With bike weddings, bike parades, hundreds of naked bicyclists, bike fashion shows, popular & interesting cargo bikes, and travelling bike pubs, Portland is #3 on this great bicycle city photo tours list.

Portland has great bicycle facilities (colored bike lanes, bike boxes at intersections, great bike signs, off-road bicycle paths, etc.), a large number of people using the bicycle for transportation, and a bike culture that brings the fun of bicycling to another level.

As a result of these factors and more, Portland was the first large city in the US to achieve the Platinum level Bike Friendly award from the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) — the Platinum level being the highest level possible (above Gold, Silver and Bronze). It is truly a world-class bicycle city now, and the amazing photos in this photo tour help to show that.

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From bicycle lovers to lovers on bikes, bike art to art on bikes, the largest bicycle sharing program in the world to some of the smallest bikers, enjoy this bicycle city photo tour of Paris, France!

Paris doesn’t have a long history as one of the best bicycle cities, but with the introduction of the largest bicycle sharing program in the world, bicycling in Paris has boomed and the city is becoming commonly associated with the bicycle now. Its whole culture is changing due to the bicycle’s increasing relevance in the city’s daily life.

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One of the things people who’ve driven electric cars seem to enjoy (including myself) is the complete silence of the electric motor. The only noises you hear while driving an EV are dependent on how fast you’re driving, the kind of tires you have, and the condition of the road. For a commuter, this feature alone can be worth millions in sanity.

But at low speeds while driving around town, EVs represent a bit of a threat to people who aren’t able to pick up on the visual cues of such a silent car — namely the visually impaired, children and the elderly. In an effort to address this problem, Nissan has decided that at speeds under 12 mph, the upcoming LEAF EV will emit a “beautiful and futuristic” noise reminiscent of the sounds that flying cars emit in sci-fi movies such as Blade Runner.

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In the study, children and breastfeeding moms ate organic milk, cheese and yogurt. The study author said the connection between choosing organic dairy and less incidence of eczema was clear. The risk for other allergies and asthma also decreased.

So why is organic better? It’s hard to say for sure at this point, but researchers believe it may, in part, be due to the higher concentrations of conjugated linoleic acids that are found in organic milk. Studies have shown that organic milk has 71 percent more omega-3 fatty acids, too, another important nutrient for growth and development.

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I’m a firm believer in getting lots of nature time - anything, as long as it includes plenty of fresh air, surrounded by trees and plants and dirt. The National Wildlife Federation’s campaign, “Be Out There” has a list of 10 ways to get outside, even after school starts.

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A two-year-old Minnesota biomonitoring program has now confirmed that residents of suburbs east of the Twin Cities have perfluorochemicals (PFCs) in their blood, although government agencies stress that the levels are only slightly higher than those in the general population. Several landfill sites where 3M formerly dumped CFC wastes leaked the chemicals into groundwater including some drinking water wells. Meanwhile, a federal agency is proposing to study chemicals in urine and blood of Great Lakes residents to determine whether a massive proposed federal cleanup is delivering results.

The Minnesota Department of Health says 3M workers exposed to PFCs during manufacturing show no apparent impact on their health. Studies on animals have shown effects on the liver, thyroid, and pancreas.

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Wool is the most hydrophilic of all fibers and wicks away excess moisture, drying quickly. It’s a natural fire retardant that can resist flame without chemical treatment and wool is a renewable resource that regrows on the sheep after shearing. It is biodegradable and kinder to the environment than oil-based synthetics that contribute to global pollution. Wool is durable, remarkably elastic for growing children, and is free of dust mites.

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One of the gifts my son received for his 2nd birthday was a subscription to Wild Animal Baby published by the National Wildlife Federation. The magazine is printed on FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified paper. Wild Animal Baby is a children’s magazine for the age range 12 months to 4 yrs.

Wild Animal Baby is a wonderful way to get your toddler involved in reading at an early age. The magazine encourages children to get outdoors and appreciate nature. My son loves to get the mail and often asks to check the mailbox for his monthly copy of Wild Animal Baby.

Wild Animal Baby is just the right size for toddler hands. The pictures are bright and engaging and it is filled with several interactive activities for your child. Including I spy, letter/color/shape recognition, songs with illustration motions, captivating stories, child participation and much more.

My son loves to look for Sammy Skunk! I enjoy reading Wild Animal Baby to him because it is  educational and entertaining. We burn up some good time going through the pages and doing the activities.

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The Demeter Egyptian cotton is super-soft, absorbent and breathable. Plus it’s the rarest, most luxurious fabric in the world. Both individuals and retailers are invited to shop online for baby clothes, toys, diapers, and women’s menstrual pads.

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My daughter looks forward to shopping at the farmers’ market.  I think she’s excited because she never knows what will be there.  When one booth owner mentioned that he would have blackberries the next week, she talked about that to anyone who would listen and pestered me about it until we went back.  If my husband or I purchase a head of lettuce at the grocery store, even if she’s with us, she won’t eat it.  But she eats the lettuce she buys at the farmers’ market, just like she eats the lettuce she grows in her little garden.

