New Eco-Tourism

So eco-tourists can visit places like Xcaret or do any number of other eco-tourist travel activities in places all around the world but I read of an opportunity today that I think is a little more unique.

I read an article about how tours will begin to be offered to visit the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine beginning in 2011. This is something that is unique in that it deals with a number of environmental issues as well as telling the story of the disaster and the fallout from the nuclear accident that occurred in April 1986. The tours will enter the 30-mile exclusion area surrounding the plant on the visit, this highly contaminated area has been closed to everyone except workers at the plant since shortly after the accident when resettlement of survivors and those living in the area occurred. A picture of the sarcophagus covering the damaged reacrot is below.

Village Volunteers

This post has been a long time coming as I had reminded myself by sending an email but hadn't gotten back to the email for quite a while.

Village Volunteers is a non-profit orgnanization that works " in partnership with rural village and capacity-building programs to support the development of sustainable solutions for community survival, education, and growth."

That sounds like just the type of organization that can be shared here on Enviro-Sustain. they have operations in several countries on three continents, including Kenya, Ghana, India, Nepal and Belize. Here is more about the organization and what they do. They have a blog that you can follow to see what is happening from time to time.

EPA 40

The US Environmental Protection Agency turns 40 today. It was founded on December 2, 1970. Here is a link with more information about the history of the agency thus far.
There is a neat video montage on that site and here is a slideshow of images.

Permafrost Methane

This isn't a new topic but it is new to Enviro-Sustain as a dangerous element of climate change. Here is an article I read today but I saw a different article earlier this week and read at the time but can't find now. Basically, as global temperatures rise more arctic permafrost land is thawing, with that methane is released. As the methane is released it compounds the greenhouse gas aspect that is pushing temperatures higher in a literal vicious circle.

This is pretty much how it works: "As the Earth warms, the summer thaw bites a bit deeper, awakening ice-age microbes that attack organic matter – vegetation and animal remains – buried where oxygen cannot reach, producing methane that gurgles to the surface and into the air."

Just another thing to keep up with in this world of environmental and sustainability issues.

More Ecological Footprint

I have a great interactive visual from The Global Footprint Network that provides a country by country view at different aspects of how the ecological footprint of humans is.

Tigers - Extinct? Soon...

Generally my posts are about websites, larger environmental issues or living sustainably and environmentally consciously. This post is about a different sustainability issue - poaching endangered species, which often get to be endangered because their hunting is not done sustainably.

Here is an article about the poaching of tigers and their precipitous drop in populations and ranges over recent years. Last year5% of the wild tiger population was killed, meaning at that rate it would be less than 20 years for extinction of all tiger species.

I learned a lot from this article and I recommend that you read it but an example of something I didn't know was that tigers were once found in 25 countries and now only in 13 countries and that their populations have declined from an estimated 100,000 100 years ago to about 3200 in the wild today.

Behind on Posting

I am woefully behind posting to this blog but I haven't given up! I have several topics at any given time that I want to post about, sometimes they end up being larger than I want them to be and need to be pruned, sometimes I am fighting for time in my life to squeeze them in and sometimes I just post to the less serious blogs that I maintain.

Since this is a post about being behind on posting it gives me the perfect opportunity to share that Earth went into overshoot just over 3 months ago. Some of the blog readers who have followed from the beginning will understand what overshoot is and here is a post from mid-may about it.

We went into overshoot on August 21, 2010!!! Yes, that is correct, Earth Overshoot Day moved more than a month ahead of when it was in 2009! That is a startling change! Here is a link to the Global Footprint Network news release about that.

Earthshare

Earthshare.org is a website that maintains a focus on presenting work-place giving options that then have donations go to "the most respected and responsible environmental and conservation organizations in America."

In addition to that, they also have information on their site about the issues, getting involved and news & media. An interesting part of the site was their quiz section, with numerous quizzes and answers. I signed up for their email newsletter while I visited the site.

