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My pet is green!

by The Green A-Team

Has your pet gone green yet?

There are 72 million pet dogs and 82 million pet cats in the United States.  The pet population has an impact just as we do, but the difference is that we’re making the calls as to how we care for them, decisions that can also have strong impact on our health and the environment.

Here’s a few tips for greening up your pet:

1.) Adopt. The shelters are teeming with abandoned pets that are desperate for a home and the cost of adoption is minimal.

2.) Feed them right. Meat byproducts, commodity corn, and chemical fillers in pet food are as bad if not worse for them as they are for us.  Nourish their little bodies with brands that are certified to have the good stuff or make  your own pet food!

and 3.) Compost pet waste. Keep it out of your vegetable garden but it use it your flower beds and lawns for them to come up really strong!

For more ways to green your pet, check out some of the following sites:

How to go green: Pets (Planet Green)

Great Green Pet

Bideawee

Photo by hippolyte photography.


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My dirty little Valentine

by The Green A-Team

When choosing gold jewelry for your Valentine this year, consider the dirty secrets of this so-called precious metal.

The world’s gold is in short supply and the amount collected in the last 500 yearsd could fill two Olympic sized swimming pools.  Within the last 50 years, the old wild west methods of panning and prospecting have been replaced by mountain leveling, open-pit mining that creates man made earth gashes that can be seen from space.

Having the least vital relevance to human existence, gold generates more waste per ounce than any other metal.  One ounce, the amount found in a typical wedding ring, requires the removal of more than 250 tons of rock and ore.  Cyanide is used to leach gold from the ore and the lead and mercury heavy waste slurry is commonly dumped into local water resources decimating fish, wildlife, and poisoning the food chain for generations.

If you really want to dazzle your Valentine this year, try buy from retailers like Tiffany & Co that are pushing mining standards higher.

For more facts and alternatives to dirty gold, check out some of these powerful images and links:

Women Gold Miners (Chocó, Colombia)

Chocó is a no man’s land. The large inaccessible rainforest jungle area in the western lowlands of Colombia is mainly inhabited by Afro Colombian population, descendents of African slaves. High presence of malaria, guerilla drug traffic routes, tropical deseases and only an irregular river transport makes this region virtually lost. Gold that is found in the jungle rivers of Chocó is the only hope for many although they never find what they dream about. Women goldminers work in a hot tropical humid climate, miring in the goldbearing mud, searching for the gold and platine dust. They will never give up their effort simply because there is no other way to live off. © www.jansochor.com

Alternatives to Dirty Gold (NoDirtyGold.org)

Jewelery retailers target ‘dirty gold’ (Marketplace)

Cleaning up dirty gold (Washington Post)

Photo by danielle_blue.

Slideshow by Jan Sochor.


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Bush saves an ocean on his way out

by The Green A-Team

In like a lion and out like a lamb.  An unlikely green super-hero emerges to protect the fragile seas.

The Bush administration may not be remembered for it’s ground breaking conservation efforts but just before his departure from office, President Bush effectively protected a whopping 195,000 square miles of the central Pacific’s untouched ocean oasis.  With the stroke of a pen, the President set aside an area the size of his home state of Texas as the largest swath of protected ocean on the planet.

And Bush didn’t skimp on the protection either: these marine monuments are granted the highest level of conservation, prohibiting commercial fishing, mining, and drilling of this newly safeguarded underwater Yellowstone.  While the initial proposed ocean and island plot was over 700,000 square miles, Bush’s declaration went above and beyond expectations and is still a huge and important initiative.

Only recently have we come to discover the finite nature of our ocean as a natural resource and it’s efforts like this we hope will endure through our emerging administration.

For a look at the largest marine monument on earth, check out some of these images:

Photo by Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Slideshow by volcanojw.


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Sustainable skiing:
Know your mountain’s score

by The Green A-Team

While snowy slopes are fun for skiers and snowboarders, what are the environmental costs of this winter sport?

60 million vacationers will head for the hills this year and resorts are being forced to expand drastically.  This means more trees chopped to clear trails, more wildlife displaced, and more energy needed to run the lifts and lodges.

So is there anything to stop this?

Recently, the Ski Area Citizens Coalition (SACC) called foul an effort where resorts were required to assess their own eco-friendliness.  The problem with this self-evaluation, they said, is the absence of accountability.

