bemoreeco

While any structure built in a way that lessens its footprint is welcomed, some of the buildings that people try to turn green simply make no sense. LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), in all its greatness, does not take the building’s intended purpose into account; this leaves us with some hilarious, unabashedly self-contradicting buildings. Here are the ten of the most laughable green buildings.

1. BP’s Helios House Gas Station - Los Angeles, Cal.

Yes, there is an LEED-certified gas station. It’s actually a nice building, complete with rainwater collection, solar panels, recycled building materials, and LED lighting. However, don’t think you’ll be able to refuel with biodiesel or charge up your electric car—they’re only in the petroleum-dealing business. How green of them, right?

2. Justin Timberlake’s Golf Course/Lodge - Woodstock, Tenn.

So Justin Timberlake decided that he wants to buy a golf course and fix it up with an LEED-certified lodge. While it’s an improvement compared to most other golf courses, the fact remains that maintaining a golf course takes chemicals and lots of water. In the United States alone, golf courses total more than 1.7 million acres and consume around 4 billion gallons of water every day. How does a green lodge counteract the water used to maintain the course? Justin, if you really want to be green, you should have turned it into a wildlife sanctuary instead.

3. Nestle Pure Life Water Bottling Plant - Boiling Springs, Tenn.

While this isn’t the only LEED-certified water bottling plant, it’s listed for having the most greenwashed name. Ozarka, Arrowhead, Ice Mountain, and Deer Park water bottling plants also have LEED certifications of some sort, but they couldn’t compete with Pure Life in the name department. If anyone needs a reminder of why bottling water is a bad idea, here are five reasons to ditch the bottle. Oh, and Nestle as a whole won’t be getting an award for their treatment of the planet and its people any time soon.

4. Logan Airport Terminal A - Boston, Mass.

Activists in England have put their freedom on the line protesting against a third runway at the enormous Heathrow Airport; do you think they’d be more satisfied with the runway if the airport terminal was LEED certified, with solar panels and the whole bit? You’d be right to assume they wouldn’t, because whether they take off from a green building or not, airplanes are still one of the top causes of global warming.

5. Toyota Car Dealership - Rockwall, Tex.

While Toyota is almost synonymous with green when it comes to cars, in reality they’re not much better than any other car company. They have a full line of vehicles, including four-wheel-drive SUV’s, some of which are 8-cylinder. In fact, their entire fleet’s average gas mileage is worse than Chevrolet’s. Perhaps they should clean up their cars before trying to green their dealerships?

6. Antilia Tower - Mumbai, India

While this probably will not be LEED certified, it has been often mentioned as being one of the greenest building concepts on the planet. While it does look beautiful and will act as a giant carbon sink in the middle of the city, there’s a major problem: it will be the home of one family. No matter how green this building is, that is a complete waste of space in a city known for its overcrowding.

7. Civic Center Parking Garage - Santa Monica, Cal.

The only green parking garage I want to see would be located at a train or bus station for people to drop off their cars to finish their commute on mass transit. To quote every politician involved in the 2008 campaign, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”

8. Vacation Home Development - Las Vegas, Nev.

You only need one house, people! Granted that seven of these eight homes are 1/12 shares, these homes are being built in a desert (Las Vegas) and if anyone needs a water-capture system, it’s people who live there year-around. Simply due to their excess, vacation homes may be the least environmentally-friendly structures on earth.

9. Spaceport America -  New Mexico

Another case of the rich attempting to make the rest of us think they’re doing the world a favor. Recreational space travel, at least with the current technology, is a huge and unnecessary carbon polluter. But hey, the spaceport will be LEED certified, so everything’s going to be fine, right?

10. Every Fancy New Building - Dubai, United Arab Emirates

I know, I know — I cheated on this one. I couldn’t pick just one since they’re all ridiculous for the same reason. The government is intent on making Dubai one of the biggest, most gaudy places on earth. Perhaps to compensate for unending excess, they’ve mandated that all new buildings must have specific eco-minded properties, but when you take all of it in at once, you know it’s nothing but a giant waste of resources.

Source;  Green Building Elements

Image Credits: (All Flickr under CC License) Top from J. Phil on Flickr. 1. danperry.com on Flickr 2.BP 3. Macon County, TN 4. MileageNYC on Flickr 5. Dushaun on Flickr 6. Concept illustration 7. City of Santa Monica 8. Emre Ersahin 9. Spaceport America 10. utpal. on Flickr

Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are testing a new electric wheel hub that features a wireless, remote control throttle that works by Bluetooth technology. The secret to the GreenWheel electric motor is that it is little larger than a bicycle’s standard hub and as a result can be fitted to the rear wheel of almost any standard bicycle.

