Israel, Eco Oasis

Israel, a small desert nation nestled in the heart of the Middle East, is providing a shining example of how environmental awareness, ecological innovation and sustainable development can blossom, even in an environment that can be harsh and unforgiving.

Despite being a tiny country with limited water and resources, Israelis are showing again and again their commitment to working with nature and developing technologies and setting standards that use resources sustainably and ecologically.

From the private sector to nonprofits to the government, there are inspiring projects underway in Israel in many arenas including sustainable building, recycling programs, water purification systems and ecological electricity production.


Developments such as the currently under-construction Eco Tower, which will be the first “green” office tower in Tel Aviv are setting the standard for sustainable building worldwide .

The eco office tower is being built under principles of using as much recycled and recyclable materials from sustainable sources as possible, utilizing solar power and water saving and recycling.

The tower will have a clearly marked separate plumbing system for recycled water that will be used to flush toilets as well as for watering the two gardens that will be an integral part of the green building design. This system alone is estimated to reduce water usage by 13,000 liters every day.

Infrared taps, humidity control and water-saving toilets are also being installed in the building to help reduce water consumption. With such a strong focus on water-saving, it is estimated that the tower will save over four million liters of water each year, when compared to equivalent office buildings in Israel.

An extensive array of photovoltaic panels will be installed on the roof of the office tower to supply the building’s electricity needs, with additional power potentially to be generated by wind turbines. To reduce the building’s electricity requirements, the tower has been designed with power-saving in mind.

Air conditioning use will be reduced due to windows being made from locally-produced insulated, recycled glass that allows almost two-thirds of natural light to pass through while reflecting more than a quarter of the sun’s heat – a vital consideration in the hot, dry climate of Israel. Read Full Story



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The Red White and "Green" , an Eco-Friendly 4th of July

 With July 4th just around the corner what better time to get this message out to everyone that caring about the environment is patriotic.

Independence Day, one of the highlights of the summer in the United States, brings to mind flags, parades, fireworks, and of course barbeques.


The 4th of July BBQ is a time-honored tradition, one that in addition to food, fun and fireworks can have negative impacts on the environment.

Fortunately, there many things we can do to help minimize these environmental impacts, while still honoring our nation’s independence.

Here are some tips for greening your 4th of July BBQ, or any other outdoor gathering.

1. Bring a cup: Many of us break out plastic and paper cups at BBQ's to cut down on cleanup and ensure there are enough cups for all the guests. Instead of relying on one-time-use materials that end up taking up space in landfills,  – have your guests bring their favorite cup to use for the duration of the party. You cut down on waste, and everyone knows which cup belongs to them.

2. Buy local: You can have a more environmentally friendly barbeque simply by buying locally-grown foods. In addition to supporting the local economy, you avoid contributing to the carbon emissions that are generated by trucks, trains, and boats that bring food from far-off places.

3. Living decorations: If you like to display flowers on the tables at your events, consider using live, potted plants instead. When the party is over, you can keep the plants at home, and they in turn help the planet by filtering carbon dioxide and producing oxygen for us to breathe.

4. Use recycled paper products: Let’s face it, paper plates and napkins are a lot easier to use for an outdoor event. However, we can still be green by looking for plates made from recycled paper products. In addition to reducing the amount of waste in landfills, recycled products typically take a lot less energy to produce than new products.

5. Encourage volunteerism: Since everyone’s outside enjoying the day anyway, why not do something that will make you feel better about yourself. Encourage your friends and family to spend part of your time together volunteering. For example, get together with your friends and neighbors to clean up a local park or other area – a little light work on a hot summer’s day makes the burgers and beer taste that much better!

6. Buy in bulk: When stocking up for your BBQ bash, consider buying items in bulk if possible. Things like large boxes of utensils and large bottles of soda actually use less packaging materials than smaller, individually packaged items.

7. Don’t sweat it: There’s no need to bake your guests or spend money and energy cramming people into an air-conditioned house. Try scheduling your BBQ for a cooler, more comfortable time of day such as dusk.

