photovoltaic carport shades in San Diego

Treehugger: "There isn’t much that’s more renewable than solar energy, and we give the TreeHugger thumbs-up to anyone who uses it. But somebody working for the San Diego Environmental Services Department is a real smarty-pants: the photovoltaic panels in the parking lot keep cars shady, too! The panels here and elsewhere on the center make it the City’s first energy independent building, and the carport array powers the 87,000 kilowatt-hours-a-year administration building (saving $16,551 every year). While it’s just plain more comfy to get into a car that hasn’t been baking in the sun all day, it can contribute to energy savings since you won’t have to blast the A/C to get the car’s temperature back down to habitable. "

MfCA - Press

MfCA - Press"The Fifth Ward Chapter of Mothers for Clean Air, a non-profit community-based environmental group, has scored a major success in the clean-up of a hazardous waste site in its community. Comments made by the chapter in response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal for clean-up influenced the EPA to change its decision to a more extensive clean-up of the Many Diversified Interests (MDI) Superfund site that sits across the street from an elementary school.

The chapter worked with a consultant, hired through an EPA grant, to submit its technical comments. Chapter members wrote their own comments and also asked other interested parties to write letters.

The EPA was “bombarded with a lot of comments... We got your comments and we listened to you,” said Stacey Bennet, Remedial Project Manager for the site. She added, “(the comments) were instrumental in getting EPA to reconsider its proposal.” The site will now be cleaned up to a level that will support the redevelopment proposed by the community. [...]"

Target : Museum of Modern Art Pop-Up Holiday Cards

Target : Museum of Modern Art Pop-Up Holiday Cards

The Supermarket that Changed the World

Ode: "The American organic supermarket chain Whole Foods started 25 years ago as a small health-food store. Led by maverick CEO John Mackey, it has reached unprecedented growth and sales rates. 'If you look back 100 years from now, history will show that Whole Foods will be in the top-five companies that changed the world.'"

coupons for natural living in NYC

Treehugger:: gifts under $25 Archives: "The Green Apple: Coupons for Natural Living in NYC is a coupon book for New Yorkers. Its mission? To prove that living an organic, natural and eco-friendly lifestyle is indeed affordable. And to help you make it more so. Though you have to buy the book to get the coupons, it also doubles as guide for resources throughout the city and features relevant articles. Plus, the 200 discount coupons redeemable at all kinds of stores, restaurants, and fitness and yoga centers appear to be worth the price tag. If you don't live in the Green Apple, don't fret--nearly 150 of the coupons can be used online or through mail-order. "

ITDG - Home - Intermediate Technology Development Group

ITDG - Home - Intermediate Technology Development Group: "ITDG is a charity which works with poor communities to develop appropriate technologies.

ITDG has a unique approach to development – we don't start with technology, but with people. The tools may be simple or sophisticated, but to provide long-term, appropriate and practical answers, they must be firmly in the hands of local people: people who shape technology and control it for themselves."

Small is Beautiful/E. F. Schumacher/25th Anniv. Edition

Small is Beautiful/E. F. Schumacher/25th Anniv. Edition
: "The Global Economy. The Individual. Could two concepts be more in opposition?


Twenty-five years ago, Small is Beautiful, by E. F. Schumacher, addressed this issue and introduced the world to his groundbreaking ideas. The book provides a cogent critique of the problems of Western economics and Schumacher's solutions calling for human-scale, decentralized, and appropriate technologies. His philosophy can be summed up in a phrase: economics from the heart rather than from the bottom line.


'More than a set of essays on alternative economics and international development, Small is Beautiful precisely finds the pulse of the giant engine of transnational business that is rapidly redefining the globe. Schumacher's observations were not only prescient (some of the essays were originally composed over 30 years ago) but are proving to be universal and almost timeless,' says editorial advisor David Rousseau."

Thoreau Center

This green building/healthy environment organization has a beautiful website and a great mission.

Thoreau Center: "The Thoreau Center for Sustainability is a Multi-tenant Nonprofit Center located in the historic Presidio, a national park in San Francisco, CA. It serves as a living model of the Presidio's original vision - a global center dedicated to addressing the world's most critical environmental, cultural, and social challenges. The Center is named after the American writer and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau because of his belief in the importance of democracy in society and his advocacy for living in harmony with nature. It is designed to incorporate both sustainable 'green' building principles as well as historic preservation."

Vanishing Aspen

Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics: "...Unlike the East, where aspen often regenerate via seeds, the West has drier, less hospitable conditions that require a different survival strategy—vegetative reproduction. An extensive root system lies just beneath the ground surface in an aspen grove. New shoots grow directly out of these roots. A stand of aspen that appears to be many trees is more likely one organism, all clones from the same parent root system.

