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58 billion paper cups are thrown out every year, and ceramics artist Rebecca Wilson has perhaps found a solution.
Rebecca talks about her paper cup project, “The paper cup is an icon of the ‘throwaway culture’ and by imposing classical ceramic styling and transposing materials I aim to highlight and question our tendency towards wasteful consumerism.”
These Delftware-inspired paperware would seem perfect for an outdoor tea party. Despite the potential stains on the inside, I wouldn’t help but feel guilty for tossing these out.
Link – via Beautiful Decay
Ancient Arab swords. Note that some designs were more commonly used for decapitation, and other designs less so. Drawing: The Book of the Sword, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Chatto and Windus, London, 1884.
The following is reprinted from The Annals of Improbable Research. Click to enlarge images.
by Simcha Lev-Yadun, Department of Science Education—Biology, Faculty of Science and Science Education University of Haifa, Oranim, Tivon, Israel.
with instructive illustrations and historical documentation selected by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff
The global energy crisis and other global changes have been studied from endless points of view. Here, I wish to discuss these matters, and also global ecology, from the point of view of the changing methods of executions, a point of view that has never been studied before.
Ancient Hebrews and Arab Innovations
The ancient Hebrews, living in the barren hill country of Judea and Samaria, executed people by stoning. The rocky, almost tree-less environment explains the use of this execution method. Arabs in the nearby sandy deserts of Saudi Arabia could not stone condemned people to death with sand particles, and instead used to decapitate them with a sword.
At least one form of impalement by stake is thought to be a Turkish innovation. Details here are from The Eastern Question: Its Facts and Fallacies, Malcolm MacColl, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1877.
Ancient Turkish and Asian Tropical Innovations
In the Near East, gravity, which comes free of charge, was also used for traditional execution. The Turks, for instance, used to execute by impaling people on a metal spear, a vivid practice known as “Chazuk.” A botanical parallel was in use in tropical regions of Asia, where instead of putting the bound condemned person on top of a spear, he was tied on top of a young palm or a bamboo. The plant shoot, in its search for light, grew quickly (a very relative term for the impaled one) through the condemned person. Such good plant growth was possible in the tropics, but not in the much more arid Near East. We see that when it was possible, biology was used, but when impossible, physics also served the purpose.
Impalement by bamboo growth originated in regions of Asia that could take advantage of the rapid growth of certain varieties of the bamboo plant. Details shown here are from Two Happy Years in Ceylon, Constance Frederica Gordon Cumming, Chatto and Windus, London, 1893. Be sure to read footnote 1 in this image. (below)
Ancient Roman Innovations
Still in the semi-arid Mediterranean, the Romans, who suffered from the consequences of severe deforestation, conserved good quality timber by the practice of crucifixion. They used wooden crosses repeatedly, and even forced the condemned people to carry the horizontal beam. An alternative tree-based method that saved the trees used in execution was to bend two trees till they were close and tie them with ropes so the ropes prevented them from straightening up. The condemned person was tied to the trees (an arm and a leg to each tree), the ropes holding the trees were cut. The end was quick, and again, there was no waste of timber. medieval European Innovations In then-wooded Medieval Europe, people were executed for centuries by the auto-de-fe, i.e., burnt alive on the stake. This spectacular procedure was carried on till the increasing depletion of the forests was recognized. Thus, in the 18th century, a new method, much friendlier to the environment, emerged: the guillotine. Taking into account the large number of people executed using the guillotine during the French Revolution, the continued use of auto-de-fe would probably have depleted the remaining forests of Western Europe.
The guillotine proved to be an environmentally friendly innovation in France. Drawing: History of the Guillotine, John Wilson Croker, John Murray, London, 1853.
North American Innovations
In a different wooded ecosystem, in North America, before the forests were cut down, condemned people were hanged on trees. Following the forest decline in many parts of the U.S., the electric chair, based on electricity produced from fossil oil or coal, was invented and used. Being industrialized, this method of execution suited the U.S. However, following the energy crisis of the 1970s, among the various measures to save energy, many of the U.S. states decided to use lethal injections.
“The end was quick,
and again, there was
no waste of timber.”
Conclusion: Execution and Conservation
We can therefore see that both regional ecology and environmental changes influenced the methods of execution in various countries and ecologies. In any case, a global trend of environmental conservation along with the exploitation of specific local resources is obvious in this colorful aspect of human culture.
