bemoreeco

Earlier on this Year my son, Nils aged 7, took part in the latest Young Writers competition ‘My First Acrostic’. This competition is used as an introduction to poetry and creative writing, that children find both inspiring and fun.

Nils’s first acrostic was about why we should recycle.

My wife and I were delighted to be inform that Nils’s Recycle poem had been selected for publication. Therefore to celebrate the start of ‘WRAP’s Recycle Week’ I thought that my first post for Recycle Now readers should be this poem. So here it is;

WHY RECYCLE by Nils (7)

Why should we recycle?

How can you help the environment?

You can be recycling

Recycling is good

Every day reuse

Cycle to school

You must throw waste in a recycling bin

Carry your bottles to the bottle bank

Learn to put litter in the bin

Each of us must be responsible.

Don’t forget you can now go to the Recycle Now website to make your pledge.

The Observer Ethical Awards in association with Ecover

Five months since the launch of The Observer Ethical Awards, sponsored by Ecover, back in January the winners of the various categories including the Ecover Ethical Kids award were officially announced on Wednesday night at a glamorous awards ceremony held in London.

The prestigious awards and this year didn’t fail to impress the judges with hundreds upon hundreds of entries from people all over the UK. The Awards looks to highlight those individuals and companies that have gone the extra green mile here in the UK whether it be a local retailer, youth community group or business.

Colin Firth, Deborah Meaden, Rick Edwards and Ken Livingstone were all on the judging panel.

The winners were:

• Lifetime Achievement Award: David Attenborough, broadcaster and naturalist, has spent his life devoted to the natural environment. Watch the interview here.

• Ethical Garden: Lower Shaw Farm, based Swindon and is an environmentally friendly place where adults and children can enjoy a range of activities all year around.

• Big Idea Award: Naturespaint, is a totally natural paint product that comes in a powder form.

• Grassroots Campaigner of the year: Rob Hopkins. Watch the interview here.

• Ethical Fashion: People Tree, Safia Minney (To celebrate you can enjoy 30% OFF People Tree is you shop via MoreEco)

• Campaigner: Peter Tatchell, has campaigned for over 30 years for sexual freedom and human rights.

• Best Local Retailer: Warren Evans, who creates unique, handmade beds and bedroom furniture.

• Online Retailer: Good Energy Shop, is a website that selects suppliers for their energy saving credentials making it less confusing for buyers to make the right choice.
• Politician: Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green party, has firmly established herself as progressive and decisive figure in the climate change campaign.

• Conservation Award, Sponsored by National Grid: Fighting to Save West Thurrock Marshes, a charity devoted to the conservation of invertebrates.

• Ethical Business Award, Sponsored by Triodos Bank: Riverford Organic Vegetables, mission is to bring organic, seasonal vegetables to your door.

• Ecover Ethical Kids Award: Lomeshaye Marsh Local Nature Reserve and Stockbridge Junior Ranger
  • Lomeshaye Marsh local nature reserve is a small nature reserve in Lancashire that is looked after and developed by a local special needs school. Watch the interview here.
  • The Stockbridge Junior Rangers are a group of young people 8-14 years old from the Stockbridge Village estate in Knowlsey, Liverpool, that look after their local environment.

Would you like to make a difference?

To buy Ecover Products online visit the MoreEco who list the best Eco Shopping sites and be part of the 5% of families safeguarding 1/2 million Olympic swimming pools worth of water.

Also MoreEco, the Eco Shopping reward site, will donate £1 for each person who sign up using the offer code ‘wateraid’.

Now in its second year, The Sunday Times Best Green Companies awards, sets out to identify and celebrate the achievements of British businesses that are striving to improve their environmental performance.

The Sunday Times Best Green Companies Award is unique. They are the first to have both a robust methodology to measure corporate environmental performance and a survey of company employees to find out whether the company standards and procedures are executed all the way down to the shop floor.

Below we have listed the top 10 Sundays Times Best Green Companies.