Unlike other ‘retro fit’ electric bicycle motors, the GreenWheel has no wiring to fit – the throttle, which attaches to the handlebars, uses the same Bluetooth technology used in many mobile phones in order to control the electric motor.

Eco-friendly motoring

The GreenWheel is designed to deliver 25 miles of pedal-free riding, and this can be extended to 50 if the rider does some of the pedalling. The battery is intended to last for 40,000 miles. The battery can be charged by pedalling, or by plugging the wheel into a mains electrical supply for 15 minutes.

A spokesperson for the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) said: “Electrically-assisted bicycle make sense for those who are unable or unwilling to ride convent bikes, but the key to their success lies in them becoming more affordable.”

The GreenWheel electric motor is currently undergoing testing and no retail price has been announced.

Source: ETA

With the current credit crunch, climate change has once again been pushed to one side in the name of self-interest, a shift that is a central conceit of many of the films in this list. We are not suggesting all of these films are great entertainment (though a few are cool movies), but all they do, in some small way, make you think about the environment and our impact on it.

So in reverse order;

10. Fire Down Below (1997)

There are two taglines that tell you all you need to know about this prophetic masterpiece starring the king of the with-your-hair-neatly-tied-back fighting style, Steven Seagal. Tagline one: ‘One Man. One Secret. One Chance in Hell.’ Tagline two: ‘Beneath a land of wealth and beauty hides a secret that could kill millions. Undercover has never run so deep.’ In all seriousness, as truly awful as this film is, it was important because it showed that even men as completely and utterly self-possessed as Seagal were taking notice of this thing called the environment, and that’s kinda a big deal.

9. Syriana (2007)

You might ask why this movie is on the list. After all, it’s a political thriller. However, it’s about the oil industry, the single biggest polluting force on the planet. It serves to expose the raw underbelly of capitalism and the brutal ramifications that actions taken in the name of profit and politics can have on the environment. Plus George Clooney sports an extraordinary beard.

8. Waterworld (2005)

A real dog of a film and the beginning of Kevin Costner’s self-inflicted career suicide. Easily the most horrific of the movies on this list as it posits that one day Dennis Hopper will be allowed to wear an eye patch and shave his head. If you don’t want that to happen, help save the polar ice caps before they melt and drown most of the planet. This was once, famously, the most expensive movie ever made. It fish-tanked at the box office, causing nary a splash.

7. Soylent Green (1973)

A hardcore dystopian vision of the future where pollution has raised most of the Earth to boiling point and the overcrowded populace is kept alive by eating a mysterious food known as Soylent Green. If you want to spoil the surprise and find out what Soylent Green is, a quick Google search will give you all you need to know, but watching the movie without prior knowledge renders it all the more harrowing. Charlton Heston sure knew how to pick out a twist or two.

6. Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (1988)

Based on a true story, this is a beautiful film featuring Sigourney Weaver and a bunch of monkeys, a cast she was familiar with after working on Ghostbusters. This movie works on a smaller, more intimate scale than the others on the list, and presciently illustrates the dangers, and resulting tragedies, of fighting for what you believe in when those around you are only interested in their own profits – Dian Fossey was brutally murdered in her cabin one night, the identity of the murderers unknown.

5. The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Yes, it’s a dull film, and no, Dennis Quaid doth not a leading man make, but the initial scenes of devastation caused by a totally FUBAR ecosystem make your fingers and toes go cold. True, climate change is gradual, but as this film ably demonstrates, our tolerances are wafer thin. And when, even now, the weather forecasters are throwing a wobbly over suntan weather in October and permafrost in late May, it might have been better to simply call this film ‘Tomorrow’. Still, at least we can rely on someone better than Dennis Quaid when the time comes, right? Right?

4. Godzilla (1998/1954)

Granted, when you are being chased by an overgrown radioactive killer lizard, the likelihood is that you won’t be wondering where it’s come from, only where it’s going. But Godzilla is a product of the nuclear age, and a warning about arrogantly and ignorantly messing with nature. And when nature gets angry, it takes a big bite out of your Apache helicopter.