I confess that I would do many things to get my daughter to eat her veggies – including eating vegetables I hate – but I, too, like gardening and going to farmers’ markets, so this one is no sacrifice. 

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These hand-knit items are made from the finest 100% certified organic Merino wool, spun entirely from unbleached, 3 ply or 8 ply un-dyed Merino fleece. No harsh chemicals are used in dying processes and garments are BIO-GRO certified.

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Slow Food USA is a group working to change food policy and attitudes in the U.S. Their mission is:

…to create dramatic and lasting change in the food system. We reconnect Americans with the people, traditions, plants, animals, fertile soils and waters that produce our food. We seek to inspire a transformation in food policy, production practices and market forces so that they ensure equity, sustainability and pleasure in the food we eat.

Chapters across the country organize events where folks can learn about the Slow Food Movement.

On September 7th, slow food groups around the country are planning eat ins to send a message to Congress: it’s time to get the junk food out of our schools and fund real, healthy school lunches. Slow Food USA president Josh Viertel explains the campaign:

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…Poor kids.

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Largest Bike Sharing Program in the World — Vélib’

Vélib’ started on July 15, 2007. Initially, it included 10,000 bikes and 750 stations. By the beginning of 2008, it had about 20,000 bicycles at about 1,500 stations. In the first 100 days, the program had 10 million rentals, an average of about 100,000 rentals a day! Each bike would turn over about 5-15 times a day. In about 6 months, the number of bicyclists in Paris nearly doubled!

You can use a bike for less than half an hour for free, or, after that, it costs €1 for another half-hour before rising more steeply. I love the first half-hour being free because many trips aren’t that long and it encourages more people who wouldn’t bike to try the program.

With about 25 million rentals in one year, replacing 10% of car traffic alone, an amazing transformation of the transportation system in one of the world’s most famous global cities has occurred. The British newspaper The Independent reports: “Describing Vélib’ as a ‘form of utopia’, Libération newspaper said that the presence of thousands of slow-moving, stately bikes has also had a soothing effect on Paris’ frenetic pace. ‘At the speed of a bicycle, an idea is gaining ground: one of a less arrogant and more human city,’ it said.”

I saw someone at a rail/transit conference in Miami make the point that the program creates a sort of individualized public transit — I thought that was a novel and very accurate description of the program. And, actually, a person gets a “smartcard” to use the program when they sign up for a transit card. This smartcard accounted for about 60% of the rentals in the first 100 days. You can also get yearly (€29), weekly (€5), or daily (€1) memberships in order to be able to check out the bikes.

With the great health benefits of cycling, I have heard another person say that Paris is creating “a city of athletes” with this bicycle sharing program. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but many people are benefiting from cycling around Paris and the health benefits are countless, for sure.

How popular is the program? After 1 year, 94% of Parisians support the program.

If you want to see more about the other best bike sharing program in the world or read a brief history of different bike-sharing programs, check out page 2 of the Barcelona bicycle city photo tour.

As The Independent reports, and hopefully you got a little flavor of it from the pictures below: “In the space of one year the vélib’ has become a Parisian institution, giving the streets and boulevards of the French capital a vague air of Amsterdam or Cambridge.”

On the flickr page of this last photo, there are notes showing how to check out and return a vélib’ bicycle.

For an amazing video on vélib’, visit Streetfilms.org

Image Credit 1: carlosfpardo via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: Feuillu via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 3: the noggin_nogged via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 4: austinevan via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 5: [phil h] via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 6: Marcia_Salviato via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 7: reinn via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 8: Feuillu via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 9: Feuillu via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 10: austinevan via flickr under a CC license

Street Artists Transport Pictures on Bikes

Other Street Artists Stand on Bikes

Street Art Can Include Bikes

Image Credit 1: franck94 via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: franck94 via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 3: °•●Mr Ro●•° via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 4: c-reel.com via flickr under a CC license

Biking for All Ages & All Styles

The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community. ~Ann Strong

The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard. ~Sloan Wilson

Hope you got a good glimpse of kids on bikes here. For pictures of babies on bikes, visit the Groningen photo tour

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Image Credit 1: iulian nistea via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: iulian nistea via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 3: [auro] via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 4: Feuillu via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 5: Abdou.W via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 6: [phil h_] via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 7: broken glass via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 8: THEfunkyman via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 9: Vinvin F via flickr under a CC license

Biking is for Friends & Lovers

Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling. ~James E. Starrs

Image Credit 1: Alain Bachellier via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 2: Joe Shlabotnik via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 3: Feuillu via flickr under CC license
Image Credit 4: Julien Hery via flickr under a CC license

Hope He Wasn’t Riding that Bike

(The guy on the right, that is. The guy on the left is using a Vélib’ bike.)