Cedar Grove Compost

Hello, It has felt like I have been neglecting Enviro-Sustain lately without meeting my goal of 5+ posts in a given week in quite some time. I have actually been reading the same amount and accumulating great topics and websites for posts but I haven't had time to post them. On average Enviro-Sustain posts take longer than posts for all of my other blogs as this is often a new topic and there is more material to share.

Since that excuse-fest is now over I can post about Cedar Grove Composting.

I was inspired to post about Cedar Grove as there was a piece in a newsletter put out by Seattle Utilities. This had a coupon for a free foll of compostable kitchen bags, which I didn't buy before it expired but did think about. I am not sure how to best post about this website as there is a wealth of composting information on the site. I guess I will begin by sharing a few links to their site. Here is a pretty helpful link - they have a youtube channel with videos about how to compost. Since 1989 Cedar Grove has diverted over 4 million tons of organic material from landfills. They offer a number of products for sale from mulch to soil amendments and blends to composting kits/supplies. Really this only scratches the surface of what is available on their site so it is definitely worth having a look through some time.

Out of This World!

So how would space travel be something for Enviro-Sustain? Well I was looking through a World Changing article from a week ago and I think it definitely fits here. The article I read is titled - Space Tourism, Climate Change and the Need for Sustainable Space Exploration. This brief piece was mostly about another article from the journal Nature. This just highlights that there is more to think about than sorting our recycling, composting, saving forests and natural space, developing renewable energy and all of the other terrestrial aspects of building a sustainable future.

Sustainable Las Vegas?

You may be wondering what is wrong with that title? Do those words go together at all? For Las Vegas Sands, the company that owns the Venetian and Palazzo hotels with over 7000 combined hotel rooms it does mean something. This morning I read an article from a weekly gaming email I have received for over 9 years now, the Casino City Times. The article is titled Top-10 Ways Las Vegas Sands is Going Green.

No picture in this post but here are a couple of cool stats from the piece. The combined building space of the two hotels and the Sands Expo Center total over 17 million square feet of space making this the largest LEED certified "green" building in the world! WOW, that is pretty cool.

They also have some other very cool ways that they are going green like having their own energy efficient light bulbs designed. What? Yes, they weren't satisfied with the existing energy efficient light bulbs so they designed new ones to meet their needs. Who does that?

OK, overall I thought it was a fun article.

State of the Future

If anyone needs something to do tomorrow night, this event The State of the Future sounds interesting. It is a meeting/presentation from the executive editor of WorldChanging. I saw this in their newsletter and for one time I am ahead of the date of an event.

Water Shortages - Possibly?

I read an article today about metropolitan areas across the US that may have water shortages in the future due to a number of factors. It isn't a long article so I won't summarize it here but here are the top three areas that are at risk.

#3 - Phoenix
#2 - Houston
#1 - Los Angeles

Some of the others in the top 10 are not ones you would automatically expect like Orlando (#10).

Top Green Companies

In a newsletter I receive from Newsweek there was a piece about the top green companies in the US. Here is the link to their slideshow of photos and information about the top 10 US companies.

Carbon Fund

This post is about Carbon Fund. Carbon Fund is an organization that works to reduce carbon use and offset what can't be reduced or avoided. They have an interactive carbon calcluator that can be done for individuals or businesses.
They also have sections of their website about education of carbon issues and how to reduce and offset carbon usage, projects they are working on and carbon fund news.

Seattle Weekly Green Card

This post is about the Seattle Weekly Green Card. I have been on their email newsletter for more than a year but I am just now posting about it. The program is free and consists of going to the coupon page and sending offers to yourself for discounts at local, green-conscious businesses. They also have sections of their site about green tips, events (which is more general and Seattle Weekly events), special features and what it means to be green.

Community Garden

One final post to Enviro-Sustain this week that was prompted/inspired by the West Seattle Green Book. A green tip in that book talked about joining a community garden and shares the site communitygarden.org.

I liked how their definition of a community garden was broad and yet very straight forward: "Any piece of land gardened by a group of people."

It is a thorough site and I really enjoyed looking around and I learned several things quickly and easily.

