Feed: Recent Edenblog posts - AggScore: 82.4

First of all thank you for visiting Edenbee, we really hope you like what we've done with the place. That said we really want you to get involved in our latest venture which sees us having a presence on Facebook. We have developed a great [Facebook application](http://apps.facebook.com/edenbee) which allows individuals to make the best possible choice by providing them with a host of ethical green products and services. Not only that, every time a person purchases a product or service from one of our partners they will be generating money for a cause of their choice such as the WWF, Greenpeace and Oxfam. We would really appreciate if you could install the application and help us grow in Facebook. We think this is a great application and with your continued support it will allow us to continue to provide you with excellent tools to help you live a more sustainable and greener life.

German utility company [Yello Strom](http://www.yellostrom.de/) is clearly into accessible tech: it manages its meters directly via households’ broadband connections, and offers access to [Google's PowerMeter](http://www.edenbee.com/users/Busybee/articles/google-power-meter-pa-1105). Now, it's keeping its customers informed by enabling meters to tweet about energy use. Each "Yello Sparzähler" smart meter ([designed by IDEO](http://www.ideo.com/work/item/sparzahler-electricity-meter1/)) is allocated its own Twitter account, which is automatically updated with energy consumption data. The owner can follow the account to receive regular updates, leading to greater awareness and hopefully lower energy use. DIY power monitors such as Tweet-a-Watt are also capable of tweeting, but Yello Strom seems to be the first utility company to offer the service as an integral part of their smart meters. While adding Twitter to their mix will undoubtedly give Yello Strom a PR-boost, the larger goal is to feed energy data into any tool customers may be using. As explained by Yello Executive Director Martin Vesper, "Our goal is to use as many different channels as possible to inform our customers about their energy consumption." Via; [Springwise](http://springwise.com/eco_sustainability/yellostrom/)

Over at [Infrastructurist](http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/07/14/from-the-uk-20-bold-schemes-that-could-save-us-from-global-warming/), they have coverage of a UK initiative to come up with 20 bold ideas for “saving the world.” These include: 2. A giant Artificial Stomach That Eats Seaweed Step One: Grow lots of kelp near the surface of the ocean. Step Two: Harvest it and “digest” it in a giant plastic “stomach.” The giant green mass gives off lots of gas — the CO2 could be siphoned off and put in some dark place and the methane could be used for powering humanity’s myriad doohickeys and gadgets. So it’s a twofer, removing carbon from the atmosphere and creating an energy source. 9. Huge Solar Farms in the Sahara A relatively small piece of the Sahara could theoretically provide electricity for the entire planet if it were covered in solar thermal mirrors. Plus think of all those jobs to build a solar plant the size of Britain. 13. Chuck The Goal Of Economic Growth Out the Window Beyond a certain point, GNP doesn’t really correspond with human satisfaction and the idea that a economy can grow forever is probably just dump. To illustrate: Under present rules, the jackass who takes high speed joyrides in his Hummer is a more valuable economic citizen than the person who commutes to work on a bike (all else being equal). Some, as you can see, are more practical than others. But this is the kind of thinking we need. The disappointing discussion coming out of the G8 on the subject of climate change was not encouraging, and who knows what Cop15 is going to bring. So I’m glad someone is putting creativity and audacity on the table.

On Thursday, Wal-Mart [is going to announce its new effort to create a comprehensive “sustainability index” for every product it sells](http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2009/07/13/wal-mart-become-green-umpire?page=0,0). The plan is to give every microwave, bean bag, book, and Transformer a score that reflects its full environmental impact, from manufacture through use and disposal, taking into account greenhouse gas emissions, use of materials and natural resources, and impacts on “people and communities.” Wal-Mart has enormous power over companies who want to sell their goods in its stores. Its buying policies can all but force a supplier to change its products or packaging. This new sustainability index, in other words, is going to be a number that Proctor and Gamble and General Mills care about. And it looks like the index has been designed well. The details are being hammered out by a “consortium” including Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart competitors like Target, consumer goods companies, and academics. Importantly, [the consortium is being led by those latter folks](http://www.sustainabilityconsortium.org/): professors of sustainability from University of Arkansas and Arizona State University. This is really big news. Wal-Mart has the clout to force businesses to dig up and release real data. And Wal-Mart has the reach to create a standard the average American pays attention to. Their index probably won’t be perfect, but it will be our first real starting point in developing a comprehensive national measure of the actual cost of our stuff. That’s pretty exciting. Via: [Good](http://www.good.is/post/judge-jury-and-retailer-wal-mart%E2%80%99s-new-%E2%80%9Csustainability-index%E2%80%9D/)

