Unplugged Living

Carnival of the Green #10

by Kevin Humphrey on January 15th, 2006

Greetings and salutations! Welcome to the 10th edition of the Carnival of the Green, the blog carnival for the green and sustainable blogosphere, brought to you by the fine folks at City Hippy and Triple Pundit.

Before we start the tour of eco-happenings from the last week, lets give a hand to our last host, Shea Gunther, the eco-entrepreneur behind Skye Creative. Thanks, Shea!

Without further ado, I invite you to step on up and follow along as we take a look at who has set up stands for this week’s Carnival of the Green…

First off, we ask you to look up, waayyy up! See those big wind turbines high above your heads? The electricity being generated by them is going to help power Whole Foods Markets all across the land as Shea helped announce last week. Whole Foods has become the first, and thus far only, Fortune 500 company to purchase enough renewable energy credits to offset 100% of their electricity use. This is huge news and if you’re still a little confused over how the whole energy credit thing works, well Shea has done up a nice post on that as well entitled How does Wind Power really work?

Moving on - you can stop looking up now - next up we’ve got an announcement of a major hip and green event taking place in New York City later this month. Josh at the Lazy Environmentalist has got the scoop on Sustainability NYC Style.

Speaking of events, the very lovely Elsa of the greenerside just got back from Las Vegas where she was attending CES, the largest tech trade show on the planet. Elsa was on the look out for how well these big tech companies are doing on being green. She wasn’t impressed as you’ll see in her post CES not looking so green yet. Be sure to check her other posts from Vegas as well while you’re there. Good stuff as always.

While we’re in the techy part of the Carnival grounds, let’s take a look at some more green technology news from the last week…

Jeff from sustainablog has a couple of posts on the techy theme, the first entitled Building an Open-Source Community for Appropriate Technology that explores the benefits of an open-source model for appropriate and intermediate technologies. Then he’s got one called Brits Developing Low-Tech Method for Recycling Grey Water that takes a look at a new grey water treatment system under development that uses low-tech and natural processes to treat grey water.

Enrique from commonground points to the work of Isaac Berzin in his post Algae Like Breathmints for Smokestacks. Isaac is studying the use of algae as smokestack scrubbers, soaking up CO2, and then using the algae as a biofuel. Now that’s cool!

Speaking of algae, who’s getting hungry? Let’s have a look at what’s available from the food vendors this week at the Carnival…

Judy from the SavvyVegetarian has a couple of offerings for us. Sustainable Agriculture Through Vegetarianism looks at how increased vegetarianism could effect and improve our ailing agriculture industry, and then Seeds of Deception talks about an interview that Jeffery Smith, author of the book by the same name, did on his expose of the GMO industry.

While we’re talking about vegetarianism, let’s go a little further into veganism. Elisa, the blogtress at the cool hip & zen pen had the honor of guest posting at Treehugger last week. Vegan Clothing Explained explores the basics of the vegan philosophy and provides an explanation of why wool production is not the benign ‘haircut’ that some people think it is.

George from the DirtyGreek offers up Slow Food : Botany of Desire, his views on Michael Pollan’s latest book that tells the story of 4 specific plants that have co-evolved with humans over the past few centuries.

City Hippy Al provides us with Loving the Ladybirds, a look at how one can grow plants without using chemicals to protect them. A member of the CityHippy collective explains the Ladybird and its naturally protective ways.

And while we’re in the garden, Scott from GreenThinkers has How to Grow Fresh Air available for your perusal, a discussion of the book of the same name which explains how some houseplants are the most efficient filters of common pollutants.

Everybody full now? Alright, onto the final part of this week’s Carnival…

Nick from Triple Pundit wants to know How Would You Feel About Profiting from War? Does benefiting from military contracts encourage companies to actually see a profit motive in continuing warfare or is it just good business? What if you manufacture something that will help keep soldiers and civilians safe and healthy, like water systems? There’s some great discussion starting up on this post.

Harlan points out Gregory Yannick’s recent contribution to Greener Magazine entitled All That Glitters, a look at the environmental impact of gold mining technologies being employed in Nevada.

And last but certainly not least, Stentor from debitage gives us A Better Precautionary Principle - But It’s Beside The Point, which discusses an alternative way of looking at the precautionary principle, and how it applies to the controversy over the ecological effects of controlled burns.

Well…that’s it, folks! That was quite the large Carnival this week, I hope no ones feet are hurting too much from all that walking. We ask that you deposit your popcorn containers, corndog sticks and various other detritus in the recycling bins to your right. Peanut shells can go on top of that compost pile over there.

The Carnival will return next week and its hosts will be the fine folks over at The Ideal Bite.

If you would like more information about the Carnival, you can find that at these posts from the founders, City Hippy and Triple Pundit.

Thanks for stopping by and until next time…Namaste.

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