The coalition fired back with their own environmental scorecards based on water usage, energy and waste management, and forest, air, and wildlife preservation.

By giving consumers the ability to choose destinations with higher scores, inadequately scored resorts are forced to steepen their efforts.

For more on skiing green, check out some of the following links.

How green are your vallées? (Guardian UK)

Ski resorts environmental impact (Suite 101)

How to become a greener skier (ResponsibleTravel.com)

How green is your mountain? (Time)

Is greener whiter yet?  The Sustainable Slopes Program after five years (SACC)

Photo by Mount Ararat Trek.


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Elephant poo paper cleans up

by Rich Awn

For no other reason than this kinda made me chuckle when I first caught wind of it on GreenUpgrader.com and then again when thepoopoopaper Twittered me, it seemed irresistibly interesting.  Turns out this elephant dung paper ain’t no joke but a potent little eco craze that’s helping keep these mammoth beasts thriving in the wild.

The diet of an elephant consists mainly of fruits, fibrous grasses and bamboo.  These plants can be used to make paper on their own but requires a rather toxic process to achieve what an elephant’s digestive system does on its own.  What’s left behind is the undigested plant matter that is first washed, combined with some other plant fibers, molded into “cakes” or “wafers”, left out in the sun to dry, and then peeled off it’s tray to make poop paper products!

The process is as brilliant as it is beneficial.  The dung used is collected from conservation parks creating a clean environment for the animals while the whole process from elephant grazing to paper raising creates jobs down the entire line.  The Elephant Poo Paper Company, Ltd. even goes so far as to donate a portion of your purchase from their “Poo-tique” to elephant conservation services worldwide.

Who knew poo could be so cool?  Hooray!


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Seawater holds key to future food

by The Green A-Team

Full BBC article here.

Green Air Filter:

One by one, the Earth’s natural resources are disappearing. And by no means is fresh water safe from elimination. And in a world where most living things only thrive on fresh water, the search for an alternative is rising to the top of the science community’s list of priorities.

98% of the water on Earth is from the ocean. So it only makes sense that scientist have been looking to the ocean as the next frontier for survival. Plants such as kale and samphire can be cultivated in salt water, as they have been for several thousand years by our ancestors. Spinach and beetroot are also options for the salt water revolution. At this rate, soylent green is no longer something we have to look forward to.

Photo by Paul Prudence.


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25,000 gardens now nature havens

by The Green A-Team

Full BBC article here.

Green Air Filter:

A land of rich culture and history, England is known for many things. English gardens being one of the most aesthetically pleasing of them all. But for many horticulture hobbyists, these famous gardens are more than just idyllic backdrops.

The Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB) has noted a trend in gardeners offering their gardens as Mother Nature’s safe haven for birds as well as insects. More than 25,000 gardens in England have initiated this plan by planting special plants and building homes for declining populations of birds such as sparrows and song thrushes. With these acts of ‘Green vigilante’, Ol’ Blighty will have soon have to change its nickname.

Photo by James.


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Birds killed by windmills: Fact or foul?

by The Green A-Team

Birds killed by windmills.

Should construction on new wind farms be stopped?

As we race to live the dream of clean energy we are confronted with obstacles on every front, whether it be inefficient technology, flawed design, or in the case of wind energy, bird life.

James Castle is a Lecturer in the Department of Environmental Studies at San Jose State University and an expert in a bird kill study at Altamont Pass, known to be one of the most notorious sites for avian mortality.

The industry itself is actually helping out.  They are shutting down wind turbines in the winter when the largest amount of birds are passing through.  They also have improved some of the new designs so that they reduced the impact on birds.

As windmill design has improved with larger, slower moving blades easily dodged by flying birds, the hazard to these animals has begun to diminish.  Wind energy remains one of our greatest hopes of achieving clean energy independence and the risk to wildlife has certainly been taken into consideration as we progress.

For more on wind energy and the birds at risk, try out some of the following links:

Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group

Altamont Pass, California (The Encyclopedia of the Earth)

The Deadly Toll of Wind Power (San Francisco Chronicle)

Putting Wind Power’s Effect on Birds in Perspective (AWEA)

Photo by Charlene Burge.


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