For an average lawn, a mower works just fine, but for fire-prone slopes or polluted landfills, an increasing number of cities are turning to a rugged biological machine: the goat.

Click Here to read the entire Wired story

One-third of an acre planted with corn, squash, green beans, broccoli, pumpkins and sunflowers where grass once grew at San Diego City College is an urban farm project that could revolutionize residential landscaping throughout the county, says Karon Klipple, an assistant math professor.

Click Here to read the article.

12 Degrees of Freedom brings us this great article about this program by the Central Vermont Public Service to tuen cow manure into electricity.

Central Vermont Public Service, which supplies electricity to 158,000 customers around the state, was among the first utilities in the country to draw electricity from cow manure on dairy farms. About 4,000 utility customers participate by agreeing to pay a premium for the electricity.

Click Here to read more.

Oregon-based author and designer Shannon Quimby recently realized her dream of building an entire house “without a dumpster” — a project she dubbed the “Reuse Everything eXperiment.”

By partnering with several leaders in the green-building movement, Quimby completely deconstructed a crumbling wreck of home in Southeast Portland and reused everything – from old lathe and plaster, to a long defunct water heater – to create a gorgeous new ecologically-friendly home.

You can follow this ambitious home recycling project from start to finish by visiting Quimby’s daily blog.

 

Via the Charles and Hudson blog

Benjamin Jones, author of the EcoModder blog has created a new blog focused on home improvements for improving your home’s energy consumption. Check It Out.

Eco Renovator

Farm Fountain is a system for growing edible and ornamental fish and plants in a constructed, indoor ecosystem. Based on the concept of aquaponics, this hanging garden fountain uses a simple pond pump, along with gravity to flow the nutrients from fish waste through the plant roots. The plants and bacteria in the system serve to cleanse and purify the water for the fish.

This project is an experiment in local, sustainable agriculture and recycling. It utilizes 2-liter plastic soda bottles as planters and continuously recycles the water in the system to create a symbiotic relationship between edible plants, fish and humans.

Click Here to read more

Courtesy of City Farmer News

From EurekaAlert

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Researchers have devised an inexpensive way to produce plastic sheets containing billions of nanoantennas that collect heat energy generated by the sun and other sources. The technology, developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, is the first step toward a solar energy collector that could be mass-produced on flexible materials.

While methods to convert the energy into usable electricity still need to be developed, the sheets could one day be manufactured as lightweight “skins” that power everything from hybrid cars to iPods with higher efficiency than traditional solar cells, say the researchers, who report their findings Aug. 13 at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2008 2nd International Conference on Energy Sustainability in Jacksonville, Fla. The nanoantennas also have the potential to act as cooling devices that draw waste heat from buildings or electronics without using electricity.

The nanoantennas target mid-infrared rays, which the Earth continuously radiates as heat after absorbing energy from the sun during the day. In contrast, traditional solar cells can only use visible light, rendering them idle after dark. Infrared radiation is an especially rich energy source because it also is generated by industrial processes such as coal-fired plants.

Click Here to read the entire article.

gDiapers consist of a washable cotton outer shell and an inner refill that can be flushed or will naturally biodegrade in 50-150 days.

One of the blogs I enjoy reading every week is Blue Skies Urban Farm. The title of an article there caught my eye:

The New Plastic Surgery: Excising the Plastic From Our Lives

It’s full of great tips about how they are eliminating plastic from their lives

Read the entire article here

http://www.freedomgardens.org

A social networking site for people who want to fight soaring food prices and global warming by growing their own food.

PASADENA, Calif., – Think of it as Facebook meets the Farmer’s Almanac: A social networking site for people who want to fight soaring food prices and global warming by growing their own food. At FreedomGardens.org, novice and expert gardeners from around the world gather to post success stories, ask questions, and challenge one another to ever-increasing levels of self-sustained living.
The site is backed by the example of its founders, Jules Dervaes and his three adult children, Anais, Justin, and Jordanne, the urban-dwelling “eco-pioneers” who have been growing most of their own food since 2001 on their 66 ft x 132 ft lot in the greater Los Angeles area.

