·:[ Environmental News Bits ]:·
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Read the full story at Biopact.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $4 million to a group of Philippine and American scientists led by Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to aid in the discovery of new molecules and biofuels technology from marine mollusks for development in the Philippines.

Read the full post at Triple Pundit.

The Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating piece a couple of weeks ago on the emergence of the reusable bag as the go-to green choice of retailers nationwide – and the eco-disaster these bags represent.

A lot of leading retailers offer reusable bags – they’re the hip new green thing to be doing… and some municipalities (San Francisco) and retailers (Ikea) have taken the initiative to forbid the use of the ubiquitous “disposable” plastic bag.

But at what cost?

Read the full post at Sustainablog.

Fellow sustainablogger Robin Shreeves recently wrote a great and helpful post — Your Trash Just Doesn’t Disappear, Stupid! (Or How To Make Sure Useful Things Stay Out of Landfills) — that touches on a bit of a phenomenon that piques my interest: mongoing, freeganism, dumpster diving.

The term “dumpster diving” probably conjures certain derogatory images: “bums,” lowlife dregs of society sifting through mostly rotten morsels of discarded food for sustenance.

Pushing aside such an unfortunate view of human beings living, hopefully only temporarily, in such unfortunate circumstances, let’s look at what dumpster diving has become: environmentally friendly, if not downright urban chic.

Read the full story in Grist.

In her new book Green Inc., Christine MacDonald argues that that large environmental NGOs have compromised their agendas in exchange for corporate cash. (See Mark Pawlosky’s recent review of Green Inc. for Grist.)

I haven’t read the entire book yet, but I did catch an excerpt published by Multinational Monitor. In it, MacDonald makes a pretty convincing case for Big Green lameness with regard to the ever-expanding agricultural frontier in Brazil.

She details collaborations between Conservation International and Bunge to “sustainably” expand soy production in Brazil’s vast savanna region; and between the Nature Conservancy and Cargill to promote “responsible” soy farming in the Amazon region.

According to a recent Reuters piece, Cargill and Bunge are the world’s largest and third-largest agribusiness companies, respectively, by revenue. Bunge concerns itself mostly with grain-trading and processing; Cargill maintains a global empire with interests in grain trading and processing, meat production, biofuels, fertilizer, livestock feed, and more.

Read the full post at the Temas Blog.

The basic idea was straightforward: stimulate recycling by requiring all state agencies, entities and offices to buy only paper products with high recycled content (50%).

That was the requirement set by a new law adopted by the southern Brazilian state of Paraná in November 2007.  The Law said that it must apply to all paper products — envelopes, cards, forms, blocks, drafts, bills, receipts, letterhead, publications, proceedings, newsletters, even packaging.  The implementing decree released in July called for 30% of public purchases of paper products during the July-December 2008 period to meet the recycled content rule, 50% January-June 2009, and 100% by July 2009.

It also required that the public entities only purchase paper products certified by the state Environment Secretariat (SEMA) as meeting the legal requirements.  Products so certified would bear a special “Blue Seal” (Selo Azul).  A separate implementing rule released in July set out the award criteria for the Seal, what it looks like  (see example at right) and how it should be placed on products

Just one problem: so far, it’s not working.

Read the full post at Scientific Blogging.

Efforts to make furniture less flammable have given residents of California higher blood levels of potentially toxic flame retardants called PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) – nearly twice the national average, scientists from Massachusetts and California are reporting. Their study, the first to examine regional variations in PBDE levels in household dust and blood within the U.S., is published in Environmental Science & Technology.

Read the full post at the Temas Blog.

Normally I would not stick an annotated bibliography in the Temas Recommended Reading List, much less do a review of the “bibliography.”  But the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC) recently released an Annotated Bibliography on the Environmental Effects of Biofuels that I find a bit unusual and noteworthy.

Read the full post at Triple Pundit.

Environmentalists have long derided the methods that have come to be standard practice for American ranchers and farmers. Over-reliant on water, fossil fuels, large equipment, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides — many of them fossil fuel intensive in their own right — livestock and crop production contributes a surprisingly large portion of our greenhouse gas emissions, and are also large contributors to water pollution, land degradation and habitat destruction.