Sustainable Burien

I am not very familiar with Burien but they also have a local sustainable organization. Sustainable Burien also contributed to the West Seattle Green Book.
Some of the resources they have on their webpage include: Upcoming Events, FAQs, Newsletters, Links & Resources and a Tip of the Week Archive (not currently kept up to date but still good tips).

Sustainable Ballard

Building on the posts from yesterday, this is about Sustainable Ballard, another local organization focused on sustainability within their community. Sustainable Ballard also wrote some of the pieces that I read in the West Seattle Green Book. The topic areas on their site are called guilds and there are several of them including Food & Health, Community, Garden & Natural Environment, Home & Built Environment, and Transportation.

Here is a little more information about their organization.

Sustainable West Seattle

While I was reading the West Seattle Green Book, I saw a page about Sustainable West Seattle so I wanted to share what I have found about this organization.
I am excited about this as a new resource for me because it is local where I now live and because of the breadth of interest and topic areas that are represented. Here are some of the areas of their site: Events, News, Education, Energy and Energy Blog, Food, Transportation and Water.

West Seattle Green Guide

Last night as I stopped at the grocery store on my way home I saw this little green book on a stand with the store ads. It said " The West Seattle Green Book" on the front with a big recycling symbol. I ended up grabbing one of them as I left the store and there is the story behind this post.

The West Seattle Green Book has a umber of advertisements for green or sustainable products and services offered in West Seattle. There are also several editorial pieces. I also enjoyed the green tips, one was on upcycling and another was on community gardening.

Biodegradable Products

Building on yesterday's post, I found a website that was creatively named "Biodegradable Products" and thought this would be a good site to post about. Here is the link to the products that they sell, the most useful for me would be the pet poop bags but I already have a bundle of them.
It was an interesting little collection of products.

Biodegradable Products Institute

To follow up on yesterday's post, here is a little information about the Biodegradable Products Institute.

Their website is pretty dry and not exciting but it does have a lot of resources if you are looking to find certified compostable products in their directory of products. I found the All About Composting section of the site most interesting.

What is compost? Here is the answer they have - Composting is a natural process that turns organic materials into a dark, rich substance. This substance, called compost or humus, is a wonderful conditioner for your soil. As an organic-matter resource, compost has the unique ability to improve the chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of soils or growing media. And while compost or humus contains plant nutrients, it is typically not characterized as a fertilizer.

I also read their History of "Biodegadation" page. You can explore and see more of what they offer on this site.

Biodegradable

What is biodegradable? I think this is something I feel like I know but am still a little fuzzy about so I will post about it this week. For this initial post I will begin with the definition.

The definition is: capable of being broken down especially into innocuous products by the action of living things (as microorganisms).

The word was first used in 1961. It was also interesting that on the Merriam-Webster dictionary site they tell you what the word that comes before and after it is and they are - biodefense and biodeterioration.

Biodegradation can be done aerobically or anaroebically and it can also be measured in both of these ways. To measure aerobic biodegradation the amount of oxygen that microbes use or the carbon dioxide they produce is what is counted and to measure anaerobic biodegradation the amount of methane or alloy that is produced is measured.

The Impact of Seafood

There won't be much substance in this post but the link is rich in material. In my "The Green Guide to go" newsletter from National Geographic today, there was a great piece about seafood, the marine food chain, sustainable seafood and the world's seafood footprint. I really hope that you follow this link and explore more about this topic. There is a lot of multimedia at this site and it is very interesting. Here is a teaser statistc for you - Every year, over 170 billion pounds of wild fish and shellfish are caught in the world's oceans!

Mother Nature Network

I spent some time looking around a new site today, the Mother Nature Network. I enjoyed one of the featured articles on there titled 8 ways global warming can kill you. In that story was the picture below, which is of Seattle but without Puget Sound in the picture but rather a dry cracked wasteland. Some of the ways to die were from severe weather, high temperatures, poor air quality, etc. The most interesting one was by animal attack! By what animals, you ask? Bears and Jellyfish were specifically spotlighted.

The Mother Nature Network also has sections of their site that are about lifestyle, green tech, eco-biz, food & drink, home, transportation and family. Inside the food & drink section there was another area of interest for me, beer!

