Category: Environment

Help Save the Redwoods with Modern Tech

Organizations that care about protecting the environment are always looking for ways to get more people helping them out and in some cases consumer technologies are the solution. Save the Redwoods is an organization in California that is asking people to use their iPhones to identify where every redwood tree is in the state. The information will then be mapped out on Google Earth – a great way of showing people the current state of the redwood forests.

Find a redwood tree in a park, in your own backyard, or in a botanical garden anywhere in the world. Then use the free Redwood Watch iPhone application powered by iNaturalist or your own camera to take a photo of the tree and submit it online.

“Citizen-science efforts like iNaturalist are rapidly emerging as rich sources of biogeographic information for alerting scientists where plants and animals are disappearing and where they persist,” said Scott R. Loarie, co-director of iNaturalist.org and a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “These technologies are a real win-win for conservation because, in addition to generating urgently needed data, they get people outdoors and help them become more aware of the natural world.”

In collaboration with Google Earth Outreach, Redwood Watch also will include a tour and new 3D online model of the ancient forest to help people better understand, appreciate and connect with the wonder of the redwoods. A 2½-minute video, Finding the Redwood Forests of Tomorrow, tells the story of an ancient forest. The video was narrated by Peter Coyote, actor and author of Sleeping Where I Fall. Save the Redwoods League partnered with Google Earth Outreach to produce the new 3D Trees model ofJedediah Smith Redwoods State Park on Google Earth. Jedediah Smith Redwoods was selected for this project because it is one of the most pristine old-growth coast redwood forests in California. The 3D model allows Google Earth users to virtually walk and fly through an ancient redwood forest anytime anywhere.

Find out more at the Save the Redwoods website

Another Way to Fix the Suburbs

The suburbs have a problem and it’s that they are lifeless. There’s little to no wildlife and human culture is confined to isolated locations and this is a problem in many ways and people know this.

We’ve looked at ways to fix the suburbs on Things Are Good before, this piece on the other hand, as an assortment of ideas and a good synopsis of efforts being made to save the suburbs from American suburban malfeasance:

After nearly four years of a McMansion mortgage crisis and new waves of Creative Class immigration into America’s leading cities, it’s time to confront a strange new phenomenon: the hollowed-out suburbs. It may not quite be the apocalyptic vision offered up by Christopher Leinberger in The Atlantic three years ago during the height of the mortgage crisis – when it was feared that empty McMansions would turn into crack dens – but it’s still bracing stuff. Indeed, the psycho-demographic pendulum appears to have shifted across America. According to most surveys, people prefer to live in walkable neighborhoods and sustainably designed communities — places that have all the perks of big-city living, as well as the goodness of green parks and good schools.

So what would it take to create these types of walkable, sustainable suburbs on a national scale?

Two architectural & design firms, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Droog, recently hosted the Open House 2011 event where they re-imagined the classic suburban utopia – Levittown in Long Island, New York – and brainstormed ways that the suburban dream could be revitalized. They looked at what has worked in places like Manhattan and Brooklyn — places where dogwalkers, drycleaners, bohemian cafes, 24-hour bodegas and countless delivery services ease the strain of everyday urban life — and came up with suburban equivalents.

Read the full article and get some more links here.

Thanks Nick!

Delicious Green Beer

I love Beau’s beer because it tastes good and today I found another reason to love it – it’s super green. Beau’s set out to make an environmentally friendly beer and did it with gusto.

Still, Beauchesne acknowledges that the skeptical non-investors were half right. “If you’re making the decision to go all-natural or organic based just on the bottom line, you probably shouldn’t be doing it,” he says. “But, to us, that was such an important part of what we wanted to be about.”

As for the market demand, Beauchesne and his father have had the last laugh. The company has grown to 45 employees from its initial five.

In 2010, Beau’s had about $4 million in revenue, and is earning a profit. There have already been a few expansions, and another one is planned next year, since the current facility has reached its full capacity of 1 million litres per year.

There have been some struggles along the way, Beauchesne admits. One of the biggest was going all-organic, which the brewery finally managed in 2008. At first, it was hard just to source the ingredients.

Read the rest of the article.

Earth Day’s Hometown Heroes

Earth Day Canada has launched a campaign to celebrate people and organizations that have made a positive and substantial change to the environment. It’s a way to publicly celebrate those who have made the environment better through their cations. Are you a “Hometown Hero”?

Hometown Heroes are individual Canadians, groups, organizations and small businesses who take a stand for the environment in their community. They lead others to environmental awareness, action and a more sustainable future. They make a difference and improve the state of the environment at the local level.

Here’s the Hometown Hero website.

New Ways to Style Denim

Sandblasting jeans seems to be the cool thing to do nowadays. I’m not big on fashion so this is all strange to me. Well, as you can probably imagine sandblasting denim is not good for the environment so some smart people have figured out a better way to blast your jeans.

Blue denim jeans are one of the most popular and iconic fashion items in the world; now a study published in Biotechnology Journal reveals a cheaper, more efficient and eco-friendly method for treating dyed denim. The process of ‘surface activation’ used to wash-down the denim following dyeing could also offer an alternative to the dangerous, and internationally banned, sandblasting technique.

“The global production of denim is estimated at 3 billion linear meters and more than 4 billion garments per year,” said Thomas Bechtold, from the Research Institute for Textile Chemistry and Textile Physics at the University of Innsbruck. “To create blue jeans denim is dyed with indigo an organic compound which is estimated to be produced in quantities of over 30.000 tons per year.”

Read the rest of the article.

I still don’t get why we need sand in our jeans.