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Caught In The Act: Volatile Organic Compounds
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are chemicals that evaporate easily at room temperature. These VOCs may cause harmful health effects, and have been linked to everything from headaches to cancer. VOCs are commonly emitted from everyday items such as carpets, vinyl floors, upholstery fabrics, and even cosmetics. Yet it has remained difficult to monitor VOCs in the environment because air and water samples have to be captured, and sent off to a lab for analysis. But new research at the Georgia Institute of Technology may pave the way for a miniature sensor that can measure VOCs right in your living room.With benzene and other VOCs high on the EPA priority pollutant list, it...

Saving the world one paperless greeting card at a time
Self-dubbed as a new, small and deeply committed company, Three Leaf is a triple bottom line online greeting card company offering video cards. This might seem like just another greeting card company, but did you know that over 7 billion paper greeting cards are sent each year? Thats a lot of paper. Three Leaf Cards offers members both choice and options, not to mention a really good looking card. Owners Steve Knaub and Andy Atkins created the company based on the three foci: creating a 1) quality service that benefits 2) society and 3) planet. This triple-bottom line motto is where the three in Three Leaf comes from. The owners met in high school and have remained frien...

Fall Fashion 07: Blue Canoe
Blue Canoe is ready for brisk weather with new fall additions to its already expansive collection. And the California-based organic apparel company doesn't disappoint. We get the same clean yet bold aestheticone that works both on and off the yoga matand mix-and-match versatility that Blue Canoe built its rep on.More photos below the cut. ::Blue Canoe...

UnTreeHugger: Nellie's Dryer Balls
We've been seeing Nellie's dryer balls and their various knockoffs throwing around their purportedly eco-friendly clout everywhere lately, even on green shopping sites and environmental blogs we know and love online. (We even tried to correct these misguided claims on one of those deal-a-day sites, but our comments were deleted and ignored. Dude, harsh.)The concept behind them is well-meaning: The dryer balls are meant to take the place of fabric softeners, which recent studies have revealed contain cancer-causing and neurotoxic solvents such as toluene and styrene. What the...

Mexican Cities Need More Sustainable Transport Options
According to a new study from the Center for Sustainable Transport, or CTS, by 2015, 27 Mexican cities will have more than 750,000 inhabitants each and their current car-based transportation models will be inefficient and unable to handle a major increase in vehicle traffic. The report urged medium-sized Mexican cities like Quertaro, Torren, Poza Rica, Tampico, Cuernavaca, Morelia and Celaya to undertake their own massive public transport projects like those in Mexico City and Guadalajara."It's true that the models that have had success in the big cities, like Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, have a lot of impact in other medium-sized cities, but it's also ...

More Bike Parking: Always a Good Decision
While many cities still require a certain number of parking spaces in new developments, Washington D.C. is on the verge of mandating a different type of parking: parking space for bicycles. The motion currently going through the city's council would be focused on making it easier for bicyclists in apartments and other dense urban areas. According to the Examiner:The proposal would require that all apartment buildings with more than eight units set aside one bicycle parking space for every four residential units. Commercial landlords would have to ...

Liz Lovely: Baking a Difference
The tastiest triple threats to come out of Vermont, Liz Lovely's scrumptious baked treats are now organic, fair-trade- and vegan-certified, making the line of cookies the first nationally distributed product of its kind to acquire all three certifications."Our new recipe uses only sustainably harvested organic palm fruit oil in place of the processed egg and butter substitutes we were using previously," says Dan Holtz, Liz Lovely's vice president of sales, in a press release. "Its also important to note that, unlike palm kernel oil, palm fruit oil is heart-healthy and 100 perce...

Graphic Of The Day: Hybrid Sales Rate Growth By US Region
Sometimes a picture tells the story best. So with no further adieu, have a look at this bar graph and the tables below. All are based on new registrations of hybrid vehicles....

Mexican President Says No To Biofuels Law
Mexican President Felipe Caldern recently vetoed a law meant to boost Mexico's biofuels sector, on the grounds it gives too much emphasis to corn and sugarcane production. According to Caldern, the law doesn't give enough attention to new technologies like seaweed, bacteria, enzyme and cellulose that could be more sustainable sources of biofuels.The law was approved by Congress in April and has broad support from the agricultural industry in Mexico. Farmers responded to the veto by saying that Mexico will now have to import ethanol and pay more for it.Corn and sugarcane-based ethanol have increasingly come...