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This article is republished with permission from the July-August 2009 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
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There’s a lot of green activity happening in this Coca-Cola billboard in the Philippines. The cola giant partnered with the World Wide Fund for Nature to create a 60×60 ft. billboard made of 3,600 Fukien tea plants, a breed excellent at absorbing air pollutants. The pots the tea plants sit in are made of recycled Coca-Cola bottles, the potting mix within is made of industrial by-products and organic fertilizers, and a drip irrigation system was installed to properly hydrate the plants.
I guess I can feel a little bit better about my caffeine habit now.
DDT {wiki} is a pesticide that was used extensively in the US from 1939 until it was banned in 1972. It was very effective in controlling insects that spread typhus in Europe and malaria in tropical regions, but it also accumulated in the ecosystem, killed wildlife, and was found to have harmful effects on humans as well. But in the 1940s and ’50s, pesticide companies promoted DDT as the cure-all for everything. This 1947 ad gave quite a few reasons DDT is “good for me.” See the rest of it at Mindfully. Link -via J-Walk Blog
If you are going to kill people and blow things up, at least you can do it so the rest of the living can have a pollution free Earth. It seems the US military has been developing “green” ammunition for some time now.
In 2007, responding to reports from the field that current rounds weren’t deadly enough, the Army jump-started efforts to make a more lethal round that was also environmentally friendly.
Across the world, architects and environmental engineers are building cities inspired by Mother Nature. Here are four communities leading the way to a greener, cleaner world.
1. Masdar City, United Arab Emirates The Greenest Town in the Middle East
The United Arab Emirates isn’t exactly known for its environmental consciousness. Many of its citizens live in large, air-conditioned homes in the middle of the desert, which is part of the reason the country produces more greenhouse gas emissions per capita than any other nation in the world. But Masdar City, a new suburb being built on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, hopes to change all that. As the world’s first carbon-neutral town, this 2.5-square-mile development not only expects to house nearly 40,000 people by 2020, it also plans to run entirely on renewable energy.
How does a city reach carbon neutrality? For starters, automobiles will be banned! Instead, folks in Masdar City will get around by using a public transit system of pods -battery powered vehicles about the size of minivans. Sleek and white with see-through black windows, these six-seaters will zoom around a central loop taking passengers to their destinations. When the transit system is completed, 3,000 pods will shuttle between 85 stations within the development.
In addition to this new spin on public transportation, Masdar City plans to get its energy from large, solar-paneled umbrellas shaped like flowers. During the day, the umbrellas will open up, storing energy and providing shade for pedestrians. At night, they’ll close to generate electricity. The suburb will also be surrounded by a perimeter wall that’s designed to block out the hot desert winds, thereby keeping the community cool. The massive barrier may look like something out of the Middle Ages, but like the rest of Masdar City, it’s actually part of the future.
2. Lyon’s Gate, United States The Coolest Place to Live in Arizona
In the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, Arizona -where summer highs regularly spike past 100°F- one community is keeping cool the eco-friendly way. Lyon’s Gate is a collection of 210 homes built to withstand the heat while also conserving energy. And according to the U.S. Department of Energy, the community’s houses are unbelievably successful. In fact, they require 80 percent less energy for heating and cooling than typical American homes.
A lot of that is due to the way houses in Lyon’s Gate are insulated. Most buildings in the Unites States rely on cheap, fiberglass insulation, which can leak out air. But the homes in Lyon’s Gate are protected by a spray foam that expands up to 120 times its original volume to fill in cracks and crevices. Although spray foam is more expensive than fiberglass, it traps air much more effectively. The houses in Lyon’s Gate also beat the heat with vinyl windows, which block out solar rays four times more effectively than normal glass. And soon, you won’t need to move to Arizona to experience the benefits. Meritage Homes, the company that built Lyon’s Gate, already has plans to open similar green communities in several states across the country.
3. Dongtan, China Where No Grain of Rice Goes to Waste
Forty miles from downtown Shanghai, between the Yangtze River and the East China Sea, is Chongming Island -a massive expanse of mudflats and wetlands that occupies an area about the size of Los Angeles. These days, birds are the island’s only visitors. But soon, the eastern part of the island could be transformed into a dense, eco-friendly city called Dongtan, which aims to have 80,000 residents, 27,000 homes, and complete carbon neutrality.
