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.
The smell of autumn permeates the air. The cool, crisp weather signals fall’s annual crimson-colored foliage. For many an avid lawn keeper, the harvest season often means returning to the never-ending chore of raking and bagging leaves, then setting them at curbside for the weekly garbage haul-off. But stop right there.
Leaves are packed full of nutrients! Under normal growing conditions — with varied values, based on the source and condition of each tree — leaves are jam-packed with nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese, chloride, boron, iron, sodium, copper, and zinc. To simply rake and bag them up, only to be hauled off to the garbage landfill is a total waste of nature’s vast supply of rich nutrients, perfect for replenishing the soil.
So how do you go green in the fall? Start the process by not throwing away your leaves. There are alternatives. Mowing leaves, then mulching, and composting are the most effective way to reuse and recycle leaf mixtures. In addition, leaves can be used for overall soil improvement, directly working them into garden and flowerbed soils by tilling them in.
Master Gardener Beth Finlay, of Berks County, Pa., educated through the Penn State University Master Gardener Program, is an avid-promoter of mulching and composting autumn’s treasures.
[Read more →]Tags: Cut Consumption · Home/Garden · Organics · Trees/Plants/Yard
By Julie Bonnin
There are many reasons to grow your own food, and recent unresolved food safety concerns about summer favorites like tomatoes and cilantro, the official herb of Tex-Mex cooking – are likely to have more folks 
cultivating an interest in growing edible plants.
Herbs are the perfect entry-level plant for first-time food growers. Given the right conditions and a minimum of care, they’re quite easy to grow, even if your outdoor space is limited to a small patio.
There are many more fringe benefits — the taste and scent of fresh herbs can’t be beat. You’ll never again pay grocery store prices for a bunch of past-their-prime herbs. Often those prices are only a little less than you’d pay for the plant itself, though growing your own, you will have to invest in pots, good soil and a few other necessities, as well as make a small investment in time.
But perhaps the biggest advantage of growing herbs is what people have known for centuries – that they have considerable health benefits to give.
[Read more →]Tags: Food · Home/Garden · Organics · Trees/Plants/Yard
By Nima Kapadia
Creating an alternative to the conventional, gasoline-powered lawn mower is “work of art” that has gotten the Neuton recognition at museums this summer.
Tags: Trees/Plants/Yard
If you’ve be
en wondering about all the buzz over honeybees, here is some food for thought – or rather some thought about food: Bees play a role in one out of every three bites of food Americans eat.
Pollinators, mainly bees, but also butterflies, songbirds and even bats, perform such a critical function in the food chain that their absence threatens everything from the viability of vast fields of commercial corn and other crops to the tomatoes in your garden. Without the bees and other pollinators, plants can fail to produce the fruits and seeds we eat.
Which is why a San Francisco-based group called the Pollinator Partnership has dedicated itself to the survival of pollinators — from hummingbirds to small mammals to the fragile and busiest pollinators of them all, the bees. Partnership members, along with beekeepers and researchers testified before Congress last week to lobby lawmakers for more funding to research the decline of many pollinators, particularly the loss of millions of bees around the world to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
[Read more →]Tags: Earth & Nature · Food · Model Projects · Nation · Trees/Plants/Yard · Wildlife
By Julie Bonnin
The last thing many homeowners may be thinking about when they yank the plug on their gas-powered lawnmower is their contribution to global warming and poor air quality.
Photo: Clean Air Gardening
Brill rotary mower
But as more and more people attempt to lessen the environmental footprint they leave behind, one of the first areas [...]
Tags: Cut Consumption · Trees/Plants/Yard
By Shermakaye Bass
and Barbara Kessler
There’s no doubt that community gardens, a tradition that first surfaced in the United States in the early 1900’s, are at the grassroots of today’s urban “buy local/grow local” movement. But today, in places as diverse as New York City and Madison, Wisc., community gardens are also a socio-cultural [...]
Tags: Food · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Model Projects · Organics · Trees/Plants/Yard
By John DeFore
While it may not be an answer to the mysterious collapse of certain honeybee colonies, researchers at the University of Virginia have identified one unusual threat to the continued well-being of pollinating insects and the flowers they love: Air pollution, they report in the journal Atmospheric Environment, is killing the scent of flowers.
Using [...]
Tags: Briefs · Food · Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Trees/Plants/Yard
By John DeFore
They claim not to have been inspired by anybody in particular, but it’s hard to imagine that childhood Disney ballads of Johnny Appleseed weren’t lurking somewhere in Grant Gardner’s and Matt Cortina’s heads when they decided, sitting in a New Jersey coffee shop in December of 2006, to travel the breadth [...]
