Environment

Clean, Green Apple

- Vanessa King 7 Comments

created-by-ilife.jpegGreenpeace has started a campaign to bring awareness to Mac Computers about the toxic waste that comes from their tossed computer parts. In China, for example, children wade through mountains of computer parts filled with toxic materials such as lead and mercury finding items their families can resell while plastic cables and chords burn nearby. Local water sources are also made undrinkable due to heavy metal content.

So Greenpeace wants the help of the people like you! Rather than tying themselves to the side of Macs headquarters, they have decided to give Mac the benefit of the doubt and use creative measures by the public to get their attention. On the Greenpeace website you can take part in letting Apple know about the effect they are having on the Environment and on hundreds of peoples lives. Check it out, it’s rather fun!

NYC Garbage Cube

- Adam Clare

A lot of people’s garbage is another man’s, er, art.

An artist in New York City scours the streets looking for dropped metrocards, gum wrappers, coffee cups, etc. until he creates the perfect mixture. He then encases the rubbish in a glass cube that you can purchase NYC garbage over the internet.

Highlights include garbage from the Republican National Convention!

You can also see where NYC garbage has been exported to in cube form on his map.

Canada’s Forests are Worth $93B Each Year

- Adam Clare

An economist, Mark Anielski, has looked at the benefits of keeping Canadian forests. The conclusion is that each year Canada’s forests do $93 billion in carbon regulation and tourism. Anielski says that we need to take this into consideration when we talk of chopping down trees and our overall approach to the boreal forest.

“Boreal forests regulate the climate by capturing and storing an estimated 67 billion tonnes of carbon in Canada alone – a job worth $1.8 billion, based on the price of carbon emissions from the global insurance industry.”

A dime a day keeps junk mail away

- Cam Proctor 3 Comments

A concept B corporation, Greendimes will keep you off junk-mail lists while planting one tree every month for each of its subscribers at a cost of $3 per month. There are free junk mail removal services, but none that provide active protection and they definetly dont plant any trees.

Think of how many people get junk mail. Total those people and plant one tree for every person. Using a one to one ratio and dividing by the average tree density, my cookie monster calculator tells me an area about the size of the golden horseshoe could be saved in Canada alone.

Cell Phones get Greener

- Adam Clare

Cell phones are a huge contributor to that problem of e-waste and the cell phone makers are aware of this. Now the phone makers are going to do a little something for the environment by checking what goes into their phones. The companies are looking into removing toxic chemicals and improving recycling and proper-disposal programs.

The consumer can curb the amount of energy that the cellphone uses. New cellphones will tell the user that the battery is charged and that the phone should be unplugged thereby conserving energy.

“If 10 percent of the world’s cell phone owners did this, the group’s final report said, it would reduce energy consumption by an amount equivalent to that used by 60,000 European homes per year.”

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