By Shermakaye Bass
Photo: © Holger Gurski | Dreamstime.com
The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook, if still it ran; . . .
- Robert Frost’s “Going for Water”
Every year, more about the world’s worsening water crisis is revealed: Who has potable water, [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Cut Consumption · GET INSPIRED
By Harriet Blake
You can always tell a garment that has come back from the dry cleaners. There’s that faint smell that seems to linger on the item, and in the closet, until that shirt or jacket gets worn again. The smell comes from the solvent used in the dry cleaning process, and chances [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Dress, Decor & Beauty
By Shermakaye Bass
You’ve read the reports in the media – or heard them on the nightly news – that a growing number of American cities are banning the use of Styrofoam, a.k.a. polystyrene foam, in restaurants and food services, due to health and environmental concerns.
Tags: Battles & Victories · Cities & States · Food
By John DeFore
Activists and alert shoppers have plenty of bones to pick with the way groceries are labeled and the way environmental or nutrition claims are monitored, or not, by the government. Yesterday, Tyson Foods announced that it is removing its “Raised Without Antibiotics” label from chicken, and has gone on [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Briefs · Food
By John DeFore
In 2002, the City of New York was recycling about a fifth of its waste, but some in the Bloomberg administration thought the program cost too much. In response to a budget crisis, the city stopped collecting glass and plastic (they continued paper and metal collection), arguing they’d save $40 million [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Briefs · Recycle & Reuse
By John DeFore
Nearly twenty years ago, a magical substance called Beano was introduced that negated an age-old dietary reality: If you took it with a meal, you could eat all the beans (or other troublesome foods) you wanted without worrying about having gas when you left the dinner table.
Beano might mostly be used to [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Briefs · Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Headlines
By Barbara Kessler
The push is on to get Congress to renew tax credits for clean energy for energy producers, green businesses and real estate owners. Environmental and business groups — fed up with the lengthy debates on the topic in Washington — have declared May 20 a National Day of Action to extend [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Briefs · Energy & Water · Greener Businesses
By John DeFore
It’s probably unavoidable that people living in this age of technological wonders, when faced with issues as daunting as global warming, will secretly trust science to invent a way out of them. Recent media attention to “geoengineering” schemes is just one example — the idea being that, if humans have put things [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Briefs · Green Enthusiasts & Researchers · Headlines
By Barbara Kessler
Earth Day is 38 years old and still going strong. That says something about our nation’s commitment to the environment, or at least the commitment of those who’ve kept conservation issues – clean air, clean water, pure food — on the table all these years.
Photo © 2008 by Kim Komenich | Distributed [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Cities & States
By Shermakaye Bass
It’s no surprise that Big Energy gets the role of Goliath in Mat Hames’ and George Sledge’s Fighting Goliath: The Texas Coal Wars, a documentary produced and narrated by Robert Redford and The Redford Center at Sundance Preserve that follows a recent chain of events in which coal companies tried to fast [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Books & Movies · Energy & Water
With Earth Day coming next month, we want to hear what you’re doing to go green right now. Share success stories, offer tips or just words of encouragement for others. Just click the link below for instructions on how to post your voice comment using your wireless phone. And check back to listen to what [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · GET INSPIRED · Model People · Model Projects
By Harriet Blake
Photo: Port of Long Beach
In 1989 the Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s pristine Prince William Sound slathering wildlife and the untouched rocky shores with an inky, sticky coating of oil. The event created a powerful visual image of the sort of damage ocean ships can cause. A [...]
Tags: Battles & Victories · Food · Other Transport
In the race for top carbon emissions polluter, the United States is still Number One, but China is sprinting forward and could soon edge into the lead. The current Olympics host nation accounted for a “staggering 57 percent of the growth of emissions” worldwide this century, and will likely surpass the U.S. as the single biggest belcher of fossil fuel emissions sometime this year, according to the Worldwatch Institute.
The standings right now: The U.S. currently contributes 19.5 percent of global fossil fuel emissions compared with China’s 18.3 percent. [Read more →]
British Petroleum (BP) has announced plans to bring cellulosic ethanol to market in the U.S., through a 
partnership with bio-fuel developer Verenium, a company that makes biofuels from rice straw, sugarcane stalks, switchgrass and wood chips. The partnership could help speed the availability of lower cost, more environmentally friendly biofuels, according to an announcement by both companies this week. [Read more →]
By Tom Kessler
Almost 90 percent of the car shoppers who visit Kelley Blue Book’s Web site say they are concerned about the future of our environment, company research shows. Among survey respondents, 80 percent agreed that individuals should make lifestyle changes to help reduce CO2 emissions. And 75 percent of KBB shoppers reported that they have made changes to further the betterment of the environment. The most frequent lifestyle changes cited were:
Weather experts are predicting that some 17 Atlantic storms — about 
seven more than average — will pack enough strength they’ll reach tropical storm strength in 2008, earning the right to be named and carrying the potential to reach hurricane status.
The best guess for the number of hurricanes, according to weather forecasters at the Colorado State University Department of Atmospherical Science: Nine, which is above average (2.3); with five of those expected to be “intense hurricanes” reaching category 3, 4 or 5. [Read more →]
By John DeFore
An item in the 
New York Times last week served as a good wrap-up of recent developments on the LED front, finding places (beyond traffic lights) where light emitting diodes are getting a toehold as replacements for less energy-efficient lights.
But does it, in newspaper terms, “bury the lead”? [Read more →]
By John DeFore
The phenomenal success of single-serving bottled water is, in the eyes of most environmentalists, a 
scourge. Yet consumers seem slow to unlearn the habit, so a water packaged in non-petroleum-containing bottles should be a step in the right direction — right?
Doubt was cast on that recently when the popular Consumerist blog ran a post that may unsettle potential customers of the green-touting water brand Primo: When exposed to the high temperatures inside a closed car, a Primo bottle shrank to around half its original size. [Read more →]
By Julie Bonnin
If you’re in the market for a custom-built home, there really isn’t a reason not to build green. Who doesn’t 
want a smaller utility bill? Or to leave a reduced carbon footprint on your corner of planet Earth? FreeGreen, a web site with free green home designs, allows users to browse a listing of green house plans that range from strikingly modern to suburban friendly. [Read more →]
By John DeFore
San Francisco residents recycle almost 70 percent of their total waste. Houston? Just over two and a half percent.
That’s according to an article in the trade journal Waste News that labels Houston the worst recycler among the nation’s thirty most populous cities. The ranking has sparked newspaper coverage lately, with accounts seeking both to establish blame for the startlingly low rate and to assess possibilities for improvement. [Read more →]
California is at it again. The state stickler for clean air, which tried to regulate car emissions but was blocked by the federal EPA in late 2007, is now asking the feds to regulate pollution from aircraft, ships and off-road vehicles.
CA attorney Jerry Brown said that California, joined by other states and environmental groups, intends to sue the EPA if it continues to “wantonly ignore its duty” to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from these commercial vehicles and agricultural and commercial equipment. [Read more →]
The Alliance to Save Energy, a 30-year-old coalition of business, political, consumer and environmental leaders, today urged the U.S. Senate to adopt a bill that would grant or extend tax credits to consumers for 
energy-saving home improvements, while also potentially stimulating the economy.
The bill, The Jobs, Energy, Families & Disaster Relief Act of 2008, would offer energy-related tax incentives to consumers and businesses, [Read more →]