I will finish with one more of their slideshows, it was titled 7 unlikely things global warming could take away. Some of these were Florida, skiing and pasta, but the weirdest one was waffles and the scariest one was beer! Yikes, apparently hops and barley are sensitive crops that don't like rising temps.

Gulf Oil Spill Revisited

Today I read an article about the final amount of oil that was spilled this spring/summer in the Gulf of Mexico. One of the first postings I ever made to this blog was about previous major oil spills so I wanted to revisit that and see how 4 months have added a bit more to the context of this spill. At that time this was the list of the top oil spills:

1. The Gulf War = 360,000,000 gallons
2. Ixtoc 1 = 138,000,000 gallons
3. Atlantic Empress = 90,000,000 gallons
4. Nowruz Oil Spill = 80,000,000 gallons
5. Exxon Valdez = 10,800,000 gallons

In the article I linked above the oil spilled in the gulf this year was approximately 4.4 million barrels. Some of you may be wondering how to reconcile this barrel v. gallon question. One barrel of oil is equal to 42 gallons. I have no idea why the number of gallons is used in these measures above as well as practically every report of an oil spill I have ever heard but maybe it is because it makes it sound much bigger, maybe it is easier for people to conceptualize 138,000,000 gallon size milk cartons but filled with oil rather than milk, I just don't know the answer to that.

OK, I know all of you are waiting for this, since math is hard, I will do the calculation.....the grand total is 184,800,000 gallons of oil! Still much less than the deliberate destruction of oil infrastructure during the 80-88 gulf war but definitely in solid 2nd place and #1 for accidental spills.

Wind Powering America

Since I previously posted about the wind farm in the UK that just opened I did a little more looking around and I found this wonderful map below. This was on the US Department of Energy renewable energy website.
The more orange/red/purple the color is the better suited the area is for wind power. I look at those purple streaks in southeastern Wyoming and I remember going to college there, where the wind never, ever, ever stops blowing and this definitely makes sense to me!

Largest Wind Farm

I read this article this morning about the opening of the largest wind farm in the world. It is located off the coast of the UK and can produce a maximum of 300 MW of electricity. What I found most interesting about this is that the towers are 380 feet tall. I have seen wind power instillations in many places around the world and none of them seemed to be that tall. I admit that my perspective in each of those situations could have skewed my guess of height but anyway, these are pretty darn tall.

Park(ing) Day

Park(ing) Day is tomorrow, September 17th and is where metered parking spaces are taken over and transformed into additional mini public park space. The Park(ing) Day website is here and has more information about the worldwide program.

Here is the description of the overall event on their website:
"PARK(ing) Day is an annual, worldwide event that inspires city dwellers everywhere to transform metered parking spots into temporary parks for the public good."

A couple of picture examples are posted here but there are more on the Park(ing) Day site.
Here is more information about Park(ing) Day. Here is information about Park(ing) Day in Seattle.

Another brilliant picture example is below.

Urban Farm Hub

I just reviewed the posts for Enviro-Sustain of late and I found that there was little coherence between the posts so I figured, "Why start now?"

This posting is more at home with the posts I made in May and July about sustainable agriculture but the overall reach of Enviro-Sustain is broad and I enjoy that there is so much to learn about a number of topics.

Today I am posting about the Urban Farm Hub website. I was digging around a little more about city chickens, though I am far from being prepared to have any at home and I came across this site. They are an information resource for urban agriculture in the Puget Sound region.

They have 5 interesting sections to explore further and their logos below are linked directly to their pages within their site.

EcoFabulous

I wasn't sure what this site would be about when I initially clicked the link and waited the second or so for it to load. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this site covers areas that I have not covered at all yet on Enviro-Sustain. Sexy.Sustainable.Style. That is their slogan and part of their logo. This site has information on staying green but being fashionable, sleek and stylish in all aspects of life.

There is a home section as well as Beauty, Fashion, Kids, Lifestyle and even Guides to help get information on different topics.

I encourage you readers out there to drive down through the links on this site to find areas you enjoy or appreciate being Sexy, Sustainable and Stylish in.

I looked through the Home section and looked through the Pets topic area in particular.

