Urban Organic Gardener: Self-Watering Fire Escape Garden in NYC

You don’t have to have a lot of outdoor space or cash to start an organic garden – in fact, if you’ve got a fire escape and some plastic containers in your recycling bin, you can grow everything from fresh greens and tomatoes to a wide array of herbs. Just ask Mike Lieberman, who built self-watering containers out of recycled materials so he could grow some of his own food at his Manhattan apartment.

Lieberman proves that small space can still provide a big yield with simple materials like soda bottles and buckets. He grows kale, swiss chard, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, peppers, mint, oregano and tarragon, all on his fire escape.

A second small garden in his grandmother’s Brooklyn backyard fits an incredible variety of fresh herbs and veggies into 16 mostly recycled containers, from cauliflower to cucumbers. This garden is a great example of how easy it can be to grow your own food, even if all you have is a porch or a deck to work with.

“This is my first time growing and the goal is get more people to do the same. To show them that it’s simple, they have the space and there’s nothing to be scared of,” said Lieberman.

Check out his blog at UrbanOrganicGardener.com for lots of tips and photos!

Link [Urban Organic Gardener]

Amazing Buddha Sculpture Made from Dead Bugs

Inhabitat has quite an eye for fascinating and beautiful green design, and this find has a bit of the bizarre in it as well: a Buddha statue that appears to be made from jewels, but is actually comprised of 20,000 dead bugs.

The statue, located in a community hall in the Gumma prefecture of Japan, took over 6 years to create. Check out this video:

From Inhabitat:

Inamura Yoneiji, a 89-year-old local of the area, created the statue in tribute to the souls of the insects, most of which are beetles. Talking about the statue, Yoneiji says “For children in the years immediately after World War II, Japan was poor and there was little entertainment available, aside from catching bugs. However, every bug would eventually die after being caught. By making a statue of a Buddha from their dead bodies, perhaps their souls can rest in peace.” And how much more peaceful could a statue of Buddha get, with the bodies of bugs extended into a new life to pay homage to Buddha.

It really is surprisingly beautiful, with so many bugs in various sizes and colors shimmering in the light, held together with small pins. Pretty amazing stuff.

Link [Inhabitat]

Green College Spotlight: University of Calgary

Not all of North America’s sustainable colleges and universities are in the United States – far from it, in fact. Canada has quite a few of them, with the University of Calgary among the most impressive. This public university with over 24,000 students has made great strides toward inserting green values and practices into virtually all areas of campus activity.

A signatory of the Talloires Declaration, U of C is working to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 and has begun retrofits to the central heating plant that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 43 percent below 1990 levels. One campus building – the Child Development Center, which is LEED-Platinum certified – uses 100 percent renewable electricity, 10 percent of which comes from solar panels.

All new building projects at the University of Calgary will achieve the highest level of LEED certification possible within budget constraints, and in addition to the Child Development Center, two more buildings are on track for certification. Carpoolers at U of C get premium parking, and students ride on public transit at a discount. A student-run program loans out bikes and provides a place for cyclists to socialize.

Food from over 19 local farms and producers is provided on campus, including local dairy. Fair trade coffee is also available. Students who bring reusable cups get a discount on drinks.

A number of student groups address sustainability issues, including the Sustainability Stewardship Program and many more. U of C also holds campus-wide competitions like the Commuter Challenge held this past spring, which prompted students, faculty and staff to record sustainable commuting choices like walking, cycling and carpooling.

Learn more about what the University of Calgary is doing to go green at UCalgary.ca/sustainability.

Link [University of Calgary Sustainability]

OrganicNation.tv Checks Out Rooftop Farming in Chicago

The team at OrganicNation.tv, who are taking a short break from traveling the nation to explore America’s sustainable food landscape, stopped by Chicago restaurant Uncommon Ground to check out the first certified organic rooftop farm in the nation.

Check it out as Dorothee Royal-Hedinger tours the roof, samples honey from the restaurant’s rooftop bee colony and learns more about the benefits of local produce and the challenges that rooftop farming can pose.

Organic Rooftop Farming in Chicago from OrganicNation on Vimeo.

Want to support OrganicNation.tv? Check out their Earthkeepers page at Changents.com, where you can become a fan, build buzz by sharing their story with friends, donate funds or respond to an action request.

