Lightning storm and brush fire, West Richland, August 7 2008 — #41 in Explore on Aug 15!, originally uploaded by Scott Butner.

Had an interesting experience in the phenomena known as viral media the other day, which I think might have some relevance to the world of P2.

I had taken a series of photos of a rare eastern Washington lightning storm — we don’t get them very often — which I’d posted to my Flickr site. It was sort of a dramatic shot, and not too surprisingly it soon became one of my most visited photos — racking up about 700 views in the first week.

Then, one day last week, someone posted it to the social recommendation site, Digg.com.

In the next 5 hours, it was downloaded 18,000 times. In the next 3 days, it was downloaded nearly 39,000 times — 3 times as often as ALL of my 2,500 other photos combined.

We live in an age where attention spans are short, but once you capture the (internet) public’s attention, you can get a huge amount of focus almost immediately. Problem is, making this happen is almost like lightning — hard to control, hard to predict.

Figuring out how to get the P2 message out on the viral media — places like YouTube, Flickr, and Digg — ought to be the focus of some real attention. Perhaps a workshop session at the next NPPR meeting?

SB

UNEP and the International Olympic Committee
UNEP and the IOC have been working together since 1994 when they signed an Agreement of Cooperation to incorporate environmental issues in Olympic Games.

International Olympic Committee Sport & Environment Commission
The role of the committee is to advise the IOC Executive Board on what policy the IOC and Olympic Movement should adopt in terms of environmental protection and support for sustainable development and, through its members, supports the IOC programmes and activities in this field. See in particular the section on Environmental Protection and the Olympic Games.

Beijing 2008 > Environment
Links to press releases and information from the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.

Recent news stories on the Olympics and the Environment from Google News.

The INFORM web site provides information on current projects, including Waste Prevention: Extended Producer Responsibility, Cleaning for Health, and INFORM Media, the organization’s effort to spread environmental literacy by “making strategic use of video and the web to reach a greatly expanded audience with critically important information about how to preserve the environment and protect human health.” Thus far, INFORM has produced “The Secret Life of Cell Phones” as part of its media project, with future videos planned to focus on paper, jeans, antibacterial soaps and single-use plastic bottles.

The INFORM site also provides publications and topical RSS feeds. New site features reportedly “coming soon” will include blogs and a “tools and calculators” section.

The Waste Management & Research Center is now known as the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC). The new name better represents the goals and direction of the organization.

The name change is part of even larger changes at ISTC. The Center is now part of the University of Illinois. It joined the other scientific surveys (Illinois State Water Survey, Illinois State Geological Survey, and Illinois Natural History Survey) in moving out of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The four organizations are now part of the Institute of Natural Resources Sustainability at the University of Illinois.

“We are excited about the move to the University of Illinois,” said ISTC Acting Director Gary Miller. “The research, knowledge, and educational goals of the scientific surveys will be greatly enhanced by the strong research and academic excellence of the University of Illinois.”

The ISTC staff remains committed to providing real world solutions to real world problems - solutions that bridge the gap between the natural resources and the human ones. Sustainability examines how to make human economic systems last longer and have less impact on ecological systems, and particularly relates to concern over major global problems such as climate change. By putting “Sustainable Technology” in our name, ISTC is showing its commitment to providing the ideas and systems to reduce environmental impacts and enhance the bottom line.

ISTC will continue to offer direct technical assistance from specialists, energy and pollution prevention assessments, a sophisticated analytical laboratory, research funding to explore a wide range of environmental issues, and information on environmental and pollution prevention issues. In addition, ISTC will continue to serve as the coordinating agency for regional and national programs including the Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable and the Printers’ National Environmental Assistance Center.

Becoming part of the University of Illinois and changing our name will require ISTC to make a variety of changes to our website, letterhead, forms, e-mail address, etc. Please bear with us in the coming weeks and months as we make these needed adjustments.

ISTC will continue to maintain office on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana-Champaign, and in OakBrook, Peoria, and Brighton.

The program’s checklist and manual for both new and existing homes is available online. The web site also provides information on registering your project, including a registration fee schedule and the cost of training. Though not yet available, case studies will apparently be included on the site under “About GreenStar” in the future. In the meantime, check out the “Project Spotlight” section under “News & Media,” which currently features one gold and two bronze-level projects with photos from the sites. The gold-level project–Live Green, Live Smart’s Sustainable House–is Minnesota’s first remodeling project to achieve Minnesota GreenStar Gold Certification and the nation’s first home remodel to achieve LEED Platinum certification. The home achieved the highest level of efficient design in both programs.

New resources are continuously added to the Hub’s “Complete List of Links.” If you would like to suggest links for the hub or have other comments, please contact Joy Scrogum.

See the main Topic Hub menu on the GLRPPR web site for other Hubs maintained by GLRPPR and other Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange (P2Rx) centers.

Thanks to Beth Anderson of U.S. EPA for sharing the link to this page. She noted that the information on the page was compiled by an intern named Lauren, appropriately enough, so thanks to Lauren too!