1 Forster

Walking and cycling holidays take on a new meaning at Forster. For every journey to and from work that is made by foot or bike, employees earn five minutes’ holiday, which can add up to a total of 2½ extra days a year.

The company helps budding walkers and cyclists find route maps, has organised cycle confidence sessions, and helps them link up with colleagues who live locally. A quarter of staff are reaping the rewards of these initiatives, which not only cut emissions, but also have health benefits.

A top green score of 98% shows that people at Forster don’t associate being green with beards and sandals. They believe the organisation is getting better at protecting the environment (another 98% result) and receive regular communication on green issues (88%).

2 The National Magazine Company

3 Willmott Dixon Group Construction

4 Skanska UK Construction

5 Infinis Power generation

6 Milliken Contract Manufacturing

7 BT Group Telecommunications

8 The Environment Agency

9 MediaCom

10 Hain Celestial UK

For a full list of the top 60 Best Green Companies <click here>

Capturing 31 percent of the votes, MoreEco.com won our first annual Earth Day poll for the world’s “Favorite Green Website.” Congratulations to UK eco-shopping site founder, Mark Philip-Sorensen.

“We feel that the majority of people in the UK still do not understand climate change and how it is happening or that it is a global issue and affects everybody. However the tide is slowly turning. As our commitment to you shopping through MoreEco.com we will offset your CO2 for you – free of charge.”

For this tremendous achievement of being the top vote-getter, Mark will receive the all-organic, and brand new Water - Use It Wisely t-shirt.  This victory has, indeed, made Mark “Shirt Worthy.” 

Now, if you want your own “Keep Calm, and Conserve Water” t-shirt that launched today for Water -Use It Wisely, you can WIN ONE through the campaign’s Twitter contest. Tweet WUIW in 140 characters or less why you’re “Shirt Worthy.” The most creative tweets as determined by some crack creative team will win a FREE shirt. But you only have one week.  The contest ends sometime on Friday, May 8.

The 2009 Goldman Prize recipients tackled some of the most pressing environmental issues of the day through grassroots efforts, helping to educate and motivate local communities to get involved in the effort to protect the natural environment around them and to stand up for their rights.

This year’s winners are:

AFRICA
Marc Ona Essangui, Gabon: In Gabon, a country without a culture of civic engagement, Marc Ona led efforts to publicly expose the unlawful agreements behind a huge mining project threatening the sensitive ecosystems of Gabon’s equatorial rainforests. Ona’s efforts led to an unprecedented victory for civil society in Gabon, with the government adopting new environmental oversight regulations and significantly reducing the size of the mining concession.

ASIA
Rizwana Hasan, Bangladesh: Working to reduce the impact of Bangladesh’s exploitative and environmentally-devastating ship breaking industry, leading environmental attorney Rizwana Hasan led a legal battle resulting in increased government regulation and heightened public awareness about the dangers of ship breaking. 

EUROPE
Olga Speranskaya, Moscow, Russia: Russian scientist Olga Speranskaya transformed the NGO community in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia into a potent, participatory force working to identify and eliminate the Soviet legacy of toxic chemicals in the environment. 

ISLANDS AND ISLAND NATIONS
Yuyun Ismawati, Indonesia: As waste management problems mount throughout the Indonesian archipelago, Yuyun Ismawati implements sustainable community-based solutions that provide employment opportunities to low-income people and empower them to improve the environment.

NORTH AMERICA
Maria Gunnoe, USA: In the heart of Appalachia, where the coal industry wields enormous power over government and public opinion, lifelong resident Maria Gunnoe fights against environmentally-devastating mountaintop removal mining and valley fill operations. 

SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA
Wanze Eduards & Hugo Jabini, Suriname: Wanze Eduards and Hugo Jabini, members of Maroon communities originally established by freed African slaves in the 1700s, successfully organized their communities against logging on their traditional lands, ultimately leading to a landmark ruling for indigenous and tribal peoples throughout the Americas to control resource exploitation in their territories.