A new website promises cash rewards for home utility bill reductions, but will it manage to peak attention? [MyEmissionsExchange](http://www.myemissionsexchange.com/) was launched last week, but the site lacked obvious safeguards to ensure customer confidence. Recently lauded by Time Magazine for appealing to "checkbooks instead of our conscience," MyEmissionsExchange could provide the incentives needed for emission reduction. In an interview with The Daily Green, Tom Reilly, president of MyEex, said "This is the only effort out there that can align green activity with financial benefit." The company works off a household's last twelve months of utility bills to generate an average usage, and then sells the reductions the customers make on the voluntary carbon market. MyEex appears to deliver on their promises to incentivize through a simple payment system (PayPal), however it does not clearly describe how potential buyers will be attracted. The company also neglects to elaborate on its certification process. "Credits are... verified by MyEex using proprietary software and then certified to international standards using unique and proprietary protocols developed by MyEex" is the only information listed on the site. They refer to "recognized certification standards," but provide little in the way of transparency to the process, leaving one to wonder how the site verifies the customer's [carbon offsets](http://featured.matternetwork.com/2009/5/new-players-services-grow-carbon.cfm). The criticisms of the voluntary market take strong roots in this venture-- of dubious science or the risk of "[rip-offsets](http://featured.matternetwork.com/2007/8/carbon-offset-confusion.cfm)." MyEex's system is a welcome principle, but at first blush lacks credibility. With the emissions trading scene posed for change, services like MyEex could be an impressive way to reduce emissions and actually make money. However, carbon markets can leave space for unverifiable tampering. Via: [Matternetwork](http://www.matternetwork.com/2009/7/new-home-offset-website-need.cfm)

On track to become the first green building to achieve both LEED Platinum and Living Building Challenge Certification, the [Omega Center for Sustainable Living (OSCL)]( http://www.eomega.org/omega/about/ocsl/) embodies the synthesis of wastewater recycling, clean energy, and eco-friendly architecture. Designed by sustainable design firm [BNIM Architects]( http://www.bnim.com/fmi/xsl/index.xsl) as a functioning model for the nonprofit organization [Omega Institute for Holistic Studies]( http://eomega.org/), the state-of-the art environmental education and water reclamation facility in Rhinebeck, New York serves as a teaching tool to educate visitors on Omega’s ongoing environmental initiatives, including innovative wastewater strategies. The building’s design, informed by the removal of the facility’s current wastewater disposal system, is centered around a 4,500-square-foot greenhouse containing a water filtration system aptly named the Eco-Machine. Executed using technology developed by ecological architects Dr. John Todd and Jonathan Todd of [John Todd Ecological Design](http://www.toddecological.com/), the Eco-Machine uses plants, bacteria, algae, snails and fungi to recycle wastewater into purified water, which is then used to restore the aquifer. The 6,200-square-foot facility also contains a classroom, laboratory, water garden, and constructed wetland, supplies all of its own energy needs using photovoltaic power, and is carbon neutral. The self-sustaining, high-thermal mass building uses passive solar heating supplemented by geothermal heating as needed, and employs natural ventilation cooling strategies. The OSCL is one of the first buildings to participate in the [Living Building Challenge](http://ilbi.org/) and is anticipated to become one of the first buildings in the United States to be designated a Living Building – the highest level of environmental performance possible to date. Combining good design with an overriding green philosophy, BNIM Architects successfully set new standards for the future of sustainable architecture. Via: [Inhabitat](http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/07/07/omega-center-for-sustainable-living-opens-in-upstate-new-york/)

Ji Lee is a young, originally Korean designer who lives in New York. His first really fantastic project was getting 50,000 empty [blank bubble stickers](http://thebubbleproject.com/) printed and gluing them on the advertising posters all over New York. This gave passersby a chance to fill out the speech bubble. Ji would go back and photograph the results, often with funny or meaningful results. It's one of those projects where everybody wins: Ji gets to do his project, the public has a chance to talk back to the advertisers, the advertisers gain heightened attention for their posters and I get an ever so slightly funnier, improved New York landscape. In the meantime, he has designed many other wonderful public projects. [Check them out.](http://pleaseenjoy.com/project.php?cat=1&subcat=&pid=98&navpoint=1) Via: [Worldchanging](http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010054.html)

In the last post we looked at poo today we look at pee. Would you like to drive a car powered by urine? Of course you would. Not only is it an efficient concept, but, [according to Gas 2.0](http://gas2.org/2009/07/06/urine-the-hydrogen-fuel-of-the-future/), “using urine as a source of hydrogen to power the cars of the future is a serious undertaking and based on completely sound science.” Researchers at Ohio University have found that [urine makes a much better starting point for generating hydrogen than water.](http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2009/July/02070902.asp) The hydrogen found in urine is bonded much more loosely than in water. So loose, in fact, that by using simple and cheap materials hydrogen can be generated from urine using 1/3 of the voltage needed to make hydrogen from water. The researchers see a much wider application for this technology in wastewater treatment plants by generating hydrogen while treating the waste simultaneously. Even if [these researchers aren’t the first ones to ponder it](http://gas2.org/2009/06/23/zerofuel-car-uses-pee-for-power/), lets hope it gets off the ground.

