition was on its way and we learned about a way to get a free Prius (but be sure to read the fine print). We also had the chance to hop aboard the electric eGo Cycle 2 and put it through its paces for a review, marked our calendars for An Inconvenient Truth on DVD, peeked in on

Ontario Election 2007: How Toxic are the Leaders?
I just can't wait to see all of the American presidential candidates pony up blood and urine samples to environmentalists to see how toxic they are, but that is what three of the leaders in the Ontario election did. They are so chock full of gender benders like phthalates and Bisphenol A, they should be wearing dresses. For some reasons they have higher levels than the population at large; It does make you wonder whether there is something about the politician's lifest...

MDesigns Mcube
Inhabitat turns us on to Mcube, a steel framed design with what looks like KalWall insulated fiberglass panels. They say "The system is based on a translucent 10-cube module which can be stacked in multiple floors and units for residential and commercial purposes. Made from concrete, steel, and luminous fiberglass daylighting wall panels, the system can be fully erected in 90 days at a cost starting at $100 per square foot! (Yes $100 a foot!). Considering how expensive most sleek SoCal prefab systems seem to be - this is a price tag that really got our attention."The price gets my atte...

Run Your Car Into The Ground: It's Cheaper
When Irv Gordon squeezes 2.5 million miles out of his old volvo, or Syl Schmid manages to get 562,000 miles from his VW Jetta, it just goes to prove that replacing your car for a newer model every few years is not the only way to go. While some may worry about the car depreciating in value, we have just learned from Consumer Reports (via

Eco-Turf From Wildfire Farm
It looks like grass to me, but it isn't. It will be gracing the Solar Decathalon Competition as the green landscaping of choice. It is Eco-Lawn, a "specially designed blend of seven fine fescue grasses, grows to form a dense turf on loam, well drained clay and even in infertile, dry soils! Eco-Lawn thrives in full sun, part shade and even in deep shade conditions." It best installed in August and September- " nature has programmed fewer weeds to germinate in fall, so your new Eco-Lawn will establish more rapidly, with less weed competition." It needs no watering, no mowing and no fertilizer. Sounds like astroturf but it's real. It was developed by Paul Jenkins and Miriam Goldberger, who also...

One to Watch: Basurama from Madrid
Eres lo que tiras"You are what you throw away". To illustrate this theme, Basurama installed a wall of trash at the FIBart '07. Guests at the exhibition contributed to the visualization of the detritus of their consumption. 185 tons of waste. Out of sight, out of mind is the philosophy Basurama aims to fight. We decided to google Basurama after reading about this group, which is based at the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid. "Basura" is spanish for "trash" so naturally Basurama caught our eye. ...

Building Green: Energy Efficiency and Aesthetics From The Same Materials (Part 19)
Slate comes in a wide variety of colors and can add visual interest to a natural home.Designing and building a green home requires quiet timetime to remove yourself from the semi-chaos of the actual construction so that you can re- focus on the design itself. A home designed and built using only the mechanical drawings that were created before breaking ground (even if they include green-building elements) risks having its aesthetic "heart" getting lost in the engineering. In other words, the design process should continue throughout the construction process. ...

Oh..Great - Our Access To Coal Is Only Limited By Imagination
"There's enough unleased coal on federal lands in the Powder River Basin to feed the United States' current appetite for coal for 493 years, according to federal figures released Wednesday. Roughly 89 percent of that coal can be mined under certain restrictions and about 11 percent is off-limits from leasing, said the report by three federal agencies.""On federal land, Wyoming has about 510 billion tons of coal, while Montana has about 40 billion tons.""According to estimates based on U.S. Geological Survey figures, 95 percent of the resource is too deep to mine by conventional methods."So, apparently they want to develop the resources with "underground gasi...