3. Silent Running (1972)

A brief rundown of the plot for those who have not seen it: set in the future, Bruce Dern plays an astronaut entrusted with a precious cargo – the last remaining forests from Earth. Earth itself is now a barren, overcrowded wasteland, the only greenery existing in domes on vast spaceships orbiting Saturn. The film centres around an order sent from Earth to jettison the domes and destroy them so the ships can be used for other purposes. Freeman Lowell (Dern) is the only one to resist. The melancholy ending of the film stays with you long after the rest of the movie is a hazy memory. Silent Running explores the contradiction between the society we live in and the society we want to live in, and then removes it to a location and time we are unfamiliar with.

2. An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

Parodied and deriled by some, exalted and lauded by others, Al Gore’s documentary touched a nerve where many, many others had failed before. Perhaps it was seeing a former presidential candidate devoting himself to a cause that for a long time has been depicted as the branding iron for society’s outsiders, maybe it was the unbearably sad image of a polar bear floating away on a block of ice with nowhere to go, or it could have been the graphs and scissor lift. The truth is, Gore’s campaign is successful because this is only one filmed version of a talk he has given hundreds of times all over the world, communicating with people one on one, as a presidential candidate tries to do when running for office, only Gore’s ambition is a universal one.

1. WALL•E (2008)

Youngsters will most likely remember the inspired chase scenes that dominate the second half of the movie, but for those old enough to know what climate change is and what it potentially means, it’s the heartbreaking opening of the film that stays with you. To see a lonely little robot delicately stacking cube after cube of garbage into skyscrapers (a fantastic visual metaphor) is a brutal indictment of the way we treat our planet, as well as an evocative portrayal of altruism versus the dream of capitalism. Ultimately, it seems, we as an audience can only believe that a robot would treat Earth the way it deserves to be treated. To see a human doing what WALL•E does would be hard to stomach.

Source: Andy Mayer at www.recycle.co.uk

The UK’s leading high street stores and supermarkets have exceeded a voluntary target to reduce the environmental impact of carrier bags by 25% by the end of 2008, according to figures released today by Wrap. Since 2006, retailers have delivered a 40% reduction in the environmental impact of carrier bags, as measured by the reduction in the amount of virgin plastic used. 

Retailers have achieved this by reducing the number of carrier bags issued by 26%, from 13.4 billion to 9.9 billion in 2008, increasing recycled content used and reducing carrier bag weight. Liz Goodwin, Wrap chief executive, said: “Consumers deserve congratulations for these results as they clearly show we are moving away from using bags once to reusing bags often. They are also a credit to retailers who have worked hard to find innovative ways of helping us reuse our bags.”  

The data also showed initiatives by retailers to reduce the environmental impact of carrier bags have resulted in a 23,000-tonne reduction in the weight of bags issued.  Jane Milne from the British Retail Consortium added: “With this first target met and exceeded we are now working to halve the number of bags taken by May this year.” 

Meanwhile, the Carrier Bag Consortium said Wrap’s figures demonstrated that a voluntary approach to cutting carrier bag use was best. Chairman Barry Turner said: “We continue to support voluntary means over punitive legislation and have been working constantly to ensure the voluntary code is measured not just on numbers but the comparative environmental merits of different types of bag.

“Counting numbers of bags instead of measuring true environmental impacts means figures are always skewed against the lightweight plastic carrier which has very low production and transport impacts and is also reused by up to 80% of households,” he added.

The target to reduce the environmental impact of carrier bags was part of an agreement with UK governments and industry in February 2007. Retailers involved in the scheme include Asda, Boots, Co-op Group, DSG International, Home Retail Group, John Lewis Partnership, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Next, Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

Reports made in January suggested that recycling adds to global warming, rather than tackling it, are misleading and factually incorrect, said Dr Liz Goodwin, CEO WRAP.

“Around two thirds of households now recycle as a way of life. The message to householders is that recycling is delivering great environmental benefits and there is absolutely no reason for them to stop,” said Dr Liz Goodwin.

Shoppers are sticking to their ethical principles when it comes to Fairtrade and locally sourced food – but organic food seems to be losing its appeal. The number of British shoppers who buy ethical food – including Fairtrade and locally sourced – has increased since 2006, a new survey by IGD has revealed. However, the number of consumers opting for organic products has fallen, according to the Shopper Trends 2009 report.

