Beijing LEEDS the way to Sustainability
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson presents the LEED Gold Award to Chen Zhili, head of the Beijing Olympic Village. (Photo courtesy BOGOC) |
The Beijing Olympic Village received a LEED gold award from the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, certifies that buildings have met a set of criteria for sustainability and energy efficiency.The LEED gold award was presented to Chen Zhili, head of the Beijing Olympic Village, on Wednesday by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Chen said the presentation affirmed the cooperation between China and the United States in clean energy technology for Olympic Games.
More than 16,800 athletes, coaches and officials of national teams are living in the residential section of the village – in 22 six-story buildings and 20 nine-story buildings that were constructed using environmentally-friendly paint and other materials.
The Beijing Olympic Village uses solar cells and geothermal heat pumps to supply energy to the buildings. The buildings feature solar heat, solar hot water, solar thermoelectric cogeneration, and intelligent control devices. They consume just 1/30th of the energy consumed by conventional buildings, according to the contractor, Guoao Investment Company.
Through a heat exchange system, the Village is projected to draw 7.89 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy from the Sun during the Olympics and slightly less in the years after the Games are finished and the buildings are used to house other residents.
The system taps energy from Qinghe sewage treatment plant and upgrades it through heat pump devices for winter heating and summer cooling. The technology can save energy by over 40 percent compared with ordinary air-conditioning systems.
In the Village, solar energy collecting tubes have been installed on rooftop gardens. The system can meet hot water demands of 16,000 users during the Games and some 2, 000 households after the Games. The project can save 5 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year,
The wastewater in the Village is being recycled and the 200 tons of water recycled daily is used for landscape watering in the Village.
Norway’s Sustainable Music Festivals
Norwegian music festivals lead the way to sustainablility by becoming the first music festivals to sign on with the UN Environment Program for climate-friendly events.
The Canal Street Festival in Arendal, Norway and the Hove Festival on the island of Tromoya, outside of Arendal, are lowering the carbon footprint of the entertainment industry through a partnership with UNEP’s Climate Neutral Network. The two big music festivals are the first to sign the UN Environment Program known as CN Net.
The Canal Street Festival, a jazz event taking place from July 21 to 27, is using certified green energy sources for their concerts. They also introduced organic cotton and paper bags in the city and they are selling organic and fair trade T-shirts.
The festival continues through Sunday and features John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, and The Waterboys, many bands of local, European, and U.S. renown, boat cruises, kids’ events, a parade and nightly jam sessions.
The Hove Festival, which featured Jay-Z, Beck, The Raconteurs and the Kooks among their major acts last month, invited their audience, staff, and participants to pay for their individual carbon footprint caused by their travel to the event. They also provided solar-charging points for their mobile phones, LED lighting systems powered by wind and solar power, and they set a target of 50% for recycling materials used during the event.
Funds raised by the offsets are going to support Clean Development Mechanisms in China approved by the United Nations under the Kyoto Protocol.
UNEP’s Executive Director, Achim Steiner, said, “The greening of live musical events represents an opportunity to lower the carbon footprint of not only the entertainment industry, but those of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people worldwide.”
He continues, “The Hove Festival and the Canal Street can serve as models for musical and entertainment events everywhere. Climate change tops the charts as the number one challenge facing this planet. Unless all sectors of society step up to the bar and address this challenge, we will all be singing the blues.”
Al Gore’s 10 year plan
Al Gore has released a plan from his home office in Nashville titled “A Generational Challenge to Repower America.” The plan is to get everyone on board to tap the entrepreneurial spirit of our nation and convert our dependency on fossil fuel to a carbon neutral source of power in the next 10 years.
Gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure and we are at war.
Gore’s says that by harnessing the energy of the sun, wind and geothermal energy we can solve many of our nation’s financil problems as well as putting a tight leash on global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps.
You may MUST read the Nobel Prize winner’s plan here:
Al’s Journal : A Generational Challenge to Repower America
…also check out: www.wecansolveit.org
We can save 100 million Trees this year!!!
