TreeHugger pushes higher density living, but one thing people complain about is noise. It is hard to build a really soundproof wood frame partition wall, but new products like Enermax can make a big difference. It is a 1/2 thick fibreboard sheathing with a foil face. Bonus points: CFC and VOC free, it’s made from 98% waste fibre with a corn based binder….
Carbon offsets may be the new junk food – habit-forming and ultimately not so healthy – especially if, in the case of offsets, stopping global warming is the goal. More and more organizations are warning that buying offsets is not only a tricky undertaking for businesses and individuals, it might not be that eco-friendly. Right now there’s still no fool-proof way to insure your dollars go to a project that actually reduces CO2, or even go to a real project at all. The price to offset each ton of carbon also varies widely, between a low of about $7 – 8 to a high of as much as $40.
The Vo…
Want to zero your carbon emissions, but lost in all the options? Gideon Greenspan, an Internet entrepreneur from Tel Aviv (via London, via Glasgow) has built Carbon Catalog
The UK-based renewable energy company Ecotricity recently won an award from the renewable energy agency for South West England for its development of three giant wind turbines at the industrial Avonmouth Docks site on the outskirts of Bristol (which we featured here). However, in typically activist fashion, rather than rest on their laurels the company took the opportunity to call on the region to step up its game when it comes to fighting climate change. This from their press release:It
Currently, we produce more garbage than stuff, but it doesn’t have to be that way; read up on going zero waste.
Despite growing awareness of the need to adopt more environmentally friendly IT practices, a quarter of firms (26%) admit to having done next to nothing to green their information technology.Ekyog, the French ethical clothing label
As we’ve noted before, the building boom along Mexico’s coasts does not bode well for biosphere reserves and threatened species in this country of incredible biodiversity. But we were surprised to learn that Mexico now invests close to four dollars per hectare in conservation, matching Costa Rica, the highest spender in Latin America, in terms of public funds spent on preserving sensitive and valuable ecosystems. The news came from Mexico’s Commission on Natural Protected Areas, which has received a boost from President Felipe Calderon’s administ…
Reminscent of the Teastick (no spaces), the Tea Stick is a clever spring-loaded gadget perfect for brewing up a cup of tea without the muss and fuss of a pesky tea bag.
Many tea aficionados will tell you that loose-leaf tea is the only way to go when brewing yourself; now you can do it in spring-loaded style and never have to bother with the waste of individually-wrapped tea bags. Sure, each tea bag doesn’t contribute a huge amount of trash to the waste stream, but why do it if you don’t have to?
We aren’t the only ones who liked the looks of this; it’s available
Flux, a new social network joint venture between Viacom and Social Media, had a limited launch in September.
The platform is the cornerstone of Viacom’s social network strategy. Instead of building independent networks for MTV and its hundreds of other brands, they’ve built a distributed platform that shares users, infrastructure and content, but allows for distinct [...]
Website-creation tool Doodlekit is over a year old but has somehow managed to fly under the radar, even after releasing its free version this past October.
Several similar services are out there: Weebly, Synthasite, Jimdo, Google Pages, SiteKreator, and Sampa to name a few. They all intend to make it possible for non-techies to make modestly [...]