By growing at least a portion of what they eat, “Freedom Gardeners” can take back control from the corporate food system. In the process, they can improve their health, reduce their ecological footprint, and — with food price inflation at the highest levels since 1990 — save money. Taking these basic steps, others can join what the Dervaeses call a “homegrown revolution(TM).”

To motivate gardeners and focus their efforts, Freedom Gardens presents challenges like the 100-Foot Diet. Mr. Dervaes uses the illustration of a target to explain the diet in the context of the global food economy and the distance food travels from field to plate. “This diet is bringing you back to your home; that’s the bull’s-eye!” he says. “People can look for food security right in their backyard.”

The free, interactive site uses social networking software to connect gardeners who can share tips about plant selection, soil and pest problems, and climate issues. Also, members of this supportive community can offer words of sympathy and encouragement for online friends going through difficult times.

“We’re providing the setting for ‘over-the-fence’ chats so neighbors can help each other,” says Mr. Dervaes. “Through our website, we facilitate their getting together.”

About Freedom Gardens

Launched in May 2008, Freedom Gardens is a social networking website for gardeners and homegrown food enthusiasts. The site’s founders, the Dervaes family, draw on many years of personal experience on their model urban homestead, PathtoFreedom.com, to help others take back control of their diets and their budgets by growing their food. For more information, visit http://www.freedomgardens.org.

Most fishing line that you can buy today is made of monofilament. It is a single-strand, strong, flexible plastic that is clear or tinted in a variety of colors. Most monofilament is non-biodegradable and can take over 500 years to decompose. Because it is thin and often clear, it is very difficult for fish, birds and animals to see, and they can easily brush up against it and become entangled in it. Once entangled, they may become injured, drown, get strangled or starve to death.

Now a company named Bioline has created a biodegradable monofilament fishing line that decomposes in about 5 years.

Bioline biofilament fishing line biodegrades in the environment in five years. Used properly, this is the only characteristic you’ll never notice.

What you will notice is superior casting distance and exceptional knot strength, along with outstanding UV and abrasion resistance. Bioline does not absorb water like traditional monofilaments and its characteristics do not change as it’s fished. And yes, should you break off a leader or length of line, it will be gone in five years versus six hundred.

Stored in its original package, Bioline has a five-year shelf life. Once spooled on a reel, the line will retain 100% of its strength for a period of 10 to 12 months, with no special handling.

For more information, Click here

There is a simple yet powerful story on Off Grid about a Laramie, Wyoming man who is completely off the electric grid:

The nearest utilities to the property are far enough way that McGovern estimates that it would have cost him $25,000 to get service to his house. Instead of forking out that money, he spent time researching everything from small-scale wind turbines to solar panels, battery technology and energy efficiency.

Now, his house and commercial wood shop have all of the heat, light and power that McGovern and his girlfriend desire. They get none of it from the local utility company. Perhaps the only concession to the national utility system is a small propane tank that powers his stove and also powers an on-demand water heater that works in tandem with solar heating of the water.

His total yearly utility expenditures on the property are less than $400, he said.

For me there were two take-aways from this article:

1. Address Consumption First.

2. it is possible to have a modern lifestyle and live off-grid

Plant A Card is a greeting card with seeds embedded in it. Printed on chorine-free 55% recycled paper, printed using vegetable-based inks. Even the cellophane wrapping is 100% compostable.

Simply tear off the strip containing the seed pod and follow the easy planting instructions on the back of each card. Once planted, each card will recycle naturally into the soil as the seedlings start to grow.

Want to know what else is cool? Plant A Card is looking for submissions of original artwork for their cards.

New bicycles are expensive. There are lots of really good bargains out there in used bikes. Here is an article on Lighter Footstep about choosing a good used bicycle:

http://lighterfootstep.com/2008/07/how-to-buy-a-great-used-bicycle/

Public Farm 1 is a unique farm located in New York City’s PS1 (Public School 1) courtyard.

Bringing sustainable construction together with sustainable agriculture, PF 1 is built entirely of recyclable materials, is 100% solar-powered utilizes rain collection for irrigation. PF 1 is a giant container garden, formed as a folded plane made from cardboard tubes designed to hold planters for vegetables, herbs and fruit. While most of the tubes create an elevated canopy for shade, some tubes extend to the ground to become columns. Each column holds a different program, from seating to sound environments to a mobile phone charging column and even a juice bar at the farmers market.