Do you like fresh air, do you like the environment, do you care? Considering the data about junk mail may make you feel green in a whole new way. Read it and weep and then pick up your phone and cancel all those Pottery Barn and Frontgate catalogs you get weekly in your mail box. Do you really need those catalogs? Do you even want them? You are probably getting catalogs and junk mail from companies that you have never even heard of. The truth about the volume may shock you into action. Read it and then contact one of the links below. Breath deeply…now grasp the facts…
More than 100 million trees’ worth of bulk mail arrive in American mail boxes each year – that’s the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months. (New American Dream calculation from Conservatree and U.S. Forest Service statistics)
In 2005, 5.8 million tons of catalogs and other direct mailings ended up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream – enough to fill over 450,000 garbage trucks. Parked bumper to bumper these garbage trucks would extend from Atlanta to Albuquerque. Less than 36% of this ad mail was recycled. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
Americans pay $370 million annually to dispose of junk mail that does not get recycled.
The production and disposal of direct mail consumes more energy than 3 million cars. (New American Dream calculation from U.S. Department of Energy and the Paper Task Force statistics)
On average, Americans spend 8 months opening junk mail in the course of their lives.
250,000 homes could be heated with one day’s supply of junk mail.
There are several easy and painless (read the Lazy Environmentalist) ways to reduce your junk mail burden. Do yourself a favor and take advantage of one or more of the free (or slightly cheap) services listed below:
http://www.stopthejunkmail.com/
…and the Coup De Grace, goes to an organization founded by a college student from Missouri who was perplexed by the unsolicited yellow and white pages delivered to his doorstep and the daunting task of recycling all of them. He founded http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/
Why?
Over 500 million of these directories are printed every year. That is nearly two books for every person in the country! These directories produce a staggering amount of waste, not only in terms of misused natural resources but also in filling of valuable landfill space.
To produce 500 million books:
- 19 million trees need to be harvested
- 1.6 billion pounds of paper are wasted
- 7.2 million barrels of oil are misspent in their processing (not including the wasted gas used for their delivery to your doorstep)
- 268,000 cubic yards of landfill are taken up
- 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity are squandered
Ever heard of www.Google.com? Who needs a 20 lb. hard copy of www.yellowpages.com?
Know your Carbon Footprint
A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. You can measure your carbon footprint by using a carbon calculator which tells you how much carbon your lifestyle produces.
For instance if you plan to take a trip and you are flying economy class from JFK International airport to Los Angeles, a distance of 2,466 miles, your trip will generate about 659 lbs. of carbon dioxide. If you are making the same trip by car and you happen to drive a Toyota Prius ,which gets between 45- 48 MPG, your carbon emissions would be 1,027 lbs. In a Hummer H3 it would be 3,216 lbs.
It is easy to make these calculations at sites like Terrapass.com and Greenprogress.com. With a little information you can make simple calculations on the impact of your vacation or with a little more detail you can work out the impact of your entire annual energy consumption. Your carbon footprint is calculated based on questions such as your energy and food consumption, recycling and driving habits and more. All these factors add up to an estimated number of pounds of carbon dioxide produced by you in a year which describes your “carbon footprint“.
Once you know the impact you have on the environment you can begin the process of reducing your carbon footprint. You may choose to do this by the three R’s: Reduce, Re-use and Recycle or by buying carbon offsets which are available on-line at sites like Carbonfund.org and Terrapass.com. These sites allow you to pay for trees to be planted on your behalf or invest in alternative energy production like wind and solar power.
Some are skeptical about carbon offsets because it is like buying forgiveness for over consumption and pollution and simply planting trees does not cure the ills of burning fossil fuels. Carbontradewatch.org has a very detailed discussion of this topic in their article “The Carbon Neutral Myth”.
This summer you may choose a carbon neutral vacation rather than jet setting. You may use wind power and go sailing (like Kjell) around the Scottish Isles or go biking around the wine country in Napa with Life Cycle Adventures (ask for Tony). Or simply stay home and plant a tree, enjoy the warmer than ever weather or redecorate with furniture made from reclaimed wood.
*UrbanWoods makes furniture from reclaimed wood. Reclaimed wood continues to trap carbon from years of absorbtion and does not allow the carbon to be released due to decomposition. Furthrmore Urban Woods furniture remains tree free meaning that no trees are harvested or cut in any way to make the product.
How Green are You?
Do you recycle your cans and paper, use efficient light bulbs or drive a hybrid car? How do your efforts to protect the environment measure up with the neighbors and the rest of the world?
Now there’s a way to find out. It’s the Greendex: a survey developed by National Geographic along with GlobeScan, a Canadian research firm. It’s part of a large-scale effort to track global consumer behavior and its impact on the environment over time.
For Americans, there was a lot of bad news along with some definite glimmers of hope. All in all, we have the biggest houses, we drive the most, and we consume the most goods. Yet a significant portion of American consumers report such changes as driving alone less often than they did last year. And 45 percent say that making greener choices has become a personal priority, while only 16 percent say they’re not trying to be greener at all.