On the morning of March 26th, on the dry Lake Ivanpah, The Ecotricity Greenbird driven by British engineer, Richard Jenkins smashed the world land speed record for wind powered vehicles.

The Greenbird clocked 126.1 mph (202.9 km/h), eclipsing the old, American held, record of 116 mph, set by Bob Schumacher in the Iron Duck in March 1999 at the same location.

This is the video.

After energetic debate and a charged round of live judging we’re excited to announce the winners of the 2009 Greener Gadgets Design Competition! Hosted by the always engaging Allan Chochinov and featuring Panelists Jill Fehrenbacher, Saul Griffith, and Jeff Kapec, this year’s competition showcased a virtuosic array of innovative technologies that ra

nged from the practical to the futuristic to the patently bizarre. Many of this year’s winning designs spoke to one of the central themes of the conference - visualizing energy use.

Congratulations to our grand prize winner the Tweet-a-watt, the Powerhog for second place, the Indoor Drying Rack for third place, and the Laundry Pod for fourth, and read on for more highlights from the judging!

This year’s Greener Gadgets Design Competition challenged an international community of designers and inventors to address issues of product lifecycle, energy use, and sustainability in consumer electronics. We were thoroughly impressed with the ingenuity on display, and Allan walked us through some of the more notable entries, including the RITI Coffee Ground Printer, several Cardboard Computers, and the Environmental Traffic Light. There were also some hilarious off-the wall ideas on display, such as the piezoelectric energy-generating “Jiggly Bed”, and a literal take on the tail light, which ensures that your dog is visible once the sun sets.

After much deliberation the panel settled upon four top entries. The Power Hog was a favorite among the audience and judges alike, Tweet-A-Watt got big kudos Saul and Jill, and the Indoor Drying Rack garnered appeal among the judges for its anti-gadget utility, although the crowd was fiercely divided so the judges decided to include the Laundry Pod as well.

Then it was up to the audience to choose their favorite design, and Allan’s applause-o-meter awarded theTweet-A-Watt with the grand prize of $3000! One of the recurrent points echoed throughout the conference is that we need to be able to measure our energy use before we’re able to cut it down - an issue that the Tweet-A-Watt tackles with flying colors. This open-source power meter won big points for its novel ability to broadcast your home’s energy use through Twitter, encouraging energy conservation by publicly displaying your power consumption. It also represents an innovative diy approach to consumer electronics, and a working model can easily be constructed using readily available materials.

Congratulations to Limor Fried, Adafruit Industries, and Phillip Torrone for winning the grand prize, and all of the other teams for their fantastic entries!

Second place: Powerhog
Third place: Indoor Drying Rack
Fourth place: Laundry Pod

Source; Inhabitat

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.

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

The US Environmental Protection Agency has released a list of its most wanted environmental criminals, many of whom may be ‘armed and dangerous,’ and wants your assistance in helping to hunt them down.

The list is published on a new EPA website, which also contains photos of the accused, summaries of their alleged environmental violations, and information on each fugitive’s last known whereabouts. It is hoped that the site will enable the public to help in tracking down fugitives accused of violating environmental laws and evading arrest.

However, the EPA also warns that some fugitives may be armed and dangerous, and cautions the public against trying to apprehend them. One of the criminal’s, Denis L. Feron, had installed a secret pipe behind a factory that he owned that was discharging pollutants into a tributary of the Mississippi River. Another, Mauro Valenzuela, allegedly transported waste oxygen generators on a plane without proper safety measures. The plane crashed, killing 110 passengers.

The EPA hopes that the innovative tool will increase the number of ‘eyes’ on the hunt for these dangerous characters. The move follows an earlier initiative by the Earth Liberation Front, which has also published a gallery of so called ‘eco-terrorists.’ Let’s hope both websites are successful, before any of the fugitives manage to commit new crimes.