Blogs & Ecology

Photo of Palace of Fine Arts via 23am

Out of 43 great innovations submitted to the California Clean Tech Open, a small handful of winners were chosen last night at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts to receive a "start-up-in-a-box" prize, which includes the equivalent of $100,000 in cash and business services to help get their technology off the ground.

Photo of San Jose City Hall by Bryce Edwards

The highest ranking competitors in the California Clean Tech Open are about to get a big boost from the city of San Jose.

In an effort to nurture clean tech during a time when venture capitalists are beginning to trim investments, the city is awarding 12 innovators with some pretty sweet prizes. ...

1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú came to speak today at the local community college in my town. I jumped at the opportunity to hear such an incredible woman speak and was especially excited that her speech revolved around global environmental issues.

Sustainablog ponders the life cycle of pig.

Rockers roll up in a Smart car at MTV's Video Music Awards.

Eco Worldy rounds up six intriguingly green news stories from South America.

We're reminded by our addiction to oil with eight common products.

A recent poll asks; do you believe gas and oil prices are being manipulated for the upcoming Presidential election?

The College Sustainability Report Card 2009 is almost upon academia. It’s that dreaded time--when all those green-talking universities who haven’t put in the due legwork have to forge their parent’s signatures; when environmentally unfriendly colleges try to pencil in a line down the far right side of the ‘F.’ Yes, it’s time for the Sustainable Endowment Institute’s intense annual eco-evaluation of the universities and colleges of the U.S. and Canada. Does your college have what it takes to profess with the greenest of the green?...

Image source: Metcalf Institute

This year's Metcalf Institute Diversity Fellowships in Environmental Reporting, were awarded this morning. The awards are given to minority journalists early in their careers to encourage diversity and excellence in environmental reporting. Environmental journalism is still a relatively new field and as climate change becomes a daily topic of conversation many newspapers and media outlets are scrambling to find reporters who can not only cover the issues but understand the science enough to translate what it means to the reader.

Ideal Bite has announced its call for nominees for the first-ever Best in Green (B.I.G.) Awards. The program will recognize companies, products and services that are true leaders and innovators in the green space. Winners of the 2008 B.I.G Awards will be announced at Ideal Bite's B.I.G. Awards Party in November 2008 in New York City.

B.I.G. Award Categories:
The B.I.G. Awards consist of seven categories including: Home, Health & Beauty, Style, Food, Fun, Everyday/Living and Next in Green. Nominees will be selected from the thousands of products, companies and services that make up...

Image source: Buckminster Fuller Institute

We've profiled natural-resources design maven Dr. John Todd before, but now he's been recognized by a much higher authority for his pioneering work. Dr. Todd is the first recipient of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award. Not to mention, the award comes with prestige, but also a $100,000 cash prize to sweeten the deal, as well as an OmniOculi sculpture artist Tom Shannon, which was commissioned for the event.

Image source: Ambrose Hotel

The Ambrose Hotel, in Santa Monica, CA, was just awarded the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) Certification by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) for a hotel - this the first-ever US hotel to earn such a distinction....

Image Source: SustainLane

SustainLane, publisher of the annual Sustainable Cities Rankings, is once again publishing its list this fall, but before they do, they are looking for a few good submissions. People in the 50 cities studies in the rankings are encouraged to send in personal anecdotes of how their city is greening, or not greening.

Nigel's Eco Store is a nice online eco-store for eco-friendly products. This year Nigel held his first Green Web Awards and the results are a good source of new (to some) green sites. Treehugger was a judge, and we were in good company with fellow judges from the Timesonline EcoWorrier, HippyShopper, EcoStreet, Digg and SmartPlanet. We are proud to announce that Treehugger won in the "Eco-blogs and News Sites" category. No conflict here--we couldn't vote for our own. Quoth the judges: "It's no surprise that the judges voted Treehugger as No. 1 in this category - it has firmly established itself as the "Green CNN" online: a one-stop sho...