You turfed your roof? Yesterday’s green, darling, so yesterday’s green. Anyone who is anyone is lining theirs with loofah. Obviously you haven’t been hobnobbing with the right sort of people over at Ecopreneurist.
You’d be forgiven for losing track of the ever-changing landscape of quality green blogs out there. It’s a little dizzying. So here’s one to bookmark – Trends Updates lists its Top 40 Green Blogs.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants the world to view environmental criminals like any other sort of criminal – literally. As GreenBiz reports, a new EPA new web tool is designed to collate information on particular individuals for easy access by law enforcement agencies – and, remarkably, there is even a public-facing page for identifying fugitives.
Here’s an eco-experiment that takes some nerve. Catering company owner Ari Derfel has held on to every scrap of trash he’s produced in the last 12 months, keeping it in his house (which no, doesn’t smell like a landfill – he composts everything he can). A side benefit – it’s allowed him to scrutinize his diet in detail, and identify where his work is so stressful it’s making him seek solace in junk food. Read the full San Francisco Chronicle story here.
For those employers still resistant to greening up their businesses, consider the findings of the World Resources Institute – they estimate a 48% drop in profits for non-sustainable companies by 2018. Ouch.
A deeply distressing expose of the Bureau of Land Management’s proposed cull of tens of thousands of America’s wild horses. The response of the Animal Welfare Institute? It’s a measure “pure and simple to balance the books for an agency whose reckless management has caused immeasurable harm to a national treasure at considerable cost to the American taxpayer”.
“Hummer“. Boy, how that word has aged. And no wonder, when you tot up the impact this gas-guzzling beast has had on the world since 1983. (Salon does all the work for you).
Ready for Christmas? Me neither. But don’t worry – everyone feels that way. There’ll be plenty of time to panic later, so for now, have a read of The Inspired Room’s Six Strategies For Making The Holdays Sane, and put your feet up.
How do you feel about wearing fur? Elizabeth Rossiter puts her cards on the table, over at SpliceToday.
“Within four months, I’d lost more than 35 pounds and was below 180, less than I’d weighed in 30 years.” These are the words of Mark Bittman – and he accomplished this by going “Vegan ’til Six” (which allowed him to eat more).
Hot on the heels of the discovery that peridotite can soak up carbon dioxide, scientists in Britain and Central America are trialling a technique used by pre-Columbian Amazonian Indians that locked up CO2 in trees that were them processed into a soil-renewing charcoal, boosting agricultural productivity and locking carbon into the soil. The startling implications, in the words of Craig Sams (of Green & Blacks chocolate fame) – “if just two and a half per cent of the world’s productive land were used to produce “biochar”, carbon dioxide could be returned to pre-Industrial Revolution levels by 2050.”
Climate update: this year is the coolest since 2000. What does that mean in terms of global warming? Answer: nothing at all. Long-term trends contain short-term variations, as The Guardian explains. And in the short term, our global climate remains as concerning as every. Naysayers – listen to the scientists, not your weather report.
Are we all done with the fax machine? Not quite yet…but this relic of yesteryear will find it a struggle to fit into the paperless workplace of tomorrow. However, right now you probably still have one kicking around your workplace – so following these tips from GreenHackz will ensure you’re not sabotaging your principles when you use it.
If someone offered you a meat sausage that had been grown in a test-tube, you’d probably show a good pair of heels. But Shmeat is on the way. The impetus for its development is a $1 million prize to be awarded to the first market-ready batch of in vitro meat products – and it’s PETA stumping up that prize money. A step in the right direction, or entirely missing the point? Expect this one to grow and grow. Full story at Grist (via Huffington Post).
And lastly, courtesy of Lisa Farino at MSN – know your Christmas Tree!
Image: Jef Poskanzer