A quarter of shoppers said they had purchased at least one Fairtrade item in the past month, compared with 9% in 2006. The percentage choosing locally produced food has almost doubled to 27%, while those who regard food provenance as a priority has risen from 16% to 23%. The results also revealed the proportion of shoppers supporting high animal welfare standards had doubled to 20%.

Almost a half mentioned animal living conditions when asked about food production concerns, compared with 30% in 2006. Organic products was the only ethical food area where the number of shoppers had fallen, to 19% compared with 24% last year.

“We believe this is partly due to a swing towards other ethical options, mainly among more casual organic shoppers,” said Denney-Finch.

Shoppers’ values ran deep when it came to doing the right thing, said Fairtrade Foundation director of communications Barbara Crowther. Traidcraft marketing director Larry Bush added: “This survey reinforces that Fairtrade is not a fad; it’s a result of consumer education and awareness of the benefits of Fairtrade to developing world producers.”

Shoppers were more price-sensitive, but were not leaving their ethical concerns at home when they went  shopping, said IGD chief executive Joanne Denney-Finch. “People are scrutinising closely to get the best value for their values,” she said.

The Soil Association insisted that although the recession had destabilised organic sales the impact had not been catastrophic.

Source; The Grocer

Calling all Green Gadget Geeks! The Greener Gadgets Conference is coming to NYC THIS WEEK: Friday, February 27th. Part of the Conference is the Design Competition and you can go to the site and vote for your favourite Greener Gadget and influence the results.

To help you we have listed some of our favourite gadgets below.

Bicycles helmets, shoe insoles, roof tiles and biodegradable plant pots could soon all be made from recycled nappies. At present, the vast majority of the 2.8bn nappies used each year in Britain end up in landfill.

A new recycling plant in Birmingham will take 36,000 tonnes of used nappies each year and transform it into a plastic will be used initially in the manufacture of roof tiles but which could later be used in a wide variety of products.

Nappies contain plastic, fibres, cellulose and polymers – all of which have the potential to be recycled. It is hoped that within two years, methane will be extracted from the used nappies and sold to the national grid.

A spokesperson for the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) said: “Cycling is already green, but cyclists who buy these helmets will also be doing their bit to reduce landfill.”

Used nappies are to be collected initially only from nurseries and care homes to begin with, but as the recycling services offered by local councils continues to improve, kerbside collections and disposal points at supermarkets and other locations may be introduced.

Source; ETA

A number of celebrities attending the Oscars this Sunday are expected to trade stretch limo for hybrids and alternative energy vehicles.

Some stars have already previewed the new 2010 Toyota Prius Hybridwhich features upgrades including a roof solar panel to power fans to cool the car when it’s not running.

Actors Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rosario Dawson, Adrien Grenierand others are expected to show their support for environmental sustainability by going green to the Academy Awards.

Toyota and Econation green ground transportation will provide the new 2010 Prius to Hollywood celebrities for awards shows and special events.

Econation offers a chauffeured car service using the most advanced hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles not generally available to the public in major markets throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.  The company is emerging as a “global ‘green’ alternative to traditional ground transportation (taxi’s, Town cars, limousines and buses)”.

Says Ben Bloch, manager partner of Econation:

“The entertainment industry is working to influence the rest of the world to use more sustainable options for transportation, with the new Prius, Toyota continues to break ground and set the right example for the rest of the industry. You might be surprised how many people prefer a Prius over a stretch or an SUV these days. Everyone from CEO’s of the biggest film studios to Academy Award(TM) nominees request the Prius when they’re going out on the town because it makes the best statement from an environmental perspective, and is stylish and comfortable as well.”

Source: Traveling The Green Way

Do you remember in the movie Back to the Future 2, the flying cars that were fueled by garbage? Well, now it is 2009 and Coskata, a a biology-based renewable energy company,  can turn garbage (as well as feedstock) into ethanol fuel. According to Coskata, each gallon of fuel costs less than a dollar per gallon to make, which should make the price of this ethanol fuel comparable to gas.

In order to use this fuel, cars need to be able to run on ethanol. General Motors recently invested in Coskata, forming a partnership, and GM has several lines of SUV’s and trucks coming out that are E85. Which means they run on 85% ethanol and 15% gas.

Coskata expects to be able to make mass quantities of ethanol using this method by 2010. Now we just need more ethanol stations and affordable ethanol fueled cars. Maybe soon the cars will fly too…

Source: Greener Trends