Green Up the Laundry Room

With everything going green, it seems only appropriate that the laundry room, a veritable vacuum of energy and water waste, would be a likely site for improvement.

The environmental parenting blog Eco Child’s Play offers a host of suggestions for more environmentally friendly laundering. The tips come from the 2007 book Raising Baby Green: The Earth-Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Care, by pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene.

One of his recommendations is to use a front-loading washing machine (look for an Energy Star) instead of a top-loader. This will save as much as 15 gallons of water per load and use half as much energy.

Greene also advises alternative means of fabric softening (add 1/4 cup of baking soda to the wash cycle), combating static cling (add 1/4 cup of white vinegar to the wash water), and water softening (“use a soap-based, rather than detergent-based, cleaner”).

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Honey, Don't Leave Me

“In 30 years … we won’t be able to have apples, avocados, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, cucumbers, melons, oranges, grapefruit, pumpkins, squash, sunflowers, tangerines, watermelon, clover, and alfalfa,” Jeffrey Hill writes in The Next American City.

There has been a buzz surrounding the dwindling honeybee population in the media for the past few years. But sadly, little has been done about it. A 2007 study by the American Beekeepers Association revealed that “since 1975, 80 percent of honeybee hives in the United States have been decimated by pesticides and a parasitic virus that is wiping out the species,” writes Hill.

Big corporations haven’t been feeling the effects of the shortage, but small farmers are suffering; and so are the wallets of the produce-consuming public.

What’s the solution? Hill says we should all be talking about it; don’t forget that the bee shortage has a major effect on one third of the human diet. Make the issue a real concern, and maybe a swarm of like-minded people will incite some change.

—Erik Helin

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Belgian Architect Has Clear View Of Paris

The power of architecture as a way to imagine an ideal society is alive in Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut. His most recent project, a pair of proposed Paris buildings dubbed Anti-Smog, is a testament to green design concepts, featuring solar power, wind power, and a “smog eating exterior,” according to Ali Kriscenski of the design blog Inhabitat.

The prototype for the project shows one football-shaped building known as Solar Drop. “The exterior is fitted with 250 square meters of solar photovoltaic panels and coated in titanium dioxide (TiO2),” writes Kriscenski. “The PV system produces on-site electrical energy while the TiO2 coating works with ultraviolet radiation to interact with particulates in the air, break down organics and reduce airborne pollutants and contaminants.”

The second structure, the Wind Tower, harnesses the gusting urban winds for energy.

The buildings are designed to be suspended over a Parisian canal and a defunct railroad track. Anti-Smog would be used as art galleries, public meeting rooms, and gathering spaces. Learn more about the project here.

—Erik Helin

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The Greening of the Middle East?

February 9 was a historic day in the environmental shaming of the Unites States as Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, broke ground on Masdar City, a $22 billion municipality that will be carless, solar powered, and almost entirely self-contained. Water will come from a seawater desalinization plant, produce will come from surrounding greenhouses, and all waste will be composted or recycled, writes the New York Times.

The groundbreaking came on the heels of a January announcement by the Masdar Initiative, a renewable energy investment company, that the UAE will commit $15 billion dollars for initial research on sustainable programs. This investment represents the biggest government-sponsored renewable energy program in the world, and it comes from a nation that gained much of its wealth through oil and natural gas. This fact has some wondering: Can one grand progressive step erase decades of carbon emissions irresponsibility?

(Thanks, Groovy Green.)

—Erik Helin

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