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Saturday

04Jul

Simply Green # 7

One Person's Trash Another's Treasure

by Terese Hartjoy @ Thorne's World

From bloggers to businesses creative people find new ways to give new life to the "waste" of others. One person's trash becomes another's treasure as item by item people are saving space in the landfills by reusing, repurposing and upcycling.

Curbside finds get a new life with these rescued and repurposed home furnishings or this wicker chair and a spot of paint.

Dr Declutterbug has great ideas for cleaning up along with some photos of beautiful upcycled sculpture from the Leanin' Tree Sculpture Gardens in Boulder Colorado, and TransAction creates wearable body art from leather scraps that large leather companies would otherwise throw away!

Saturday, July 4, 2009 at 8:00PM |

Student Saturday - Environmental Education

The Need for Education in Environmental Science

by ciel s cantoria

In the past twenty years or so, our world has been facing environmental problems in different categories: natural disasters, technological devastations and environmental degradation. Environmentalists have been active in finding ways to solve the never ending influx of ecological and environmental dilemmas.

Saturday, July 4, 2009 at 8:01AM | Comments Off |

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Friday

03Jul

Simply Green - California Landfill Diversion

Mixed Nuts in California!

by Terese Hartjoy @ Thorne's World

While California lawmakers push bill 479 that would require cities and counties to increase the amount of waste diverted out of landfills from 50 percent to 60 percent by the year 2015, California cities and communities span wide gaps in compliance projections and successes.

San Joaquin County is responsible for diverting a whopping 67% of its waste from the landfills. The county's success, officials say, is to the credit of watchful citizens and programs aimed at preventing special kinds of recyclable waste like TVs and Computer hardware from entering the landfills.

Other communities like Manteca, are struggling to maintain a diversion rate above 50 percent. Manteca sends sludge from its wastewater treatment plant to landfills because air quality officials objected due to odors when the sludge was applied to fields as fertilizer.

Los Angles is running between 50 and 53%, while San Francisco tops the chart at a heartfelt and dedicated 70% diversion!

How is your city and state doing, and what can you do to help? Remember: reduce, reuse, precycle, recycle, and upcycle!

Friday, July 3, 2009 at 8:00PM |

Renewsable Energy Digest - File #9

Renewable Energy Financing Better Than It Looks

by Deb Powers

Workers receiving training through projects funded by these competitions will be at the forefront as our nation transforms the way we generate electricity
Hilda Solis, U.S. Labor Secretary

According to the Wall Street Journal, the state of financing for renewable energy in the U.S. could be better than it appears. The headline is deceiving - sorta. It reads, "Renewable Energy Financing Rebounds in Europe, but not in US". The article, however, makes the case that those figures may not reflect the true state of affairs in the world of green energy financing. The article makes the common sense point that U.S. investors are on hold, waiting for the Department of Energy to come out with guidelines and specifics on U.S. financing for energy based products. When those guidelines are released and firmed up, there's likely to be a boomlet of investments and loans in the green energy sector, probably hitting in the 3rd quarter of this fiscal year. By contrast, the article continues, the European boom in green energy investment could be deceptively good because many of the loans approved in the past quarter were for big investment projects, committed a lion's share of government money to big ticket projects.

Overeall, the article concludes, things are looking up for green energy investments, a hopeful sign for both our environment and our financial recovery prospects.

Other renewable energy news...

Friday, July 3, 2009 at 8:51AM | Comments Off |

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Friday

03Jul

Footprint Friday - Formula 1

Formula One’s Carbon Footprint on the Wane

by Lavana James

The world is a place where greed and speed have predominated, but recently even the gods of pace have acknowledged they either have to embrace environmentally friendly options or become extinct like the dinosaurs of old..