Accessories, Accessories
It's London Fashion Week and we are here to report on the newest and latest eco-fashions. Once again this year, Estethica, the special exhibit of green fashion was a fascinating collection of the best on offer. You know what they say in fashion: accessories are key. And you can always fit into them. So here are two of the nicest. First off shoes, who can resist them. These (pictured) are handmade by a recent graduate of fashion school. She uses unwanted, recycled kimonos found in Kyoto as the top (upper as they say in the biz) for her shoes. The kimono fabrics are bright and luxuriant in detail, and each has its own story since the patterns are very symbolic. The soles are mad...

Most Huggable: Trouble in Pig Land, Weird Weather Watch, Mammoth Poo, and More
As fascinating as it might be to see a scientist potentially holding a pile of mammoth-poo in his hands, this is not a good signThe Daily Greens Weird Weather Watch wants your photographs of climate freakinessBritish ministers are talking up a ban on internal combustion vehicles by 2040, part of a vision for a Zero Carbon BritainAmong industrial pig farms, resistance to antibiotics may be piggybacking around the herdGetWithGreen.com spends some quality time with concrete countertop mast...

Investment in Cycling Could Save 521 Million
Spending money on encouraging cyclists could actually save the government money, as well as combating climate change, according to a new report. Getting more cyclists on the road could save the UK taxpayers 520 million, according to government-backed cycling group, Cycling England.They say that a 20% increase in the number of bicycle journeys in the UK would lower healthcare costs by improving the health of the nation, and reduce congestion. A relatively small 70m annual investment in cycling initiatives could apparently reduce the number of

Can Networking Teens Save Planet For Themselves?
With record numbers of virtually every species and natural resource being harvested and utilized in an unsustainable manner, its clear that we need a different path. But with governments and big businesses alike often marching merrily together down the well-worn highway of profits over common sense, one man has come to believe that networking teens will be vital to the future of humanity.That person would be Steve Chase, founder and director of the Environmental Advocacy Program at Antioch University in New Hampshire. Currently hes working to train grass roots activists within a...

During Public Transit Week, China Goes Carfree
China is notoriously good at preventing people from doing certain things. Driving does not happen to be one of them. Efforts to stem China's fast-growing, toxic and delirious love affair with the car have mostly fallen flat; though initiatives like the no-car days Beijing launched last month, look like a step in the right direction, they serve mostly as Potemkin village rehearsals for the city's big coming-out party at ...

Balancing The Anti-Wind, Pro-Coal Lobbies: The Pennsylvania PennFuture Example
Pennsylvania's PennFuture organization has released a "one-pager" to help balance the advocacy claims of pro-coal and anti-wind power forces. Fossil fuel lobbyists can easily bring their talking points in to State legislators which, until now, have had little access to information on the advantages of wind power. Rather than have each state have to 're-invent the turbine,' as energy bills come up for discussion, we thought we'd pass along the PennFuture list - just to keep the information valves open. Go to the website of PennFuture here.View the full letter sent to the Pennsylvania State Legislature...

The TH Interview: John Bowe, Author of "Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy"
In Nobodies, John Bowe has crafted an incisive expos of the seedy underbelly of modern labor practices in the U.S., which, in certain circumstances, have lent themselves to virtual enslavement. The book traces his journey from the fields of Immokalee, Florida, to the factories of Tulsa, Oklahoma - eventually taking him the island of Saipan in the Western Pacific. Bowe is a prolific writer who has contributed

Green Style Hosts Carnival of the Green
This week is Carnival of the Green # 95 and it's being hosted by Green Style! So, head on over to this week's Carnival to check out a round up of last week's green news and events, submitted by other bloggers and green sites. To learn more about Carnival of the Green, where it will be and how to host (hurry, we now have less than 5 dates left in 2008!), please click here to link to our previous post....

Mithun Architects' Vertical Farm for Seattle
This evidently won "Best of Show" in the Cascadia Region Green Building Council's Living Building Challenge. It is a "Center for Urban Agriculture," a building, located on a .72-acre site, that includes fields for growing vegetables and grains, greenhouses, rooftop gardens and even a chicken farm." According to CEO Washington, The building also would run completely independent of city water, providing its own drinking water partly by collecting rain via the structure's 31,000-square-foot rooftop rainwater collection area. The water would be treated and recycled on site. And photovoltaic cells would produce nearly 100 percent of the building's electricity."Constantly developing cr...

Solar Power From Contracting Wires
We have seen some wierd and wonderful ideas from the past through Modern Mechanix, but this one has us scratching our head. A parabolic reflector focuses heat on tungsten wires stretched the length of the drum, lengthening under the heat. As the drum turns, the wire hits cold water and contracts. "As the drum rotates the wires pass out of the focal range of the suns rays and are doused in a trough of water at the bottom. Sudden cooling of the wires causes them to contract rapidly, pulling on a bell crank at the end of the drum. This action in turn causes the dogs to engage notches in the fixed ratchet and drive the drum around. Rotation of the drum causes t...

