Green lifestyle
Kyu Sung Woo's Harvard Housing Goes LEED Gold
Photos: © Timothy Hursley - The Arkansas Office
10 Akron Street, Kyu Sung Woo's smart new graduate student housing complex for Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, has received high praise from the US Green Building Council: a Gold LEED rating.
Among other sustainable touches, the 115,000 sq ft brick-and-timber building features regionally-sourced siding with recycled content, bamboo flooring and wall paneling, and low-VOC finishes, while building systems are designed and engineered to minimize energy usage. Inside, two-story study lounges and other pub...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Find Green Energy, Green Your Video Game System, and Visit the Library this Winter
:: So you want to make the switch to green energy but don't know where to start? Check out our guide to Finding Green Energy Anywhere!
:: Video games are hugely popular, and in many ways they are green (certainly more energy efficient than driving around). Here are 5 tips to make your video games even greener.
:: Don't know what to do this winter? Here's why you should visit your local library!...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Making Car Parts With Coconuts & the Dangers of Eco-Tokens
Coconuts in the Trunk
Researchers from Baylor University have figured out a way to make trunk liners, floorboards, and car-door interior covers using using fibers from the outer husks of coconuts. Usually these are made from synthetic polyester fibers. This sounds like a (small) win, though we have some reservations. Read on for more....
Categories: Green lifestyle
Affordable Health Care Is Key to Innovation in our Food System
image credit: The Irresistible Fleet of Bicycles
There are many factors that keep people in jobs they hate; in America, one of them is health insurance. Steph Larsen writes at the Ethicurian how the lack of health care is impeding America's agricultural revival.
We hear frequently about the need for new and younger farmers, but there are many barriers to attracting young people to farm in a way that will foster sustainable local food systems. One of them, however, looms bigger than the r...
Categories: Green lifestyle
This Sneaky Pink Iguana Evaded Charles Darwin's Attention
Looking at it, you'd think it would be hard to miss. But this rare pink iguana, referred to as "rosada," evaded Charles Darwin and many other biologists and explorers when they visited the Galapagos island. Read on for more....
Categories: Green lifestyle
Closer Than We Think: Rejuvenated Downtowns
Paleo-future
Over-the-top architect Morris Lapidus (where Mies said "less is more", Lapidus said "too much is never enough") also noted about cities that "a car never bought anything.". Others also thought that the way to save our cities was to get the cars off the streets and turn them into pedestrian malls. In the wonderful comic "Closer than we Think! Arthur Radebaugh ...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Ocean Iron Fertilization Test in South Atlantic Given Go Ahead
The test will be conducted off of South Georgia Island, pictured here. Photo: NASA via Wikipedia
TreeHugger has covered plans for ocean iron fertilization a number of times and the basic premise goes like this: By fertilizing parts of the ocean with iron filings you can increase the rate of photosynthesis in phytoplankton, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide which can be absorbed by the ocean. There the greenhouse gas emissions can be sequestered for long enough that global warming can be slow...
Categories: Green lifestyle
New Battery Technology Improves MacBook Pro Battery Life by 60%
Photo via Gizmodo
New battery technology in the 17" MacBook Pro was shown off at MacWorld today, which lays claim to a battery life improvement of 60%. The new battery can last up to 8 hours on a charge, and can be charged 1,000 times, equivalent to about 5 years. It's also recyclable at the end of it's life. But there are even more green features to this new technology. ...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Crafty In Motion: Amazing Cardboard Animation
It is all in french, but even if you don't understand a word, watch these incredible animations made almost entirely out of cardboard.
...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Ouch! Sales of Hybrid Cars Down 42.8% in December
-10% for 2008
Hybrid cars have suffered from a power 1-2 combo punch in recent months. First, the global economic meltdown (housing bubble bursting, credit crunch, etc) sharply reduce car sales overall, and then oil prices fell like a rock, reducing the pain at the pump. This resulted in a year with a 10% drop in hybrid vehicle sales, and a staggering -42.8% in December compared to last year. Read on for more....
