Green Daily

Slow moving and pretty cute for a reptile, turtles are apparently pretty tasty too. Demand for turtle meat, particularly in Asia, has surged to the point that the Centre for Biological Diversity has asked a number of American states to ban the harvesting of turtles and has called the practice unsustainable.

While the increase in turtle meat consumption is concentrated in southeast Asia, the number of freshwater turtles in that part of the world has sharply declined. So, hungry turtle-eating Asians are looking to certain American states where turtle harvesting has increased hugely -- Iowa, for instance, saw turtle harvests increase by over 700% between 1987 and 2007.

There are concerns that this quick decimation of turtles could have serious consequences for future turtle populations. Texas has already banned commercial harvesting of wild turtles and Florida is considering a ban for April 15. The Center for Biological Diversity is also asking eight other American states to consider a ban.

It's easy to think that we city-dwellers are a pretty polluting bunch. Turns out we may not be that bad, according to a report by the International Institute for Environment and Development. Residents in major cities directly produce less greenhouse gas per capita than the rest of the country.

The study, which looked at major cities in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America, found that having larger concentrations of people can actually help reduce emissions. If you're a New Yorker, for instance, you likely live in a small place and use public transportation. In 2005, New Yorkers produced 7.1 tons of CO2 per person which is substantially less than the 23.92 tons per person produced nationally in 2004. Londoners produced 6.18 tons per person while the national UK average was 11.19.

Before we urban-ites all pat each other on the back, the report only looked at the emissions we produced directly and not the CO2 produced by the manufacturing of products we love to consume. City-dwellers do a lot of the consumption, but due to high labor costs and tougher environmental laws, production usually remains outside of major urban centers. UN-Habitat's executive director, Anna Tibaijuka, says that cities are actually responsible for closer to 80% of emissions when you take all the indirect emissions we are responsible for.

2008 may have been the year that solar power started popping up in more places than your calculator.

The Solar Energy Industries Association announced in a report today that solar energy capacity increased by 17 percent last year. Government stimulus programs have helped get that growth rate and this year's stimulus package has a bunch of provisions for getting solar power closer to the main stream.

And the not-so-good news? While the survey said that 2008 was a great year, 2009 may be a different story. The global meltdown hit the industry pretty hard in the first quarter. The financial crisis has dried up a lot of financing for an industry that requires a lot of cash (getting power from photovoltaic panels costs three times as much as wind-generated energy).

So, what's going to boost the solar industry? The solar folks are looking for federal policies that would mandate a percentage of US energy come from renewable power. They also want a "solar carve-out" policy that would ensure a certain percentage of renewable energy come from sun power. Similar requirements have already been implemented in a dozen individual states but the industry is looking for federal policies to really get solar going.

It's a big planet with a lot of green happenings. Here's a sample of environmental headlines from everywhere:

Korea -- Yellow dust storms hit Korea hard, especially Seoul and the Gyeonggi Province, every spring. Gyeonggi have decided to fight the storms by building a forest of 5 million trees by 2011. The government, through a private sector organization called "Future Forests", will be planting a forest in Kubuqi, in Northern China, where the dust storms originate.

Pakistan -- A bunch of dolphins washed up on a beach just west of Karachi, Pakistan's largest city. Locals have been playing with the mammals and picking them up to pose for cameras, increasing the danger to the animals. Most of the dolphins, who were likely beached by a high tide, were able to return to sea, but about six are still trapped on land. A wildlife official has reported that the remaining dolphins are being sent back into the water as soon as possible.

You could start seeing .eco if Dot Eco LLC gets their way. The group wants the new top level domain for green groups or companies that have a site for environment initiatives. The idea is getting some strong support and has Al Gore on their advisory board.

Take a gander up to the URL on whatever page you're on, and there's a chance that those last few characters, called a top level domain, will give you some idea about where you are (.edu generally means education, .org is probably a not-for-profit, .biz refers to business).

(Sorry for that really basic Internet lesson. I've been explaining the web to aunts and uncles and am still in super-patient explaining mode. I'm such good nephew!)

Other groups have proposed top-level domains that include a .xxx for naughty sites and .med for the medical community.

My guess is that an .eco domain wouldn't do very much, especially because saying a site is 'green' is so vague. At the same time, the domain .eco is inevitable. Then again, how long would it be before every company has a page with an .eco suffix? At least we can all have a laugh when exxon.eco gets registered.