Image Credit: iulian nistea via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Bike Taxis

As in Barcelona and Berlin, you can find these cool bicycle taxis in Paris.

If you missed the others, check out the #10 Basel, #9 Bogota, #8 Barcelona, #7 Berlin, and #6 Groningen great bicycle city photo tours.

To keep yourself updated on the next four photo tours, keep your eye on EcoWorldly or even subscribe to its feed or email list. Have something extra to add? Comment below!

Image Credit: Mohsan via flickr under a Creative Commons license

It is with pleasure that I write this review of special children’s book written by our Green Options colleague and Eco Child’s Play contributing writer Joe Mohr, aka Mean Joe Green!  Not only is Joe a great political cartoonist, he’s a children’s author too.  His new book Go Out!  Go Out! is unique not only because it comes from Joe, but it is also a short book (14 “pages”) designed for your iPhone using istorytime.

From kite-flying to corndog buying, Go Out! Go Out! is a rhyming story that shares a small sample of the wonderful experiences that are waiting for us just outside our own front door.

Joe believes it is important kids get outside, no matter where they live!  I couldn’t agree more, and my family spends most of their days in the great outdoors.

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Editor’s note: The following post was originally published on Green and Clean Mom. “Green & Clean Mom can inspire you to try a little harder, be a catalyst for change and to offer you some new tips and news on how to be the green, sexy and sassy mom…I know you are!”

The New York Times recently reported that a  study was just published in the Journal of Pediatrics showing the children who took a bath in a half a cup of bleach per full standard tub were relieved of their eczema related itching. The bleach apparently had very little odor and the children were relieved of the itching. One article totes the solution of using bleach in the bath with children as “safe, simple and inexpensive…” and I’m trying to figure out how the hell this is safe.  Something is seriously messed up about this and I’m feeling very sick over the idea of a child breathing the toxic fumes, having their body exposed to the toxic substance when bath time should be a safe place to play. Do the children drink the water? How does it not get in their eyes? How is this legal and okay? Time Magazine explains that using the bleach bath might sound harsh but it’s safer than exposing children to the antibiotics…

“The bottom line is that the more antibiotics we use, the higher the risk for something becoming resistant to them,” says Dr. Amy Paller, a study author, specialist in pediatric dermatology and chair of the dermatology department at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “The beauty of something like dilute bleach is that one doesn’t get resistance to it.”

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Gus is a Tree by Claire Babin; illustrated by Olivier Tallec

Gus is a Tree is about a boy who, while playing with other children, falls asleep beneath a tree and then dreams of experiencing life as a tree. Gus shares the forest with other trees including birches, oak and beeches. He sees an autumn sunset and a wild boar family search for food. Night falls and he senses other creatures–owls, bats, even a dormouse that lives in a knot in another tree. He experiences a refreshing fall of rain and feels squirrels scamper up and down his bark. Then he is awakened by his friends who tell him it is time to go inside from the rain.

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In my local community something is happening that makes me want to jump up, clap for joy and say, “thank goodness”! Children are being encouraged to get outside. Turn off the television and discover green grass, bugs, bond with the trees, smell the fresh air, run and get dirty. It’s an initiative that really shouldn’t have to take place but with television, computers, working parents and technology more children are inside verses exploring the great outdoors. Find out how to locally get involved or start an initiative near you by visiting Getting Kids Outdoors.

The idea is to leave no child inside. I found many helpful tips for parents on a handout given to me at our local health fair and hopefully you can use some of these tips and join in the effort to get our kids off the couch and outside where the rain won’t hurt them and some mud could be fun for everyone!

Limit Screen Time. Designate how often the television can be turned on and stick to it. Avoid using it just for noise. I’m guilty at this. My children love to just have the television on but they’re not watching it. It wastes energy and it’s just noise.

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Predicting the Weather with Clouds

(This is a simple and quick explanation; I am not going into too much detail. Here is a great site about using clouds to predict the weather, or better yet, pick up a book from the library!)

1. Look at the sky! If you don’t see any clouds the weather is fine. If you see clouds, try and identify them.

2. Determine in which category the clouds fit. (These categories are high clouds, middle clouds, low clouds and clouds with vertical growth.)

3. Grab your book or go to this website to determine the shape and type of the cloud.

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Drug company giant Pfizer has agreed to settle out of court - to the tune of $75 million - in the case of its unlicensed medical trials on Nigerian children during a meningitis outbreak in 1996, which led to 11 deaths and serious injuries such as organ failure and brain damage in others.

The Nigerian Health Ministry called the experiment “an illegal trial of an unregistered drug” and a “clear case of exploitation of the ignorant.”

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A study of about 3000 children in 32 schools in Germany found that installing water fountains, giving the children refillable water bottles, and using teaching lessons promoting the health benefits of water consumption reduced the risk of being overweight by 31%.

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