Brazilian consumers had the best Greendex scores and the seemingly very green German consumers had more mixed results.
Take the Greendex Survey yourself and see how you compare the the average Brazilian.
http://event.nationalgeographic.com/greendex/
Urban Woods promotes Sustainable Furniture at AltBuild in Santa Monica, CA
The 5th Annual Alternative Building Materials & Design Expo (AltBuild) returns this year as the largest and most cohesive green-building Expo in Southern California, offering a number of ‘firsts’ and unprecedented presentations, including the first official presentation by collaborative Green Cities California (GCC). AltBuild will take place on April 25-26, 2008 at its new location, the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Presented by the City of Santa Monica, the show continues to offer FREE admission, while featuring top speakers and noted exhibitors within the “green” community. The Expo is a much-anticipated event that brings together the general public and members of the building community, including architects, designers, contractors, retail buyers, government representatives – all with the uniform motivation to learn about and promote green building, alternative energy and sustainability technologies and practices. For more information go to: www.altbuildexpo.com
Norway’s “THINK” Electric Car will Return to the US and Made in California
According to the LA Times, Norway’s Think Global will begin selling its inexpensive, eco-friendly vehicles in the U.S. next year.
Norwegian automaker Think Global said Monday it planned to sell low-priced electric cars to the masses and will introduce its first models in the U.S. by the end of next year.
The battery-powered Think City will be able to travel up to 110 miles on a single charge, with a top speed of about 65 mph, the company said. It will be priced below $25,000.
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Oslo-based Think said venture capital firms RockPort Capital Partners and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers had made investments to fund its entry into the U.S. under the auspices of Think North America.
“This is not a toy,” said Wilber James, RockPort managing partner. “This is a serious car that we expect to sell.”
Think North America is likely to be based in Southern California, the investors said, and the cars it sells here will be assembled locally. The venture investors will own half of Think North America. In March, General Electric Co. invested $4 million in Think Global.
Although technology for electric cars has been advancing — and consumer interest has been rising amid growing concern over gasoline prices and greenhouse gases — few vehicles have come to market. Last month, San Carlos, Calif.-based Tesla Motors began production of its Roadster, an electric vehicle that costs $100,000.
The Think City “is a mass-market vehicle,” said Kleiner managing partner Ray Lane, dismissing comparisons to the Roadster. Tesla’s car is being produced in relatively small numbers, with roughly 300 expected by the end of this year. “Our desire is to be selling 30-40-50,000 of these cars in a couple of years.”
Think Chief Executive Jan-Olaf Willums said the company would bring test vehicles to the U.S. in the coming months.
The Think City runs on sodium batteries, but future versions could use lithium ion batteries, Willums said. The company is working with A123 Systems and EnerDel Inc., to develop the batteries, which would boost range and speed.
With most automakers focusing on hybrid technology, only a handful, including Nissan Motor Co. and Mitsubishi Motor Co., have announced plans to produce all-electric cars. Mitsubishi’s MiEV is set to go on sale in Japan next year.
Ford Motor Co. was the longtime owner of Think but sold it in 2003. It was purchased by Norweigan investors two years ago, and began selling cars in Norway this year, with sales in Sweden, Denmark and Britain expected this year. The company said its annual production capacity in Europe is 10,000 vehicles.
The Think City, a two-seater that can be fitted with two additional seats for children, has a mostly plastic exterior and is 95% recyclable. Willums said a convertible was in development. “Women want to buy it immediately,” he said.