The most exciting thing about Dongtan is how it plans to power itself: All of the city’s energy will be locally produced. To fuel the power plant, for instance, the city will use rice husks. Typically, after rice is processed in a mill, the husks -the protective covering on grains of rice- are discarded. But Chinese engineers have figured out a new way to transform them into energy. Even more surprising is the fact that Dongtan will make use of almost all its refuse, including sewage. Ninety percent of the city’s waste will be reused or repurposed to create fuel, compost, and fertilizer for its organic farms. And because almost all the garbage will be recycled, Dongtan won’t even need a landfill.
4. Jätkäsaari, Finland The Least Trashy Neighborhood in Europe
The Jätkäsaari district of Helsinki, Finland, is windy and barren -at least for the moment. Ship builders and cargo warehouses have abandoned the district for newer locations. All that remains are piles of old ship supplies and a grassy knoll that local kids use to play soccer. But all of that is about to change. In 2009, the city greenlighted plans to transform part of the area into a sustainable community. Over the next 15 years, it’s expected to provide commercial and residential buildings for 16,000 people.
To ensure that it has a minimal impact on the environment, Jätkäsaari plans to utilize a variety of green technologies, including “automated vacuum collection” in every building. This incredibly efficient system will suck away waste through chutes that connect to tubes running under the city, eliminating the need for garbage trucks. There will even be separate chutes for different kinds of waste -one for cardboard, one for paper, one for compost, etc. Once underground, the paper will be transported to paper mills; the compost will be sent to farms; and combustible items will be shipped to a furnace, where they’ll be burned as fuel. Watch out, garbage men of the world; your days may be numbered.
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The article by Rachel Stern is reprinted from the January-February 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Subscribe today to get it delivered to you!
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!
When you’re a kid, you know the dinosaurs went extinct, but it seems weird that a creature alive today could suddenly be wiped off the earth tomorrow. I remember the first time I really realized what extinction meant when I went to the San Diego Zoo and saw a picture of the dodo bird on a sign talking about extinction. I was familiar with the bird from Alice and Wonderland and asked my mom if we could see it while we were at the zoo. When she explained to me that the bird didn’t exist any more, my heart sank.
Even today I am saddened whenever I learn about a species becoming extinct, but the worst part is when you know it was caused by human activity. Here are seven such animals that are no longer on earth thanks to mankind.
Also known as the Tasmanian tiger, this carnivore wasn’t related to dogs, tigers or hyenas, as many people believe. It was actually a marsupial, closer related to kangaroos and wallabies than any of those other animals. It was originally found in Australia and New Zealand, but its was essentially extinct in those areas long before Europeans discovered it. Even so, it thrived on the island of Tasmania until European settlers issued began fearing that the animals were eating their livestock. Like wolves, the Tasmanian tiger was often accused of slaughtering sheep in the fields. As a result, the Van Dieman’s Land Company issued a bounty on the creature, offering one pound per adult and ten shillings for each pup.
Scientists have still not been able to verify accusations of the animals eating livestock, but it would be too late to help the thylacines anyway, as the last known individual was captured in 1933 and died in a zoo in 1936. That’s her in the video. Sadly, she died two months before the Tasmanian government enacted a law dedicated to protecting the animals.
While it looks like a strange cross between a horse and a zebra, a quagga was actually a subspecies of a typical plains zebra with a brown rear end and a striped head. It was once found in great numbers in southern Africa until Europeans started hunting the animals for their meat and their hides. It is believed that the last wild quagga was shot in the late 1870s. A number were sent to zoos before that point though and the last captive individual was killed in 1883. At the time, people still believed these were the same as other zebra species, the individuals just had different markings. It wasn’t until after the subspecies was eradicated that people realized the animal had become extinct. Some historians have noted, the story is particularly sad because if the same thing happened in modern times, the breeding programs of zoos could help rebuild the population of the animal and release them back into the wild.
Interestingly, because the animal was so closely related to other subspecies of zebra, South African researchers have attempted a selective breeding program to create a new stock of the animals. The third and forth generation animals created through this project do look similar to the extinct creatures, but scientists debate whether or not looks are enough to declare these animals quaggas.
As a slow-swimming marine mammal that never completely submerged itself and was loaded with blubber, the Steller’s sea cow was doomed from the beginning. These massive herbivores were once abundant in the North Pacific, but aboriginal peoples hunted them until their population was limited to only the Commander Islands. Unfortunately for the sea cow, they were then discovered in 1751 by George Wilhelm Steller on an expedition led by Vitus Bering.