Method

I am not always caught up on new things but I try to catch up quickly when I learn something new. Today, in a totally unrelated piece about what to buy and what not to buy at Target, I learned about Method cleaning products. Honestly, I rarely go to Target and it used to be quite close to where I lived, now it is considerably further and out of the way. I will probably try to find them at a few of the other retailers that they are available at.

To be honest we may have already had some of these products at our home as the shape of the bottle in the design logo above looks familiar.

They also have a blog that you can follow and it has fun and interesting posts. You can even join People Against Dirty if you want.

Energy Savers

Here is the Department of Energy website about Energy Savers. I learned a few interesting things on this site. One thing I learned was about shutting down computers when they are not in use. I have in the past always shut down my computer at home. Only recently have I begun to let it stay on but it is a new computer and has energy saving functions.

I also looked at the do-it-yourself home energy assessments. In the house we moved to last month it was in the upper 90s our first week. Since then it has cooled significantly and this week we are getting some more reliably cool and dreary weather, which I think will be a good time to take on part of this task.

Green Guide

This post is about the Green Guide from National Geographic. They have a monthly newsletter that I signed up for. The site has several sections, including Home & Garden, Parenting, Travel & Transportation, Food and their blog.

I did their water footprint calculator, which was interesting. Here are my scores:

Home - 48

Diet - 763

Energy - 74

Stuff - 22

Overall - 907

The scores for an average American are:

Home - 100

Diet - 1056

Energy - 700

Stuff - 125

Overall - 1981

Based on this I feel pretty good about myself but the results told me I could even lower my score another 20%. I was amazed at the water it takes to produce various types of food in people's diet.

Another feature was about what country is the greenest.

Walk Score

I read an article in my World Changing email that I received earlier this week about Walk Score and calculating how pedestrian/transit friendly different areas of cities are. Below is a transit heat map picture of Boston on the left, San Francisco in the middle and Seattle on the right. The brighter the green, the more walking and transit friendly the area is and the darker orange/red it is means it is less friendly and requires more individual vehicle transportation.

You can calculate your own score for addresses you input on the Walk Score website. My old address had a score of 88, which was good. My new score is a 91 and called a "walker's paradise" so I am pretty stoked about that. I thought it was interesting that 22% of Seattle residents had a higher score still, I guess that means Seattle is pretty good for walking and transit.

Here is a link to another World Changing article from the past about this walk scoring.

Seattle was the #6 most walkable city on their ranking. San Francisco was #1

Save the Serengeti

I read an article this morning about the Tanzanian government moving forward with a highway through the Serengeti plain just south of the Tanzania-Kenya border. I then followed through to a link about a group opposing this and their site titled Save the Serengeti. On their site they have the map below showing the proposed route as well as an alternate route that has been proposed to the south of the national park and conservation areas.
To give some perspective on the vast size of this park, just the park alone is about 5700 square miles, about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined or compared to Yellowstone National park, which is about 3400 square miles. The conservation areas surrounding the Serengeti, including Masai Mara NP in Kenya more than double the size of this contiguous area of conservation.

Below, there is a picture of mine from when I visited the Serengeti and was taken from atop a rock outcrop. It would be strange to see a black line running through the unbroken flat piece of green land.

The conservation groups opposing this are accurate about the danger of animal crossings for the animals but they don't even mention the danger to people on the highway. I saw the remnants of an Elephant v. Semi-truck collision on a highway in Botswana and neither end of that collision came out a winner.

Seattle Solar

Solar power in the dreary, cloudy northwest? Seattle City Light, the electric company that is part of the City of Seattle, says it is just fine here. They state that we actually get more sun than Germany, which is currently the largest solar power market in the world.

Seattle City Light is also looking to offer an option for community solar power.

There is a FAQ page about solar energy on their site as well.

Solar Power

I have been absent from posting for a week but I haven't been absent from learning about Solar Power as I said last week was going to be a new area for me. This is a brief post about a solor power plant in Nevada. The Nellis Solar Power Plant is located on Nellis Air Force Base just north of Las Vegas. The plant supplies about a quarter of the power for the base. Solar power is literally the perfect fit for an area of high energy consumption (think air-conditioned casinos, neon lights, massive hotels) and an abundance of sunny days in the desert!