51 ways to Celebrate Earth Day
This Earth Day take the time to adopt a few good earth friendly habits. Listed below are 51 suggestions that are easy to do and will make a difference in your quality of life and help preserve our environment for future generations. 1. Lower your thermostat. Buy a programmable thermostat.2. Reuse your water bottle. Avoid buying bottled water. In fact, reuse everything at least once, especially plastics.3. Check out your bathroom. Use low-flow faucets, showerheads, and toilets.4. Start a compost in your back yard or on your rooftop.5. Buy foods locally. Check out Eat Local Challenge and Food Routes to get started. Buy locally made products and locally produced services.6. Buy in season.7. Buy compact fluorescent light bulbs. You’ll find more on energy-efficient products and practices at Energy Star.8. Turn off lights and electronics when you leave the room. Unplug your cell phone charger from the wall when not using it. Turn off energy strips and surge protectors when not in use (especially overnight).9. Recycle your newspapers.10. Car pool. Connect with other commuters at eRideShare.11. Consider a car sharing service like Zipcar.12. Ride a bike.13. Walk, jog, or run.14. Go to your local library instead of buying new books.15. At holidays and birthdays, give your family and friends the gift of saving the earth. Donate to their favorite environmental group, foundation, or organization.16. Get off junk mail lists. GreenDimes can get you started. They’ll even plant a tree for you!17. Buy products that use recyclable materials whenever possible.18. If you use plastic grocery bags, recycle them for small trash can liners.19. Bring your own bags to the grocery store. Given a choice between plastic and paper, opt for paper.20. Buy locally. Find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food near you at LocalHarvest.21. Consider organic cleaning products like vinegar, borax, and baking soda.22. If you have a baby, consider using cloth diapers. To sign up for a diaper service to do the dirty work, check out the National Association of Diaper Services.
23. Consider buying a fuel-efficient car or a hybrid.
24. Landscape with native plants. Check out the article on the EPA website.25. Opt into a clean energy program. Check out the Green Power Network at the US Department of Energy.26. Go paperless. Consider reading your newspaper and magazine subscriptions online. Switch to electronic banking and credit card payment, too.27. Teach kids about the environment.28. Take your batteries to a recycling center. Earth 911 gives you the scoop.29. Turn your car off if you’re going to be idle for more than one minute.30. Do full loads of laundry and set the rinse cycle to “cold.”31. Recycle. If you’re not at home, take the extra steps, (literally), to find that recycling can.32. Reuse. Plastic food containers make good crayon and marker holders. Use padded envelops more than once. Buy your toddler or preschooler’s clothes from a thrift shop and give away those that don’t fit to friends. Goodwill or the Salvation Army can help.33. Limit the length of your showers. Even better, take a “navy shower,” shutting off the water while soaping up and shampooing.34. Don’t run the water when brushing your teeth. Learn about water scarcity.35. Wash towels after several uses. 36. Purchase one case of water and provide clean water to 24 people (for over twenty years).37. Give away your goods and find new ones at FreeCycle.38. Recycle your technology. Dell, Hewlett Packard, Apple, and IBM, among others, offer recycling programs.39. Go zero! Log on to the Conservation Fund’s Carbon Zero Calculator and in less than five minutes, you can measure and then offset your carbon dioxide emissions by planting trees.40. Put your money where your mouth is—invest in green investments. Web sites like Co-op America’s National Green Pages™ can help.41. Learn about threats to ocean life and help Greenpeace take action.42. Whenever you can, try using green cleaning products. Check out Cheap, Clean, and Green.43. Find your local watershed and learn how to protect it.
45. Opt for eco-friendly and holistic health products.46. Good to the last drop. Switch to fair trade coffee.47. Go paperless at work. Distribute company information and post company material online.48. Eliminate junk mail at work. For no fee, the EcoLogical Mail Coalition will eliminate the junk that former employees receive at work.49. Plant a forest and feed a family while you’re at it.50. Shop smart. Choose eco-smart products.51. Call for Climate
Environmental Effect on Consumers
Concern about the environment and global warming is not only influencing how consumers live their lives, but also impacting their buying habits.In a consumer survey taken in advance of Earth Day (April 22) by BuzzBack Market Research, 72 percent of those asked said they used energy efficient light bulbs and 57 percent said they purchased recycled products. But much work still needs to be done to change attitudes among consumers as less than 10 percent say they buy products only from “green” companies.BuzzBack conducted a survey among 1,141 people in the US and United Kingdom to learn how they are changing their lives to be more “green” or environmentally conscious. About half of those surveyed agree completely/somewhat “that the environment is the most important issue, and are willing to make sacrifices such as convenience, comfort or cost savings in order to support the environment.”When it comes to using products to improve the environment, US consumers say they do the following more often than not:
- 72% use energy efficient light bulbs
- 70% turn down the thermostat
- 71% recycle paper
- 68% turn off electric appliances rather than leave them on stand-by
- 67% take more showers than baths to conserve water
- 57% recycle glass
- 57% purchase recycled products
- 55% purchase recycled paper
- 51% purchase refill products
- 38% use less household chemicals
- 36% walk short distances rather than drive
- 31% buy organic fruit or vegetables
- 20% take fewer flights
- 15% buy organic meat
- 6% only buy products from companies they consider Green
- 4% use a hybrid car
