Entries tagged with 'environment'
Page 2 of 5
In response to Tyler "Dr. Vino" Colman's essay on boxed wine, Joseph J. Cattaneo says: Without a doubt, glass bottles are greener than wine boxes.Calculating a carbon footprint based solely on trucking capacity is myopic and fails to consider the carbon costs for extraction and manufacturing.Just envision the various elements that have to go into creating a wine box. It involves many more steps, materials and energy inputs than are required for making a glass bottle.As for recycling, most communities can handle glass, which is 100 percent recyclable. Good luck finding programs that handle wine boxes.The choice is clear: glass is greener. Setting aside the biases of the messenger (Cattaneo is from the Glass Packaging Institute), does this message ring...
Continue reading »
Photograph from uhuru1701 on Flickr According to Dr. George Wilson of the Australian Wildlife Services, we should switch from eating beef to kangaroos to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike cows and sheep, who produce harmful methane gas, kangaroos produce almost no methane gas. They also have cleaner poop and produce lean, free-range meat! But what does kangaroo tastes like? "It tastes excellent, not unlike venison—only a different flavour," says Dr. Wilson. If you've eaten kangaroo before, what do you think of it?...
Continue reading »
Whenever I admit to drinking soy milk, I immediately add a qualifier: "Only in coffee and cereal. Sometimes. I swear." I don't want to be pegged as a freaky full-time soy-milk drinker because at the core, I identify with "regular" milk. From cows. But every so often there's something about soy milk, especially vanilla, that adds a nice twist to an otherwise sludgy coffee. No offense to furry critters, but I don't drink soy milk for animal rights reasons or anything Mother Nature-related. I drink it because in certain contexts, it's really good. So when Slate reported this week that soy milk isn't necessarily better than cow's milk from an eco-perspective, I appreciated the insight but wasn't any less likely...
Continue reading »
In an effort to curb pollution and litter, the Chinese government has issued a ban on plastic bags, which went into effect June 1. Customers must now supply their own bags from home or pay a fee to get one, and shops found to be violating the ban will face a fine or risk having their goods confiscated. Given that China uses 37 million barrels of crude oil each year to manufacture plastic bags and produces up to three billion plastic bags a day, it's a smart eco-conscious move—and might even bolster China's reputation, which hasn't been doing too great with scandals every which way. China now joins the roster of countries who have gone plastic-free, like Ireland, Uganda and...
Continue reading »
May 29: The Los Angeles Times runs a story on guerrilla gardening. June 8: The New York Times Magazine runs one, too, but with videos....
Continue reading »
Think that ugly grass-covered road median could use a flower or two? Perhaps even stalks of corn? Transform ugly patches of neglected grass in public spaces to the beautiful and productive land it should be by becoming a guerilla gardener. The Los Angeles Times covers the prevalence of guerilla gardening in L.A. fronted by "green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs." While these gardens aren't always welcomed with open arms, some people recognize the benefit of "citizen gardeners helping cities turn wasted space into food and flowers" and encourage the activity. Long Beach's superintendent of grounds maintenance Ramon Arevalo wants to work with guerilla gardener Scott, who dedicates much of his time to cultivating a lush...
Continue reading »
Brewing illegal whiskey in a bathtub out back is so eighty years ago. These days, backyard stills in California are much more likely to be turning stolen restaurant grease into barrels of bootleg biofuel. Now that gas prices have gone up, a car that runs on used fryer oil sounds increasingly appealing. Unfortunately, this means that grease-haulers are losing thousands of dollars a year, prompting those in the business to look into locking their trash cans. But even locked barrels of grease are disappearing into the gas tanks of Californian cars. It's no wonder, considering that the price of soybean oil has tripled in the last three years. The liquid dripping off your French fries has never looked this good....
Continue reading »
Photograph from Greencolander on Flickr Tired of taking out the trash? The New York Times would like you to know that it's your own damn fault. According to the most recent Week in Review, 27 percent of all food available for consumption in the U.S. ends up in the garbage. That's about a pound a day per person, which amounts to 30 million tons of food waste per year. Not only does this perpetuate the nutritional disparity between America and poorer nations, but as the Times points out, the methane produced by rotting food also contributes to global warming. So instead of dumping your dinner leftovers, get out that Tupperware and save them for lunch. As food prices continue to...
Continue reading »
The New Yorker drops a lengthy and sobering piece this week that looks at the depressing state of the world's food-supply system as detailed in four "second-wave" food-politics books. Where "first wave" books (such as Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation) leave off at the ill effects of junk food, the new crop of books looks at how "the entire system of Western food production is in need of radical change."...
Continue reading »
If the idea of environmentally friendly lunches sounds a lot more appealing than sewing your own sandwich wrap, check out furoshiki, the Japanese "ecofriendly wrapping cloth." Traditionally used in Japan for wrapping gifts and money, furoshiki can easily be adapted for everyday use. In fact, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment offers suggestions on using them to carry books, bottles, or even a watermelon. They might not work so well for sandwiches, but they could easily replace a brown paper bag....
Continue reading »