Last chance to support OrganicNation.tv’s bid for the Nau Grant for Change! Voting closes on Monday, August 31st (that’s tomorrow!).

Link [OrganicNation.tv]

From Demolition to Art: Upcycled Creations by Michael Yonke

Artist and ‘upcycler’ Michael Yonke turns reclaimed wood harvested generations ago into stunning, high-end eco-friendly art and furniture. All of his designs have an upcycled material content from 90 to 99 percent and have a modern aesthetic that reaches beyond the rustic look commonly found in upcycled furniture.

The austere geometric designs paired with perfectly polished and stained wood give these pieces, which include chairs, tables, benches and wall art, a sense of sophisticated simplicity.

You can see Yonke’s work in person right now at the Atrium Gallery at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. The exhibit, “Reclaim, Reuse, Renew”, will be up until September 26th. Many pieces are also available in his Etsy shop.

Link [Upcycler.com]

Do the Honey Bee! Rap Video Builds Buzz About Threats to Bees

In honor of National Honey Bee Awareness Day, five creative brothers from Los Altos, California made a rap video in which bee-costumed dancers shake their stingers to raise awareness about the plight of honey bees worldwide.

With some heavy reliance on Auto-Tune and the backing of the bee angels at Häagen-Dazs, Max Lanman, a 21-year-old senior at Yale majoring in film studies, directed, edited and photographed a short video featuring four of his brothers and a bunch of friends. One of the brothers, Connor Lanman, wrote a book called “Plight of the Bee” that originally caught Häagen-Dazs’ attention.

The choreography in the video is a nod to the “dance” that honeybees do when they return to the hive after a good round of pollinating. Check it out:

“We’re hoping that “Do The Honey Bee” will help raise honey bee awareness in a fun and original way, and appeal to the greater population,” Max Lanman told The Huffington Post.

Learn more about the challenges facing bees at HelpTheHoneyBees.com.

Link [The Huffington Post]

Timberland Celebrates Undiscovered Independent Environmental Activists

How many unsung environmental heroes are there in the world, tirelessly working to improve the health of the planet and all of the living creatures that call it home? In a culture where celebrities are applauded for taking the tiniest of steps while the everyday people doing the real work go mostly unnoticed by the general public, Timberland has dedicated itself to elevating environmental activists onto the global green scene.

In partnership with Changents.com, The Timberland Company is creating a unique consumer engagement engine to help get emerging eco-change agents their big break. The Earthkeepers Movement garners support for these activists on an interactive platform that connects people who are changing the world with the people who can help them do even more.

Meet the 2009 Earthkeepers Heroes – from an eco-photographer to a teacher designing green makeovers for homes with inner city youth – at Changents.com/Earthkeepers.

You can help your favorite Earthkeeper get exposure on national TV for defending the planet! All you have to do is grab a widget and post it to your social networking profile or blog. When you register to join Earthkeepers, you get the opportunity to win some cool prizes, too.

If Timberland gets 100,000 supporters for these Earthkeeper Heroes by November 1st, they’ll unveil a publicity stunt where you can take action to help the winning hero get on TV. Check it out at Changents.com.

Link [Earthkeepers]

11 Bizarre Sources of Clean Energy, from Dead Turkeys to Urine

Why stick with boring old oil when you could be powering your home, car and gadgets with slaughterhouse waste, garbage and onions? As strange as transforming these substances into renewable fuels might seem, many of them are viable energy sources and some are already in use around the world.

And if you think these ideas are weird, check out MSNBC’s Crazy green energy ideas that just might work, which covers another 7 including solar panels in space and “snakes in a wave”.

Watermelons

Image via: Flickr user flattop341

The newest wild n’ crazy renewable energy on the scene is watermelon juice, which can be a valuable source of biofuel. Researchers say juice from ‘cull’ watermelons – imperfect ones that can’t be sold for consumption – can be efficiently fermented into ethanol. These ‘cull’ watermelons are currently just being plowed back into the field, so they’re technically a waste material.

Slaughterhouse Waste

Image via: Discover Magazine

As insanely disgusting as it sounds, turkey guts can be used to produce oil. No, really. It works in the same way that any fossil fuel is created, through pressure and heat, only at a faster pace.

