Archive for the 'pollution' Category

Push Mowers

Published
by
JB
on June 23, 2008
in carbon, gardening, household and pollution
. 5 Comments

mower.jpgI’ve been thinking about selling my townhome and buying a house that actually has a yard.  A YARD!  Can you imagine the possibilities?  I can grow my own vegetables!  I can have a place to sit outside!

Well, with a yard comes great responsibilities.  That is, taking care of the lawn.  I grew up in the midwest where our family had a pretty decent size yard (about a half an acre) and I have to admit, I never once touched a lawn mower.  I am such a princess.

Anyway, I’m kind of excited about the possibility of having my own lawn to take care of – and have been thinking about push mowers.  Paul thinks that this is not a good idea because he believes they would be hard to push, but I hear this is not really true anymore.

Another option would be to get an electric mower – at least this would still cut down on the pollution.

Anyone have any experience with either?  Recommendations would be appreciated!

My kind of town, Chicago is…

Published
by
JB
on June 15, 2008
in action, carbon, energy, global warming, pollution, recycling and solar
. 3 Comments

chicago-skyline.jpgI lived in Chicago circa 1993-2004, during which most of this time I lived near Lincoln Park (Lakeview to be exact). I worked in downtown Chicago and would hop on the 151 (bus) everyday. I had my ups and downs with the 151 – it safely brought me to 333 East Wacker and back without fail, but was crowded and downright gross in the heat of the summer (picture your face being smashed into someone’s armpit when the bus lurched to a stop.) Yum. Regardless, I loved the freedom public transportation afforded me. The fact that I only used my car on the weekends is a total 180 from my life today, where I basically drive everywhere and everyday (public transportation in Mountain View, CA is sorely lacking in comparison). Anyway, there are other things I miss about Chicago – the food, the summer festivals, Ravinia, etc. I can go on and on.

Well here’s one more reason why Chicago is a great city: Mayor Daley. Regardless of your political party affiliation, you have to admit that he’s doing a pretty good job of making Chicago one of, if not the greenest cities in the US today. Here are just a few examples:

  • Chicago’s City Hall is the country’s first rooftop garden on a municipal building – Check out the Featured Projects link on this website
  • The Green Alley Project where alleys are retrofitted with environmentally sustainable road-building materials (there’s a lot more interesting information about this project here)
  • Museums (all of them) have been converted to partially run on solar power
  • All new public buildings to achieve at least LEED Silver status

Check out this cool PDF which shares more info on some of the other big green projects Chicago has completed.

Can China’s air pollution really get any worse?

Published
by
greenhl
on June 10, 2008
in global warming and pollution
. 0 Comments

beijing_traffic_air_pollution

China is notorious for its poor air quality, ranging from the burning of raw coal, to millions of cars crowding city roads, and to blatant industrial pollution from factories and companies. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that pollution had gotten so bad in China last week that heavy pollution warnings were issued. This means that residents with respiratory problems are encouraged to stay indoors.

For those of you who haven’t been to China, I’ve heard from numerous sources that pollution is bad there, especially in and around the larger cities. When you go out during the day, you will often come back with a face full of soot and pollution – so much so that your towel will turn black if you wipe your face. Apparently, even if you blow your nose, it will come out dark because of all the pollution. I’ve heard lakes and rivers are nowhere near clear, let alone the skies.

I recognize that we in the U.S. aren’t exactly innocent either. Considering we’re only a fraction of the world’s population, we do more than our fair share when contributing to global warming. I think all countries, especially those with resources like China really need to take a step back and look at what they are doing. Remember the Industrial Revolution during the late 19th century? We saw all those pictures of coal burning, smokestacks spewing raw pollution into the air, and industrial waste everywhere. Well, China is like that… but 100 times worse given the scale at which they are going through their Industrial Revolution.

No matter who is at fault or who the worst violators are, we all need to stop pointing fingers and do our part to help. The more blame we try to shift, the worse the problem will get. All countries, especially China and the U.S., need to set examples. I know we can start by passing legislation that will help our environment, such as the

Barack and John, I’m talking to you.

Published
by
JB
on June 6, 2008
in global warming, politics and pollution
. 0 Comments

Well, I just saw on a Reuters newswire that the US climate bill died.

The bill aimed to cut total U.S. global warming emissions by 66 percent by 2050. Opponents said it would cost jobs and raise fuel prices in an already pinched American economy.

What is there to really say? It was a close call (sort of) – 48 senators favored the bill, 36 opposed. 6 no-shows (including Obama and McCain) wrote in saying that if they were in town to vote, they would have favored the bill. (60 votes were needed for the bill to have passed.)

The climate bill was not as aggressive as the Kyoto Protocol, and we can’t even pass this? This is depressing, but I suppose there is comfort to be had that our future president (whomever he is) is more pro-environment than our current president… Let’s hope that we can get something passed soon once the torch has been passed to Obama or McCain.

Plastics are evil, part 1: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Published
by
Paul
on May 28, 2008
in pollution and waste
. 8 Comments

180px-oceanic_gyres.pngHave you heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It is a humongous, Texas sized section of the Pacific ocean where garbage that finds itself in the Pacific ocean collects. It collects there because currents in the ocean form a whirling vortex, known officially as North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, and that’s where the garbage eventually ends up.

I’m reading a book called, “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman, which answers the question of what would happen to the planet if one day humans were to mysteriously disappear. It turns out that reading the book, which uses that interesting question to illustrate all the great and small ways we affect the planet, also makes you want us to disappear, because we cause so many problems which would miraculously go away if we went away.

runoff.jpgTake the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It turns out that every time it rains or the wind blows, our plastic bottles and bags and other garbage are swept into the ocean. Because plastic basically lasts for thousands of years before degrading, we’ve been creating ever larger and more pernicious swirl of plastic garbage in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, as well as the 5 other ones on the planet. How much plastic? How about 18 million tons?The book tells the story of Charles Moore, an amateur sailor who steered his catamaran into the patch:

For a week, Moore and his crew found themselves crossing a sea the size of a small continent, covered with floating refuse. It was not unlike an Arctic vessel pushing through chunks of brash ice, except what was bobbing around them was a fright of cups, bottle caps, tangles of fish netting and monofilament line, bits of polystyrene packaging, six-pack rings, spent balloons, filmy scraps of sandwich wrap, and limp plastic bags that defied counting.

albatross.jpgIf you’re wondering why that’s bad, consider the effect on animals. Greenpeace estimates that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement. Like this one here, whose stomach is full of plastic it mistakenly ate.

And those plastics also act as sponges for other chemicals, such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or “gender benders’ and resilient poisons like DDT and PCBs. Animals and fish eat those – any chance they don’t end up in our food?Anyway, this is one significant way that plastic is evil. Stay tuned for more, but I’m definitely going to get serious about takeout containers, plastic bags, and other plastics.