Green Options

As the fastest land animal on Earth, the cheetah is a beast often referred to in metaphors, and studied for its movements. Humans, as you may have noticed, have something of an obsession with speed. Many of us won’t give up that obsession, no matter how much climate change may endanger our future. Did I mention humans are stubborn as well?

Thus the quest for a fossil fuel free future brings about a lot of interesting, outlandish, and outright weird ideas. This one is one of the weirdest, and yet it may actually have a future of sorts. Its a tricycle designed to mimic the movement of a cheetah… and, apparently, it works.

Rumors are gathering pace that Toyota is working on a two-door coupe version of its ultra-popular Prius hybrid, possibly scheduled to hit the market sometime in 2012.

The latest reports suggest that the Japanese outfit is currently developing a compact 2+2 Prius-based hybrid sports coupe featuring a beefed-up version of its 1.8-liter 2ZR-FXE four-cylinder engine, capable of achieving around 134 hp – 36 hp more than the sedan counterpart.

Although the higher power levels are likely to affect the Prius’s impressive fuel mileage, insiders are speculating that the company’s Hybrid Synergy Drive system will keep this to a minimum.

Italdesign, the Italian design firm responsible for the development of dozens of Lamborghini, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo production cars over the past 40 years, has announced plans to bring what it calls “the world’s fastest hybrid” to this year’s 2009 Geneva show, which will also be hosting the debut of the hotly-anticipated ethanol Bentley supercar.

Photos and speculation after the jump.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

I mentioned before in this blog that the gym and spa industry is one of the main buyers of sport bottles. It makes sense, sign-up for a [...]

After the Phoenix Suns NBA basketball team announced last week that they were installing solar panels as part of a new green initiative, now things only seem to be getting better for the environment when it comes to the efforts of professional sports teams.

The Philadelphia Eagles NFL football team announced on Sunday that they have paid a company for enough wind power to cover their energy needs for this year as part of their ongoing “Go Green” initiative. These needs include powering their stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, and also their training complex. The Eagles claim that they are the first team in the NFL to obtain all of their energy from a sustainable source (and we aren’t talking about Campbell’s Chunky Soup).

The Phoenix Suns NBA basketball team has announced that they will be installing 1,125 solar panels on their parking garage to help power their arena. The clean energy project will cost about $1.5 million and will reportedly not increase ticket prices for fans. The 194 kilowatt solar power system will provide an equivalent amount of energy to what would be used in about 26 home games per season. The system should be operational next year.

Bicycling it isn’t always easy. Busy streets, honking horns, and inadequate city funding for bike lanes and paths can make bicycling an uphill battle. However, with green in the news, the economy in a slump, and summer on its way, it’s getting easier to find reasons why there are some 1.4 billion bicycles and only about 400 million cars in the world today.

This week, EcoWorldly authors from six continents contributed articles on bicycling in their country. With exerpts from those articles and others in the blogosphere, here are seventeen very good reasons to bicycle no matter where you live. Click the headings as you go to read more.

“Over 500,000 tons of feces are openly defecated every day to the environment around the world. That’s enough to fill the 30,000-seat Stade de Genève, where the Euro 2008 football tournament kicks off this weekend, three times over. But the global sanitation crisis is not a mere game: it pollutes the very environment upon which humans depend. Providing toilets and protecting the environment would be a winning combination for people and planet”, says the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC).

The above was an opening line from an email communication sent out this week from Geneva, Switzerland by David Trouba, communications officer of WSSCC to mark events around the World Environment Day on 5 June, and the Euro 2008 football tournament.

We are told that each year, more than 200 million tons of human waste go uncollected and untreated around the world, fouling the environment and exposing millions of people to disease and squalor.

South Africa has hosted major international sporting events in the past, so I do not know why people write negative comments about the 2010 FIFA World Cup to come.

Since South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, the country has fruitfully hosted major sporting events. For example…

Nope, not an April Fool’s joke… the St. Louis Blues hockey team will host a “Go Green” event on its Tuesday night game against the Nashville Predators. While the information is bit sketchy on their website, sales rep Scott Witte let me know that this first environmentally-themed event for the team will mainly involve raising funds for one of the city’s most cherished green spaces, Tower Grove Park. There may be some green vendors displaying [...]

Do you take your kids to the park? Sign them up for soccer or softball? Parents who care about their children’s health likely encourage outdoor play and participation in organized sports. In the spring, as we begin to shop for soccer cleats and baseball mitts; it is wise to investigate how your schools and municipalities manage their green spaces.

Pesticide exposure is a serious health risk to children. And while limiting, or better yet, eliminating ingested pesticides is important, consider the direct exposure your children may get while they play upon that green, green grass.