A company called Changing World Technologies is transforming slaughterhouse waste – including a sickening blend of rotting heads, feet and intestines – into oil at a thermal conversion plant in Carthage, Missouri.  Other surprising items that go into the mix include old tires, mixed plastics and municipal sewage. But, the process still needs a lot of refinement to be commercially applicable.

The process of turning your Thanksgiving leftovers into oil is complicated, but not impossible. Mental Floss has an overview, which starts with chopping and churning those giblets into a fine, grainy mess. Mmm. Who’s hungry?

Poo (and Pee) Power

Image via: Statemaster

It may be distasteful, but waste – from both humans and animals – has proven to be a surprisingly efficient form of renewable energy. In Norway, city buses run on biomethane, which is a by-product of treated sewage. Not only is it a free source of energy, using biomethane in this way prevents it from being emitted into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.

Cows are also a major source of methane, emitting it in all sorts of unsavory ways, from both ends of their bodies. An Ohio company has developed a way to refine that methane gas in a way that could potentially power homes.

Then there are urine-powered batteries. That’s right, pee is a promising source of renewable energy as well thanks to its particular composition of its main component, urea, which is made up of hydrogen and nitrogen. Using a nickel-based electrode, scientists can create large amounts of cheap hydrogen from urine that can then be burned or used in fuel cells.

Garbage

Image via Idiocracy/20th Century Fox

There’s quite a bit of controversy as to whether trash is really a source of renewable energy – it’s certainly not ‘clean’. In fact, groups like Greenpeace warn that classifying garbage as a source of renewable energy risks ‘enshrining it’ rather than trying to produce less in the first place. Then, there’s the fact that trash incinerators are the leading source of extremely toxic chemicals called dioxins.

Modern incinerators use heat from the incineration to boil water, causing steam, which then generates electricity. These incinerators are cleaner than their predecessors, but they still pollute the air. Some argue that, with the looming threat of catastrophic climate change, using this energy is worth breathing in dirty air.

An Ottawa company called Plasco Energy Group is working on a method that transforms garbage into a synthetic gas without emitting greenhouse gases, but it’s got quite a few technological and financial hurdles to cross before it can be applied on a wide scale.

Onions

Image via: Flickr user Darwin Bell

One onion farmer is now crying all the way to the bank after finding a way to turn onion juice into fuel. This process has big up-front costs – about $9.5 million in this case – but they’ll make it back fairly quickly. Gills Onions saved a whopping $700,000 off their facility’s annual electric bill by using the juice to run his refrigerators and lighting, and another $400,000 on disposal costs. They also received $2.7 million from SoCal Gas, which offers financial incentives to customers that reduce natural gas consumption through on-site generation.

An anaerobic digester converts treated onion waste into biogas, which is then conditioned and turned into methane. The methane is pumped into a 600-kilowatt fuel cell to make electricity.
The same concept can be used for other waste products.

Viruses

Image via: MIT

Common viruses that are harmless to humans can be harnessed to create both the positively and negatively charged ends of a lithium-ion battery. Researchers at MIT genetically engineered viruses that build cathodes and anodes, producing batteries that have the same energy capacity and power performance as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries. The process of creating the batteries is environmentally friendly in and of itself, using non-toxic materials and requiring no harmful solvents.

Currently, the MIT prototype is about the size of a coin and can only be used 100 times, but researchers intend to pursue even better batteries using materials with higher voltage. Once that next generation of virus batteries is ready, they’ll be ready for commercial production.

Burning Bodies

Image via: Hubpages

There’s nothing like staying warm in the dead of winter thanks to the heat given off by burning corpses. The Swedish town of Halmstead figures that heat generated by crematoriums shouldn’t be wasted, so they decided to divert it into local buildings instead of just letting it escape into the sky.

Of course, they can’t just pump hot crematorium air directly into people’s houses. That air is chock full of nasty stuff like mercury from dental fillings, so the off-gases must be filtered before the heat is usable. But, this ‘byproduct energy’ saves costs, uses less water, and uses an available resource in an incredibly efficient and creative way.

Booze

Image via: Flickr user scottfeldstein

Sweden customs officials confiscate a million bottles of booze every year from purveyors of smuggled alcohol trying to evade local taxes. That’s a lot of alcohol – and until recently, it was all being poured down the drain. What a waste. Luckily, someone came up with a brilliant idea: shipping it to a waste-to-fuels plant where it’s added to bioreactors along with other waste, creating methane that is used to fuel biogas-powered vehicles.

