Wooden Bike Rack Finds New Purpose for Comb Design
As an artist, I am always intrigued by unique design that repurposes traditional shapes. The wooden comb/bike rack is very interesting and certainly would attract attention in any community. Treehugger reports:
According to The Roanoke Times, Roanoke was designated as a Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists last year. To commemorate this the city's public art program commissioned a number of custom-designed bike racks, one of which was this 400-pound rack, "handcrafted out of Mangaris using full mortise and tenon construction, while the hair is made from powder coated steel."
The giant wooden comb bike rack reminds me of the work of Claes Oldenburg, only with a utilitarian spin.
Although we may not be thinking as much about the nuclear disaster in Japan as we were a few weeks ago, the problem is far from over. UPI reports:
Takashi Sawada, deputy director of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, said in a CNN report Saturday it would take two or three months to restore cooling systems at the damaged reactors.
The plant's coolant systems were damaged by the March 11 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami, resulting in a near meltdown and causing a nuclear accident on par with that at Chernobyl, in the former Soviet Union, officials said.
The evacuation zone is being expanded to include the village of Iitate.
That's three more months of radiation. Although our exposure in the United States is minimal, it's still important to protect your family and pets. Keep up your iodine levels by eating lots of seaweed!
World Cup 2010 Carbon Footprint: 2.75 Million Tons CO2
As the world is enthralled with World Cup 2010 frenzy, we can't ignore that this year's carbon footprint is the greatest in the history of the games. Specifically, 2.75 million tons carbon dioxide will emitted this year which is nine times greater than the 2006 World Cup. Mother Nature Network reports:
So why is the carbon footprint for the event so high? The study cites the geography of South Africa as the main culprit of the high carbon footprint. In fact, 1.85 tons of carbon dioxide will come just from fans traveling across oceans and to and from the 64 matches spread across nine host cities in the 25th largest country in the world.
As of early April, 119,000 tickets had been sold to Americans, who at the time were the leading foreign ticket buyers. That's thousands of people making the more than 7,000-mile trek from the United States to South Africa. No wonder the carbon footprint is sky-high.
Efforts have been made to green the games through recycling, wind power, tree planting, and recycled jerseys.
As compared to plywood coffins, "ecoffins" consume half the energy, requiring about 10 minutes for combustion. They also release less than one-third the amount of toxic gases, such as nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and CO2, because no chemical adhesives are used.
These eco cardboard coffins are lined with natural fabrics, and the company plants 10 trees for each coffin sold.
Via: Lohas
Al Gore first brought us An Inconvenient Truth, now he and the Alliance for Climate Protection bring us environmental optimism with We Can Solve It. Personally, I need to feel like there is hope to alter climate change, and the We campaign does this by "igniting public action to help solve the climate crisis." Only together, can we solve this global problem. Oh, Mr. Gore, I wish you were president.
Saturday, March 22, 2008 was World Water Day, and in honor of the event, restaurants all over the country joined UNICEF's Tap Project. As part of the Tap Project, customers donated a dollar for each glass of tap water they were served for free. Just one dollar provides a child in need with 40 days of clean water.
One aspect that should be considered when shopping responsibly for really natural products is product stewardship. Product stewardship involves looking at the lifecycle of a product, from manufacturing to disposal. The Environmental News Network offers eight tips for practicing product stewardship:
Stay Informed-find out what companies are doing to reduce their carbon footprints and reduce their use of harmful chemicals.
Spend Some Dough-sustainably produced products cost more money.
Locate Your Products-shop locally, such as at a farmers' market, to avoid buying goods that have been transported thousands of miles.
Check the ingredients-read the labels! Remember, natural and organic are marketing terms without clear definitions on the US, especially for beauty products.
Reduce Your Packaging-Look for products with less packaging and use canvas shopping bags at every store you shop, not just the grocery store.
Recycle
Take Advantage of Take Backs-Many companies offer to dispose of old products for you, especially electronics.
Close the Loop-purchase product with high percentages of post-consumer recycled content.
A 53-year-old man in San Carlos, California has done what all of wish we could do: create zero waste, so that he no longer needs municipal trash service. Eddie House explains, "It's just me and my dog, so I don't have a whole lot of garbage to begin with and I recycle everything." When Eddie canceled his trash service, the city of San Carlos served him with a lawsuit. According to the Examiner,
The lawsuit claims House broke the city's municipal code requiring all residential, commercial and industrial properties to contract with Allied Waste for pickup at least once a week -- a standard requirement in most cities, San Carlos Deputy City Manager Brian Moura said.
Everything's Cool, billed as a "real-life disaster movie" is a film about Americans' growing awareness of global warming in the wake of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and Hurricane Katrina. It's also an incredible time capsule for our mass awakening to climate change as an issue that will shape our lives, with parallels to other political issues and the way they are framed by industry representatives and an easily-manipulated media.
The film follows a groups of "global warming messengers" through three years -- 2003 through the beginning of 2007 -- and looks at how the country came to realize what scientists had long recognized -- that global warming is happening and that something needs to be done about it.
Where an Inconvenient Truth focused on the science of global climate change, Everything's Cool looks at the political debate around the issue -- how a small group of energy-industry-funded think tanks created a debate when scientific consensus existed, and how the media's desire to present both sides of a story can move political dialogue way off course.
Here's a case of mistaken identity. EcoSeek bills itself as "the Search Engine for All Things Green." Unfortunately, it's not a search engine at all. Which leads to pretty bad reviews for a site that's actually not bad at all.
EcoSeek claims to be an eco-friendly search engine. The front page is a real mess, and the first random search I tried -‘wood burning stove’ - returned zero hits. It’s clearly such a green engine that it’s saving power by…uh…not delivering any results at all. Riiight!
Turns out the site is actually just a directory of green products. Search, or browse by category to see products that merchants have listed.
EcoSeek says it has over 7100 products from 335 merchants. A quick look shows most of the categories looking pretty thin, but when it's populated with more content, it may be a useful yellow pages for eco-friendly products.
7 Tips to Reduce Carbon Footprint: Grist Founder on Today
And speaking of Grist, founder Chip Giller (a former classmate of mine!) was interviewed on Today earlier this week and offered viewers seven tips to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% in one week. Among the tips:
- Wash your clothes in cold water
- Eat no meat one day a week
- Lower the heat in your house by two degrees
- Unplug appliances when they're not in use.
Chip took some flack on the Grist message boards for focusing on baby steps instead of recommending radical changes to our culture of consumption. Personally, though, I think he'll catch more flies with honey, and that the impact created by these small changes would be pretty significant if they were implemented by a big enough audience.
Wooden Bike Rack Finds New Purpose for Comb Design
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