Get involved in Earth Day this year by pledging an Act of Green – Earthday.org is hoping to get one billion people across the world pledging to help save their world!
Learn why it is so important to recycle your old cell phone rather than just throwing it in the garbage…
Is buying a Toyota Prius really good for the environment or is it all just misleading hype?
It’s not too late to get involved in Earth Day, beyond just clicking the Google header and seeing what it says about this holiday.
In fact, this year the folks at Earthday.org are running a special initiative, inspired by all of those pledge and goal-tracking websites. They’re calling it ‘A Billion Acts of Green‘, and the idea is to get a billion people to pledge to doing something – anything – out of their normal daily routine that is good for the environment.
Your household probably has a few old cell phones lying around in a drawer – old models that got replaced when you upgraded. Most of us have some kind of ‘electronics graveyard’ of ancient phones, fried iPods and dead digital cameras in our homes.
Well, here’s a little something you probably didn’t know about these gadgets:
Nearly all of them are manufactured using a substance called Coltan, or Columbite-tantalite. It is used to make many small electronics components, most notably the batteries. 80% of the world’s Coltan comes from the war-torn region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and I’m about to explain why you should do whatever you can to minimize your Coltan consumption.
There’s been no shortage of noise about the Toyota Prius. Is it as economical as they say? A couple of years ago the popular British motoring show Top Gear did a segment in which they took a Toyota Prius and drove it around their track, with a BMW M3 driving behind it. They drove it ‘as fast as possible’, but this doesn’t mean flooring it (which would eradicate the Prius’s fuel efficiency).
In fact, with all the twists and turns on that track it’s actually quite a good simulation of real-world driving. You do more braking and turning than accelerating, and probably never reach the kinds of speeds you would on the average motorway.
The result? The Prius managed a respectable 17.2mpg – still far short of its advertised 50mpg. The BMW M3 (a high-performance racing car) did 19.4mpg.
Now, this isn’t the whole story by far.
Yesterday my significant other brought home recycled toilet paper. It cost about $1.50 more than the regular stuff we buy (for 4 rolls). I’m usually all for recycled paper, but this struck me as a bit much. But it did get me thinking a little about how much it costs to live a greener lifestyle, and support producers of products like this.
I’m not just talking about how much more it costs to buy recycled goods or more environmentally-friendly products. Companies that make use of ‘green marketing’ strategies know that we will pay a premium for anything in green packaging. That’s not the issue here, because that’s a choice we’ve all made already.
We know that our recycled toilet paper and our bio-degradable garbage bags are more expensive than their standard counterparts, but this is a small price to pay for negating the environmental impact usually associated with producing these types of products.
The question I want to ask is this: what is the cost of producing something like recycled toilet paper, and are we actually doing the environment some good by buying these kinds of goods? What are the costs involved, quantifiable or not, in producing recycled toilet paper? More importantly, what is the difference in carbon footprint between the two?
A spike in the level of radioactive iodine present in the ocean near Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant has been detected. Experts say that the radiation levels are as much as 3,500 times the allowable limit, and that this represents a major danger to local inhabitants, as well as all local marine life.
The implications may be much further reaching, however. Radiation is dispersed easily by sea water, and there are risks that ocean currents may carry radiation particles around the world, affecting biospheres for thousands of miles in the direction of the currents.
The sample was taken only 300 metres out to sea from the Fukushima plant. The plant’s reactor cooling system was irreversibly damaged by the massive earthquake that hit Japan on March 11, and since then radiation has been leaking into the surrounding environment in the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Due to the elevated levels of radioactive iodine in the tap water of Tokyo – a problem attributed to a nuclear plant damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami- parents have been advised to NOT let their children drink it.
Radiation exceeding legal limits has now been found in 11 different types of vegetables and milk in prefectures surrounding the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This has caused a stoppage in the shipping of many different products.
There are many reasons to get the Kill A Watt to help you save energy at home, most importantly it will show you exactly how much energy you have been wasting day to day.
Here are just a few things this energy meter will tell you:
For those who are of the opinion that nature is the best place to be during those hot summer months, camping is their own personal slice of heaven. That is all fine and good but there are some pretty important tips for camping that should not been neglected, some of the most vital ones include cleaning up after yourself before you head home.
True vacationers should keep in mind that if we don’t tidy and take of everything before we leave the campground, it will soon be no longer good for that oh so special family trip. Camping safety is as important as anything else in life, so be sure to go prepared.
Here are some essential tips to clean up after your family trip to the woods:
CNN Editor’s note: Fisher Stevens is an actor, director and producer. He is a producer of “The Cove,” an Oscar-nominated film that won the best documentary award from the National Board of Review in 2009. He co-founded Naked Angels theater company in 1986 and co-founded GreeneStreet films in 1996.
(CNN) — Before I started working on the documentary “The Cove,” I assumed like many others that dolphins and orcas enjoyed living at Sea World and other marine parks. They always seemed to be smiling, jumping merrily around their tanks, eager to put on a show for human spectators.
From CNN: The U.N.’s leading panel on climate change has apologized for misleading data published in a 2007 report that warned Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.
In a statement released Wednesday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said estimates relating to the rate of recession of the Himalayan glaciers in its Fourth Assessment Report were “poorly substantiated” adding that “well-established standards of evidence were not applied properly.”
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