It feels like green ideas in the auto industry have been shoved off the front page. Financial meltdowns and auto-industry bailouts have a little to do with that. Fair enough, but we'll be buying cars and living on the planet for a long time to come and there's still green auto news out there.

Fortunately, a lot of this news has come out of the Geneva Motor show shedding light on what eco-friendly car ideas are brewing in Europe. Not planning a trip to Switzerland anytime soon? Not to worry,Car journalist Richard Aucock has listed the top green car ideas from the show.

Some of the highlights. Number 9 on the list would make electric cars practical and wide spread. French auto-maker Renault will introduce a Europe-wide network of electric car filing stations where you could swap a used batter with a fully charged one. London has signed on to the idea which is expected to launch in 2012.

At number 3, Volkswagen will be releasing the Bluemotion II next year, a car that gets better mileage than the Prius but costs way less. Number one on Aucock's list? General Motor's much talked about Volt that could save the electric car and bring it to the masses. It's great news but will depend a lot on how (if?) GM will survive over the coming years.

Check out the rest of the green list at the Guardian. To get even more car coverage, check out our friend's at Autoblog for more news on the Geneva Motor show.

Is your home overflowing with trophies from your overachieving life? Mine isn't either, but Planet Green has found some places you can donate a surplus of un-recyclable awards. If you're getting bored of little statues that remind you of when you were the fastest, strongest, weirdest or just plain awesome-est, you can ship them off to groups that can make that symbol of previous success into something more than a dust collector in your closet.

Art Inc. can take your award and recycle it into, well, art, and Creative Images re-uses trophies to give to children's groups and totally worthy causes like the Special Olympics. Awardex.com will reuse your trophy to make new awards that will eventually clutter someone else's home.

The green-friendly disposal of trophies hasn't kept me up at night as my trophy collection consists of grade school participation awards and a weird corporate trophy called the "Award for Spirit and Enthusiasm" (weird, because I only worked there for two months and was decidedly unenthusiastic).

But hey, if you're cleaning off that crowded trophy shelf, these are some worthy places to consider instead of shoving it in the trash or awarding random people on the street. Sound off on your own trophy disposal method in the comments below.

A huge $29 million mansion in Florida is expected to get LEED certification. The 15, 000 square foot Florida home has floors made from renewable wood and bamboo, boasts a grass driveway, and uses solar panels to power light fixtures that are 70% more efficient than most.

The LEED folks admit that the home gets penalized given its immense size but the developer has agreed to make "super green additions" to compensate for the inherent not-so-green issues that come up when building a massive home.

While it's not known when the developer will get the LEED stamp of approval, the idea of getting any sort of green certification for a monster home seems a wee bit, well, ungreen. No matter how many environmentally friendly elements get incorporated, it's hard to ignore the problem of building a massive home for only a few people. As a commenter in this WSJ piece point out, this could only be a green house if it was the "primary and only residence for 30 or more people".

My home is only a few hundred square feet and the space is easily shared between my fiancée and our little dog. While we're not asking for LEED certification (mostly because we hate doing paperwork), we're pretty sure our home is way greener than this soon-to-be-green certified Florida mansion.

As this post on "The Wealth Report" says, could LEED become the next "organic", as in something that gets plastered on everything to the point where it doesn't mean anything?

It's a big planet with a lot of green happenings. Here's a sample of environmental headlines from everywhere:

United Kingdom - Following countries like Germany and France, motorists in the UK could soon take advantage of a "scrappage" incentive scheme. The idea would allow drivers to receive cash for getting rid of their old gas-guzzlers and, hopefully, buy an eco-friendlier alternative. The goal would be to get cleaner cars on the road but it could also boost the tanking auto-industry which has just reported its worse January sales figures since 1974.

Japan - Good news, Japanese residents could start buying home fuel-cell generators that will emit 45% less CO2 emissions than standard water heaters. Bad news (aside from me not living in Japan) is that the units are a bit pricey at $15 000 (and that's after a government subsidy). Tokyo Gas Co., along with five other Japanese firms, have gotten together to offer the Ene Farm fuel cell system and aim to sell a modest 5000 units in the first year.

