Let There Be Organic Tobacco: Smokers Deserve Healthy Cancer Sticks

Environmental Graffiti got in a snit about greenwashing by the tobacco industry:

The cigarette industry knows that there are smokers who can’t kick the habit, but still want to go green. Recently, roll your own cigarettes have been promoted as a more eco friendly, cleaner alternative to regular smokes. That’s not the case, however, as roll your own cigarettes were recently found to have more chemicals than regular cigarettes.

Other companies are rolling out organically grown cigarettes. While this tobacco isn’t doused in pesticides during its growth, the previously mentioned problems still apply. So what’s a green smoker to do? Nothing.

I’m not going to defend the greenwashing by tobacco companies, but is it realistic to expect everyone to stop smoking for the benefit of the environment? Call me a cynic, but my guess is that I have a better chance of being elected President in November than that happening. Smoking tobacco is not going anywhere and if we really want to save the world we need to figure out a way to give people their cancer sticks without destroying the rain forest in the process. Smokers should be able to buy minimally processed, chemical free Fair Trade tobacco.

Tobacco companies should be called out for their bullshit greenwashing, but at the same time they should be encouraged to actually get a handle on the environmental impact of their business. If we can get the tobacco industry to get on the bandwagon maybe we’ll have luck in convincing the Drug Cartels to green up their product line. A guy can dream can’t he? (Note: I don’t smoke cigarettes, just the random shisha)

Link [Environmental Graffiti]

Photo Credit: Flickr user eilard

Question: How Many Bullets to Cut Down a Tree? Answer: 2,250 From a M-134 Minigun

Mythbusters wins the Un-Green Lumberjack Award for their test of how long it would take a M-134 Minigun to cut down a tree. To their credit they did choose a long dead tree with no branches. Not so Green but oh so very awesome.

The Suburbs Are Turning Into Crime Ridden, Cookie Cutter Hellish Barrens

Remember the scene in Back to the Future II when Marty stumbles around his alternatively universed crime ridden suburban neighborhood, which is filled with empty houses and gang warfare? That is quickly becoming the reality in a many suburbs as the subprime mortgage crisis ripples out. There are neighborhoods today were 61% of the houses are empty and in foreclosure.

Formally middle and upper class homes are being rented out to shady (poor) people and are falling apart thanks to the cheap-as-possible construction methods of most conventional home builders. Neighborhoods with homes that used to sell for upwards of half a million dollars are turning into run down crime hives.

The Atlantic has a great piece titled “The Next Slum“ that explores this growing problem and the urban flight from from the suburbs. Here’s a snip:

Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025—that’s roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today.

For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.

Link [The Atlantic]

Photo credit: Flickr user tlindenbaum, faux tilt shift added with Photoshop

The Hippies Were Right! Not Washing Your Hair is the New Hotness

The hippies have been proven correct about a lot of things- protecting the environment, saying no to stupid pointless wars, and the benefits of eating unprocessed organic food. But who would have thought they were right about not washing your hair? Going without shampoo is cool again.

The New York Times had a piece last week about a growing trend in not washing your hair. It’s not just neo-hippy college kids and jam band refugees skipping out on lathering up on a regular basis- unwashed hair is the latest thing among hipster moms and other upwardly mobile women.

They are discovering that unwashed hair often feels and looks healthier and is easier to manage and some are skipping out on shampoo entirely. I had no idea.

The NYT has it:

“There’s this whole new breed of young fashionable girls who are getting that once-a-week shampoo and blow dry and just milking it,” said Johnny Lavoy, the owner of Moda-Rey Salon and Spa in West Hartford, Conn. They grew up, he said, “thinking you have to wash your hair every time you shower, but they’re realizing that natural oils are good for the hair.”

It’s hard to imagine that shampoo will ever be obsolete, but some bottles are likely lasting longer these days.

Abby Fazio, the owner of New London Pharmacy in Manhattan, washes her hair only every seven days. The rest of the time, she uses one of her store’s five spray-on “hair powder” cleansers, like Batiste Dry Shampoo and René Furterer Naturia, to sop up excess oil. She sprays the powder on her roots, lets it sit for a few minutes, then blots it off with cheesecloth and brushes out the rest. “I can get ready in 30 minutes,” said Ms. Fazio, 48, compared with two hours to shampoo, dry and style.

Cool Hunting has a link to Lulu Organics Hair Powder, which can be used to soak up excess hair oil. It’s green- made of white clay, baking Soda, organic corn starch and horsetail powder, and essential oils. It’s a bit steep at $40 for a 4.5 oz. bottle, but that might last 10 times as long as a typical shampoo bottle, so I can’t say for sure. I’ll do some follow up.