The Stellar sea cows were over 25 feet long. They were slow swimmers who couldn’t submerge themselves. There were only about 1,500 when Europeans first laid eyes on them and it wasn’t long before those remaining were hunted down for food, pelts and blubber, which could be used in oil lamps. Within 27 years of Steller’s discovery, the animals were extinct.
In May of 2009, the missile-tracking ship General Hoyt S. Vandenberg was hauled out in the Gulf of Mexico. Planted explosives blew holes in the ship’s hull, and she sank to the bottom in just a couple of minutes. You can see the process in a time-lapse video. Deliberately sinking a ship sounds like an environmental crime on the surface, but the Vandenberg was carefully prepared: ten tons of asbestos and over 800,000 feet of electrical wiring was removed before she was sunk. The sinking was part of an environmental program to create artificial reefs where sea life -from coral and plankton to game fish- can live and reproduce.
The Vandenberg is certainly not the first ship to be deliberately sunk to create an artificial reef. The waters off the Florida Keys have become the grave site of the Coast Guard cutters Duane and Bibb and the U.S. Navy landing ship Spiegel Grove, and on the sandy bottom 20 or so miles out to sea from Pensacola lies an entire aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Oriskany—the largest ship in the world intentionally sunk as an artificial reef. Dozens of World War II cargo vessels known as Liberty ships have been submerged, or to use the proper jargon, deployed, all along the Gulf, Atlantic, and Pacific coasts.
National Geographic tells us the history of artificial reef programs and how they are used to encourage marine life to flourish. Link
(Image credit: David Doubilet/National Geographic)
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The headline is Cracked’s way of saying that humans have introduced invasive species to places where they wrecked the ecosystem. Some of these were accidental; others were caused by the silliest of reasons.
In the late 19th century, a group called the American Acclimatization Society released about a hundred starlings in New York City’s Central Park as part of a project to introduce all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays into America. Even knowing nothing about starlings, you may recognize this as an idea that is both baffling and terrible.
Of course, the birds just took over.
The released birds went on to reproduce like mad, increasing their numbers to somewhere around 200 million. By all accounts, starlings are natural terrors. They will force other birds out of their nests and eat their eggs. They swarm in those massive flocks, just eating absolutely everything they can fit in their beaks, stealing food from other species and wreaking havoc on agriculture.
And that’s just the first of eight stories! Contains NSFW text. Link
In 1966, a beluga whale swam the wrong way up the Rhine -and wound up paving the way for environmental reform in Germany.
When World War II finally came to an end, Germany was in shambles. Its cities had been transformed into forests of twisted steel and broken concrete, and the German people were suffering from food shortages and rampant unemployment. Within a few years, however, things were looking up. Production of steel and coal were fueling remarkable growth in West Germany, and the country was positioning itself as the industrial powerhouse of Europe.
But this “economic miracle” was wreaking havoc on the environment. Careless mining and manufacturing turned the Rhine into what amounted to an open sewer, and soon, the international waterway contained millions of gallons of toxic waste. By the 1960s, the river was striped with red and green steaks of sludge. The water’s oxygen level had plummeted, and fish were dying en masse. Germany tolerated the pollution because food, jobs, and a sense of progress came along with it, but everyone knew that something had to change.
The catalyst for that change appeared unexpectedly on the morning of May 18, 1966, when a fisherman on the Rhine spotted a large, white creature swimming alongside his boat. Dr. Wolfgang Gewalt, director of the nearby Duisburg Zoo, was called in to identify the animal, which he recognized as a beluga whale. Intrigued, Dr. Gewalt quickly put together a team of whale hunters to trap the animal and bring it to his aquarium.
That was easier said than done. For all his expertise, Gewalt had little idea how to capture a whale without harming it. He tried trapping the animal using tennis nets, but the whale swam right through them. Several more failed attempts followed, and the whale began to garner more and more attention. Before long, the newspapers had nicknamed him Moby Dick. But as the German people continued to watch Dr. Gewalt’s attempts to capture the whale, it became impossible to ignore the unfortunate side effects of post-war progress. As Moby Dick proceeded to swim up the Rhine, journalists noticed that the whale’s skin went from soft and white to bumpy and splotchy. Concerned citizens began to fear that the river’s water would harm the animal, if not kill it outright.
