Did you know that Earth Day is also Lenin’s birthday? According to some sources, the choice of April 22 in 1970 as the first Earth Day was intentional as it was also the 100th birthday celebration of Lenin. According to Leftbooks.com, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported:
When Earth Day started in 1970, one of Georgia’s leading politicians tried to warn President Nixon, state governors and other national leaders that it was a
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A year after having first noticed the green ‘cyber’wave, months after informing the world about Global Internet giants going green and weeks after being appointed as the new Moderator of the Delhi Freecycle Network(TM) group, the green ‘cyber’wave just got stronger. And Yahoo! has taken the lead. Starting Earth Day, it is not just spreading the message, “Free is good - Give stuff, get stuff. Do good for the environment” through its green pages, but is also working to achieve the same.
If the five easy steps in this video are not enough for you, then take a look at this list from Seoul’s 2008 Earth Day organizers of ten more ways to go green, Korean style.
Students in a horticultural technology class at the University of New Hampshire’s Thompson School for Applied Science completed a final project for last week’s Earth Day celebration that brings learning outside of the conventional classroom.
Associate professor Dana Sansom’s grounds management course installed sustainable landscaping around the university’s Putnam Hall, designed to provide low-maintenance beauty throughout the year. Additionally, the landscaped area will be used as a living classroom for the school’s future horticulture students.
Thompson School student Jim Lynn, who designed the landscape with students Henry Hess and Katie Leipold worked with nine other students over the course of the past year to develop and implement the project. The site, which had been largely neglected for a decade, was overgrown and unkempt.
Though those of us in the eco sphere are celebrating Earth Day this week, many of us green or not are also observing TV Turn-Off week. Sponsored by The Center For Screen Time Awareness, the annual TV-Turn-off week encourages us all to get out from behind the screen and do something else.
Though originally started as meaning, turn-off the TV, it has now spread to include all screens- TV, computer, video game, etc. That’s a lot of things to turn off.
Beyond the obvious benefits of spending less time in front of the tube, such as increased productivity, more social interaction and for kids…better grades and a more active lifestyle, there are other green and money saving benefits.
As part of their Earth Day coverage, NPR’s All Things Considered took a look at a LEED Platinum home renovation in Washington DC. Peter Yost from the green building resource BuildingGreen helped to explain some of the possibly unfamiliar green building terms and explained how the elements of this renovation contributed to its being one of the greenest homes in the country.
While building tours on the radio can’t show pictures, the NPR website has several [...]
Tuesday, April 22 is Earth Day, and we thought that a couple special posts would be appropriate on this date. Building has an enormous impact on the Earth, and green building offers the opportunity to lessen or eliminate many of those effects. Today, in a series of articles titled Elements of Building, we take a look at how Water, Energy and Materials each factor in to building operation and building design.
In addition to discussing green building, let us also take this opportunity to remind you of all the other Green Options blogs in the network and invite you to take a minute to look at some of the other writers and their Earth Day thoughts:
At the heart of all building projects are the materials, the stuff, the bricks and sticks, the elements that are assembled to build a building. Different materials have different impacts on the Earth. Some require extensive resources for their manufacture. Steel and other metals need to be refined from ore and processed into their final forms, often several operations, all taking great amounts of energy. The choices that go into selecting building materials have long range ramifications in a number of ways.
The materials we use in our buildings have an enormous impact on the Earth. Choosing materials with a lower impact can be an important criterion, but the matter needs to be looked at with proper long-term perspective. Careful use of materials with a long useful life (rather than materials which merely stick around for a long time after they have reached the end of their useful life, like vinyl siding) can result in a building that serves generations. Densities of use found in modern cities are only realistically possible when using higher impact materials such as steel. However, the offsetting benefits coming from the use of those materials helps to make this a more reasonable choice.
As part of the ‘International Earth Day’ week being celebrated here at EcoWorldly, there were a lot of E-Day events and happenings from Delhi, India that I wanted to share with the readers. I wanted to talk about the screening of the documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ at the American Center here in Delhi followed by a dicussion that shifted from Clean Development Mechanism (and the lack thereof) to the pollution in the city and/or the various tree plantation drives that took place in large number of schools here. More than that, I wanted to vividly illustrate the real time ‘eco’tourism being carried out at the Mandakini Magpie Bird Watcher’s Camp in the Himalayas as an excellent tool for biodiversity conservation. But then, there was something that caught my eye this afternoon.
Today is Earth Day, and it’s a great day to remind ourselves why we’re interested in things like renewable fuels and green car technology. It’s also a day to think about the role each of us plays in local and international environmental issues, from air pollution to the increasing cost of food.
Instead of bombarding you with tips on how to save gas or have a car-free day, I think everyone should take a few minutes to contemplate the local context in which these issues are playing out.
Practically speaking, the issues we’re facing can seem to overwhelm individual or even collective action. Oil is moving merrily toward economic depletion, public transportation is often nightmarish, and finding a realistic green car is almost oxymoronic.
Welcome to Earth Day, crafters! Today, in honor of our one and only home, I’m taking a break from the Fabulous Fabrics series to address a serious dilemma.
If you’re like me, you have a decent sized fabric stash sitting around. In my case, it’s quilting cotton. Yards and yards and yards of it. If you’re like me, you also spend a lot of time thinking about how you can help avert ecological crisis. When the two collide, it can produce guilt about consumption of that much cotton - which uses a ton of water to produce - as well as dyes to make it pretty.
Don’t fret! While cotton is a thirsty crop, your stash can start to make up for its ecological footprint while it awaits that perfect project. Scientists here at Crafting A Green World Laboratories have been working diligently to evaluate all the possibilities and develop this list of the Top 5 ways your fabric stash can help save the earth. (We believe these tips are also applicable to other stash materials, such as yarn and possibly ribbon, but our research is still ongoing into these supplies.)
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