conservation

In The Blue

scleaver — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:43:40 -0400

You want your barista’s latte spoon clean, sure, but recent news reports accuse Starbucks of wasting as many as six million gallons of water each day. All that water runs down the tap because of a company policy that requires stores to keep water running in the sink constantly, so germs don’t build up.

As Eat.Drink.Better. discussed, all that water would be enough to provide water for two million people in Namibia. In fact, “a single Starbucks tap left running for just over three minutes wastes the amount of water one African needs to survive for a day in drought conditions.”

And, as Eat.Drink.Better. points out, this isn’t just about wasting water, but about corporate responsibility—Starbucks owns Ethos Water that donates money to help water programs around the world and Starbucks itself touts environmentalism as a company policy.

If you want to avoid Starbucks next time you need a cup of coffee, try CoffeeShopFind.com or IndieCoffeeShops.com to find and add your own.

Photo from Big Marketing Blog.

Calculate Your 'Water Footprint'

jplatt — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:09:44 -0400

Do you or any of your family members spend too much time in the shower? Are your toilets designed to save water? How about your faucets, are they installed with conservation in mind? How about your lawn...

Okay, let's just get to the real questions: How much water do you use on a daily basis? And how much can you conserve?

A group called H2O Conserve wants to help you answer those questions. Their new online water calculator not takes you through your direct water usage, but the water used to produce your food and other goods, to come up with what they call your Water Footprint.

It's this later side that many people don't think about. Says H2O Conserve: "Your water footprint includes other factors such as water utilized to cool power plants that provide your electricity, and water saved when you recycle. You may not drink, feel or see this water, but it makes up the great majority of your water footprint."

The water calculator is great fun, and takes about 5 minutes or less. When you're done, the site will present not only your water footprint (mine came up at over 1,000 gallons per day!), but what you can do to reduce it. The site contains dozens of great tips, any one of which can save you tens of gallons every single day.

Give it a try. You might be shocked by what you come up with.

Books vs. eBooks: Which Are Greener?

jplatt — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:39:56 -0400

Amazon.com has sold nearly 300,000 of its Kindle eBook readers since it introduced the device earlier this year. Rumors of a Kindle 2.0 release before year-end have been squashed, but that doesn't mean that the interest in electronic books is fading. If anything, it continues to grow and hit new markets.

But is an eBook really greener than a regular, paper book?

Let's examine some of the issues:

Books are printed on paper. Paper requires trees and extensive chemical processing. But paper can be recycled, and a paper book can be read more than once, by more than one person. The more times a book is read, the "greener" it becomes. (Libraries, gotta love 'em!)

Books are heavy. Paper weighs a lot, especially if we're talking about hardcover books, books printed on glossy paper (say, graphic novels), textbooks, etc. The more a book weighs, the more expensive (and less green) it is to deliver it to a retailer or to your mailbox.

eBooks need energy. Every time you read an electronic book, you need to use some electricity. This need will be minimized as electronic paper technologies improve, but no matter what, you can't search for, buy, deliver or read an eBook without the "e."

eBooks have no resale value. Once you've read a paper book, you can keep it, discard it or sell it. Some used books are barely worth 25 cents; others can become collectors' items and be worth a fair amount of change. Any time an object can be re-used or re-sold, it is greener than something that can not.

eBooks = eWaste. eBook reader technologies are still developing. Early adopters are going to end up trading in their devices for new ones, and that creates the possibility that the old devices will just create electronic waste.

What's the bottom line? It's still a decision that should be made by the individual reader. If you read books more than once, collect them, trade them, or just enjoy the feel of a paper book in your hand, traditional books are still the way to go. But if you read books once, don't want to worry about disposing of them, read a lot for business or school, and want to avoid shipping costs (include greenhouse gases), then an eBook reader might be the best thing ever.