After a couple of weeks, Moby Dick finally left the Duisburg area and traveled downriver. It was only a few yards from the North Sea when a strange thing happened. The whale suddenly stopped, turned around, and went back upriver. A few days later, Moby Dick appeared outside the German parliament building in Bonn -150 miles south.
This caused quite a scene. Hundreds of onlookers gathered at the river, and a group of nearby politicians even suspended their NATO news conference so they could get a glimpse of the whale. Meanwhile, the press went wild, with newspapers suggesting that Moby Dick’s plan all along had been to raise awareness of the environmental plight of the Rhine.
Although the whale eventually escaped to open water, its presence remained. For four weeks in 1966, Moby Dick captured the nation’s attention and highlighted the country’s ecological desperation. Not coincidentally, environmental politics soon became a pressing national issue. The German people began forming grass roots organizations, and in 1972, the influential Federal Association of Citizen’s Initiatives for Environmental Protection was formed. That same year, the German parliament passed the first two laws that effectively regulated waste disposal and emissions in rivers. And in 1979, 
Germans formed the first successful political party to focus on ecological concerns, Die Grünen Partei, literally “the Green Party.” It’s from their name that we get the term “green politics.”
Today, the Rhine is the cleanest it’s been in decades. Germany is still an industrial powerhouse, but it’s also one of the most eco-friendly countries in the world. Yet the river might still be a sewer today if it hadn’t been for one lost whale that tested the waters.
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The above article by Michael Ward is reprinted with permission from the November-December 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
The current tallest wooden building in the world is nine stories. The planned LifeCycle Tower will be 30 stories tall! The totally green project in Dornbirn, Austria is a project of the CREE (Creative Renewable Energy and Efficiency) Group.
Materials used to build the structure would include reinforced concrete (for the foundation), composite slab (wood/concrete), and timber wood. The floor will be made of a hybrid glulam (glued-laminated) beams and reinforced concrete. The building would include photovoltaic panels on the outer facade to generate electricity along with a “green wall” (aka “vertical garden”). The building will further protect the environment and public health through use of local resources, reduced routes of transport, use of sustainable materials, and significantly improved CO2 balance. Highly pre-fabricated construction will further reduce air pollution as well as construction site waste. In accordance with Passivhaus standards, construction of the LifeCylce Tower will reduce carbon emissions by 90% when compared to conventional construction.
The LifeCycle Tower will have plenty of other environment features, which you can read about at InventorSpot. Link
An article at the Guardian makes the point that the trend of screw top caps replacing wine corks may endanger the few remaining cork tree orchards as farmers move to more profitable crops. Along the way, we get a fascinating lesson in how cork is harvested and turned into bottle stoppers.
Deep into one of the 350 remaining cork oak forests (in my case Herdade dos Fidalgos, near Lisbon) sometime between June and August you’ll suddenly come across a team of about 20 men, ranging in ages from 16 to 70, striking huge twisted trees with axes. Then, with a sensitivity you would not associate with an axe, they prise the juicy bark from the tree and it is levered from the trunk in great, satisfying pieces. From the base, right up to the beginning of the branches, it is peeled away to reveal the oak’s red, nude surface underneath.
When the tree is completely harvested, the axeman takes a swig from his water barrel and moves on to the next. Periodically, a truck comes to collect the pieces of cork and take them to nearby sheds where they will be weathered for months before being processed. The truck is the only obvious exception to a process that hasn’t changed since the 18th century, when montados (open cork oak woodlands) and forests here in Portugal, in southern Spain, Morocco, Algeria and Turkey began to be exploited commercially to produce wine corks. A white number is painted on the tree. It will be nine years before it’s disturbed again.
(Image credit: Katherine Rose/the Observer)
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If you think that going "green" is going to save the Earth, think again. It turns out that eco-conscious people are more likely to overconsume, thanks to human nature:
Lucas Davis, an energy economist at the University of California, Berkeley, has published a study showing that after getting high-efficiency washers, consumers increased clothes washing by nearly 6 percent. Other studies show that people leave energy-efficient lights on longer. A recent study by the Shelton Group, which advocates for sustainable consumer choices, showed that of 500 people who had greened their homes, a third saw no reduction in bills.
"Subconsciously, I think this is just part of human nature," said Jason Holstine, owner of Amicus Green Building Center in the Kensington. "It’s like, ‘If I just do a little, I’m off the hook and my conscious is clear. Give me a pat on the back, and thank you very much.’ Then it goes too far."