Industrial designer Virginia Gardiner has designed not just a new toilet, but a new closed-loop management system that will allow individuals to, basically, recycle their poop. Yeah, I just said that. But give her idea a few minutes of your attention, because it's really not as gnarly as it sounds. A student of the Design London school at Imperial College in London, Gardiner has made a prototypical waterless toilet, called the LooWatt, that is part of a closed-loop energy management concept. It also uses no energy and converts human waste into a commodity. The idea is pretty simple. It starts with a person making a deposit into the toilet. Rather than flushing that organic waste into a sewage system, the person turns a crank that pushes the material into a receptacle lined with a carbon-rich, biodegradable film. The portal into this receptacle is sealed shut once the crank is turned completely and the waste disappears into the tank. (Thus, no odor lingers around the loo.) post-continues.gif our-sponsor-message.gif The collected poop is then periodically removed (it can be rolled away from the toilet, in the prototype design) and brought to an anaerobic digester, which produces cooking gas from the methane. Then the user cooks food with the gas (or heats a home, or whatever) and the whole process starts over again. Cooked food to poop to gas to cooked food, etc. She's also made a [clever website]( http://www.excrextra.com/) to describe the conceptual system. This might sound utterly loony to Westerners, and for anyone with a flush toilet, access to a sewage system and existing cooking/heating sources already piped into their homes. But Gardiner claims that there are 2.6 billion people—that's 40 percent of the world's population—who do not have access to flush toilets. Given the link between human disease and poor sanitation, it seems Gardiner's concept would fall on fertile ground, so to speak, in many parts of the world where it could be used a sustainable solution for a lack of sanitation infrastructure. But as one of viewers of the video produced by Dwell noted: those billions of people around the world who can't afford to live in areas with proper sanitation probably can't afford this system, either. Perhaps it's more appropriate for those who choose to live off the grid—rather than those who have to because of lack of resources. As a means of addressing poor sanitation in impoverished areas, the [Peepoo]( http://www.peepoople.com/) degradable bag seems more appropriate—or at the very least, a good first step in the right direction. Created by Swedish architect Anders Wilhelmson in 2005, this bag is designed to provide a way for those in poverty to safely collect their own waste, which can then be used it as fertilizer. It has been pilot tested in Africa and India. Via: [Triplepundit]( http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/new-loo-design-shits-a-commodity.php)

Greg Craven says he had to write a book to pay his 'Red Bull bill' debating climate change - but can he sell 7m copies? Two years ago a science teacher from a high school in Oregon called Greg Craven became a web phenomenon when he posted a video on YouTube entitled The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See. In the video, which has now been viewed more than 7m times, Craven sets out his take on why — from which ever angle you look at it — we must act to tackle climate change. His common sense approach to the problem was that a basic understanding of risk assessment suggests that we'd be pretty dumb not to spend some effort and cash now trying to avert the worst of the predicted climate change scenarios. In summary, he's arguing for a "better safe than sorry" approach to climate change. Needless to say, the popularity of the video — and [the follow-ups Craven posted on his YouTube homepage](http://www.youtube.com/user/wonderingmind42) in the following months — [irked the usual suspects](http://www.youtube.com/user/wonderingmind42) and a trail of debate has followed Craven ever since. But now he's back with a new video that is a not so subtle plug for his book [What's the Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate.](http://www.gregcraven.org/) He's says he's written the book to help him pay for the "Red Bull bill" he's wracked up over the past two years trying to debate with people responding to his videos. I suspect that he's only half-joking. "This book is my best effort to answer the question that has us all deadlocked in this debate over global warming: "When faced with contradictory statements from experts on a crucial issue, just what the heck is the over-busy lay person supposed to do??" And I think I managed to do it in a fair manner. In fact, the main criticism I got from both sides was — I went too easy on the other side! How's that for striking the middle ground? NO ONE likes me." Craven says his dream is to try to get the book to sell out its first print run of 15,000 copies before its official release date on July 7. Judging by how quickly his call-out has gone viral — he only sent out his rallying email to friends, family and fans yesterday afternoon — he may well succeed. Via: [The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/jun/22/greg-craven-climate-change)