Then there’s the Scottish distilleries that run their own plants on byproducts of the distilling process, along with sustainably harvested wood chips. Combination of Rothes Distillers Limited (CoRD) teamed up with Helius Energy to build a combined heat and power (CHP) plant along with a fertilizer factory fueled by all that booze waste. Makers Mark Distillery in Kentucky has been using a similar technique for a number of years.

Bugs that Poop Oil

Image via: Times Online

Bug excrement may seem like a most unlikely source of fuel, but scientists have actually found a way to genetically engineer bacteria that produce ‘renewable petroleum’. Silicon Valley company LS9 claims that this “Oil 2.0” will be carbon negative, as well. LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms about a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant, which have been modified to produce crude oil when fed agricultural waste.

It’s essentially the same process as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, it just sounds way crazier. The main challenge being faced by LS9 right now is that, although it can produce its bug fuel in lab beakers, meeting America’s weekly oil needs would require a facility roughly the size of Chicago.

Chocolate

Image via: FacilityBlog

Before you freak out at the idea of perfectly good, delicious chocolate being used as fuel instead of going into your mouth, relax: this source of renewable energy is made with cocoa bean shells, not the chocolate itself. Cocoa bean shells are a waste product that can be mixed with coal at power stations to produce sort-of-greener-ish fuel.

Cocoa bean shells will be donated to Public Service of New Hampshire when chocolate maker Lindt USA begins producing its own chocolate from raw cocoa beans by the end of 2009.

Unfortunately, though this sounds cool, adding cocoa shells to the coal doesn’t make a huge difference because of the tiny ratio of shells to coal.

Man-Made Tornadoes

Image via: Technovelgy

The average tornado contains as much energy as a typical power plant – but how in the world can you safely harvest that energy? Well, as it turns out, that requires creating man-made tornadoes in a controlled environment.

Canadian engineer Louis Michaud calls his tornado the Atmospheric Vortex Engine, and he says he could extract as much as 200 megawatts of electricity from it – enough to power a small city. Michaud heats an elevated layer of air so that the temperature is much higher than that of the air below, which creates a vortex, and then places wind turbines at the base of the vortex, which are able to suck up the energy contained within.

Michaud has built many small prototypes with nary a bump in the road, and producing a 200-megawatt facility would cost roughly $60 million, lower than the cost of any existing power source. He’s currently looking for investors.

Who’s Who in Green: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have been born into one of the most privileged families in America’s history, but like his father and many of his aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings, he wasn’t content to live a selfish life of fame and fortune. Named one of TIME Magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment”, Kennedy is an environmental lawyer, author, activist and defender of the Hudson River and has won many cases upholding the Clean Water Act.

Born in 1954 to Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in American history and literature and then went on to law school, obtaining his Masters of Law at Pace University School of Law. In 1984, Kennedy began his storied work with the Riverkeeper organization, suing alleged polluters of the Hudson River.

Kennedy also founded and is current chairman of Waterkeeper Alliance, an organization that connects local waterkeeper groups around the country. He has served as Clinical Professor of Environmental Law and co-director of the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic since 1987, and is also Senior Attorney for the National Resources Defense Council.

Aside from his three New York Times best-selling books Crimes Against Nature (2004), The Riverkeepers (1997), and Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr: A Biography (1977), Kennedy has written two children’s books and hundreds of articles, mostly on environmental subjects, which have appeared in a wide variety of publications from The Wall Street Journal to Rolling Stone. He also co-hosts a radio show – ‘Ring of Fire’ on Air America – and writes regularly for The Huffington Post.

Kennedy was one of the most outspoken critics of former President Bush’s environmental policies, and his book Crimes Against Nature called Bush “America’s worst environmental president.” The book reveals, in stunning detail, the many ways in which the Bush administration put industry and big business ahead of the health of American citizens, the land and our natural resources.

This is one environmentalist who isn’t pushing ‘small steps’, but rather, encourages taking direct action. He told Grist in a 2004 interview,

Industry wants us reading those books that say “50 things you can do to help the environment” because it distracts you from what you ought to be doing, which is joining an environmental group and voting for politicians who support the environment and fighting against the lobbyists on Capitol Hill. I mean, you can go out and buy a car that gets 40 miles per gallon, but it’s not going to change the planet.