This array has 70000 panels and they rotate to follow the sun and maximize power throughout the day. Here is the brief White House press release when President Obama visited the plant in 2009, there are a few more statistics there.

Learning About Solar

So, I mentioned earlier I am going to learn about solar power and I am starting today. I began with an article I found on Yahoo Green. This gave me a little bit of information about the affordability of solar panels for a home. I followed the link at the bottom of the article to ecomii to see their buying guide for making a home green.

I also read a great little article about the costs for installing solar panels and how to calculate different aspects of how much solar installation is right for people based on their current electric bills.

Solar Power

I think I will learn more about solar power and one of the items that sparked this additional interest was a featured article from World Changing, which was in the email newsletter that I received this week. The article was titled: Scaling Up Solar: The Global Implications of a New Study that Says Solar Power Is Cost Competitive with Nuclear Power. It was interesting that now in North Carolina solar power can be cheaper than nuclear power. There is a wrinkle in this and that is that tax credits, etc. are part of what makes this happen and part of why this price equity does not happen in every jurisdiction since each place in the US (and the world) has its own set of policies, taxes, etc. that impact this.

This article was a good starting point for my interest in this so look for more upcoming posts about solar power.

EPA, Go Green!

So I signed up for the EPA "monthly" newsletter, called "Go Green!" in early May just after the April newsletter came out and now, 4 months later I received the new August newsletter in my email. There were no May, June or July editions.

Even ignoring the multi-month MIA period (they were busy in the Gulf, right), there were a few interesting areas/items in the newsletter. I followed the link for the "I'm For Water" Water Pledge which was interesting. I then looked at the WaterSense products page that are water saving items.

I also looked at tips for water saving, in particular the tips for consumers but there are also tips for businesses, utilities and communities.

So that is what I did today with the newsletter, you can check out the newsletter in the link above and see if other areas are interesting to you.

Islands of Trash!

So many of you might have heard of the great big garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific ocean, right? It is made up primarily of tiny bits of plastic and was formed by ocean currents (and trash dumped in the sea).

This evening I read an article about the torrential rains in China that shut down the shipping locks at the Three Gorges Dam last week and how now the upstream flow has washed in "islands of trash!"
Here is the link to the article but the most impressive (or worrying) part is not that these islands are incredibly tiny compared to the Pacific Ocean patch but rather that they can be walked on!!!

Food & Climate Connection

Since I am still on a roll today I want to share a video that I think is a very concise, powerful and easy to understand and translate into action!

It is about 9 minutes long but it is probably one of the best videos I have posted on any of my blogs in the last 5 months.

The video also speaks for itself so please watch and enjoy!

The Food and Climate Connection from WhyHunger on Vimeo.

GreenNote

***This event already took place***
OK, so I am running behind but it is good that I learned about this and I can be prepared and ready to pay attention next year when this event comes around again. Since this is still a good event to promote and one that has some good ideas for other and future events I am posting it anyway!

A flurry of posts today here at Enviro-Sustain, which is appropriate because of the multiple day lapses I have had lately in posting. This post was inspired by one of the numerous weekly emails I receive from Seattle Weekly each week. In particular it was the Green Card Newsletter that I received several days ago and the GreenNote event as this post is titled that caught my attention.

This isn't really like any of my previous posts as it is not about an article or website or even a current event like other posts have been. This is about the GreenNote event and how they are promoting "green" as a way of hosting an event.You can explore the event more, which is headlined by Amos Lee with some of the links in this email but here are a couple of tid-bits:

The event will have 100% compostable food and drink concessions

Sustainable and/or vegetarian concession menus

Fundraising for local environmental non-profits

Check it out!

The Swinery

So, I am changing gears from the recent petro-carbon postings and going back to highlighting a local sustainable business. In fact, I will soon be living in the same neighborhood in West Seattle as The Swinery and this will be a fun business to frequent.