PF 1’s intent is to educate thousands of visitors on sustainable urban farming through the unique medium of contemporary architecture.

Watch a time lapse video of its construction:
 
http://publicfarm1.org/index.php?/ongoing/construction-time-lapse/

Some of California’s aggressive pursuit of green living is beginning to pay off.

Pacific Gas and Electric CEO Peter Darbee made some interesting comments at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Energy Summit last Friday.

He said the state’s aggressive approach to slashing greenhouse-gas emissions will help shield it from significant utility price hikes that will soon grip the country.

“Rates in California will be going up much less than the rates across the entire United States,” said Darbee. “What we have learned from our discussions from other utility companies across the country is that they may be looking at between 20 and 30 per cent increases in energy bills in the future,” he said. Darbee believes California will only suffer rate hikes in the single digits.

PG&E attributes this bittersweet news for Californians partly to the company’s more diverse portfolio of plants across the state, including nuclear power, hydro power, solar and wind.

A new, compact way to collect sunlight from windows and focus it to generate more electricity could make those multiple expensive rooftop solar panels a thing of the past.

The solar panels that cover the tops of some buildings today contain photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into electricity. Unlike burning coal, collecting and converting solar energy releases no greenhouse gases, which warm the atmosphere. Limited efficiency and high construction costs have kept solar from producing more than about 0.07 percent of U.S. energy needs in 2007, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Solar concentrators can be used to increase the electrical power obtained from the photovoltaic cells. But most concentrators in use today “track the sun to generate high optical intensities, often by using large mobile mirrors that are expensive to deploy and maintain,” said MIT’s Marc A. Baldo, who led the team that created the new type of solar concentrator.

New approach

Instead of covering a large area with solar cells, the new method only requires locating cells around the edges of a flat glass panel.

The MIT solar concentrator involves a mixture of two or more dyes painted onto a pane of glass or plastic. The dyes absorb light across a range of wavelengths, reemit it at a different wavelength and transport it across the pane to the solar cells at the edges.

“Light is collected over a large area [like a window] and gathered, or concentrated, at the edges,” Baldo said.

Focusing the light like this increases the electrical power generated by each solar cell “by a factor of 40,” he added.

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Read the entire Andrea Thompson article at Live Science.

[An artist's representation shows how a cost effective solar concentrator could help make existing solar panels more efficient. The dye-based luminescent solar concentrator functions without the use of tracking or cooling systems, greatly reducing the overall cost compared to other concentrator technology. Dye molecules coated on glass absorb sunlight, and re-emit it at a different wavelengths. The light is trapped and transported within the glass until it is captured by solar cells at the edge. Some light passes through the concentrator, and is absorbed by lower voltage solar cells underneath. Graphic not to scale. Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, NSF]

Welcome to Derrie-Air, the world’s only carbon-neutral luxury airline, where you don’t have to choose between living the high life and saving the planet. Nine out of ten scientists agree—we need to reduce our carbon emissions or perish from the face of the earth. Air travel is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions and global warming. Derrie-Air will be the only airline that plants trees to offset every pound of carbon that our planes release into the atmosphere.

Find out more HERE.
(Read more…)

by Margaret Bruning

I live in a condo and like to walk through my neighborhood looking for edible treasures as the alleys in Phoenix are loaded with figs and citrus. As a way to meet my neighbors I always ask their permission to pick. I have found that they love to share their abundance and have someone else help “harvest” and enjoy their fruit. This is also how I stumbled into my own garden.

Two years after buying a condo and living city-style in the heart of one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the country, I was hungry for growing my own groceries. Daily I pondered my options so I began scoping out back yards and abandoned patches of dirt in all corners of my neighborhood. I spread the word to everyone with a yard, that I was looking for a patch of dirt where I could grow a small garden. I even considered guerrilla style planting in the drip-irrigated landscape planter at the adjacent condos.

Read the rest of the article at Your Guide to Green