What’s going to change the planet is if we have somebody standing up to the auto-industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill to pass standards that require that every car in this country gets 40 mpg. I try to focus on that part, not on how individuals are incorporating environmental ethics into their lives. I think it’s important for people to do, but to the extent that it’s distracting you from participating in the political process, it’s not a good thing.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Green Score: 79,844

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Great Green Job of the Week: Telecommute Director of Strategic Relationships

The Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT) was founded by Jeffrey M. Smith, the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and author of Seeds of Deception, the world’s bestselling and #1 rated book on the subject. IRT’s Campaign for Healthier Eating in America educates consumers about GMO health risks and provides easy access to non-GMO brand choices. The Campaign is designed to generate the tipping point of consumer rejection of genetically modified (GM) foods, in order to force them out of the market.

The Problem with GMOs:

The current generation of GM foods is one of the greatest threats to human health and the environment. GMOs are linked to toxic or allergic symptoms, thousands of sick, sterile, and dead livestock, and damage to virtually every organ studied in lab animals. FDA scientists warned about these potential problems, but were ignored by the person in charge of policy-the former attorney for biotech giant Monsanto, and later their VP. The FDA requires no safety tests.

GM crops:

* Concentrate corporate control of food

* Increase herbicide use without increasing average yields
* Endanger food security
* Are detrimental to sustainable and organic farming
* Trap farmers in a cycle of debt and dependence
* Shrink biodiversity
* Harm beneficial insects
* Damage soil bacteria
* Contaminate non-GM varieties, and
* Work against solving the problem of hunger

Moreover, the self-propagating genetic pollution from GM crops might outlast the effects of global warming and nuclear waste.

The Solution: A Tipping Point Strategy Based on Success

The consumer revolt in Europe provides a successful model to stop the genetic engineering of the food supply in North America. After the European media reported the health risks of GM foods in early 1999, consumer concern reached a tipping point. Within a single week, virtually all major food manufacturers committed to remove GM ingredients from their European brands. This market rejection has kept GMOs out.

If GMO health risks got onto the national radar screen in the US, a European-style tipping point could be achieved. Since food companies do not gain any advantage from using GM ingredients, even a small percentage of consumers changing brands based on GM content could accomplish it. We believe that 5% of shoppers-15 million people or 5.6 million households-is more than sufficient to trigger an industry-wide cleanout.

The Institute, as part of a coalition, has already been successful in generating a tipping point against milk from cows injected with genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH). Most of the top dairy brands, including Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Kroger, Dannon, Yoplait, have committed to stop using rbGH in the past three years.

Health Concerns Motivate; Non-GMO Brands Provide Direction

IRT has packaged information about the health dangers into books, films, audio CDs, PowerPoint presentations, brochures, reports, websites, podcasts, scripted PowerPoints, and articles. We offer compelling expert content for others’ websites, list serves, magazines, newsletters, handouts, conferences, etc. We also produce a printed and electronic Non-GMO Shopping Guide, making it much easier for people to make healthier non-GMO choices.

Position Overview:

Director of Strategic Relationships: Enrolls organizations and key opinion leaders to participate in our Campaign for Healthier Eating in America.

Responsibilities:

To enroll organizations and key opinion leaders to participate in our Campaign for Healthier Eating in America and thereby establish distribution of our GMO-related materials to tens of millions of people. Groups willing to partner with us include: green, health-conscious, medical, foodie, sustainable, spiritual, parent, school, chefs, and others.

Qualifications:

* Must have terrific nonprofit to nonprofit, or business to business, experience in sales, networking, or coalition building
* Easily interacts with CEO or Executive Director levels
* Able to inspire enthusiastic support
* Meticulously organized
* Able to work independently in a virtual office
* Competent in business communications
* Experience in one of the targeted outreach areas is a plus.

Position Details:

We can accommodate full time or multiple part time positions. You are welcome to work from your home. (You will NOT be required to work onsite at IRT’s Iowa headquarters.)

Compensation: Salary is commensurate with experience. Support towards health insurance is available for full time positions.

To Apply:

Please send resume using the subject line Strategic Relationships Director.