I will let you do a little searcching around their website but here is one of their vows:

"We VOW: to support and honor our local Farmers/Ranchers.

Too often in our current Chef focused culture the preparer is glorified and the producer forgotten. Our meats come from just a 300 mile radius and we are dedicated to insuring that local producers are successful. We also explain the farms and the farmers, and give you all of the information you need to make and informed sustainable decision. "

They also have a Swinery blog here.

Oil Everywhere!

Oil spills are everywhere, last week I posted about spills in Nigeria, there was the spill in China, of course there is the Gulf spill and now in a Michigan river. I read about this yesterday but I read a different article today and here it is.

Just a brief post with article.

Natural Gas Flaring

OK, so I am on a roll today and will keep posting until I lose the momentum. This post is about natural gas flaring, which I had heard of and was only minimally aware of but I have been reading about it this morning. Here is a brief description I found in an article from Oilwatch Africa, it is an article linked in the previous blog from today:

WHAT IS GAS FLARING?
*Geology dictates that some of the richest deposits of oil sit together with deposits of natural gas. Gas flaring is the practice of burning off that natural gas when it is brought to the surface in places where there is no infrastructure to make use of it. In the 1960s and 70s, "worthless" gas was continuously flared at oil wells from Texas to Saudi Arabia. At its peak, the practice pumped about 110 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year — about 0.5 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.
Since then, the practice has been reduced, largely because companies have realised the commercial potential of the gas. Pressure to reduce flaring increased again when negative impacts of burning the gas became better understood and efforts began to reduce the CO2 emissions driving climate change. However, flaring is commonplace in Nigeria, where an estimated 40 per cent of gas produced is burned off – about 2.5 billion standard cubic feet per day. Worldwide, the gas lost to flaring could meet one third of the EU's natural gas needs each year.

Here is a little more information about flaring.

Oilwatch Africa

Since my first post of the day was about Nigerian oil spills, I would like to stay on the same continent and post about a group and their website: Oilwatch Africa

On their site I read an article about the gas flares in Nigeria that are visible from space but have been illegal since 1984.

They also have more information in an overview of oil in africa and an area with publications.

Oil Spill

OK, so I bet you thought I would be posting about the gulf oil spill...or the spill in China that didnt make the news until several days after it started...you are all wrong. I read an article today about oil spills in Nigeria. It surprised me to find out that approximately each year there is an oil spill in Nigeria the size of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska was!!! It also notes that there are about 2000 spill sites that are yet to be cleaned up.

Just a brief post but something that is important but very much out-of-sight and out-of-mind for the US.

Tree Hugger

So the other day I posted about another website run by Discovery and today I will post about another of their sites, treehugger.com. This site can be a little overwhelming in the volume and breadth of information available but hopefully finding a category or two of interest makes it less so.

I selected to look at the green basics section first and read the piece on all you need to know about "paper or plastic" which was an interesting read. I think you may be surprised by the conclusion to the piece if you read it!

The second area I looked through was the travel and nature section. I ended up reading a piece about getting feral cats to stop eating endangered birds.

There was also an interesting piece from today that was about China's carbon emissions and I have posted about that in the past.

100 Places

I have seen this site before but I watched a couple of the 1 minute videos today and wanted to share it. This is from the Planet Green site run by discovery.com and are the "100 places to remember before they disappear." As I mentioned each video is only a minute long and are on a number of places. The first one I watched today was on the Kalahari Desert, the second was Tuvalu.

There is a map that you can explore a little with to see where some of these places are and get a snippet of information about.

Some of these places are ones you might not think of like Tokyo or the River Thames in England.

Grow Food

After a near week-long absence from this blog I am back!

Short post here about a site called GrowFood that a friend forwarded to me a week or so ago.
This site helps people looking to experience or help work/learn on an organic farm find farms near them and it helps farms and farmers who need help get the feet on the ground that they need. While searching through the farms I looked at several that I thought were interesting and some of them have their own sites or blogs that were fun to explore.

ReVolt - WorldWatch

OK, since the post yesterday was more of a teaser than an full post, I will continue and add a little more about WorldWatch and I will also feature their ReVolt blog today. Hopefully you have had a moment to check their site but if not you at least know from yesterday that they have four blogs.