• BuildItSolar: The Renewable Energy Site for Do-It-Yourselfers
  Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:27:08 GMT
  Build It Solar includes plans, tools and information to do renewable energy and conservation projects. Includes links to The Half Project, one family’s program to cut their energy use, energy costs, and CO2 emissions in half. Excellent resource for DIY solar information.
• Guidelines for Avoiding Wood from Endangered Forests
  Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:44:25 GMT
  This document includes examples of key high-demand tree species extracted from endangered forests. The document also includes examples of more environmentally sound alternative materials and their sources.
• Drive Green
  Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:51:06 GMT
  Compilation of articles, video, and blog entries from Popular Mechanics about energy-efficient driving and alternative fuel vehicles. Includes features on new technologies, test drives of new vehicles, analysis, tips, and related material.
• Online News Hour: Alternative Fuels
  Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:49:58 GMT
  News and features about alternative automotive fuels such as ethanol, natural gas, hydrogen, electric, and biodiesel. Includes reports, case studies, classroom materials, and interactive features such as “How Does Your Car Stack Up?” that considers carbon dioxide output and fuel costs.
• Edmunds Green Car Guide
  Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:54:40 GMT
  This buying guide features articles on fuel-efficient cars, alternative fuels and new technologies (such as biodiesel, electric, and compressed natural gas), hybrid vehicles, improving gas mileage (covering “hypermilers,” who try to beat the EPA average fuel economy ratings), and oil and gas prices. From Edmunds, producers of consumer automotive information.
• Doing Well by Doing Good? Green Office Buildings
  Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:59:25 GMT
  This paper provides the first credible evidence on the economic value of the certification of “green buildings” in the commercial sector — value derived from impersonal market transactions rather than engineering estimates. We match publicly available information on the addresses of Energy-Star and LEED-rated office buildings to a commercial data source detailing the characteristics of U.S. office buildings and their rental rates. We analyze the micro data on 694 certified green buildings and on 7489 other office buildings located within a quarter mile of the certified buildings. We find systematic evidence that rents for green offices are about two percent higher than rents for comparable buildings located nearby. Effective rents, i.e., rents adjusted for the occupancy levels in office buildings, are about six percent higher in green buildings than in comparable office buildings nearby. At prevailing capitalization rates, conversion of the average non-green building to an equivalent green building would add more than $5 million in market value. These results are robust to the statistical models employed.
• Truckers - Clean Diesel Grants and Loans
  Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:41:30 GMT
  This page is designed for truck owners seeking information about loans and grants for eligible clean diesel projects under the National Clean Diesel Campaign.
• Drinking Water Treatability Database
  Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:51:06 GMT
  The Drinking Water Treatability Database (TDB) presents referenced information on the control of contaminants in drinking water. It allows drinking water utilities, first responders to spills or emergencies, treatment process designers, research organizations, academicians, regulators and others to access referenced information gathered from thousands of literature sources and assembled on one site. It includes more than 25 treatment processes used by drinking water utilities. The literature includes bench-, pilot-, and full-scale studies of surface waters, ground waters and laboratory waters. The literature includes peer-reviewed journals and conferences, other conferences and symposia, research reports, theses, and dissertations.
• Adapting to Climate Change: A Business Approach
  Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:17:43 GMT
  This report outlines a sensible business approach to analyzing and adapting to the physical risks of climate change. It focuses on a critical first step in assessing these climate impacts: understanding the potential risks to business and the importance of taking action to mitigate those risks. Not all businesses need to take action now; this paper develops a qualitative screening process to assess whether a business is likely to be vulnerable to the physical risks associated with climate change, and whether a more detailed risk assessment is warranted.
• Do Your Part! for Climate Friendly Parks
  Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:56:27 GMT
  Do Your Part! for Climate Friendly Parks is the first interactive online program in the country that provides national park visitors and supporters with the tools to understand and reduce their carbon footprints and thereby help to protect our national parks from global warming. Do Your Part! is sponsored by the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) in support of the National Park Service’s Climate Friendly Parks program. Do Your Part!’s interactive mapping feature lets you explore park goals and the progress park stakeholders are making towards those goals. Its carbon calculator provides the tools you need to understand your current carbon footprint and then set goals to reduce your impact. Its tracking tool displays progress in real time towards park and related group goals.

Although I realize that most people (except for search geeks like me) probably won’t ever use most of the features that Google has to offer, there are a couple of features that I use often and find very helpful. They are:

define:

The query [define:] will provide a definition of the words you enter after it, gathered from various online sources. The definition will be for the entire phrase entered (i.e., it will include all the words in the exact order you typed them).  See the results of define:biomimicry for an example.

site:

If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. See the results of biodiesel site:glrppr.org for an example.

What’s your favorite Google search trick? Share in the comments.

Now that you’re an expert on consuming RSS feeds, here are the RSS feeds that GLRPPR offers:

• GLRPPR Blog
• GLRPPR Environmental News
• Sector Resources (Click on a Sector Resource to get the feed)
• The latest Sector Resource documents

If any of you have any additional tips or tricks with regard to RSS feeds, please leave a comment.