Contact Information:
641-209-1765 (phone)
info@responsibletechnology.org
http://www.responsibletechnology.org

Best of EarthFirst’s Bizarre Green News

When it comes to green news, there’s certainly no shortage of bizarre stories to go around. But it’s not all about the latest weird green gadget or the strangest sources of renewable energy. Sometimes, the stories are just crazy in and of themselves, from the president of PETA requesting that her dead body be barbecued and eaten to honeybees getting addicted to cocaine.

We dug through the EarthFirst.com archives to find some of the most mind-boggling bizarro stories of the past year, and we’ve got some doozies to revisit. Check it out:

WTF, Broccoli?! Check Out This Cascadian Farms Package

Someone at Cascadian Farms has a great sense of humor. Bloggers Alicia Carrier and Summer Allen-Gibson of Bread & Honey noticed something funny recently on a bag of broccoli, and took to the web to share it with all of us. Read More

Student Group Eats a Cat in the Name of Animal Welfare

A group of students in Denmark have had their Facebook profiles suspended after uploading a video of them eating a cat. The students planned the cat-eating performance as a way to call attention to the plight of food animals such as pigs and cows. Read More

Dumped Corpses Give Sharks a Taste for Human Flesh

Experts believe that a pack of bull sharks in Mexico is intentionally targeting humans, after recent attacks have killed two surfers and injured another. A fourth swimmer is missing. The deadly 10-ft long sharks may have developed a taste for human flesh after feasting on corpses dumped by the mob. Read More

UK Wind Turbine Destroyed, Locals Claim UFO Did It

A 290-foot turbine was mysteriously mangled overnight on Sunday near Louth in Linconshire, United Kingdom with local residents claiming to have seen an octopus-like UFO. Experts have ruled out most of the more believable explanations, like a meteor or lightning strike. Read More

PETA President Wills Her Body to Become BBQ & Leather Goods

PETA did it again. Stomach-turning publicity stunts are nothing new to the animal rights organization, but the latest one will make you lose your lunch (fair warning). PETA President Ingrid Newkirk has willed her body to the group along with a gross list of instructions on what they should do with each body part after she’s dead. Read More

Shrimp on a Treadmill Helps Scientists Study Climate Change Effects

By now you may have seen the strange YouTube video that shows a shrimp inexplicably running on an underwater treadmill to the tune of ‘The Final Countdown’, the Benny Hill theme, the Rocky theme and several other humorous and inspirational anthems. Funny as it may be to see this little guy running with all its might, the shrimp on a treadmill is actually part of a serious science experiment. Read More

Honeybees Susceptible to Cocaine Addiction

Despite the fact that cocaine repels most insects, researchers have found that honeybees can become addicted to the substance and even suffer withdrawal symptoms. Bees on cocaine behave the same way humans do, throwing themselves into highly energetic dance routines and talking incessantly to their nest mates. Read More

Solar Electric Vehicle Company Provides Free Green Rides

Colleges, parks, museums and other institutions now have a green way to shuttle people around – for free! – thanks to the Solar Electric Vehicle Company. The company provides emissions-free, solar-powered people movers that are paid for by corporate sponsors so that more people will be able to breathe cleaner air, creating a healthier environment.

From SolarEVco.com:

For every solar electric vehicle in a community, citizens will have access to pollution-free transportation. For every vehicle at a university campus, more students will be able to cut down on their gas bills, as well as feel more secure traveling on campus. For every vehicle at any park, museum, garden, or zoo, there will be one less dirty, costly, petrol burning vehicle which keeps us dependent on foreign oil, and which keeps our economy inescapably tied to the price of a barrel of oil.

At the same time, while every solar electric vehicle is creating cleaner, greener, and better communities and institutions, they are also creating cleaner, greener, and better exposure for advertisers and sponsors. This allows them to connect more intimately and highlight their green commitment to their target markets. This is truly a model in which everyone wins.

Each Solar Electric People Mover is topped with two solar panels, which charge six 8-volt batteries. This enables the electric vehicle to go longer between charges, increasing the range by up to 33%.

It’s a pretty rad concept. Imagine how much cleaner the air would be in cities around America if even a fraction of universities and tourist attractions used these vehicles instead of traditional fossil fuel-powered vehicles. It could make a huge difference!

