Blogs & Ecology

Unpackaged is a small, charming shop that sells affordable organic and fair trade dry foods--unpackaged. You bring your own container or buy a reusable one. It sounds like old news to North Americans, but here in the UK it is unique. The owner, Catherine Conway, is very serious about her business and has made great efforts to push the envelope, using a low carbon delivery service, publishing a newsy and informative monthly newsletter, and becoming a community resource for the area.

In case you weren’t among the fifty or so people who attended 92Y Tribeca's panel discussion on American Media & the Green Movement last night, I just wanted to pass along some of the questions that popped into my mind as I listened to Annabelle Gurwitch pick the brains of green luminaries such as NPR’s Ira Flatow, the New York Times’ Andy Revkin, author Elizabeth Royte, Lynne Kirby of the Sundance Channel and TreeHugger’s very own Graham Hill.

Image Credit: EMPA

BBC News reports that the Publicly Available Specification 2050 - PAS 2050 - a newly created audit scheme to help companies measure the carbon footprint of their goods, was launched in the UK by BSI British Standards. The effort aims to provide consistency and transparency for British companies to communicate their products’ carbon footprints to consumers.

Life Cycle Stages According to the RONA Website.

Source: Market Watch. The Canuck version of Home Depot, RONA , has announced its new eco-responsible signage in all of their stores. The new signs will be placed on products that were selected using the life cycle approach

Halogen-Free CPUs
Chip-maker Intel has announced that is has started shipping four halogen-free Xeon processors (series 5200 and 5400). The chips are functionally the same as the previous versions, and they are drop-in compatible.

What's Wrong With Halogens?

photo by tokyofortwo via flickr

In an effort to raise awareness of global warming, Japan is planning to label a range of consumer goods to show the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted in their manufacture, delivery and disposal. The project, the exact scope of which has yet to be finalized, is expected to begin in April 2009, AFP reports.

Back when we were tooting our own collective Discovery Communications horn about the launch of the first TV channel dedicated to green living, Planet Green, we gave you a brief glimpse of the new series Stuff Happens. Now that the start of the 13-part series is drawing closer, here’s a bit more about what you’ll be seeing.

Bill Nye Shows Us Where Our Stuff Comes From, And Where It Goes

Here’s a job we all want – carrying out a life cycle assessment of beer. One would have to really do some serious investigation to get realistic statistics on the “use phase”. But seriously, the cover story on the March issue of the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment is the LCA of an Italian Lager Beer (see the full article citation at the end of this post).

Image credit: Robert McLassus

As a dedicated Treehugger you knew it, but…in case you needed more proof:

"A direct comparison of drinking water from the tap with unrefrigerated bottled water shows an environmental impact of tap water which is less than one percent of that of bottled water. Even when refrigerated and carbonated, the environmental impact of tap water is approximately only one fourth of that of bottled water. Thus, from an environmental point of view, tap water is preferable to bottled water as a beverage."
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