The environmental education movement in this country has been around for quite some time. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and the first Earth Day 40 years ago were both important factors in bringing environmental education to the fore. My personal journey is not nearly as long. Nearly ten years ...
Last year the website This Is Reality launched a commercial by the Coen brothers, directors of films such as Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and The Big Lebowski, about clean coal. The commercial, which can be seen below, paints a satirical picture of so-called clean coal ...
What happens when an MIT trained engineer comes back after vacation to find he forgot to empty the kitchen compost bin before he left? Aside from cleaning up the mess, getting rid of the flies, and getting rid of the smell, the light bulb clicks on: "While ...
A few months ago we wrote about clean energy plays in the stock market. While we are not investment specialists and do not recommend investing in these companies, we provide the following information for your general knowledge. Please do your own research before investing in any company ...
The prospect of climate change has several ski resorts reconsidering their use of natural resources. Last year we wrote about Jiminy Peak in Massachusetts and the steps they had taken to both minimize their consumption of non-renewable resources by installing a wind turbine as well as ...
This is a brief post about an encouraging experience I had the other day. A few months ago we wrote about Software Advice’s receipt poll. Namely, they were asking whether readers were in favor of paper receipts or doing away with the small slips. I wrote a follow up that included the poll’s results and an anecdote about standing behind what I presumed to be a small shop owner spending more than $50 dollars on eight rolls of receipt paper.
The other day I had a more encouraging experience.
Although there are not as many events on the calendar for August, there are two in Austin, Texas and a couple in Australia mentioned below. In addition, Shelburne Farms in Vermont is hosting the Education for Sustainability Institute in the first week of the month. Shelburne Farms is “Shelburne Farms is a membership-supported, nonprofit environmental education center.” Their “mission is to cultivate a conservation ethic in students, educators and families who come here to learn.” They “practice rural land uses that are environmentally, economically and culturally sustainable. . . . In 1972, it became an educational nonprofit. [N]early 400 acres of [their] woodlands are Green Certified from the American Tree Farm System.”
The following events are listed in chronological order.
Last year my father sent me an article from the Los Angeles Times about a company that was using its waste to partially power the company. I did not follow up on it at the time, but he called the other day (almost exactly one year after the original article) and said, “There’s this company you ought to look into.” Little did he realize he had already informed me, albeit indirectly, of their exploits.
Gills Onions in Oxnard, California was recently featured on Huell Howser’s California’s Green. In episode #134 (the 34th of the first season), Howser visits Gills Onion “which is not only the largest onion processing plant in California but its also the greenest. Each day they convert over 150 tons of onion peel and juice waste to power fuel cells on site that provide enough power to run the lights and refrigeration.”
In an effort to reach their goal of 300 LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) hotels by 2015, Marriott will begin by building their Courthouse Charleston/Summerville hotel with the backing of U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC.) The company’s press release states that “Marriott is the first in the hospitality industry to launch a green hotel prototype that has been pre-approved by USGBC as part of its LEED Volume program, meaning that any Marriott hotel that follows these plans will earn basic LEED certification, or possibly higher, upon USGBC final approval. The new Courtyard hotel will open in early 2012 as a part of a joint venture between Blanchard & Calhoun Commercial of Augusta, Ga., and MeadWestvaco of Summerville, S.C. The hotel will introduce the first phase of The Parks of Berkley, a community consisting of 5,000 acres and one of the largest planned developments in the Southeastern United States.”
Marriott already has approximately 275 hotels that have earned the ENERGY STAR® label from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—the most of any hotel company. In order to save money
The following five Friday facts come via Rocky Mountain Institute’s Reinventing Fire pamphlet.
For more information on Reinventing Fire, watch the video below:
[Image source: Metropolitan Museum of Art]