8. Carpooling isn’t just for work: If you have a lot of people coming, encourage them to carpool when possible. It’s especially easy for guests that live near each other to share a ride and save gas and emissions in the process.


Using Eco-friendly Forest Stewardship Council certified charcoals means that no trees in endangered woodlands are cut to produce the charcoal for your 4th of July BBQ.  It also means that fewer greenhouse gases  are emitted when your charcoal burns and that no unhealthy additives are released into the air or onto your food during your Fourth of July grilling.

Look for brands of charcoal that are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Cowboy Charcoal, a natural lump charcoal,  is FSC certified. 

Cowboy Charcoal produces a cleaner-tasting food with out a petroleum after taste. It also produces fewer ashes so clean up is easier too.

Don't Forget:  If you're serving bottled or canned beverages, be sure to put out clearly marked recycling bins.

So use these Eco-Friendly Fourth of July ideas to make your red, white and blue cook out a little greener.





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Extreme Recycling

Looking to recycle in a new way!






Chase and Cane from 3Run.co.uk use their skills to help recycle!!
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Turning Green Into Green

Everyone knows the familiar “reduce, reuse, and recycle” concept by now, but most people still have not moved past this most basic “greening” of their home and life onto other methods to help the planet.              Turn Green into Green.
We have compiled a short list of other easy ways to live more sustainably, as well as save you some “green” in your wallet. We hope you will try out one or more of these community based strategies to benefit the environment and keep you on budget in this struggling economy. 




Bartering
Bartering is the age old practice of trading something you already have for something else you don’t have. It is what you can do to get what you want without any money. Some people trade items, such as fish for apples for example, but others trade for less tangible things, such as time spent gardening for time spent babysitting, which is referred to as time dollar credits. Barter exchange is another way you can recycle your old belongings that you no longer use to get something that you do need without being wasteful. It helps save you money since you aren’t spending your cash on something new.


Carpooling
Everyone knows what carpooling is, but it seemed like the practice had tapered off in the past decade until the current economic downturn. Now ride-shares are coming back in popularity both in part to help combat global warming by reducing carbon emissions and to save money on gas. You can usually find a coworker to carpool with at your place of employment, but you can also look on local community boards or forums. Splitting the cost of gas and taking extra cars off the road will help everyone breathe easier. If you can’t find someone to carpool with, leave your car at home and take your local public transportation. There are usually many opportunities for carpooling and ride-shares in larger cities if you look for them.

Rain Barrels
Rain barrels are what they sound like: barrels that catch and store rainwater. With the demands on the world’s fresh water supply increasing every day, you might wonder what you can do to help conserve water in your own home. Installing a rain barrel is just one thing you could do that makes sense and would cut down on your water bill. Initially, it will cost you money for the supplies (and possibly installation), but it is something you will use for years. Rainwater is diverted from the downspout of your gutter into a plastic or wooden barrel and then used to water your garden or lawn during the summer. It makes the most sense to install one right before the spring rains come so you will have a full barrel to use over the summer when droughts can cause water utilities to raise their rates.

Meal Exchange
With some planning and coordination, you can create a meal exchange with a group of friends, coworkers or neighbors. In a meal exchange, each family only cooks one large meal a week for everyone in the group, and then portions off and trades meals with the other families. This means your family gets to eat a different meal cooked by each family every night. The end result is that you save time by only having to cook one meal a week, you save money by buying in bulk and not having to buy groceries for multiple meals, and you build community with the other families in the exchange. It is good for the environment as well because you end up going out to eat less when you already have food prepared at home, which saves on carbon emissions from driving and food packaging from going into a landfill.

