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All Together Now: Green Modern Cooperative Living in Australia
Images from Sanctuary Magazine, Rachel Pilgrim & Andrew Lecky
So many of the green houses we see are single family, alone in the country, but there are more and more developers and builders trying to build green communities. On Munro court in the mining town of Castlemaine, outside of Victoria, Australia, eight lovely little modern houses have been designed by Robyn Gibson of Lifehouse design. None are over 1500 square feet, and it is sort of a cooperative, sharing responsibility for the communal vegetable gardens, emptying the compost and feeding the "chooks" [sic]
...Read the full story on TreeHugger
  
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Pig Business Exposes the Grizzly Inner Workings of the Pork Industry
Image credit: Grist
Pig business is not an easy documentary to watch. First of all, the images of the inner workings of pig farms and slaughterhouses can turn the stomach of even the most steadfast meat-eater. Second, and more significantly, the film has not been—and likely never will be—released in the United States. This means that American viewers are relegated to ingesting the film in 10-minute segments via YouTube....Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Rarest Flower in the World Blooms in the UK (PICS)
Photos via the BBC
It's one of the (if not the) rarest flower in the world: the Middlemist's Red exists in only two known locations: a greenhouse in the UK, and a garden in New Zealand. Imported to Britain two hundred years ago from China, back when flowers where a luxury item, it has since been exterminated in its original homeland. And now the Middlemist is blooming again--nice looking flower, right?...Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Riding in New York with Village Voice Columnist Michael Musto (Video)
"Nobody used to ride a bike in New York, but now it's becoming mainstream"
Our friend Clarence at Streetfilms rode around NYC with Village Voice entertainment columnist Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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After Smart Grids, Smart Sewage? Urine-Separating NoMix Toilet Gets Thumbs-Up in 7 European Countries
NoMix Toilet. Photo: Flickr
Technological Innovations in the Bathroom? You Bet!
Being green is all about solving problems and grabbing overlooked opportunities. It turns out that there's such a double-win in most bathrooms around the world; if we had "NoMix" toilets that separate urine from solid waste, municipal wastewater plants would have a significantly easier task (and produce more methane to generate electricity), and we could much more easily extract precious nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen for use as fertilizer (instead of using fossil fuels). So what's stopping us from going NoMix?...Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Young Farmers are Combining Politics with Pitchforks
Image credit: Good
The life of a farmer is a difficult one—meaning, for most, years of hard work, little money, and even less appreciation. Maybe it is this reason that passing down the family farm has become an increasingly difficult proposition....Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Unilever & Solazyme Working On Algae Oil Process For Soaps And Other Personal Care Products
World consumption of most common commodity triglyceride vegetable oils. Image credit:Wikipedia
Certain plant oils, especially palm oil, have a reputation of being produced unsustainably. Many plant oils are low-cost commodities (see table above for recent global volumes). Certain of the commodity plant oils are used extensively in soap and personal care products; and demand for these is increasing (a growing market segment does not accept animal fat-based product). For personal care products of the future, a key challenge is to find sustainable feedstoc...Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Should Obama Send His Science Team on a National Campaign to Explain Climate Science?
Photo via LimJunYing
It's been a couple months of seriously bad PR for climate science, both due to unfortunate errors made by scientists and (okay, mostly) a well-funded noise machine intent on preserving the status quo at any cost. So how can climate scientists dig themselves out of the negative publicity trench and help reeducate the public on the dangers of climate change? The Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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World's Scientists to Carry Out Independent Review of IPCC
Photo via FreeSpeech
Ban Ki-moon has announced that a comprehensive, independent review of the IPCC is to be carried out, after calls from world governments were made to do so. The Secretary General for the UN said that scientists from academies around the world will take part in the review, which will be headed by the Inter-Academy Council--and it will be conducted completely independently of the United Nations. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Mining Methane From A Rwandan Lake Offers to More Than Double Nation's Electric Capacity
photo: Wikipedia
This is one you definitely don't hear about too often: Over at Green Biz Marc Gunther is highlighting the efforts of Contour Global to extract methane from Lake Kivu, on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here's how they are doing it:...Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Dying for a Cookie: Seemingly Harmless Foods That Aren't
 Michael Pollan's first food rule is simple: Eat Food, which he considers to be a different thing than what he calls edible foodlike substances, or "highly processed concoctions designed by food scientists, consisting mostly of ingredients derived from corn and soy that no normal person keeps in the pantry, and contain chemical additives with which the human body has not been long acquainted."