Link [New York Times]

The Green Cell Battery Vending Machine is an Awesome Model

I went to the Greener Gadgets Conference a few weeks ago and caught the green design competition at the end of the day. One of the entries that was presented made absolutely no sense to me- the Green Cell battery network.

The idea is to standardize cell phone and gadget batteries and sell them in a vending machine. People would switch out batteries via the Green Cell machine when they run down, getting a fully charged one in return. The designers of Green Cell think this is better than charging up your battery at home because you wouldn’t have to buy a ton of different adapters for all your hand held gadgets.

Really?

Am I missing something here? Do they really think people will buy into a system where they need to run out to a vending machine every time their cell phone or iPod batteries die? Wouldn’t the extra gas to make the trip offset any savings from not having to make the extra adapters in the first place? I plug in my cell year old cell phone once every day or two, I’ll be damned if I had to run down to the store to get a new one 3 times a week.

I think model is flawed. I doubt many people change out their gadget batteries in the first place- they just get a new one when they buy their new phone or MP3 player. Standard battery sizes are something the tech industry needs to embrace, but does it make sense to sell/lease batteries in a vending machine? No, I don’t think so.

I’m a dumbass. See Jill’s comment below.

Link [Inhabitat]

Watch the Right Hand Turn Out of That Bike Lane, It’s a Wet One

Bike riders have it tough in this city.

Link [FrostFireZoo]

Leadville, Colorado Fears Billion Gallon Flood of Cancer and Pain

Leadville, Colorado is a scary place to live in these days. It’s a high altitude town- the highest incorporated in the U.S. at over 10,000 feet- contaminated by decades of mining the slopes above and around. It was at one time the largest silver mine in the world and over the decades has been host to soldiers from the nearby Army base, famous writers and celebrities, and even gunslinger Doc Holiday.

Today it’s filled with a people fearful of the billion gallons of polluted water plugged up in a tunnel overlooking town that’s threatening to pop. If it blows the entire town will be awash in a watery stew of deadly chemicals, lead, mercury, and other heavy metals. Leadville’s 2,700 residents could find themselves knee deep in cancer and death.

Groovy Green says not to worry though, officials are all over this one:

Peter Soeth, a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation, which acquired the drainage tunnel in 1959, said there was no immediate threat to Leadville’s 2,700 residents.

Officials point out that a speaker system to broadcast evacuation notices has already been installed near a mobile home park that has 300 residents near the tunnel’s portal.

I’d feel so safe if I knew that and lived in Leadville. A speaker system. They have a speaker system. Great F.S.M.

Link [MSNBC] via Groovy Green

As Green as You Can Get: Shipping Wine With the Winds

Here’s something that I hope I read more of: French wine makers are using a three mast sailing vessel to ship 60,000 bottles of wine from France to Dublin, Ireland.

Brilliant!

Using wind to ship things around the world is something we’ve been doing for a long, long time. When the steam engine, and then later diesel burners, came onto the scene, the winds were mostly left behind. There has recently been some hopeful movements back to using wind to ship cargo in the form of the super kite- a giant rig that connects to traditional bunker oil burning ships that can save 15-20% of the fuel otherwise needed.

Each bottle of greenly shipped wine will come with the label “‘Carried by sailing ship, a better deal for the planet.’” Here’s a quick bit from the Guardian:

Later this month 60,000 bottles from Languedoc will be shipped to Ireland in a 19th-century barque, saving 18,375lb of carbon. Further voyages to Bristol, Manchester and even Canada are planned soon afterwards.

The three-mast barque Belem, which was launched in 1896, the last French merchant sailing vessel to be built, will sail into Dublin following a voyage from Bordeaux that should last about four days. The wines will be delivered to Bordeaux by barge using the Canal du Midi and Canal du Garonne, which run across southern France from Sète in the east, via Béziers in Languedoc. Each bottle will be labelled: ‘Carried by sailing ship, a better deal for the planet.’ Although the whole process will end up taking up to a week longer than a flight, it is estimated it will save 4.9oz of carbon per bottle.

Link [Guardian] via Environmental Graffiti

Video: Danish Wind Turbine Explodes in High Winds

When wind turbines attack!

Check out this wind turbine exploding in Denmark in some kicking high wind. Wind turbines have mechanisms to stop the blades from spinning when it gets super gusty but this one obviously malfunctioned. Yikes!

Great Green Design: The Heineken Bottle That Doubles as a Building Material

Here’s another wickedly smart green design idea- manufacture beer bottles so they can be reused as a building material.

Heineken manufactured these purely awesome bottles back in 1963 because one of their brewers saw the lack of cheap building materials and the glut of beachside bottle litter while on vacation in the Caribbean. Functional, green, economical, and gorgeous to boot. We need more of this.

Link [Frostfirezoo]

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