Community Tool Sheds
A community tool shed is exactly that – people in the neighborhood share their tools in a central location for other neighbors to borrow and use. It allows you to borrow a tool you need for a project instead of having to go out and buy a new power tool that will just collect dust after you complete the work. You will save money on tools and help save resources. A community tool shed also provides the opportunity to organize a neighborhood home improvement team where a group of neighbors help one another do repair work on each other’s homes. By working together, the projects will get finished sooner, everyone will save money by not hiring workers, and the neighborhood overall benefits by becoming a closer community and raising home values.

We hope these suggestions have been useful in helping the “green” in your bank grow along with expanding your knowledge of other creative ways to help the environment and build community.

…And please remember that every little thing each of you does will help!
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Trash To Energy

When it comes to environmental discussion, waste management is an environmental concern that many feel needs to be addressed. Many also feel that clean energy innovations are needed to ensure a greener earth. Yet, what many fail to realize is that the solution to the garbage and clean energy problem may be garbage itself.

Denmark has installed a number of garbage plants that take trash and make it into energy. These plants are at the forefront of waste/energy technology. How they operate is that the waste taken into the plant is incinerated which creates heat that generates steam for a turbine that goes on to run generators that create electricity and even heat. Statistics have shown that plants like the ones in Denmark, while creating new forms of energy, also help to cut down on waste caused emissions. 0.56 metric tons of CO2 is emitted from these conversion plants, which is considerably smaller than the 3.35 metric tons of CO2 that is emitted from landfills. Denmark has shown that there are other answers to waste problem than the common practice of landfills, but some countries like the United States are still hesitate to make the change.

There are over 13,000 active and inactive landfills in the United States alone. These landfills make up 54% of the nation's waste management, which compared to the 4% in Denmark shows the differences in the way garbage is taken care of between the two countries. The negatives of landfills are that they take up space, have been known to leak toxins, and have almost six times the emission rate than that of trash energy plants. So what is stopping the United States from embracing the change? Well, it may be coming from an unlikely opponent: environmentalists.

Some environmentalists feel that incinerators, even ones that help to create energy, are counterproductive to the cause. In their opinion, incinerators promote a waste culture instead of a culture based around recycling. Yet, many American organizations like the Clinton Global Initiative (an international aid and philanthropy organization started by former President Clinton and advisor Doug Band back in 2005) see carbon emissions as the true environmental problem regardless of where it comes from. This is why CGI has worked tirelessly to create green initiatives that cut down on CO2 emissions.

What the waste conversion plants in Denmark have shown is that there are plenty of solutions to environment worries around the world waiting to be utilized. The United States may not be eager to join just yet, but the victory is that the world is thinking of ways to create cleaner energy even if it's from a trashy source.

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Wal-Mart Goes Green: The World's First Quintuple Play

Watching baseball's first quadruple play was strange. Seeing Wal-Mart (WMT) go green is stranger still. First the baseball: The scene was a game of T-Ball, where everyone bats every inning, regardless of the number of outs. The bases were loaded when a line drive ended up in the glove of the pitcher. While he wondered how it got there, all the runners took off without tagging up. The pitcher ran to third, then second, then first. We kept counting the number of outs and they did not add up. First in our heads: That doesn't make sense. Then on our hand: That's crazy. Then our other hand: It kept adding up to four outs. It took us a while to believe what we saw right in front of us.

And now Wal-Mart, the original Black Hat, is going green. Or better said, sustainable. Let that sink in because it is true. Big time.  So much so that Treehugger.com says it "could end up being one of the biggest motivators to make truly 'green' products ever."
As in history of the world. Wal-Mart has made believers out of not just the biggest environmental organizations in the world -- like the Environmental Defense Fund and the World Wildlife Federation -- but also Wal-Mart's suppliers.
It started five years ago when Wal-Mart announced three goals:
1) 100 percent renewable energy;
2) Zero waste;
3) Sustainable products.

Wal-Mart stores have already gone sustainable on dozens of fronts from shipping to selling to storing to recycling. Last year, Wal-Mart saved 4.8 billion plastic shopping bags.

That's how they roll in Bentonville: Big.    Click here to read what Wal-Mart told it's 100,000 vendors



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