"They think, ‘I’m being a good person, I can do more of this stuff and still come out ahead,’ " said Frank Zeman, director of the Center for Metropolitan Sustainability at New York Institute of Technology. "Although the problem is that they will never come out ahead. This goes to the heart of the sustainability challenge."
Link (Illustration: Marc Rosenthal)
One way to keep oil from the Gulf of Mexico from creeping into Louisiana’s marshlands would be to keep water flowing from the opposite direction. Scientists think rerouting a small part of the Mississippi river would do the trick, at least temporarily. A fork in the river normally sends some water to the south via the Atchafalaya River, which empties into the ocean west of the oil spill. If more of that water were directed instead to the mouth of the Mississippi, the marshlands would be flooded with fresh water. National Audubon Society coastal scientist Paul Kemp says this idea should be put in place soon, because it won’t work if we wait.
The Mississippi will not be able to keep the oil at bay indefinitely, however. The river’s flow naturally declines each summer, and by August, Kemp’s idea will no longer be effective.
That’s why Kemp rushed to submit a memo on June 9 outlining his idea to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which would have to approve any short-term river diversions.
In addition to rerouting the Mississippi, Kemp suggests that water currently held behind dams farther upriver should be slowly released. This would keep the flow of water as strong as possible.
Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
(Image credit: Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory)
Here on land, we undertake great engineering projects to get rid of biological waste from cities and livestock farms. What about the sea, where huge animals produce a lot of it? It turns out that whales have the ability to offset greenhouse gasses with their poop!
Sperm whales in the Southern Ocean release 220,462 tons of carbon when they exhale carbon dioxide at the water’s surface, but their poo stimulates the drawdown of 440,925 tons of carbon, according to the research, published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
These ocean giants and certain other marine mammals may therefore be among the most environmentally beneficial animals on the planet.
“If Southern Ocean sperm whales were at their historic levels, meaning their population size before whaling, we would have an extra 2 million tons (2,204,623 tons) of carbon being removed from our atmosphere each and every year,” lead author Trisha Lavery Told Discovery News.
Lavery, a marine biologist at Flinders University of South Australia, and her colleagues explained how the cleaning process works.
You can read all about it at Discovery News. Link -via Digg
(Image credit: Flickr user Erwin Winkelman)
Corona has teamed up with environmental artist HA Schult to draw attention to the sorry state of the European shoreline. On June 3rd the Save the Beach campaign opened a pop-up hotel in Rome, designed by Schult, made almost entirely from trash that has washed up on beaches across Europe. Winners of a contest on Facebook got to spend a night in the trash (but not trashy) hotel. You may have to fill in an age verification box to see the site.
Link – via It’s Nice That
Just a short journey away from Amsterdam there is one of the most remarkable nature conservation areas in the world. Oostvaardersplassen is a recreation of the landscape of the Europe of thousands of years ago, before mankind moved in and started managing the place. Even more remarkably, the whole project is situated on a polder – land reclaimed from the sea in 1968.
The whole place challenges an assumption long held about wildness. Generally people think of dense forestation when they think of wildness. In other words when you leave a place to its own devices it will naturally turn to forest. In terms of ecology this is known as succession and the theory goes that ecosystems unfold due to succession in much the same way as natural selection rules evolution.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
Oregon is living up to its reputation as one of the greenest states in the US, this time with an office tower designed to be the first Living Building Challenge – certified in the world. The Oregon Sustainability Center certainly looks gorgeous, and it’s packing every green trick in the book:
The Portland-based skyscraper is being developed using the LBC’s doctrine of neither taking resources nor causing environmental harm — this means that the building will produce all of its own water sources and energy. That’s a tall order for a tower, but the collection of non-profits that comprise the Center, along with a strong community, feel up to it. Ground breaking is projected to start by the end of the year.
Check out the source to see the efforts necessary to keep it certified (everything matters… from recycled toilet water to the angle of the building).
With livestock farmers on both sides of the family, I thought all manure was eco-friendly up to a point. But domesticated pigs have excess phosphorus in both their urine and feces, which does awful things to the water supply and organisms living in the water. Now researchers in Canada have developed a genetically-altered “Enviropig” that produces plenty of the enzyme a pig needs to process phosphorus.
To fix this problem, the scientists tinkered with the swine’s genes to make the pig produce its own phytase in its salivary glands. When the cereal grains are consumed, they mix with the phytase in the saliva, and throughout the pig’s digestive tract the enzyme works to break down the phosphorous in the food. With more phosphorus retained within the body, the amount excreted in waste is reduced by almost 65 percent, say researchers.