Tags: Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Nation · Trees/Plants/Yard
By Barbara Kessler
After nine years, Mary Bakatsa’s garden is bearing fruit…and vegetables…and flowers…and herbs. It is a chorus of life, and supports more activity than even Mary imagined when she started gardening nearly 20 years ago with a few potted herbs.
Along with her flowers and veggies, which grow side by side, she has [...]
Tags: Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Organics · Trees/Plants/Yard · Xeriscape & Water
By Shermakaye Bass
Ah, the smell of freshly mown grass. It’s the smell of childhood, of school vacations and picnics and lying in the backyard, finding faces in clouds. No one will deny that plush turf is a big part of modern Americana. But the imported, “exotic” grasses of our childhoods, nostalgic and fragrant as they [...]
Tags: Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Greener Businesses · Organics · Trees/Plants/Yard · Xeriscape & Water
By Shermakaye Bass
To sort out which grasses to use and where, we consulted native grass expert Bill Neiman, head of operations and farming for Native American Seed in Junction, Texas. For much of the United States, he recommends “Native Sun Turfgrass,” a blend of 34 percent Blue Grama and 66 percent Buffalo grass created [...]
Tags: Green Enthusiasts/Researchers · Organics · Trees/Plants/Yard · Xeriscape & Water
By Barbara Kessler
Since the first hippie incurred the nickname “tree hugger,” there remains an inescapable (but not inconvenient) truth at the core of that label: Trees are still one of the best things you can cultivate if you want to green your particular piece of paradise. They gobble CO2, emit oxygen, provide cooling [...]
Tags: Briefs · Model Projects · Neighborhood · Schools/Colleges/Churches · Trees/Plants/Yard
Polar bears, penguins, pandas have become symbols of the fight to save wild places around the world and push back global warming.
According to conservationists meeting in Barcelona this week, they have a host of company. A broad assessment of the world’s mammals reveals an “extinction crisis” with nearly one-quarter of known mammal species at risk of disappearing forever due to habitat loss, pollution, global warming, over-hunting and food chain erosion.
The study, unveiled at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress, shows that 1,141 (and possibly nearly 2,000) of the world’s 5,487 mammals are known to be threatened with extinction.
Natural processes - or natural selection as Darwin termed it - accounts for some loss of species over time, and since the year 1500 at least 76 mammals have known to become extinct.
But the number of threatened species being pushed toward extinction today is skyrocketing due to human pressure on the planet’s resources, according to the IUCN, a network of scientists, conservationists, governments and policy organizations.
“Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live,” says Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN Director General, in a statement.
Recovery efforts and better data collection must begin in earnest to turn the tide, she said.
The report cited examples of several species that have been nurtured back from near extinction, such as the Wild Horse, which was listed as Extinct in the Wild in 1996 but brought back to Critically Endangered status since been reintroduced into the wild in Mongolia.
Overall, the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species identifies 44,838 total species worldwide in danger right now. (See a video of selected threatened species at this link.)
Of those, 16,928 - or about 38 percent are threatened with extinction. Of that number:
The IUCN has posted a photo galllery with case studies of affected animals to help people see some of the species being affected, such as the African Elephant, the Iberian Lynx and the Caspian Seal.
The project to assess the world’s mammals was conducted with help from 1,800 scientists from more than 130 countries. Collaborating institutions included Conservation International in Washington D.C., and unversities such as Sapienza Università di Roma, Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, University of Virginia, and the Zoological Society of London.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature brings together governments, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and companies to develop policies and best practices in the arena of conservation. The global network, based in Switzerland, includes more than 11,000 volunteer scientists and experts in more than 150 countries.
Some 7,000 experts work on the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.
Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media
Those who’ve tried The Blade say it works - though, so far, we’ve not met any of them. The purported fuel-conserving, emissions cleansing attachment for autos hit the market late last year amid kudos and 
celebrity endorsements (Sheryl Crow, Laura Dern and Ben Harper say it’s da bomb).
The simple tail-pipe attachment/filter is said to cut auto emissions by 57 percent, and greenhouse gases by six to 34 percent, depending on the model of your car. That makes the $200 price tag reasonable enough for the carbon-conscious.
But the fact that it can increase fuel economy up to five miles per gallon makes it attractive to just about every Joe and Jane Sixpack in the country. [Read more →]
By Tom Kessler
The battlefield cry “charge” is taking on new meanings. Portable fuel cell systems from SFC Smart Fuel Cell AG won first and third prizes in the U.S. Defense Department’s inaugural Wearable Power Competition, the DOD announced.
Nearly 170 designs competed in the event, which was established by Department of Defense Research and Engineering to “encourage innovation in energy systems carried by personnel during field missions.” The systems, attached to a military vest, were required to provide 20 watts of average electric power, have peak-power capability up to 200 watts and weigh no more than 8.8 pounds.