Categories: Green lifestyle
77% of Hong Kong Residents Think Unsafe Food a Major Concern: Ahead of Air Quality, Global Warming
If the air quality wasn’t bad enough, Kong Kong citizens have plenty of other environmental concerns to worry about...They're just harder to photograph. Photo: Adrian Furby
You might have seen John’s earlier post on how one in five Hong Kong residents is considering leaving the city due to air pollution. In case you don’t have the population of Kong Kong at your fingertips, that translates in about 1.4 million people. And about 500,000 of those are actually making...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Back Lane Intensification by Pyatt Studio
Pyatt Studios
Many older cities have infrastructures with back lanes, relics of an era when streets were for people, and you kept the horses and the cars in the rear. It worked well; you could put the houses on narrower lots, and the garages were useful for a lot more than just vehicles. It also provides a great opportunity for urban intensification, although it is really tough to get approved and defines the term NIMBY. But who could say no to something as elegant as this studio in Boulder proposed by Rob Pyatt?...
Categories: Green lifestyle
EPA Sued to Force Restoration of Degraded Chesapeake Bay Waters
photo: Andrew Bossi
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, along with a coalition of partners has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia which seeks to force the EPA to enforce laws requiring the reduction of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay to levels that the bay can be removed from the federal ‘impaired waters’ list.
Speaking on why the action was taken CBF president William Baker said,...
Categories: Green lifestyle
1969: Cuyahoga River Catches Fire
Image: Plain Dealer
Forty years ago, Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire. It was not the first time a river (even the Cuyahoga) caught fire, but like Apollo 8's earthrise photos, it became an important event in the raising of awareness of environmental issues in America. "The burning river mobilized the nation and became a rallying point for passage of the Clean Water Act," and inspired Randy Newman's Burn On. It was importa...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Handy Guide for TreeHugger's Conversion to Metric
Only those three last bastions of freedom and the right to choose, the United States, Liberia, and Burma, still do not use the Metric System. Until now, one could justify this on the basis that the Imperial American system was human scaled, based on our body's dimensions and things we naturally understood. (Like 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot, who cares about water boiling and freezing?)
Randall Munroe to the rescue, with his guide to getting a feel for metric, full of universal cultural touchstones that everyone can relate to, like the volume of Summer Glau or the length of a Lightsaber. This should be on the wall of every classroom in America. ...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Archigram Redux: More Ideas From the Sixties Are Fashionable Again
click here to go to video. Image BBC
TreeHugger has referred to Archigram, the group of British Architects and students out of the AA (Architectural Association School) that came up with plug-in cities, walking cities, blow-up cities and other ideas that are all the rage again. Now the BBC has picked up on it, with a recent interview of Peter Cook, one of the key players in Archigram and not a comedic partner of Dudley Moore. ...
Categories: Green lifestyle
“I don’t trust TVA, not after all this:” Interviews With TVA Coal Ash Spill Victims (Video)
Pardon the audio quality in portions of this, but check out some eyewitness accounts of the aftermath of the TVA coal ash spill: Basically a slow response on the part of TVA (clip above) and the type of damage which has happened (see clip below). Clips were recorded by United Mountain Defense. ...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Tao of Change Hosts Carnival of the Green
This week we ring in 2009 with the first Carnival of the year! Carnival of the Green #161 is being hosted by Tao of Change, a blog that shares a boots-on-the-ground view of the way things are changing in our communities and in the world.
So head on over to this week's Carnival to find a round up of green news and events from the past week, submitted by other bloggers and green sites.
To learn more about Carnival of the Green, where it will be and how to host, please click here to link...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Boutique Hotel Built From Airstream Trailers
The Grand Daddy Hotel in Cape Town, South Africa just added a rooftop trailer park, with each classic Airstream customized by local artists. PSFK writes that "Each of the polished chrome trailers sleep two people, and are embellished with design themes that include, among others, polka dots and The Three Bears. The customisation is worked in throughout all the facilities (including bathrooms) required for the hotel to earn a 4 Star hotel rating."...
Categories: Green lifestyle
Russia cuts EU gas
The Gas grid across large areas of Europe could fail to meet demand this week , due to aggressive Russian use of western dependence on its supplies