Link [SolarEVco.com]

Lower-Cost Solar Cells Can be Painted onto Rooftops

Nanoparticle ‘inks’ could soon be used to produce solar cells that can simply be sprayed onto a rooftop or other surfaces, and though this sounds like expensive technology, the chemical engineer who created it says it could reduce costs to one-tenth of their current price. Brian Korgel of the University of Texas at Austin says he believes that this reduction in price could thrust solar power into competition with fossil fuels.

From Science Daily:

For the past two years, Korgel and his team have been working on this low-cost, nanomaterials solution to photovoltaics – or solar cell – manufacturing. Korgel is collaborating with professors Al Bard and Paul Barbara, both of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Professor Ananth Dodabalapur of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. They recently showed proof-of-concept in a recent issue of Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The inks could be printed on a roll-to-roll printing process on a plastic substrate or stainless steel. And the prospect of being able to paint the “inks” onto a rooftop or building is not far-fetched.

“You’d have to paint the light-absorbing material and a few other layers as well,” Korgel said. “This is one step in the direction towards paintable solar cells.”

Currently, Korgel and his team at Innovalight, a company he founded, have been able to develop solar-cell prototypes using copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) with efficiencies at one percent. If they can get to 10 percent, there’s great potential for commercialization.

That’s definitely promising considering the fact that America’s solar industry is lagging behind China’s due to the fact that we just can’t seem to compete with their prices. It will be interesting to see how far Korgel and his team can take this technology.

Link [Science Daily]

Big Oil Refuses to Let American Flags into Astroturf Rally

You’d think that Big Oil would be more than happy to wave a bunch of American flags around while holding their fake grassroots rallies – especially in Texas, of all places. Yet activists bearing the old Stars & Stripes were turned away at the American Petroleum Institute rally in Houston, where oil company employees gathered to hear oil billionaire Drayton McClane Jr. whine about Obama’s clean energy plans.

Check out the video:

Partial transcript from Wonk Room:

ACTIVIST: They said, “We won’t let you have an American flag either.” They said they won’t let you have this, and then the guy touched this, the American flag.

ANOTHER ACTIVIST: I got an email from Freedomworks saying, “Come, it’s free, free food,” doodah doodah. And then I get here and they say, “Well, it’s against fire code to let people in the door.” And then, they let all these people in. Granted, one of the people was Drayton McLane. He’s got more money than God, so, I guess…

Umm, it’s pretty obvious that the uninvited people trying to get into this rally are on the side of Big Oil, so WTF are they worried about? As if the old dude bearing a book called ‘Liberal Facism’ is a spy for the ‘other side’.

Could it be any more clear that this was anything but a grassroots rally? It was one big oil industry whack-a-thon. You would think that these pro-oil citizens (the real ones, not the energy employees) would have caught on by now that the oil industry doesn’t give a shit about them.

Link [Wonk Room]

Global Warming Could Cause Tilt in Earth’s Axis

Oceans warmed by the rise in greenhouse gas levels could cause the Earth’s axis to tilt, according to a new study by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Researchers say the tilt would be significant enough to create a large shift in the distribution of the Earth’s mass, especially when combined with the tilt being caused by the melting of Greenland’s ice.

From New Scientist:

The researchers modelled the changes that would occur if moderate projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a doubling of carbon dioxide levels between 2000 and 2100 – were to become reality.

The team found that as the oceans warm and expand, more water will be pushed up and onto the Earth’s shallower ocean shelves. Over the next century, the subtle effect is expected to cause the northern pole of Earth’s spin axis to shift by roughly 1.5 centimetres per year in the direction of Alaska and Hawaii.

Luckily, the effect is expected to be relatively small, and shouldn’t induce any negative feedback in the planet’s climate. It just needs to be taken into account when interpreting shifts in Earth’s axis.

Still, this should be a strong message to those who still insist that we insignificant little humans can’t affect the planet we live on to a great extent. We may be relatively unimportant in the scheme of things, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of causing some serious changes.

Link [New Scientist]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

China Kicking America’s Ass in Race to Go Solar

Leave it to China to find a way to produce just about anything on the cheap, and do it really quickly. Despite the Obama administration’s dedication to getting America’s clean energy industry off the ground, China is leaving us in the dust and it’s looking unlikely that we’ll get a good chance to catch up.

In fact, the Chinese are preparing to build plants right here in the United States to assemble their products, to get around protectionist legislation.