Green Sports: Washington Post Get On Board
In fact they get aboard surfboards, snowboards, skateboards as well as bikes, and sports balls. On learning that green claims can give sports goods manufacturers a marketing edge they ponder if there is genuine environmental motivation behind such moves, or is it really just promotional ploys to make us feel better about our toys. After discovering that the Action Sports Environmental Coalition (ASEC) is working up a green stamp to certify eco-sports product they embark on their own exploration of the issue taking a cursory glance at the aforementioned sports products and asking for opinion from experts. ...

Some More Good News: Recovery Suprisingly Fast for Mercury-Plagued Fish
Though you'll probably still want to pass on the contaminated fish from this river, the good news is that you can rest assured that the levels of the toxic metal in the fish and other organisms will - if contained - decrease in short order. A team of scientists from British Columbia found that limiting the amount of mercury emissions from sources such as power plants could result in the rapid decontamination of fish populations within a period of years.In their study, the researchers artificially increased the levels of mercury in a lake ecosystem in western Ontario by adding an inorganic and less toxic form of mercury. They spent the ens...

Concrete Canvas Shelters
Blaine at Transmaterials shows Concrete Canvas Shelters: "a rapidly deployable hardened shelter that requires only water and air for erection. It can be deployed by two people without any training in approximately thirty minutes and is ready to use in twelve hours. Invented by Peter Brewin (same person?) and William Crawford, the shelter consists of a cement-impregnated fabric (Concrete Cloth) bonded to the outer surface of an inflatable plastic inner structure." They note that it is better than tents: "CCS enables a hardened structure from day one of a crisis. It provides much better environmental protection, incr...

Now You See It, Now You Don't. A Global Warming Traverse
We can petition our government and scream at faceless corporations to more quickly address this problem, but doing so fails to recognize that the enemy is actually us. So writes Andy Skurka talking about his calling to a Lightweight Lifestyle. He observes that none of the proposed solutions to global warming are ready to make an impact tomorrow, none have widespread political support, none are without problems, and none are free. His proposal includes a two part action plan, one of which is Get outside, and get others outside. This is because he believes that those who have a deep relationship with the natural world have...

The CEI Airs Its Dirty Laundry: Save the Inefficient Top Loader or Thousands Will Die
Remember those entertaining folks at CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute)? Thats right, these are the people who brought us the hilarious CO2: We Call it Life commercials, and blamed the global malaria crisis on Rachel Carson. What are they getting into now, we hear you ask yourselves? Apparently these crazy cats are now busy

Absolut Downloads: Angelique Lucas-Witte
why move material when we are interested in ideas, creativity and talent?Like Ryerson University student Angelique Lucas-Witte's laptop table, made from a 4x4 sheet of baltic birch."Designed for easy mobility and the use of a laptop, this table may also transform into a side table. Through the use of voids and shifting planar elements this piece is not only functional, but intriguing and playful."So many ways to squeeze neat designs out of so little material. More at ::In An Absolut World Everything is Downloadable...

Eco Fair in Copenhagen is Green With Passion
Last week we visited Green Passion, the eco fair in Copenhagen. Its the first year this green lifestyle-salon is taking place, combining eco fashion, health and beauty, home interior as well as organic food.Believe it or not we came across an organic hairdresser and wellness centre called Zenz, who have just gone CO2 neutral. Their branch CommonZenz sells organic lifestyle products and we were delighted to find some Kuyichi organic jeans over here in Europe. Another Danish company

Cheap Gas Makes You Fat
A recent study by Charles Courtemanche of Washington University in St. Louis looks at the relationship of gas prices and obesity. He found that in the years where gas prices were stable or declining in real dollars (graph right) the obesity rate climbed constantly. He concludes: $1 in real gasoline prices would reduce obesity in the U.S. by 15% after five years, and that 13% of the rise in obesity between 1979 and 2004 can be attributed to falling real gas prices during this period. I also provide evidence that the effect occurs both by increasing exercise and by lowering the frequency with which people eat at restaurants. He calls his study, appropriat...

More Green Houses: Open House London
Two more modern and sustainable houses, built with budget and site constraints, were open as part of Open House London. Part of the fun is searching out new and unknown quarters of London and these two places were in Peckham, a mixed area with little gentrification going on and poor quality housing stock. With an hour and half wait in line for this house, it is a good thing that people are friendly and love to chat. Many had come because they had seen it on the telly--it had been featured on Grand Designs and voted as one of the Nation's favourite Grand Designs houses. It was built on a difficult site, with a small budget and lots of g...

