Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
By John DeFore
If and when the subject of overpopulation crosses their minds, most Americans think of places in Africa and Asia that already have enough people to stretch the limits of natural resources. But few seem to worry about it happening in our own back yard.
Tags: Briefs · Cities/States · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Headlines · Nation
By John DeFore
While polar bear populations face the challenge of habitat melting beneath their feet, organisms that call water home appear to be grappling with a stranger difficulty: More and more areas of the ocean have oxygen levels too low to sustain them.A report just published in the journal Science asserts that, as tropical [...]
Tags: Briefs · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Headlines
By Lynette Holloway
Eastman Chemical may have come out ahead in the recent move by the Canadian government to label bisphenol-A, a chemical found in some forms of plastic, as toxic.
That is because the company already manufactures plastic without the noxious chemical, which could put its product in great demand. Last fall, the company rolled out [...]
Tags: Food · Headlines · SHOP GREEN
By John DeFore
Are polar bears in danger of extinction? U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland wants to know, and has given the Bush administration two more weeks to find out.
Judge Wilken said today that the administration had no legitimate reason for failing to meet a January 9 deadline (one year after the bear was [...]
By John DeFore
The sudden explosion of stories about food shortages resulting from diversion of crops to biofuels may prod Westerners to think, likely for the first time in years, about just what and how much people typically eat in other parts of the world.
The recent paperback Hungry Planet, then, is timely: Though stuffed with [...]
Tags: Books/Online Media · Briefs · Food
By John DeFore
While enterprising Americans are busy submerging decaying urban artifacts to create new fish habitats, one entrepreneur is traveling the world using man-made objects to help habitats grow back in something closer to nature’s own design.
Biologist and avid diver Michael Moore (no, not the filmmaker), concerned about the disappearance of coral reefs, has designed [...]
Tags: Briefs · Greener Businesses · Headlines · Model Projects
By John DeFore
A flurry of action regarding a chemical called bisphenol-A, or BPA, broke out last week after word leaked that Canada’s chemical review board was set to deem the substance toxic. Though its name is exotic, the plastic material itself is commonplace, used to make clear polycarbonate bottles that are highly durable, perfect for [...]
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
Are you looking to get down and dirty for the 39th Annual Earth Day? The commemoration brings a collection of great festivals this weekend (April 20). It’s also a time to renew our personal commitment to the health of the planet. So come with us as we talk about projects you can do, like composting, [...]
[Read more →] By John DeFore
Standing out in the current wave of books about the environment — dire jeremiads, thoughtful analyses, and green-leaning coffee-table books — is a compact but weighty tome that is largely uninterested in conveying to readers any kind of “the time is now!” urgency. Rather, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau released April [...]
Tags: Activists/Authors · Books/Online Media · Briefs
By Harriet Blake
Soon after President Bush’s address on greenhouse gas emissions yesterday, environmentalists criticized the president’s goal of halting the growth of emissions by 2025 as too little, too late.
The Environmental Defense Fund praised Bush for acknowledging that federal action is needed to address climate change, “a new and welcome shift.” But, it falls [...]
By Harriet Blake
Interest in the No Child Left Inside Act is growing on Capitol Hill this week. The proposed $100 million a year initiative would provide new funding for environmental education, specifically outdoor learning activities in schools and other learning centers. Environmentalists, teachers, some representatives of Congress and business leaders are supporting the plan [...]
Tags: Eco-kids · Headlines · Schools/Colleges/Churches
By John DeFore
For a movie that explicitly addresses the perils of overconsumption, Pixar’s WALL*E is being used to promote an awful lot of consumer products.
One tie-in in particular is rankling Greenpeace. It seems that the lovable robot’s image has popped up on boxes of Kleenex, a product the activist group has criticized with a “Kleercut” campaign that asserts, “it takes 90 years to grow a box of Kleenex” because the product’s manufacturer Kimberly-Clark “all but refuses to use recycled paper in its products.” (Among other things, they’re trying to get parents and teachers to reject the company’s tissues in classrooms.) [Read more →]
By John DeFore
Mitsubishi Electric announced Wednesday that it will quadruple its capability to produce solar cells, jumping from the 150 megawatts it currently produces each year to an annual 600MW capacity by 2012 — a more ambitious goal than its previously stated one to get to 500 MW by 2013. Current production levels are already triple what they were four years ago. [Read more →]
Residents of the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area will again get a chance to trade in their pollution-emitting old clunker for a newer, less polluting car with the help of state money.
The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) reports that it has about $12 million for the second year of the AirCheckTexas Drive a Clean Machine campaign, which began taking applications in mid-August. [Read more →]
