Other than the intoxicating smell of new text books and notebooks, the familiar scents of back-to-school may be changing. Ammonia-scented hallways, newly sealed and fuming gym floors, odorously painted classrooms as well as lawns with the subtle scents of pesticide treatments, may be a thing of the past.

In today’s more environmentally conscious world, public and private schools are rethinking how they maintain their buildings. Reducing toxic chemicals in schools – as in our homes — is not only good for the environment, but for those who use these buildings.

In Maryland’s Montgomery County outside of Washington D.C., the public schools have long taken a pro-active approach in using non-toxic cleaners.

“We want our buildings to be clean and at the same time healthy for our students, faculty and the person doing the cleaning,” says Larry Hurd, building services trainer for the school district.

Ten years ago, the district, which oversees 200 schools, changed from an oil-based sealer for their wood gym floors to a water-based sealer. It works well, says Mr. Hurd, and toxins are no longer an issue. “The oil-based sealer was bad for the students and other visitors to our schools, but it was real, real bad for the person applying the sealer.” That person was exposed to the sealer fumes for as much as four hours. (more…)

Houston’s air quality and recycling rates may be nothing to brag about, but the city’s school district is among the country’s leaders in its commitment to building energy-efficient schools.

Walnut Bend Elementary, on the city’s southwest side, is one of the first of dozens of Houston Independent School District schools that will be built or retrofitted to meet LEED standards, the nationally accepted benchmark for design, operation and construction of high performance “green” buildings.

“We’re the largest employer in Houston, and we feel we have a responsibility to the environment,” says HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra. “We are teaching children, and that means we need to set an example of environmental stewardship that the children can follow.”

When Walnut Bend (pictured) opened last year, its teachers and students exulted in design touches that include hues from nature, terazzo floors embedded with scattered leaf imprints and lots of natural light. But it was the greening of this school that really sets it apart –- the drywall is guaranteed against mold and wind is powering the school’s electricity for at least the first two years. Chickens scratch and scurry in an enclosed courtyard nature center that includes vegetable plots and a fishpond. Wood and brick from the old Walnut Bend building were recycled and integrated into the sleek new construction. Mechanical and electrical systems are optimal performance, and plumbing fixtures and native landscaping are designed to conserve water. (more…)

Summer’s ending and school’s recommencing — and along with the sound of bells ringing comes the simultaneous groan of kids nationwide. But this year, more American students than ever will return from vacation to a new backdrop, a green schoolhouse.

Yep, the little red school-house of yesteryear is getting a redo, making way for a 21st-century incarnation. Of this country’s 100,000 private and public schools, approximately one a day are now registering for LEED certification, according to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

These little green schoolhouses still teach the “Three R’s” (reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic), but they’ve added three more – “Reduce, Recycle, Reuse.” And they’re doing it not just through energy-efficient building principles or water-conserving whiz-bangs, but through curricula, community-outreach projects, cafeterias, landscaping, new buses and transportation policies. One school in Oregon, Clackamas High School, has a city-wide cellphone battery recycling program and last year planted its own orchard.

The greening of America’s schools is a phenomenon to behold. Less than four years ago, Arizona and Washington state were two of the first to require all new public building construction meet LEED Silver requirements. Now dozens of states have green ground rules for schools. New York prohibits the use of non-green cleaners, while its neighbor New Jersey has mandated that all new schools be built to LEED specs. The 58 member schools of the Kentucky Green and Healthy Schools Program marked the project’s first anniversary this year (Kentucky made national news when it banned the sale of non-cafeteria foods on campus a couple of years ago). (more…)

This coming Labor Day Weekend, San Francisco will celebrate the intersection of taste, sustainability and social justice that is the Slow Food movement. Non-profit educational organization Slow Food USA is throwing a four-day party they’re calling Slow Food Nation.

SFN’s Executive Director Anya Fernald hopes the debut event, expected to draw some 50,000 people, will reach out beyond the obvious coalition of foodies, health-nuts and environmentalists to, “build momentum and demand for an American food system that is safer, healthier and more socially just.” Highlights of the festival, which runs Friday through Monday, will include the:

• “Slow Food Rocks” concert, serving up not only Gnarls Barkley and the New Pornographers but gourmet beer and locally-grown and locally-produced food;

• 50,000 square feet of “taste pavilions” for which nationally-recognized regional food experts have hand-picked authentic gastronomic specialities from every state;

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Marin County dairy farmer Albert Straus started moving toward a “slower” way of doing business back in 1994, when his family-owned farm, Straus Family Creamery, became the only organic dairy west of the Mississippi.

Straus, whose organic ice cream will be scooped out at the Ice Cream Pavilion at Slow Food Nation, has been producing organic milk, yogurt, butter and ice cream under the family name ever since. Straus grew up on his father’s conventional dairy farm in Marshall, California, a town so small it had a one-room schoolhouse, on the shores of Tomales Bay in western Marin County, 60 miles north of San Francisco. He joined the farm as a partner in 1977 and made the risky, but prescient decision to transition the operation from conventional to organic in the early 1990s.