The researchers who created the Enviropig say it’s not just eco-friendly, but it also cut farmers’ feed-supplement costs. If the pigs eventually become common, they could also help U.S. farmers comply with “zero discharge” rules that forbid pork producers from releasing nitrogen or phosphorus runoff.
The pigs are now being raised on test farms, and won’t be available to consumers anywhere for a few years. Link
You think you have troubles at work? Dairy farmer Tony Goltstein of Winchester, Indiana has methane bubbles the size of houses rising up to twenty feet tall, full of gas released by decomposing cow manure. Since wholesale prices of dairy products has plummeted, he cannot afford to properly maintain the manure lagoon. Replacing the plastic liner would cost around $200,000, and Goltstein is afraid the lagoon will overflow if the bubbles under the plastic continue to rise.
This month, Mr. Goltstein asked state regulators to let him pop the bubbles. He said he and his 19-year-old son would slice them open with a knife from a paddleboat.
Bruce Palin, assistant commissioner for the office of land quality at the state environmental agency, said officials were considering the idea. But, he added, “not knowing how much volume of gas is there and how much pressure is on it, we’re concerned with just cutting a hole.”
Last year, a hog farmer in Hayfield, Minn., was launched 40 feet into the air in an explosion caused by methane gas from a manure pit on his farm. He sustained burns and singed hair.
Mr. Goltstein’s attorney, Glenn D. Bowman, acknowledged that the potential existed for an explosion: “We’re aware of that sort of common physics issue,” he said.
The Goltsteins filed for bankruptcy last month. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Lauren Etter)
In 1987 this Canadian production won the Academy Award for the Best Animated Short Film, and in 1994 was voted by animation artists to be one of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time. Embedded above is part 2 of three parts, which demonstrates the style and representative content of the film. Those who are interested will of course want to view Part 1 and Part 3. This English version is narrated by Christopher Plummer.
We first posted the HumanCar back in 2006. Inventor Chuck Greenwood has been working steadily ever since to bring his dream of an eco-friendly human-powered car to the market. In this latest video, he test drives the Imagine_PS, an electric hybrid that combines human and electrical power. Link -Thanks, Chuck!
As Alex told us last year, carnivorous ants were deployed to help thin out the environmental mistake that is the cane toad in Australia. They brought the toads over from Hawaii in 1935 in an ill-advised effort to wipe out another pesky species, sugar cane-destroying beetles.
The toxicity of these amphibians has since wreaked havoc on indigenous wildlife, and now there’s an answer as to how to get the meat-eating ants on their case: cat food.
Putting cat food close to ponds inhabited by baby cane toads attracts carnivorous ants that are also immune to the toads’ poisonous skin. The ants then attack the baby toads and eat them.
“In one spot we tested, 98 percent of the baby toads were attacked within the first two minutes,” researcher Rick Shine told Reuters. “It was a bit like a massacre.” Shine said the study was aimed at boosting the numbers of ants around the breeding areas of cane toads, and not upsetting the ecological balance by introducing the insects to an area that they wouldn’t normally be in.
Link to Reuters Link to Guardian (Photo credit: B.N. Sullivan)
Record snowfall has covered the U.K., while cold temperatures are gripping Europe. Seoul and Beijing have seen their heaviest snowfalls in recent memory, and arctic temperatures have penetrated the U.S. far enough to threaten crops in Florida. For those who have to commute to work in such weather, this is a good time to appreciate the technology incorporated into winter service vehicles.
Sand- and salt trucks have evolved a long way from the era when two men with shovels used to stand on the back of a dump truck. Modern grit is a mixture of sand and rock salt, but the latter has deleterious effects not only on metal vehicle frames, but also on vegetation and freshwater lakes and streams. A variety of techniques have therefore been devised to keep roads on a “low-salt diet.”
“Pre-wetting” the salt — spraying it with brine as it’s dropped — helps it stick to the road better, meaning crews can cut back from 500 pounds per mile to 200…
Vehicle-mounted electronic thermometers let supervisors know how far above or below freezing the pavement is. Some truck cabs have up-to-the-minute weather radar so crews know how long it’ll be before the freezing rain or snow hits…
To prevent the grit from being thrown off the road surface by vehicle tires, additional substances may be intermixed to increase adherence. The earliest additive was molasses, but it was difficult to use in cold weather and tended to attract cows and wildlife to the roads.