A [BBC article](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8106104.stm) reports that a detailed forecasts of how climate change may affect the UK during this century are to be released by the government later. The report will predict how temperature and rainfall are likely to change at regional and local scales. Scientists believe winters will be wetter, particularly in the north, and summers drier, especially in the south. The projected impacts are "worse than the government had feared," according to a source familiar with the project. The government hopes the UK Climate Projections 2009 report (UKCP09) will allow citizens, local authorities and businesses to plan better for future decades. The picture it paints is an alarming one Keith Allott, WWF-UK Using a range of online tools including a "weather generator", people will be able to enter their postcodes and see projections of how conditions are likely to change within 25 sq km grid squares at different points in the future. "[This is] the most comprehensive set of probabilistic climate projections at the regional scale compiled anywhere in the world," said John Mitchell, director of climate science at the UK Met Office, which has taken charge of the computer modelling of climate used in the report. 'Serious impact' The previous report - UKCIP2002 - is now seven years old, and included projections from just one computer model. By contrast, UKCP09 has collated data from 400 variations of the model developed by the Hadley Centre, part of the Met Office. Each variant has been checked to see how well it predicted the climate of past decades; and the numbers have been compared with projections of other computer models. This allowed scientists to assign probabilities to various forecasts. The idea of the impact assessment has been well received by environment groups. "It's great that the government has decided to put together such a scientifically robust analysis of the potential impacts of climate change in the UK, but the picture it paints is an alarming one," said Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF-UK. "This research confirms that not only is climate change already having a serious impact in Britain, but that we are also locked into further impacts, and that these impacts will get much worse unless we act now to tackle the problem." Campaigners say that the UK impacts are likely to be minor compared to other parts of the world. [Listen](http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8106000/8106385.stm) to [Mark Lynas](http://www.marklynas.org/) author of [Six Degress](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/0007209053/ref=ed_oe_p) give his feedback on the report Last month a report from the Global Humanitarian Forum, the think tank chaired by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, said that the UK was among the 12 countries likely to be least affected by climate change. On Friday, the Environment Agency will release an assessment of how the changing climate will affect the risk of impacts such as flooding in England and Wales.

Watch [Yann Arthus Bertrand’s](http://www.yannarthusbertrand.org/v2/yab_us.htm) film [Home](http://www.youtube.com/homeproject) for free [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU&feature=channel_page).

[Nathan Shedroff's](http://nathan.com/) new book, ["Design is the Problem"](http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/sustainable-design/), presents a practical and layman-accessible exploration of sustainable design. In it, he breaks the progress towards sustainability into five parts: learning how to reduce, reuse, recycle, restore, and process. And Shedroff isn't afraid to get in reader's faces about the issue, either, bluntly stating that we need to "get over the guilt or shock or outrage... because none of it will be useful... and we have a lot of work to do." His often counter-intuitive points encourage reconsidering prolific and seemingly solid reasoning. For example, the book considers paper bags may be worse than plastic for the environment or how a Prius may have a larger footprint than a H2 Hummer. (Maybe there's redemption after all for the notorious tank-drivers.) One of the most thoughtful arguments we've come across against green-washing, the gist is that to be sustainable you need to consider more than just the veneer of a product. Put most poignantly, Shedroff insists, "Don't do things today that make tomorrow worse." "Design is the Problem" is available through [Rosenfeld Media](http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/sustainable-design/). You get both a digital and a printed copy of the book, and with the discount code WHATMATTERS you get 20 percent off the cost of the book (and all other books) on the site. You can also find it at [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Problem-Future-Must-Sustainable/dp/1933820004/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244810012&sr=8-1) Via [Coolhunting](http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2009/06/design_is_the_p.php)

Toronto charges on plastic bags In an effort to divert 70 % of waste from landfill, the city of Toronto has decided to charge consumers with 5 cents for every plastic bag requested from a retailer. Since last week, all the retailers must apply the fee for each plastic bag to their customers. The city council has been running a plastic bag recycling program that prohibited retailers to offer disposable bags not biodegradable, compostable or with plastic or metal handles.It’s a good oportunity to start thinking about bringing our own [reusable bags](http://apps.facebook.com/edenbee/facebook_goals/show?id=933946569) The money collected by the retailers with the 5 cents fee per plastic bag is not for the city council. Stores like Best Buy had already announced that proceeds from its stores will be donated to Toronto's youth programs. So, from now on, Toronto will join the road for becoming other plastic bags free cities in the world like San Francisco, although Los Angeles will have a ban in place next year and Washington D.C. is considering a 5-cent-fee this week, says [mongabay.com]( http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0609-hance_plasticban.html). Also countries like China and Bangladesh have both banned plastic bags, while Ireland has reduced plastic bag consumption by 90 percent by levying a fee on each bag. Via [earth911]( http://earth911.com/), [mongabay.com](http://www.mongabay.com)

