Monthly Archive for November, 2010
photo: Charles Henry/Creative Commons
Steven Chu just said now is the US' Sputnik moment for clean technology, and here's some independent confirmation of that: Ernst & Young has just released a new Country Attractiveness Inde...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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photo: Diane Worth/Creative Commons
Considering the considerable official enthusiasm for the highly polluting and carbon intensive Alberta tar sands, this really isn't so surprising: According to correspondence obtained by the Pembina Institute, the Canadian Government is "pursuing an orchestrated strategy to undermine US effort to combat climate change" and partnered with poll... weiterlesen...
Calling all art and design students! This year, Design*Sponge is teaming up with Glos and Room & Board to award $10,000 in financial awards to four lucky students! This excellent scholarship aims to provide financial assistance to the next generation of talented art and design students, giving them a helping hand in their creative pursuits. Both graduates and undergraduates ... weiterlesen...
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
In medieval England, a beaver pelt was worth three years of wages to a peasant laborer. So important, in fact, was the beaver, that the Church of England classified it as a fish so it could be eaten on Fridays. After a few hundred years of such popularity, however, the European beaver became extinct in the UK.
Now, after four centuries, conserva... weiterlesen...
Photos: Wikipedia, Public domain.
Investing Now for a Better Future
In a speech at the National Press Club, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu made the case for more R&D in the U.S., especially in the energy sector ("the 2010 federal budget is $3.6 trillion, of which 0.14 percent went for research and development related to energy"). Dr. Chu explains why this is essential for bot... weiterlesen...
If you’re a grownup who still secretly loves having toys around (don’t worry, you’re not alone), this awesome bowl might be just the way for you to do it without breaking your sophisticated adult facade. Made by designer Dominic Wilcox of Variations on Normal, each War bowl is handmade using model figures from historic battles. The little plastic army men are m... weiterlesen...
Starbucks has very proudly announced the completion of a pilot project where they have proven that paper cups can be recycled into new paper cups. They call it a breakthrough in their "goal of ensuring 100 percent of its cups are reusable or recyclable by 2015"
In a press release they say:
"This innovation represents an important milestone in our journey," said Jim Hanna, Sta... weiterlesen...
Photo: Youtube
Let's Hope it Won't Stay Just a Commercial
German car maker Volkswagen has produced a series of ads based on "fun theory", the simple idea that if something is fun or if there's something in it for you, you are more likely to do it than if you're just "supposed to". It's pretty simply psychology, yet if we look at everything we're supposed to do, that fact is ver... weiterlesen...
by Chelsea Holden BakerIceland seems more remote than the four-and-a-half-hour flight from Boston feels. But Reykjavik, a city closer to Boston than San Francisco, is a world apart. The prime minister is in the phonebook—along with the rest of the population of 300,00—alphabetically, by first name. Violent crime is virtually non-existent. The country has no army, and ... weiterlesen...
Photo: Zainub, Flickr, CC
It's so simple -- so gloriously simple. In 2008, China instated a law that made it illegal for stores to give out plastic bags for free. Instead, shop owners were required to charge for the bags, and allowed to keep any profit they made for themselves. The results? After two years, the poorly-enforced law has nonetheless dropped plastic bag consumption... weiterlesen...
Image: Youtube
2 Square Meters of Sunlight is All it Takes
Last summer, I wrote about a cool video that showed how a solar oven could be used to melt steel. It's a good demonstration of just how much solar energy is hitting the Earth (it's one thing to know abstractly, but it's much more memorable to see it in action). Here's another very cool video in the same vein, except tha... weiterlesen...
International efforts to reduce fishing quotas for Icritically endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna, or better yet ban the trade outright, may have failed (again...), but that doesn't mean you can't help take action to reduce demand. The Center for Biological Diversity has just launched a boycott campaign urging chefs, restauranteurs and consumers to not buy or serve the bluefin...... weiterlesen...
Image: Friend of Family Farmers via flickr
Despite small but significant signs that the country wants to move in a different direction, factory farms across the country are growing at an unprecedented rate—not in number, but in size. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Graphic courtesy Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund.
Today the U.S. Senate passed Senate Bill 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act. After the recent scandal with eggs, and all of the other food safety issues of recent years (meat, peanut butter, s...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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