From The New York Times:

The Obama administration is determined to help the American industry. The energy and Treasury departments announced this month that they would give $2.3 billion in tax credits to clean energy equipment manufacturers. But even in the solar industry, many worry that Western companies may have fragile prospects when competing with Chinese companies that have cheap loans, electricity and labor, paying recent college graduates in engineering $7,000 a year.

“I don’t see Europe or the United States becoming major producers of solar products — they’ll be consumers,” said Thomas M. Zarrella, the chief executive of GT Solar International, a company in Merrimack, N.H., that sells specialized factory equipment to solar panel makers around the world.

China’s commitment to solar energy isn’t likely to make a big dent in the fight against global warming, especially given the country’s own skyrocketing emissions, much of which are caused by the pollution that goes hand-in-hand with running ultra-low-cost factories.

America still has the world’s largest supplier of photovoltaic cells – First Solar in Tempe, Arizona – but China’s Suntech is not far behind. Suntech plans to build a solar panel assembly plant in the United States “to facilitate sales — ‘buy American’ and things like that”, according to the company’s president for global sales and marketing.

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: OregonDOT

‘Ronald McDonald’ Opens Up About Cruel Slaughtering Practices

“Who cares about those PETA pricks, and who cares about the chickens? They’re just animals!” That’s what ‘Ronald McDonald’ (Andy Dick) had to say about McDonalds’ slaughtering practices to famed celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick (Martin Short) in a new video from FunnyorDie.com.

Dick makes for quite a frightening, deranged-looking Ronald McDonald as they discuss boiling chickens alive. “What I say to the chickens is, ‘You deserve a break today. In your legs.”

Check it out:

The video is hilarious, but they’re actually calling attention to a real problem. As Ecorazzi reports,

“McDonald’s U.S. and Canadian chicken suppliers abuse birds using a cruel and outdated method of slaughter. Birds often have their bones broken and their throats cut while they are still conscious, and many birds are immersed in tanks of scalding-hot water while they are still alive and able to feel pain.”

And, yes, you can learn more about it at PETA.org.

Link [Ecorazzi]

Chic Recycled Paper Jewelry by Sandra Di Giacinto

Who knew that paper could create such beautiful and surprisingly durable jewelry? Italian designer and sculpture artist Sandra Di Giacinto has turned her fascination with recycled materials into a collection of colorful, lightweight, incredibly unique adornments that are hand-made in limited editions.

Di Giacinto’s work speaks to the versatility and potential of recycled materials – they can be upcycled in the most unexpected ways. See the full collection at SandraDiGiacinto.it.

Link [Sandra Di Giacinto] via [Great Green Goods]

Youth to World Leaders: Less Talk, More Action on Climate Change

The biggest-ever youth gathering on climate change took place last Thursday in Daejeon, Republic of Korea with 700 participants releasing a statement to world leaders expressing “concern and frustration that their governments are not doing enough to combat climate change”, adding that “we now need more actions and less talking”.

The statement was the product of eight-week-long web discussions between young people across the world about their governments’ track record on addressing climate change. It was finalized as part of the global UN ‘Seal the Deal!’ campaign to garner public support for a comprehensive global climate agreement.

The children and youth asked governments around the world to agree on a more fair, just and action oriented post-Kyoto agreement adopted and implemented by all countries, strict laws against pollution, carbon action plans and much more.

From UNEP:

“It is very important to include the voice of children and youth in every environmental decision. It is our request to all politicians that they please take this statement into consideration in Copenhagen,” said 13-year-old Yugratna Srivastava from India.

The children and youth also addressed the citizens of the planet and urged them to push their governments to create a global green economy. Other recommendations included a call to pressure businesses, producers and governments to promote environmentally friendly products and eco-labeling policies.

“We are the generation of tomorrow. The decisions that are made today will define our future and the world we have to live in. So we young people of the world urge governments to commit to a strong post-Kyoto climate regime. It is our lives we are talking about,” said youth delegate, 23-year-old Anne Walraven from the Netherlands.

Visit UNEP.org to read the full statement and learn more about the youth conference.

It’s nice to know that even if the generation currently holding power around the world refuses to act, the next generation is ready to take the reigns and do what needs to be done. There’s a lot of security in this kind of enthusiasm among youth.

Link [UNEP]
Photo: Art by Li Pik Hei, 13-year-old winner of the 2008 International Children’s Painting Competition on Environment

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