With just six months to go to the Climate Conference in Copenhagen it's worrying to see that powerful global leaders – including Obama – are still refusing to take proper action to prevent a 2C+ rise in temperatures. Josh Garman's article in the [Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/09/un-climate-change-talks-barack-obama) on the frustratingly slow progress at the UN climate talks in Bonn addresses [the need for us all to do our part](http://apps.facebook.com/edenbee/facebook_goals/show?id=933946717) For years now, scientists have said – and most world leaders have acknowledged – that the imperative for a new global climate treaty is that it must keep the world below a [2C rise in temperatures](http://www.tearfund.org/webdocs/Website/Campaigning/Policy%20and%20research/Two_degrees_One_chance_final.pdf). If warming of more than 2C isn't avoided, the UN estimates up to four billion people will become vulnerable to water shortages, agriculture will cease to be viable across whole swathes of the world, causing widespread famines, and the Amazon rainforest will collapse. It is clear this 2C consensus should determine the sorts of carbon-reduction targets countries must take on, and should set the parameters of a strong Copenhagen treaty. Anything else would be a pact for mutually assured destruction. Yet it seems the US, even under Obama, is afraid that acknowledging this imperative would expose how their proposals are scientifically illiterate. It can only be for this reason that the US is consistently trying to dodge any promise of striving toward the necessary 2C goal. Asked this week if he's committed to it, Obama's slick chief negotiator, [Jonathan Pershing](http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/03/120777.htm), said the US was still looking at the science. [Questioned by a youth delegate](http://ukycc.org/) if he would pledge to try and save the communities whose very survival is already at stake because of rising seas, Pershing refused. It's obvious that the US is not so much "back" as "back to form". For those of us who hoped Obama's team would be different, it's gutting to already be sensing a sinking feeling on this issue. You want to stand up and shout, "Yes we can. Remember?" Maybe it was naïve to think Obama might be strong enough to take on [Big Carbon's stranglehold on the Hill](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/12/us-climate-bill-oil-gas), but I still believe if anyone can, he can. He was elected on a ticket of ending Bush and Cheney's eight-year assault on reason and with it the era of special-interest politics. With his dream team of science advisers and a global population willing him on, he could still do it. Yet instead of signing up to a science-led global agreement, his US negotiators here are arguing that in the Copenhagen agreement countries should be able to set their own targets according to what they perceive to be politically feasible in their countries. They want to write our generation's history on their terms and on their turf. You only have to look at the climate law passing through the US Congress at the moment, the so-called 'Waxman-Markey Bill,' to see what this would mean for the level of ambition we could expect to see in Copenhagen. Waxman-Markey commits the US to just a 4% cut in US emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels. Set this against the Nobel-winning [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change](http://www.ipcc.ch/) analysis showing that at least 40% cuts in emissions in developed countries are required, and you see the huge gap between the carbon budget being prescribed by scientists and the one being considered by politicians. The Waxman bill isn't even as ambitious for America as the Kyoto Protocol obligations that were put forward 12 years ago, and to add insult to injury, the proposed law would allow for [2bn tonnes of carbon offsets](http://internationalrivers.org/node/4223), meaning that the US wouldn't have to make any reductions domestically at all until the late 2020s. Every new acronym I hear turns out to be another dirty trick designed to allow rich countries to go on with business as usual. For example, one dubious accounting measure being proposed here would mean that for every tree planted a country would receive a carbon credit, but for every tree felled they may not be debited. For millions of species and indigenous peoples, this would signal extinction as it would incentivise deforestation of ancient forests and pave the way for plantations. America is far from alone amongst developed countries in dragging its feet. Canada is making desperate moves to prop up its tar sands and logging industries. Even supposedly clean, green New Zealand has no 2020 carbon target. Neither does Japan. Of course these industrial countries are joined by the caricature comedy baddies of the UN arena, rogue states like Saudi Arabia and Russia who throw regular wrecking spanners into the process. But what's most worrying is that the European countries with the most engaged constituencies are themselves failing to stand up. Europe is only committed to a 20% cut in emissions by 2020, and Brown, Sarko et al have given no indication of how much money they'll put forward for developing countries to rescue those who would otherwise drown or starve because of our addiction to the black stuff. 6717 "Edenbee SCC featured Goal")