As populations and urban areas have grown and spread, and debates over land and water rights, usage, volume and quality become increasingly contentious, growing numbers of farmers and ranchers are looking to more sustainable, organic farming and ranching supported by community supported agriculture and environmentally and socially conscious consumers.

Read the full story in USA Today.

America is deep into green: You can wear green fashion, carry a green bag and dab your face with green makeup. You can hire a green architect to design your green house, walk on green floors, decorate with green accessories and fabrics, sleep on green beds, sit on green chairs. Teens can be green, babies should be green, singles can join green dating clubs.

Green books are filling up bookstore shelves. You can even read them with green reading glasses — made of bamboo. A selection:…

Read the full post in the Official Google Blog.

Hundreds of millions of users access our services through the web, and this traffic requires lots of computers. We strive to offer great Internet services while taking our energy use very seriously. That’s why, nearly a decade ago, we started work to optimize the energy efficiency of our servers and later set out to build the most environmentally sustainable data centers possible. We now believe that Google-designed data centers are the most efficient in the world.

Read the full story at 27East.

Down at the bottom of a hill near the business center on Stony Brook Southampton’s 82-acre campus, a dozen students spent this spring and summer tilling a 1,600-square-foot plot of land and watering vegetables that will one day will play a major role in the menu of the campus dining hall.

The Garden Club, which tends the vegetable garden, is led by Dr. Jim Hoffmann, an ecology professor at the university. It’s one of the most homegrown aspects of the college, which Stony Brook University has begun to rebuild based on the concept of sustainability. The school introduced three new ecology-related majors this fall, the campus’ second year, and, according to Interim Dean Martin Schoonen, is expected to announce plans for a new green dorm.

Read the full story in Epoch Times.

Butte Community College sits perched amidst rolling hills and streams on a thousand-acre wildlife refuge near Oroville, Chico and, quite literally, Paradise, California. Mike Miller is director of Facilities Planning and Management for the Butte campuses, which serve some 20,000 students a year.

On the main campus, the buildings, roads and service areas occupy about 250 acres. Another 80 acres are used for farming, and the rest is wilderness, some of which is used for grazing. The woods, streams, farmed fields and trails are learning tools for students who are studying a range of agriculture and science-related topics. They are also enjoyed by the communities surrounding the college.

Miller describes Butte College as its own self-contained city, the fourth largest in Butte County. It has a fire department, sewage system and water treatment plant. And like other rural campuses, it is challenged by a unique set of environmental and sustainability issues. Among these is a decision to use part of the riparian wilderness for grazing, which is something Miller says helped stave off the devastating effects of an enormous wildfire that blasted through the area recently.

Read the full story in EMQ.

Data center managers who follow the proactive steps outlined below will ensure their ability to monitor and control current data center power consumption while facilitating necessary changes to increase the efficiency of their operations.

Read the full story at Product Design & Development.

The Brainstorm is a new section of Product Design & Development where we talk with industry leaders to get their perspective on issues critical to the overall design engineering marketplace. In this issue, we ask:

In examining ways to improve energy efficiency in product design, do you think more attention should be paid to component composition or power supply/fuel?

Read the full story from Medill Reports.

Most people are aware of blue-collar, white-collar and pink-collar jobs, but in light of environmental concerns, there are now green-collar jobs. Green job fairs are sprouting up all over the country, including a recent one held at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

Read the full post at The Right Fit.

The gym is usually thought of as a place of positive growth, not negative waste. Faithful gym-goers use the equipment and features to improve their workouts. Newbies have access to trained staff members that can point them in the right direction. But lurking underneath this glowing, healthy exterior is the energy that makes a gym hum. The lights, water, laundry facilities and electric outlets needed for cardio machines, personalized DVD players and TV sets can add up quickly, especially as gyms expand in size, more members pour in, and hours of operation lengthen to accommodate everyone. Very quickly, a gym can morph from a healthy haven into a waste machine.