GreenPlan Philadelphia -- A planning project to help provide a long-term, sustainable road map for using, acquiring, developing, funding, and managing open space in the city’s neighborhoods.
Philadelphia Sustainability Awards -- The awards celebrate Greater Philadelphia's environmental innovation, economic development and vibrant communities.
Pennsylvania Buy Fresh Buy Local-- Organization creates food guides, coordinate tasting events, organize farmers' markets and sponsor farm tours, among other activities.
PhillyCarShare --A non-profit organization that provides members with access to a fleet of vehicles on an hourly basis.
Philadelphia Green: The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society -- A not-for-profit membership organization that provides events, activities and publications for novice gardeners, experienced horticulturists, and flower lovers of all ages.
As debates about climate change — does it exist and how serious is it? – rage on, many scientists continue to uncover more and more evidence that atmospheric pollution is having negative effects on Earth, right here and now, climate change or not.
Scientists studying the chemistry of lakes reported in a study published this week that atmospheric nitrogen released from the burning of fossil fuels and the widespread use of fertilizers in agriculture is altering the makeup of even remote bodies of water.
[caption id="attachment_6418" align="alignright" width="199" caption="Green Lake 5 in Colorado (Photo: James Elser/ASU) "][/caption]
Exxon-Mobil Corporation, the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Denver to violating the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) in five states during the past five years, the Justice Department announced.
The company has agreed to pay fines and community service payments totaling $600,000 and will implement an environmental compliance plan over the next three years aimed at preventing bird deaths on the company’s facilities in the affected states. According to papers filed in court, the company has already spent over $2.5 million to begin implementation of the plan.
Green-minded visitors to northern Colorado should consider a tour of the New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins. New Belgium, best known for its Fat Tire Amber Ale brand, is one of the most environmentally progressive breweries in the world. The brewery has used wind-powered electricity since 1999, and green-design methods have been incorporated throughout the company. I visited the headquarters on a recent trip and discovered that many aspects of company life are dedicated to sustainability.
New Belgium sponsors a charity bike-and-music event called “Tour de Fat” in eleven cities in the United States, including Austin, Chicago, Minneapolis and Portland, that encourages people to trade their car for a bike, at least for a day. At Tour de Fat events, beer is served in compostable cups, and performers take to a solar-powered stage. (A Tour de Fat schedule is online.)
The old-fashioned American road trip — packing the kids up and driving from one motor lodge to the next — may seem less than 100% wholesome these days, what with eco-conscious drivers becoming as sensitive to the amount of CO2 they’re generating as they are to cries of “are we there yet?” from the back seat.
But getting out into the natural world remains one of the best ways to introduce children — and city-dwelling adults, for that matter — to the environment we all want to preserve. And a well planned road trip can provide vacationers with an array of views and experiences that’s stunning enough to make a phrase like “ecosystem diversity” suddenly sound like a tangible good worth fighting for instead of a dry academic concern.
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.
I work for Metro Solar, a solar thermal and photovoltaic installation and service company. We specialize in solar thermal heating and high efficiency boiler systems, but also install PV (photovoltaics). Since we are one of the few companies that service old systems, the majority of the work I do is in this area. There were many solar thermal systems installed in the Denver area back in the ‘80s and Metro Solar has stayed in business maintaining these systems during the last three decades. Now that there is a renewed interested in solar we are starting to install new systems.
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.
Drill, baby, drill may be what’s on the minds of gas companies, but if you’re a landowner of a potential gas site, you probably have a lot of questions.
Thanks to a new software application that’s being test marketed by MIT, landowners may now extract data to see if the gas companies’ proposals to drill are fair and safe. The software tool, called the Landman Report Card (LRC), will help landowners in any state navigate the government and corporate databases, as well as get feedback from other landowners who’ve been in similar situations. And they can do all this before agreeing to a drilling contract.
The term “land man” refers to an oil company representative who often times shows up on the doorstep of unsuspecting property owners who’ve been targeted as having prospective drill sites.
“People often will sign the day the land man shows up at the door,” says MIT professor Chris Csikszentmihalyi. “There are lots of negotiations that people can do, that they often don’t know they can.”
Csikszentmihalyi , co-director of MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media, and Sara Wylie, a grad student in the Science , Technology and Society Program, are the directors of the Landman Report Card project, which is coming to fruition just as natural gas exploration in America gains traction as a potential energy source that doesn’t rely on foreign oil — affecting land and homeowners from New York to Texas to the Rocky Mountains states.
If skiing or snowboarding is your brood’s idea of the perfect family vacation, then ask yourself: What could make it even “more” perfect?
Powdery white slopes and alpine valleys? Maybe a white Christmas? Chances are when you think of skiing, you think of things white, not green. But the green-ski movement, prompted by U.S. groups like the Ski Area Citizens Coalition (SACC), an outgrowth of nonprofit Colorado Wild, and National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) “Sustainable Slopes” program, is changing that – little by little.
A fairly young endeavor (SACC started in 1999; Sustainable Slopes in 2000), the movement’s emergence reminds us that as healthy and nature-loving as this sport might be, it hasn’t been known for its environmental sensitivity.
An overwhelming 86 percent of Coloradoans want to limit subsidies for oil shale production and hault new coal-fired power plants, according to a newly released poll.
The survey of 600 Colorado adults conducted by Opinion Research Corporation also found support for
federal and state investment in wind and solar energy, enhanced energy efficiency, and highly fuel-efficient vehicles. The study was conducted for TheCLEAN.org and the Civil Society Institute, and was released by Western Colorado Congress, a community action alliance focused protecting and enhancing the quality of life in western Colorado.
By Tom Kessler
Colorado developers have announced what they say is the country’s largest net-zero energy, master-planned community in Arvada, Colo., a suburb of Denver. Geos Neighborhood, which will begin infrastructure construction this fall, will feature 250 residences and can generate enough renewable energy to supply 100 percent of the annual energy needs of the entire [...]
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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.