Consumer Consequences: American Public Media's Online Eco-Game
TreeHugger is no stranger to carbon calculators weve covered BPs efforts in this regard, weve written about the first wedding carbon calculator in the US, and we even had our own calculator for the Convenient Truths contest. It was with some scepticism, then, that this reporter heard news of yet another online resource aimed at calculating your environmental impact. Launched by the Public Insight Network of American Public Media,

A Solar Kitchen With a Plan, by Xcruza Design Studio
We just love to see items that have been carefully thought and that consider not only design, but also implementation. This portable solar kitchen by Argentine studio Xcruza is an example of that: more than being a nice prototype, the studio is trying to make the oven an industrial product that can have a bigger impact. A solar kitchen that is actually available for purchase might not sound like something new in the States or Europe, but it is actually pretty rare in Argentina. The kitchens technological simplification allows it to become industrialized with a low cost, while still considering the security, cleaning, operation, storage and transport issues...

Living Steel Competition Winners Announced
It was an interesting idea for a competition: pick three prototypical sites and invite the designers from around the world to compete, with a whacking big prize. The winner for Recife, Brazil was in fact Brazilian, Andrade Morettin Arquitetos Associados Ltda, who "addressed a global housing shortage in their design by getting to the essentials of comfortable living. "Essential Architecture" embraces basic minimalist construction with an economic use of materials for a light structure and design. This idea of essentials extends to the building's glass-free facade and carefully planned ventilation that eliminates the nee...

Vote for Cooper-Hewitts Peoples Design Award
Last year, the prize went to the house that rocked the prefab world, the Katrina Cottage. Once again, New Yorks Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is looking for your input. The second annual People's Design Award, as the first, covers all designbut this is an excellent quick and easy way for YOU to draw the public eye to the best green design out there. ...

How to Fix Our Cities
Photographer and artist Danny Lyon is flattered to be asked to help design a city; in the past this was the job of emperors and kings. While I have some small concerns about his step one, many of his other suggestions make a lot of sense. The essay is from a new book "Block by Block: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York" which we eagerly await. ::New York Times...

Texas Hosting Bids For Offshore Wind Farm Leases
Texas, the top producer of wind power among U.S. states, will hold the nation's first competitive sale of leases for offshore wind-power facilities.Texas General Land Office said. Jerry Patterson, Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, is seeking bidders for the nations first competitive lease sale for the rights to develop offshore wind power on a combined area of 73,098 acres in the Gulf of Mexico. Bids must be received no later than 10am (CST) on October 2, 2007 at the General Land Office in Austin, Texas.This is exciting. Howev...

The Book of Lights
As a long time fan of popup books, how could I resist Takeshi Ishiguro's Book of Lights, a coffee table book that you'll actually open. "The ultimate illuminated manuscript, Book of Lights pop up protagonist emits a tabletop warming glow. A wonderfully crafted and cleverly folded lamp springs to life from the hardy white pages of the bound book, powered by a simple low voltage adapter." Don't know how much light three .06 watt LEDs pump out but suspect it is more for decoration than doing petipoint. ::Artecnica...

Quote of the Day: Bruce Nussbaum on Google
Being very rich does seem to breed a sense of entitlement, and the Google boys are no different. Even though the company motto is "do no evil" they appear to have few qualms about some very conspicuous consumption, as Eric noted earler. Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week notes:I don't know why two guys need a big wide-bodied 767 jet to fly around, guzzling gas and polluting the planet and I don't know why NASA cut them a deal to land at Moffit Airbase, minutes away from Google headquarters but I do know that it hurts the brand image of the company they founded and run. Not good.Gett...

Cameron Sinclair Wows HOK Canada
Ed Burtynsky and Cameron Sinclair; photo by Hugo Arriojas10 years ago, HOK Canada started with 15 employees in a townhouse. Now 250 strong, it is celebrating its anniversary in style. Last night Edward Burtynsky dropped jaws all around with a slide show of his photographs of quarries, slag heaps, coal and construction in China and s...

EPA Shutters the Nation's Leading Computer Recycler
The good people at the Alameda County Computer Recycling Center, a fantastic Berkeley, California-based non-profit group that recycles anything that plugs into the wall, is now under siege by the EPA. Its director, James Burgett, is a champion of the do-it-yourself culture, and has won many awards for his efforts to get used electronics back on the street. As the ACCRC slogan goes, "Obsolescence is just a lack of imagination." Now though, the ACCRC is in trouble. The Department of Toxic Substance Control of the California Environmental Protection Agency has issued the ACCRC