“Someone approached me about doing organic milk for ice cream,” Straus said in an interview in a makeshift conference room above his dairy. “I had no clue what it was. It took me three-and-a-half years to figure out what “organic” meant. No one else was doing it. There was one small co-op in Wisconsin, Organic Valley, but that was it.” (more…)

There are already undeniable legacies of the 2008 Olympic Games: eight gold medals hanging around U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps’ neck, for instance, or the otherworldly sprint that helped Jamaican runner Usain Bolt break Michael Johnson’s record in the men’s 100 meter race. There are visual reminders, as well; the Olympic pavilions, Bird’s Nest and Water Cube will remain a part of central Beijing life for decades.

Perhaps the most crucial legacy, however, is yet to be played out. As hotels empty, athletes and television crews return to their home countries, and Beijing goes back to a life more sheltered from the world, the lingering question is this: Will the enormous and by most accounts successful efforts to reduce the city’s pollution during the Olympic games continue in some fashion, improving life for those who live there and reducing the city’s footprint on the global environment?

“Beijing will be built into a livable city,” said Du Shaozhong, deputy head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau in a press conference the day before closing ceremonies.

“We will take some new measures to ensure that air quality will reach a new level after the Olympic Games,” he said. “Whether it is automobile emissions reduction, or construction site dust reduction or coal pollution reduction, I believe that the requirements will be more stringent.” (more…)

Hazardous chemicals are on hiatus, bottled water is out and bikes are in at the Democratic Convention in Denver, where organizers are seizing the opportunity to green the festivities this week.

As some 10,000 delegates, volunteers, politicos and media people converge on the Mile High city, they’ll be quenching their thirst at “hydration stations” or water fountains serving Denver tap water (inside and outside the Pepsi Center) instead of grabbing the once ubiquitous and landfill-clogging plastic water bottles that have been the norm at big gatherings.

Yes, what’s old is new again, and conventioneers have already been drinking from the well, so to speak, at weekend events where the non-profit water utility Denver Water provided a truck of chilled agua to refill water bottles. The new approach has been “incredibly well received” by those attending the pre-Convention activities, said Donna Pacetti, the local government conservation coordinator with Denver Water. “They love it. It’s cold water. We keep it chilled so it comes out at about 38-40 degrees.”

Convention goers also will find themselves with another back-to-basics choice, with 1,000 bicycles available free-of-charge for short carbon-free hops around top, courtesy of Humana and the Bikes Belong Coalition. (more…)

Well, slap us with a ruler, it’s time once again to hunt down school supplies, to elbow into the desperate mob with our mandates to secure a thousand pens, pencils, highlighters, fine tip Sharpies, binders and the mysterious “folders with brads.”

With the eco news streaming like ticker tape from the big office stores this year, we thought it would be an easy assignment to find what we needed in recycled versions. We were surprised that this was not the case. The stores we sampled (Office Depot, Office Max and Target) offered only a handful of green notebooks and non-toxic pens. At Office Depot we nearly struck out, looking in vain for recycled filler paper, reasonably priced eco-responsible spiral notepads and pencils made from post-consumer waste. We did spot a reusable shopping bag at the checkout line. But we had only a lone green item, Ticonderoga EnviroStik pencils, to put in it!

Tired of combat crawling through towering stacks of un-green paper and binders, we turned the Internet. Aha! Here we found much greener pastures. Online, even the Big Box stores that had failed us in person had the environmentally good goods. Go figure. Serves us right for expending $4 gasoline to search out environmentally friendly products. Our findings, and a powerfully definitive list it is:
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Some of the largest cities in the U.S., including New York, Las Vegas and New Orleans, have agreed to measure and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions to better understand the potential risks and opportunities associated with climate change.

Thirty cities in all will participate in the pilot program coordinated by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and the International Council on Local Environment Initiative (ICLEI) Local Government for Sustainability. (more…)

Nevada Senator Harry Reid joined forces this week with former President Bill Clinton, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Texas oilman-turned-wind-advocate T. Boone Pickens and other notables at the University of Nevada/Las Vegas for the National Clean Energy Summit. (more…)

Pushed by the dwindling prospects for fossil fuels, the auto industry is undergoing changes not seen since the days of Henry Ford. Today’s innovators aren’t just looking to gear up production, they’re trying to dial back energy use, and that’s produced a bumper crop of wild and wacky (and some not so wacky) concept cars.

Here are eight of our favorites:

Air Car

It would cost less to manufacture (and buy), less to maintain, less to fuel and there would be no emissions. The makers of this car, Air Car Factories, are either on drugs or they’ve seized the Holy Grail. Their car would run on compressed air collected by see-saw devices on the road. Each car would be refueled through regenerative driving. The Barcelona-based company expects to begin with electric models, until testing is completed on the Air Car. A green dream? We hope it’s a reality.

Nike ONE

That’s right. This is a car designed by a shoe maker. It doesn’t much look like a shoe. More like…nothing you’ve seen before. The car is intended to be “athletic.” No joke. “An athlete training to drive the Nike ONE uses a physical resistance simulator, that mimics the vehicle’s controls, along with the digital simulation within GT4 to train their muscles and mind for specific tracks and competition scenarios,” explains Phil Frank, lead designer, who said his team was inspired by the principals of Nike founder Bill Bowerman. The long term plan is that any movement by the driver would be converted into electricity through nanotechnology using a “Spark Suit.” Frank calls it “the ultimate in convergent technologies.” We agree. (more…)

Buying something new may not be the soul of environmentalism, but of course some products are greener than others, and rare is the eco-extremist who buys nothing at all. So it’s no surprise to see a crowded marketplace in the corner of Amazon.com devoted to Earth-friendly goods. (more…)