That means using brine, magnesium chloride and a sugar beet byproduct, which are mixed via a dozen yellow-handled valves marked with letters of the alphabet.
Fine-tuning the grit application to the weather conditions not only saves taxpayers money (one truckload of salt costs ~$800), but also reduces chloride levels in nearby lakes.
Link. Photo credit Richard Tsong Taatarii, Star Tribune
The Danish design firm Diffus created a dress equipped with LED lights and a carbon dioxide detector that glows as the CO2 level rises. It’s called the Climate Dress:
The embroidery becomes functional conveying electricity and computer information and thereby give “power to the dress”. The dress senses the CO2 concentration in the air, then accordingly creates diverse light patterns varying from slow, regular light pulsations to short and hectic.[...]
The Climate Dress also contributes to the necessity of creating more awareness about environmental issues trough an esthetical representation of environmental data. Different light patterns are thereby staged as dramatic “micro events” embedded into clothes. They diligently and without concession tell us disturbing stories wrapped into a comfortable and reassuring cocoon de luxe.
Link via Technabob | Image: Diffus
As ministers, representatives, and journalists from around the world gather in Copenhagen to discuss climate change, rental car firms are having difficulty providing enough limos to meet the demand:
Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen.
The local airport is expecting so many private jets that there will be no room to park them; the jets will have to fly to Sweden or other regional sites and then return later for their passengers.
The culprit is the well-known emerald ash borer, an invasive Asian beetle that first arrived in Michigan seven years ago. The infestation has spread to Ohio, Canada, and now Minnesota, threatening to do a log power more damage than the famous Dutch Elm Disease. Federal and state authorities have responded to the emerald ash borer by limiting transportation of timber and wood products, but have been unable to quarantine the disease.
Now volunteers in are spreading out across Minnesota and several other states, collecting seeds which may be needed to restore the white, green, and black ash species if the current epidemic destroys the currently standing trees. Some of the seeds will be stored in the National Plant Germplasm System, a depository maintained by the Agriculture Department and at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation. Others will be retained by Native American tribal authorities.
A map showing states and Canadian provinces at risk, with links to sources of local assistance, is available at the Emerald Ash Borer website.
Further details on seed preservation are available in a story written by Bill McAuliffe for the Star Tribune.
David and Katie France of Dorset County, England thought they were being eco-friendly when they walked to dump to dispose of their recyclables. But they were met at the gate by an employee who told them they would have to bring their bags in by car! He cited safety concerns and warned the couple they may be hit by a vehicle. David France walked the 400 yards back to their home, got the car, and drove to the gate where they loaded their bags of scrap metal and took them into the center.
Mr France said: “It was farcical. I thought we were being doubly green by taking our recycling there on foot.
“But whatever good we did in recycling our waste was probably counteracted by the CO2 emissions we used up in our car.”
The council responsible for tip said that because there is no “dedicated pedestrian access point” it was unsafe for people to walk there.
Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: Flickr user hugovk)
This guy is destroying Earth!
Which has a larger ecological footprint, a large dog or an SUV? According to Robert and Brenda Vale, Fido has a Hummer of an eco-footprint:
In "Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," authors Robert and Brenda Vale argue that resources required to feed a dog — including the amount of land needed to feed the animals that go into its food — give it about twice the eco-footprint of, say, building and fueling a Toyota Land Cruiser. Noting that a cat’s pawprint was roughly equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf’s, "New Scientist" asked an environmentalist at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, U.K., to independently calculate animals’ environmental impact, and reported that "his figures tallied almost exactly." The study apparently didn’t take into account the emissions of either the SUV or the dogs.
Spanish photographer Jose Luis Rodriguez has won the 2009 Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year award with his photo of an Iberian wolf leaping over a gate. He used an infrared camera trap to capture the moment.
Iberian wolves have been persecuted by people who see them as a threat to game and livestock and because of ignorance about the supposed danger they pose… In Spain, the population of Iberian wolves – a subspecies of the grey wolf – is thought to number 1000-2000 in the north, with a few tiny, isolated populations in the south… What José Luis hopes is that his picture, ‘showing the wolf’s great agility and strength,’ becomes an image that shows just how beautiful the Iberian wolf is and how the Spanish can be proud of this emblematic animal.
Link, where you can also access winning photographs in other categories.
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