Free Mobile Phone Game Aims to Save Gorillas

jplatt — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Mobile games are the fastest growing segment of the electronic gaming market. Now, a new cell-phone game promises fun gameplay while teaching users about the challenges faced by Rwanda's endangered mountain gorillas.

"Silverback," a free mobile game produced for the conservation group Flora & Fauna International, offers game-play that mimics the struggles mountain gorillas face in the wild. The game follows a gorilla through his entire lifecycle. In the first level, you're a young gorilla separated from his family. Later, you have to defend yourself against rival silverbacks, find a mate, start a family, avoid poachers and snares, and find safe food and habitat.

The game is free to download (although your cell provider may charge for the data download). The developers hope that users will donate £5 (about $10) or more to help fund gorilla conservation efforts.

Mountain gorillas are one of the world's most endangered primate species, with only an estimated 700 members left.

Send an Instant Message, Fight Global Warming

jplatt — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

How many instant messages do you send every day? What if each time you sent an IM, you ended up contributing money to fight global warming or protect the environment?

Microsoft's i'm Initiative does just that. The program's name is short for "I'm making a difference," and it does just that. By using Windows Live Messenger as your IM client, and by adding a special code to your screen name, you end up contributing to one of ten charities every time you start an IM conversation.

The money comes from advertising revenue (the ads appear on Live Messenger, just like with any other IM client), and Microsoft has promised that each of its ten "partner" charities will receive at least $100,000. (The program has already raised more than $1,400,000 -- so they've obviously already past that point!)

You can choose from three different conservation organizations -- StopGlobalWarming.org, the Sierra Club, or the Humane Society of the United State -- as well as other worthy causes like the Susan G. Komen Foundation or the American Red Cross.

I like this system because it takes something people are already doing and turns it into an instant act of activism. So if you're already IMing, why not use it to do some good?

Want to learn more about global warming?

Top 10 Lesser-Known Myths About Global Warming

New Report: Doubts Grow About Global Warming

Top 10 Ways to Prevent Global Warming

Global Warming Cartoons

Jared Leto Pushes Back on Global Warming

Clean, Renewable Energy: The Answer to Global Warming

What You Eat Can Affect Global Warming, New Study Shows

A Bird in Hand-- the Food Chain in Order

jchatraw — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

When it comes to learning to appreciate the all-too-familiar, just leave it to a toddler to bring the familiar wide-eyed wonderment. In looking for something fun and interactive to take my one-year-old daughter to this weekend, I stumbled across the Bald Eagle Day exhibit at a nearby park in the paper's activity listings.

After bundling up my daughter, Faith, to the point that she looked like a pink marshmallow with legs, I found myself anticipating the impending experience. After all, I had never really seen a Bald Eagle up close.

Upon arriving at the snow blanketed park, we walked toward the exhibit area and never quite made it inside the Bald Eagle show. It was too exciting outside, where my daughter was enthralled by the bird handlers' hawk and falcon. As I held Faith near the birds, she was initially a little frightened, burying her head into my shoulder whenever the Peregrine Falcon looked in her direction. But after a few moments, she began to warm up to the birds.

It wasn't long before she noticed that the falcon's eyes looked strangely similar to her baby doll's eyes ... eyes she likes to poke. (I guess beady eyes all look alike to toddlers.) That's when I saw her finger emerge and began moving directly toward a collision course with the falcon's eye. I quickly stepped backward to avoid disaster, like a talon to the face.

What I learned in between closely studying the falcon and keeping my daughter from gouging out the falcon's eye was fascinating. The art of falconry has been around for more than 2,500 years and is uniquely tied to conservation efforts today. As ironic as it may seem, falconers are as passionate about making sure birds of prey are around to keep the food chain in proper working order as they are about training their birds. The Peregrine Fund is a great organization that is working hard to ensure these birds' survival.

In the end, I never did get to see a Bald Eagle up close, but I have a new appreciation for these birds that swoop down and snatch little rodents off the ground. They're as regal and majestic on the ground as they are in the air—and I hope they never find themselves on the brink of extinction.