Good Fact

Bricks a la Sewage

- Adam Clare

Yesterday some work was being done on the piping where I live and I couldn’t work from home like I normally do because of the stench. Good news may come from this because that stink, combined with a few other materials, may end up in future buildings.

Imagine if you could turn old rubbish into new houses. That’s exactly what civil engineer Dr John Forth from University of Leeds wants to achieve with the invention of a building block made almost entirely of recycled glass, metal slag, sewage sludge, incinerator ash, and pulverised fuel ash from power stations.

Dirt Fights Cancer

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

treeThe fight against cancer has found some support from something that we stomp over: dirt. I love ‘discoveries’ like this because I hope it’ll make people aware of how important biodiversity is.

The bark of certain yew trees can yield a medicine that fights cancer. Now scientists find the dirt that yew trees grow in can supply the drug as well, suggesting a new way to commercially harvest the medicine.

Scientists originally isolated the drug paclitaxel—now commonly known as Taxol—in 1967 from the bark of Pacific yew trees (Taxus brevifolia) in a forest near the Mount St. Helens in Washington. This yew also yields related compounds known as taxanes that can be converted to paclitaxel. Research since then has revealed other yew species generate paclitaxel and taxanes as well, as do some fungi and certain hazelnut varieties

6 Environmental Warriors!

- Vanessa King

earth.jpgThe Goldman Environmental Award is the world’s largest prize honoring grassroots environmentalists, and this years winners were just announced! Check out these 6 amazing people from all over the Globe who have done some really incredible stuff for nature!

North America
Sophia Rabliauskas, 47, Manitoba, Canada: Working on behalf of the Poplar River First Nation, Rabliauskas succeeded in securing interim protection for the boreal forest of Manitoba, effectively preventing destructive logging and hydro-power development while the government and international agencies deliberate on the future of the region.

Africa
Hammerskjoeld Simwinga, 45, Zambia: In an area where rampant illegal wildlife poaching decimated the wild elephant population and left villagers living in extreme poverty, Simwinga created an innovative sustainable community development program that successfully restored wildlife and transformed this poverty-stricken area.

Asia
Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, 40, Mongolia: Munkhbayar successfully worked with government and grassroots organizations to shut down destructive mining operations along Mongolia’s scarce waterways. Through public education and political lobbying, Munkhbayar has effectively protected Mongolia’s precious water resources from additional unregulated mining.

South & Central America
Julio Cusurichi, 36, Peru: In the remote Peruvian Amazon, Cusurichi secured a national reserve to protect both sensitive rain forest ecosystems and the rights of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation from the devastating effects of logging and mining.

Europe
Willie Corduff, 53, Ireland: In the small farming community of Ross Port, Corduff and a group of committed activists and landowners successfully forced Shell Oil to halt construction on an illegally-approved pipeline through their land.

Islands & Island Nations
Orri Vigfússon, 64, Iceland: Vigfússon brokered huge international fishing rights buyouts with governments and corporations in the North Atlantic, effectively stopping destructive commercial salmon fishing in the region.

All winners will be honored as they come together at the San Fransisco Opera House tonight!!

Bamboo Ecobook

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Bambooing
Asus is making a line of notebooks that are modular and easily upgradable for the end user. One of these easy modifications that can be done is making the notebook an ecobook by having bamboo casing and all the plastic made of recycled materials!

There won’t be many who find issue with the choice of material used in the EcoBook. Bamboo wood is easily replenished (it grows infamously fast) and yet when polished up it creates a luxurious wood veneer that is also biodegradable.

But the goodness of ASUS new ECOBOOK doesn’t stop there. the plastics chosen to manufacture the EcoBook come from recyclable raw materials and are numbered to facilitate recycling when the product reaches the end of its life cycle.

The sound of music is called “makorn” in Afghanistan.

- sohorobin

In Afghanistan, the hills are alive again with the sound of music…

“For three decades, music was an endangered art in Afghanistan. Soviet occupation and civil war disrupted people’s lives. When the Taliban took over in the mid-’90s, music was banned altogether.”

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