NYC.gov Environment -- Information on water, air quality, recycling and more.
plaNYC -- Official government site for making NYC a sustainable city,
Hudson River Foundation -- Supports scientific research and the management of the Hudson ecosystem.
New York City Environmental Fund -- Fosters active community stewardship of waterways, shorelines, parklands and open spaces in and around New York City.
The Council on the Environment of NYC -- A non-profit dedicated to greening neighborhoods, creating environmental leaders of the future, promoting waste prevention and recycling, and running the largest farmers market program in the country.
If it feels like you are finding a new phonebook on your door step every week and yet, you can’t remember the last time you opened one to get a number, listen up. The industry may be walking away, albeit in baby steps, from its paper-wasting ways.
These days there are multiple ways to get a phone number without having to thumb through a directory. With sites like www.yellowpages.com and www.superpages.com many people are turning away from print phone books and using online versions. There are even free phonebook applications for phones such as the iPhone and Blackberrys.
Sustainability and nature appreciation walk hand in hand. But surprisingly, there are still just a few U.S. vacation venues lodged lightly in nature’s embrace. If you want to “go green” you can camp out all over North America, but you can’t necessarily find a hotel that hugs the woods (or the beach) and boasts full green credentials and white linen service.
Here are a handful of green getaways that nestle nature, but don’t necessarily involve nesting with nature. We set the bar fairly low, requiring that these hotels have mattresses, hot food, indoor showers, and a LEED rating of some sort. We begin with Callaway Gardens, a great place to enjoy a respite from urban hustle amid botanical delights.
Odwalla is continuing its successful plant-a-tree program by donating $100,000 worth of trees to be planted in state parks in California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Utah, Ohio, Texas, Maryland, Michigan and Virginia.
Visitors to www.parkvisitor.com/odwalla can choose their preferred state to receive a tree — no contribution or registration is required. The trees will be used to support important reforestation and planting initiatives across the country.
Rendering: Kitson & Partners This rendering of the Babcock Ranch project shows the solar panels and green roofs that will be used to manage energy needs.
From Green Right Now Reports
Real estate developer Kitson & Partners today announced an agreement with electric utility Florida Power & Light to build a large solar photovoltaic power plant at Babcock Ranch, Fla. – making it the “world’s first city powered by solar energy.”
Kitson & Partners said the 17,000-acre city of Babcock Ranch will consume less power than the proposed FPL on-site solar facilities will produce. The city also will be integrated with a “smart grid” that will provide greater efficiencies and allow residents and businesses to monitor and control their energy consumption.
A softening economy and a milder-than-usual winter contributed to a decline in carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants in 2008, according to a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project.
EIP officials noted that the decrease is a departure from the recent trends, with power plant carbon dioxide emissions having risen 0.9 percent since 2003, and 4.5 percent since 1998, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Seeking to show that proposed new U.S. coal plants would exact a high environmental toll even beyond their carbon air pollution, the Natural Resources Defense Council issued a list today of the states that would bear the greatest burden from coal waste.
Texas, with eight proposed plants, topped the NRDC’s “Filthy 15″ list. It was followed by South Dakota, Florida, Nevada and Montana, Illinois, South Carolina, Ohio, Wyoming, Michigan, Kentucky, Missouri , Wisconsin, Georgia and West Virginia.
Those states have 54 proposed coal plants awaiting permitting. Across the nation, there are 80 proposed plants that would dump an estimated 18 million tons of dangerous coal combustion waste annually into various dump sites, largely unmonitored by the federal government.
Here is the Natural Resources Defense Council’s list of the 15 states that would be the biggest polluters — the “Filthy 15” — based on their total of 54 planned coal plants that create nearly 14 million tons of dangerous waste (state; number of proposed plants; estimated coal ash waste in tons):
Recycling. It works for campaign slogans. Now the government of Florida figures it can work for those accumulating campaign signs as well.
The state is encouraging local entities to come up with innovative plans in hopes of recycling 75% of the signs that line local lanes and thoroughfares in the run up to the election Nov. 4, according to the Environmental News Service.
By encouraging candidates and citizens to recycle the signs instead of trashing them, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection will be working toward its mandate to reduce waste heading for landfills by 75 percent by 2020.
Odwalla is continuing its successful plant-a-tree program by donating $100,000 worth of trees to be planted in state parks in California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Utah, Ohio, Texas, Maryland, Michigan and Virginia.
