Blogs & Ecology

A bunch of young Japanese monks have created a virtual temple online to talk about issues close to their hearts. They are based in Tokyo, where there are surprisingly many Buddhist temples, many as old as the city itself, dating back to the Edo Period (1603-1868) before the city started to modernize. They note that no matter how artificial our environment becomes, monks continue to pass on age-old wisdom from master to disciple, inheriting the modes of living, using the temple as its vehicle:

Reuters had an interesting piece recently on Bangladesh's thriving Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) recycling industry. The South Asian country exported more than 20,000 tons of PET flakes, the shredded version of plastic bottles, last year sorted from the 3,000 factories across the country dedicated to recycling. The industry generated about $10 million in 2007 and has grown annually at a rate of 20 percent.

In a piece of irony you couldn’t imagine if you tried, researchers in Australia have discovered that a lack of time spent playing in the great outdoors is leading to greater incidences of myopia among children, which means it's not just figuratively causing shortsightedness, but literally as well.

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A termite resistant building board made from a composite of chicken feathers and compressed cement. This is the dream of Dr. Menandro N. Acda from the Dept. of Forest Products and Paper Science, College of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of the Philippines Los Banos.

Efforts over the past seven years have expanded the surface area of the Aral Sea by 30%. Photo by Mentat Kibernes.

It might not quite be the Whole Earth Catalog of the glorious 1960s, but I like it anyway. Asian Productivity Organization publishes its biannual Green Products Directory with the latest from our part of the world (was WEC ever truly global?) and the listings are comprehensive.

It might not quite be the Whole Earth Catalog of the glorious 1960s, but I like it anyway. Asian Productivity Organization publishes its biannual Green Products Directory with the latest from our part of the world (was WEC ever truly global?) and the listings are comprehensive.

Rickshaws driving through flooded Dhaka, Bangladesh streets. Photo by Shahid Sarker.

Put this one in your “life’s cruel ironies” file.

20 Square Kilometers Per Year Gained...

Everybody knows that Giant Pandas are endangered and that they are -- to say the least -- not very prolific when it comes to reproduction. So it is a very good news indeed to learn that four cubs were born in the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre, southwest Sichuan province, in China.

50 Million More Battery Units per Month

In a sign of things that might have been, Chinese children born after the closure of a local coal plant have found themselves with 60% less development problems such as motor skill coordination than those born prior to the closing.

For with all the efforts by the Chinese government to clean up places like Beijing for the Olympics, there’s no denying that there are plenty of other places that could use the help.

Of course, the plant that was closed in Tongliang lacked basic pollution control equipment to limit the emission of pollutants like carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter.
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Marina Rikhvanova, Co-chairwoman of the NGO Baikal Environmental Wave, was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for Asia for her on-going achievements in the protection of Lake Baikal, the "pearl of Siberia," in Russia. Founded in 1990, the prize is given annually to six grassroots environmentalists working for change around the globe.

Image from Ben Tubby

Indonesia and the Philippines need help. And not because they lack the geothermal energy capacity: No, quite simply, it's because they're having trouble accessing it. The two Asian countries, both of which are located in the geothermally-active Pacific Ring of Fire, are increasingly turning to this vast, untapped source of power as rising oil prices and a dilapidated power infrastructure begin to exact their toll on their economies.

Smart Marketing in Japan
The clever "vending machine" pictured above is located in Japan. You can't really buy a smart car from it, but you can get brochures and info about the various smart models. Yeah, it is anti-climactic.

Smart Car: Good and Bad