This week is Carnival of the Green #186 and it's being hosted by Conserve Plastic Bags, an informative blog whose goal is to raise public awareness on the consumption of plastic bags. Since it's inception (which began as a class project), it has since evolved to include content about a multitude of other current environmental issues as well. So head on over to this week's Carnival, which includes a round up of green news and events from the past week, submitted by other bloggers and ...
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"Jacobs says this landscaping requires no mowing, no edging and no weekly maintenance, just a little weeding and trimming about once per month." Image credit:KPBS, Angela Carone Cut the grass will you?...Are you done edging?....Time to water the grass...Grass is too long!...Feed the grass...Grass is too high. Suburban US teens of an earlier generation will remember hearing these very expressions, having grown up with acres of the Kentucky blue. Now it's pretty much the landscaping service that gets an earfull. Things are changing, though, in places where water is increasingly scarce and costly. Cali...
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photo: Ishikawa Ken via flick With the American Clean Energy and Security Act set to go before a vote in the House later today, and expected to pass, many in the environmental community have taken the position represented by the NRDC, that we need to pass the bill and that it's a (small) step forward. Only a few voices, such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, are saying what I think many ...
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(Screenshot of the YouTube video showing the protest in "thongs" in Tel Aviv). Hot bodies alert! You heard it right. Clothing was optional as Tel Aviv cyclists and roller bladers protested against lack of bike legislation in thongs, and other combinations of underwear (or lack of underwear). Protesting a helmet law, the cyclists used the forum to balk about the lack of government support for cycling as a form of transportation. The streets of cities like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are blocked with congestion and stuffed up with pollution. Putting their bodies in front of the l...
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Turkey is building a plant to make power from chicken poop, but is still struggling to ease traffic congestion in its largest city. Photos by Darin Barry (left) and neoprolog via Flickr. Life usually slows down a bit for the summer in Istanbul, as the rise in temperatures and influx of tourists drive people away to the beach, or at least up to rooftop terraces or out to their stoops to while away the muggy days. But things are still popping on the environmental front as we once again wrap up some of the month's eco-news ...
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US Department of Interior, Secretary Ken Salazar, with members of the Youth Conservation Corps. Image credit:Jackie Ostfeld, Sierra Club staff. This scares me: Kids get outside 50% less today than they did 20 years ago, and if they’re not being taught to explore, enjoy, and protect wilderness and wildlife habitat - then who will take that on 20 years from now? Who will fight for protections in courtrooms and Congress? Turns out that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is bothered by this situation, too. That’s why on Monday, when the Obama administration - led by the First Lady - rolled out United We Serve, Salazar set...
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To Robin Chase, parked cars and solo drivers just look like a great big mess of wasted capacity. It’s this kind of thinking that inspired her to start Zipcar (now the world’s largest carsharing company), and GoLoco, the Facebook of ridesharing. It’s also the kind of thinking that got her invited to speak at TED and put her on 
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Photo Courtesy of Neatorama Next time you're home, look around your closet. Your attic. How many pairs of jeans do you have there, unworn for months, years, decades even? I have four. Aside from the ones you keep for "some day" when you're skinny again or returning to fat, which ones of those could go? And where should they go? I'm betting your first thought was Salvation Army or some local version of such a thing. A commendable thought, but there's a...
Image credit: Marjukka Grover Because Water is so Vital, Even Enemies Can Find Common Ground There's no doubt that as our climate gets weirder, the world will increasingly face a severe 