1. Palm Oil
Many of those substances are bad for our health, bad for our planet and show up in really surprising places. One of the most blatant examples is palm oil, which is now found in just about everything; alm...Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Study Finds Large Animals in India are Facing Extinction Even in Protected Areas
The Satkosia Gorge Sanctuary in India. Image credit: Raveesh Vyas
India has had a system of wildlife sanctuaries since 1928. Now, there are more than 500 in the country ranging from dedicated tiger and bird reserves to more general areas intend to protect habitats rich in biological diversity.
Unfortunately, Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Dubai Skyscraper Is One Giant Wind and Solar Generator
 Images: Studied Impact
It's hard to fathom much of the news from Dubai, especially when it comes to architecture. Then again, this city of excess has delivered some astonishing structures, including, of course, the world's tallest building. So it with a mixture of cynicism and excitement that we greet news of projects such as this.
The proposed 10MW Tower, designed by Studied Impact, is a 50-story skyscraper that integrates three massive ren...Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Don't Expect a Grand Solar Minimum to Save Us From Global Warming
photo: chantrybee via flickr.
Even if the sun entered a Grand Solar Minimum--like the one experienced in the late 17th century known as the Maunder Minimum, which brought about the Little Ice Age--it would still only offset less than a tenth of the warming caused by human release of greenhouse gases. That's the word from a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published in Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Are You Being Lied to About Recycling?
Image credit: Ivan Prole
Look at the bottle of juice you just drank. The detergent you're going to use. The plastic backer on the desk calendar. What's on all of them? That familiar "chasing arrows" graphic with a number in the middle. That means it's recyclable, right?
Sorry, but not quite....Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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What Does Sustainability Look Like? Photos From Around the World (Slideshow)
A market for salvaged goods in Cairo, Egypt. Photograph by David Lazar.
What does "sustainability" mean to you? That's the question that JPG Magazine, a publication of reader-submitted photography, posed to members of its online community, who posted hundreds of images of peaceful landscapes, freshly grown Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Best of Ecouterre: 7 Celebs Spotted Wearing Eco-Fashion
+ Is Lady Gaga a stealth refashionista? The empty soda cans in her hair could be the next haute hair accessory.
+ Woody Harrelson, Food Inc.'s Robert Kenner, Suzy Amis Cameron (wife of James), and Livia Firth (wife of Colin) were just some of the Oscar red-carpet attendees decked in sustainable style.
+ How our little Herminone has...Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Big Oil Launches Campaign to Protect Gov Subsidies, Uses Stock Photos AGAIN
Guess who'll pay for the new energy tax? the ad reads, in lettering right above four portraits of hardworking Americans. Perhaps it's Getty Images, the stock photo company from which all four photos of supposedly 'real' Americans were taken? Or perhaps its actors and models, who posed for the photos? Okay, I give up, tell me, tell me!
The only entity that will be paying--or should I say no longer getting paid out--is the oil industry. See, this ad is in response to Obama's attempt to remove 36 billions of dollars in government...Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Fabulous AW10 Fashion Week Highlights From Around The Blogosphere
It has been another fabulous season for ethical fashion and all of us green bloggers are delighted to see the ethical designers' collections going from strength to strength. From New York to London to Paris there have been some truly desirable fashion forward pieces for Autumn Winter 2010. Emma Grady did an amazing job of covering Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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Arctic Doomsday Vault Now Has Half Million Samples - Becomes World's Most Diverse Collection of Saved Seeds
photo: Mari Tefre/Svalbard Global Seed Vault
The doomsday Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway--begun as protection against any potential future calamity that threatens global food production--just turned two years old and has also just passed the half million mark in terms of seed varieties saved. This makes it the most diverse collection of crop diversity anywhere in the world. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
 
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