Today is the last day to enter the “Name that Television Show” contest! Help NYC based Green Ground Zero rename their environmentally focused talk show, Built Green TV, and you could win a Voltaic solar backpack from 3r living! Send… Read More »Last Chance to “Name that Television Show”
There are a number of options available to you if you decide that you want to live in a more eco-friendly home. You could start from scratch and build your own eco-home, you could retrofit your current home to make it more sustainable, or you could go out there and buy an off-the-peg eco-home. This is the first of a series of posts looking at these options, and starting with buying a ready-built eco-home in the UK.
gWiki (think quickie with a “g”) is the Green Wiki. gWiki is newly launched and a great source to both the green guru and those who are just starting out on the path of environmentalism and needing to know more.… Read More »gWiki is the Green Wiki
The Environment Agency claims that businesses that adopt green practices are saving UK industry upwards of £5 million every year. And while going green can save £££s, it also serves to enhance reputations with customers and investors, drives innovation and creates markets.
In it’s Spotlight on Business report, the Environment Agency looks at what is changing:
For two seasons, Green Ground Zero has proudly hosted a television show called Built Green TV. During that time Neil Chambers, host of the show, has interviewed some of the most incredible thinkers, writers, designers and leaders in the environmental… Read More »“Name that Television Show” Contest
Although better than the Bush plan of doing nothing, the Kyoto Protocol has its share of problems. The European Union in particular has relied on market mechanisms to achieve the goal of holding carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. The plan works like this: Governments and Treaties set the level of emissions allowed by a region. Government bureaucrats then divide up this level of emissions into “emissions allowances” for individual emitters. That emitter then has the ability to emit to its full allowance, or cut emissions below its allowance and sell its remaining allowances on the open market. A coal plant may, for example, be given allowance to cover only its current level of emissions. If it wants to increase production, it needs to either purchase more allowances from another emitter or find ways to increase production with fewer emissions. To accommodate this trading, exchanges have sprung up to broker emissions allowances. However, some bureaucrats have demonstrated in this space their woeful lack of understanding of how markets work.
Read More »Market mechanisms for emissions trading full of holes
I’m confused when I hear people say they’re saving water by washing their dishes by hand because when I bought my first dishwasher two years ago, I did my research and found that by buying a AAA-rated machine I would be saving not only time, but water and electricity too. Still, the myth that dishwashers are water-gobbling evils prevails, and so I was grateful and relieved to read in The Guardian that it’s now official, get a dishwasher and save water.
A study by Waterwise, an NGO dedicated to reducing water wastage, shows that washing dishes by hand is wasting millions of litres of water every day in the UK. This supports research at the University of Bonn that shows that by using a dishwasher, households could save up to 11,000 litres of water annually. That’s a lot of water!
While dishwashers back in the 1970’s used on average 50 litres per wash, modern appliances use as little as 9 litres per cycle. I’m guessing the average sink holds around 20 litres at least, and that’s not taking into account changing the water when it gets greasy, or rinsing dishes.
Read More »Washing dishes by hand wastes water
Its clear that the business sector has a major role to play in helping to protect the environment, and governments worldwide are encouraging businesses to do their bit to achieve goals on sustainable consumption and production, and corporate responsibility.
So while Christmas is often seen as a time of excess and commercial gain, one company is making it possible for others to curb spending, help the environment and still keep the spirit of Christmas alive. Wishawish.com is having Christmas in July in 2006 and offering others the opportunity for further savings on their already economical corporate ecards for businesses that buy their ecards before the end of August.
Read More »Christmas in July: another way for businesses to stop harming the environment
The Happy Planet Index is a new global measure of progress, calculating the environmental cost with which countries deliver lives of different length and happiness, revealing for the first time that happiness doesn’t have to cost the Earth.
Launched today by nef (the new economics foundation), the Happy Planet Index is the first of its kind, and its results are surprising, or even shocking. The ranking puts the UK in 108th place and the USA in an even worse 150th out of 178 countries.