And some aspen groves have been around for a very long time. “We have clones here in Utah that are hundreds of acres in size,” says Dale Bartos, aspen ecologist at the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Logan, Utah. “If that started from a single seed, then that genetic material has been on-site for thousands of years.”

But the essential fact of aspen ecology in the West is that the trees have prospered by being continually destroyed by fire. “Aspen is a fire-dependent species,” Bartos says. “It thrives on getting killed.” [...]"

Collective Good

CollectiveGood"CollectiveGood creates financially productive partnerships with charities and companies to ensure that the benefits of mobile phones are maximized, and their environmental impact is minimized. We pioneered the concept of providing marketing, operations and logistics support to charities and the private sector to create innovative used mobile phone collection campaigns that are successful in every community."

Who grows your food?(And why it matters)

Who grows your food?(And why it matters) - November/December 2004 - Sierra Magazine - Sierra Club: "What urbanites-especially urban environmentalists-do understand about farming is that it can damage the environment. We criticize farmers for the use of polluting pesticides and fertilizers; for robbing wildlife of water by pulling it from rivers and aquifers for irrigation; for damaging streams and causing erosion through bad grazing practices; and for erasing wildlife habitat. We condemn agriculture for poisoning wells in the Midwest and California's Central Valley, and blame it for the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi dumps toxic runoff from a third of the U.S. landmass.


Such criticism usually doesn't sit too well with the farmers themselves. After all, they are feeding us, and doing it as efficiently as they know how. It often sounds as if we're yelling at them across a cultural gap.


Fortunately, some farmers are now bridging this gap, with help from those environmentalists who support sustainable agriculture. "

Postcards from the edge

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Postcards from the edge: "Of course, a few refuseniks still don't accept that burning fossil fuels or any of our species' other bad habits are accelerating climate change, and one of the main strands of Cape Farewell is to gather more evidence about what is happening, why, and the implications for the rest of the planet. That means, as my bunkmate Dr Simon Boxall from Southampton Oceanography Centre puts it, 'we take highly sensitive and sophisticated monitoring devices, chuck them into incredibly hostile conditions, and pray they work'."

Eco-Tip: Eliminating Phantom Loads

Treehugger: Eco-Tip: Eliminating Phantom Loads: "In Nov. 18 post on 'phantom' power loads, TH told you that household electronics in standby mode are wasting a shocking amount of electricity. George Mokroy wrote in a tip that can help us all save more energy: 'Any appliance that has a phantom load--usually an 'instant on' capability like TVs and VCRs--should be plugged into a power strip with an on/off switch. When you finish using it, turn off the power strip instead of the device and you eliminate the phantom load.'"

Motorola mobile phone becomes sunflower

Treehugger: Motorola mobile phone becomes sunflower: "Motorola have developed a novel approach to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR.) They might soon be saying “you can take your mobile phone and shove it!” Shove it in the garden, that is. And then watch it metamorph, butterfly like, into a sunflower. University of Warwick' researchers, together with PVAXX Research & Development Ltd, have created a prototype cellular phone casing, made of a biodegradable polymer, which comes with an embedded sunflower seed. The casing degrades in the compost and releases the seed from its viewable capsule. Sounds cute. Let's hope their next project solves the issue of heavy metals inside the body of the phone."

Gizmodo : Gadgets Archives

Gizmodo : Gadgets Archives: "If it cost more than $12AU, I might give this Solar Powered Clothes Rotator a hard time. I have to admit, though, it's sort of a great idea, if perhaps just a little bit unnecessary. As sunlight strikes the top of the Rotator, it causes the clips to slowly spin, increasing 'the airflow around the clothes and exposes them to the available sunlight for fresh smelling and hygienic clothes.' Is it that much more hygenic than just putting them on a line? Who cares! It's only 12 bucks."

U.S. Rules Out Dam Removal to Aid Salmon

The New York Times > Washington > U.S. Rules Out Dam Removal to Aid Salmon: "The Bush administration on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of removing federal dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers to protect 11 endangered species of salmon and steelhead, even as a last resort.

In an opinion issued by the fisheries division of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the government declared that the eight large dams on the lower stretch of the two rivers are an immutable part of the salmon's environment.

Endangered fish, the opinion said, can be protected by a variety of measures, including carrying fish around dams and building weirs - a new type of weir that works like a water slide - to ease young fishes' journey through dams as they swim downstream to the ocean. The total cost of the 10-year effort was projected at $6 billion. Assuming annual expenditures of $600 million, this represents a slight increase over existing spending for this purpose.

'It is clear that each of the dams already exists, and their existence is beyond the present discretion' of federal agencies to reverse, the opinion said. [...]"