For an entire year, Dave Chameides put nothing on the curb for garbage pick up. Not even a box of recycling.

Instead, he put all of his trash in the basement. Sounds like a nasty basement? Probably not. The year long experiment in garbage conservation generated only 30 pounds of trash, 153 glass bottles, 64 plastic bottles and a 50-pound box of paper for recycling. Dave's personal garbage dump fit an organized 10 square feet of basement space.

If Dave can do it, there's no reason a lot of us can't take up the challenge and confuse city garbage pick-up folks. Some tips from Dave. No plastic bags, drink tap water, and think about the packaging of stuff you buy. Oh, and probably most importantly, get some worms working for you. Dave used a worm composting bin that ate up leftover foods and "a couple of pounds of paper a month".

Dave tracked his year through his blog 365daysoftrash and now runs Sustainable Dave, a site on sustainability and not throwing stuff out. My city has a good organic bin program so I think I'll stay away from having a worm army in my house. But if Dave could reduce his waste in one year to what the average American puts out in six days, I'm sure there are a bunch of ways I can reduce my curb side pile.

Hotwire.com, the San Fransisco-based discount travel site, has announced that they will help you pay the carbon offset cost for your travel plans. Here's how it works. After booking your travel stuff, you get the option to buy an offset through a third-party carbon offsetting service. Hotwire will pay half the cost of that carbon offset fee. TerraPass, the folks that offer the service through Hotwire (and who we've mentioned before) will use that fee towards a CO2 reducing project and hopefully make you feel less guilty about the trip you're planning.

While more and more companies are offering some sort of offset service through a third-party like TerraPass, getting the vendor to pay half the cost could get more people onto the offset train. The fees for offsetting an international flight are about $24 after Hotwire pays their share. One week of driving a car rental would set you back an extra $12.

The Atlanta community of Virginia-Highland has apparently become the first carbon-neutral 'zone' in America.

How did they do it? A co-owner of a local green retailer, Eco-Bella, was approached by an Atlanta-based carbon off-setting company, Verus Carbon Neutral. Versus audited Eco-Bella and found the organic retailer responsible for 22 metric tons of CO2 a year. Eco-Bella's co-owner, Antje Kingma, paid Verus to offset the emissions; eco peace of mind was only $87 for the first year.

Sharing the idea with her neighbors was the next step. Her landlord offered to pay for 18 audits for each of his business tenants in the area. The only catch? They were required to pay for the offset which ended up ranging from $10 for a candy shop to $600 for a local steakhouse. The offset money is then used by Versus on the Chicago Climate Exchange to support projects like managing carbon-removing forests in Georgia. Despite the additional cost during difficult economic times, each of the businesses agreed.

Opponents of carbon offsets plans say that these schemes don't solve the original problem of producing too much CO2. Instead, they allow business to pay their way out of eco-guilt. That's partly true, but it's nice to see a neighborhood get together and decide to do something about global warming. The heightened awareness of carbon emissions has to be a useful thing. Hurray for local solutions to global problems!

It's a big planet with a lot of green happenings. Here's a sample of environmental headlines from everywhere:

Antarctica - My seventh favorite continent is going green. Research bases bring almost 5000 people to the bottom of the planet. A chunk of this research deals with climate research so it's good to see them using renewable energy. Meridian, a New Zealand company, is ready to ship wind turbines that will replace fuel-powered generators and create the most southerly wind farm in the world.

Europe - Toyota Motor Europe wants to generate green ideas and discussion through its new blog. This is part of a Toyota campaign called "aim: zero emissions" that aims to shed light on Toyota's environmental goals. The home of the Prius has had their share of eco-critisism, but their green marketing always looks so darn sincere.

Japan - Two Japanese corporate giants, Sanyo and Nippon Oil, have decided to go halfsies on the cost of building a major solar cell producing factory. They're betting 226 million bucks on the solar market which has recently flattened due to that pesky global economic slow down. Despite news of economic woe, the companies see the solar cell market worth over $100 billion dollars by 2021.

Asia - Remember that "Brown Cloud" hovering over Asia? Well, it's still around and continues to get worse. Scientists know that the layer of nastiness is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year in India and China, but studies knew little about what the cloud was made of. Fortunately, a study from Stockhold University and Indian scientists found out -- a lot of wood and dung burning, traffic pollution and industrial activity.