Here is the mission statement for WorldWatch: "Worldwatch Institute delivers the insights and ideas that empower decision makers to create an environmentally sustainable society that meets human needs. Worldwatch focuses on the 21st-century challenges of climate change, resource degradation, population growth, and poverty by developing and disseminating solid data and innovative strategies for achieving a sustainable society."

I think that statement is really a more thorough version of this blog, as Enviro-Sustain is simply a personal pursuit.

OK, on to ReVolt!!! If you follow the link above or in yesterday's post you will see the first post so I won't spotlight that one but rather I will focus on one from June 29th titled Research We Wish We Didn't Need. This artlcle on their blog illustrates how climate change has a much ibgger consensus among climate researchers than the public believes there is and that climate change research should be considered more straight-forward than it has been in the past.

I followed this by linking to an article from Feb. 11th titled Arab Leaders Begin to Recognize Climate Change Impacts. In this article moderating positions of some oil producing nations in the Middle East as well as non-oil states who have realized climate change impacts are illustrated. Also the impact of sea level rise and diminishing freshwater from the Euphrates and Jordan rivers.

There is more to both of these posts than the few points I highlighted here and I really enjoy the WorldWatch blogs so hopefully you will too.

World Watch

As I said yesterday I wanted to highlight this site but I will be short as I will probably post something about one of their blogs tomorrow. WorldWatch is a website that I came across last week. They have four blogs, ReVolt, Nourishing the Planet (which I shared yesterday), Green Economy, and Transforming Cultures.

Look for more about these blogs and the rest of World Watch tomorrow and Friday.

Nourishing the Planet

Today I want to spotlight a blog from WorldWatch Institute, which is a site I would like to highlight later this week but today I really enjoyed a couple of articles in their Nourishing the Planet blog. The article that started my journey today was Kickstarting Livelihoods With Improved Water Management and then I followed the link in the article to this blog.

The second piece I read was an innovation of the week segment from February about getting water to crops in sub-Saharan Africa. I then read another innovation of the week segment from May titled Feeding Communities by Focusing on Women.

The more I read, I could see how I was snowballing through interesting topics and I needed to take a breath and just post what I had found so far. I will continue to explore and I will share updates from time to time when I see something of special interest.

China Winds

OK, so yesterday I had an article about cities in China but in the process of reading/posting that I found another article that I thought was worthy of posting about as well. I felt I needed to wait a day to do so though.

In particular this article was about how China could power itself with wind alone, if it so chose to! This would be an incredible improvement on the current power generation from coal sources that contributes to clouding and filling many areas of China with smog.

A short post about this article but hopefully that entices you to click through and read at least part of it!

Smarter Cities

The NRDC has a site called Smarter Cities and there are a number of interesting things on this site. This is a relatively fun site to poke around in and find areas of interest and interesting things that are happening. Here is the What are smarter cities? section

There are also city profiles - here is the profile for Seattle.

A short post here since this site is best explored rather than linked to multiple places.

Cities in China

OK, sorry for the near week-long break on the blog but I have still been accumulating material, just not having time to post it!

Today I read an article that came from World Changing, in their email newsletter/update from earlier this week. The article titled A Climate Neutral China was pretty awesome! Here are a few stats to reel you into reading the article - By 2030 China will have 220 cities over 1 million people, for comparison, Europe has 35!
They may build as many as 50000 skyscrapers in this time as well.

Here is a link to one of the coolest web graphics I have ever seen anywhere and this is in the article if you go to read it as well.

The article expands and goes into the necessity for planning these cities to be green, powered by green energy and have sustainable food sources, etc. The article is longer than most that I link to but this one is about one of the best articles I have ever read - it doesn't hurt that I have an interest in China anyway!

Washington Recycling

OK, to piggyback off of the earlier post, I have chosen to look at the Washington State Recycling Association. Their Hot Topics area has links to very nice information sheets on various recycling topics like recycling glass & plastic, recycling paper to save water, etc.

This is a site that has good local information for exploration.