Enviroman Says: An Environmental Blog

Online source for spice racks

2011-11-09T08:31:00.003+08:00

Previously prior to the advent of the Internet and eCommerce to shop for a suitable spice rack for your kitchen will involve traveling, use of depleting fuel and carbon dioxide release contributing to global warming.

Now, you can easily browse many types of spice racks online from your home computer and having a suitable spice rack delivered to your house without ever leaving your house.

SpiceRackSource offers such a wide variety of kitchen spice racks that you are quite assured of finding 1 suitable for your kitchen. Such convenience. Say yes to online shopping.

Make environmental blogs do more

2011-09-11T09:49:00.002+08:00

A free hosted blog using the free Blogger.com or Wordpress.com is fine for just making known to the world your views about the environment, interacting with viewers, spread environmental awareness with perhaps Blogger.com being my choice over Wordpress.com

However, if you demands more from your blog like for selling environmentally friendly products, you would probably need to be able to do more than what Blogger.com and Wordpress.com can offer.

That is the circumstances which will require a shift to self hosted blog powered with Wordpress.org (yes, there are 2 versions of Wordpress, one free and hosted and another paid and require you to host yourself). This means you will have to choose a web host for your blog.

However, making a choice of webhost need not be a lonely affair as you have Web Hosting Rating for reading reviews of web hosts.

There are many web hosts which uses Windows webhosting because Windows users are more widespread.

However you also can choose Linux webhosing

Environmental blogs and web hosting

2011-08-31T15:47:00.002+08:00

Are you keen on starting an environmental blog to post about your opinions regarding the state of the environment or problems plus solutions. One easy way for you to do so is via blogging. If your requirement is not too demanding, you can start putting content on the World Wide Web within minutes using www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com both of which are free and also host your blog for you for free.

However, if you want more freedom on what you are allowed to do, you will have to go with the self-hosted www.wordpress.org which requires you to purchase/register a domain plus purchasing a package from among one of thest webhosting for your blog.

If you choose this route to a self-hosted blog, one thing you should familiarize yourself with is webhosting security which can be free or paid. It would be useful for you to know about 5 free Open Source Security Options

As a webmaster, it would be useful to read the CMS FAQ (Content Management System Frequently Asked Questions for there are numerous CMS available and choosing one can be a headache.

I would consider the big 4 CMS to be Blogger, Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla although some may argue with me in calling Blogger or even Wordpress (wordpress.org) a CMS but as far as I am concerned, Blogger can work as a kind of rudimentary CMS.

Green Speak: Starting in the Classroom

2011-08-12T14:47:00.001+08:00

Green Speak: Starting in the Classroom

We need to change how we look at the environment today if we have any hope of mending it so that future generations do not have to fix the mistakes of the past, but that doesn’t mean that those who will inherit this big blue planet can’t help make it a better place too.

For starters, today many elementary schools and high schools now have recycling and compost programs in order to teach students how to do their part and allow them to get involved. Some students even have a recycling competition to make it a more fun and challenging experience and to entice more students to get involved.

Beyond these recycling programs, there are many other ways that teachers can help youth to learn to ‘go green’ and put them on the path to protecting their environment.

Implement a school garden

Credit: Leslie Duss

Teachers and parents can add onto their schools recycling and composting by implementing an organic garden. Not only will they be able to use their own compost structure to grow these plants, but they will teach children how to cultivate food and eat organically. At the end of the season, when the food is ripe, they can donate it to a local food bank or homeless shelter to further teach children ways to be an outstanding member of the community and caring about all life.

Take eco-friendly field trips

Credit: Loren Kerns

One of the key ways to create positive change in this world is through education. By taking students on eco-friendly field trips, you are given the opportunity to teach children about the importance of the environment and why we need to be aware of how everything we do impact our own environment as well as ecosystems and the trees and wildlife that live within them.

Host an Earth Day festival or green event

Credit: Akuppa

Much like with the field trip, a festival or green day at your elementary school will help to promote saving the environment to children at a young age. By making the environment something fun that we should celebrate and incorporating educating presentations or plays, you are helping to engrain that information into future generations so that they may move forward out into the world and do their part.

2. Encourage students to walk or ride a bike to school

Credit: Ivy Dawned

Walking to school is something most children are good at, but by encouraging all of them to take part in this, you are also encouraging the parents who bring them to school to try walking for a change.

Use green supplies

Credit: Meddy Garnet

Much like using eco-friendly products and cleaners at home, the same can be applied to the classroom. By encouraging students to get eco-friendly school supplies such as water-based paints and recycled paper, you are helping them learn how their choices as consumers can influence the environment and the world around them. When children learn to go green at school, they will carry this with them back home and eventually to their jobs and work environments.

The end result of all of these influences is that they will help teach youth the importance of their impact on the environment and how everything is affected, you are creating positive change for the future. Only now is the general populace becoming active in helping change the environment for the better. By influencing our youth to do the same, we are influencing a promise to Mother Nature and everything we share this planet with.

CREDIT

Environment911.org is an interactive website for individuals to come and discuss the environment from green business to natural disasters. We feel it is important for people to come together and share their thoughts, ideas and visions for the future. The more we can communicate what is happening in our world, the more people can be educated and the more we can progress. Beyond Environment911.org you can find us on Facebook and Twitter where we are continuing to spread the message about our global environment and the impact that we have on it every day. www.environment911.org

Freecycle PJ featured in theStar newspaper

2011-04-05T18:51:00.005+08:00

Freecycle has spread far and wide from its humble beginning in Tucson, Arizona, the United States, and has settled in Malaysia, the more active centers being in Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya and Penang.

You may join them at various Yahoo group as follows:
Freecycle Petaling Jaya Yahoo group
Freecycle Kuala Lumpur Yahoo group

Related:
Freecycle Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Its local newspaper has found the movement worthy of mention and has published an article Ask, and you might receive in its Lifestyle section, the article below below republished below with permission.

Tuesday April 5, 2011
Ask, and you might receive
By MENG YEW CHOONG
star2green@thestar.com.my

There is such a thing as a free lunch in the case of The Freecycle Network.

IT has been described in various ways: a free version of eBay, a grand curbside where people can drop off their things, a lifesaver. It all began in May 2003, when Deron Beal sent out the first e-mail announcing The Freecycle Network (TFN) to about 30 friends and a handful of non-profits in Tucson, Arizona, the United States.

Beal was then working with non-profit organisation RISE, which provides recycling services to businesses and transitional employment to the needy. Beal was amazed at what companies chucked out the back door every day – beds, office tables, and items which, although not readily recyclable, still have a lot of life left in them. Getting rid of the items proved to be a great obstacle. For example, he discovered that local thrift shops did not accept beds due to health concerns.

Ways with waste: A recycling centre filled with unwanted stuff. Through Freecycle, people now have another way to get rid of their waste – give them away, for free, to people who really need them.

Beal frantically called those whom he knew to distribute the stuff away as otherwise, the things would wind up in a landfill. In the end, it was the Internet that came to the rescue, with Beal setting up that initial Freecycle e-mail group for Tucsonans. With that, Freecycle was off and running, offering anyone with access to the Internet a way of giving away as well as requesting for things.

Since then, the Freecycle concept has spread to nearly 120 countries, with membership now close to 8.2 million worldwide, spread across nearly 5,000 groups. In 2007 Freecycle was ranked by Yahoo as the third most searched environmental term following only “global warming” and “recycling”. By giving freely with no strings attached, members of TFN instil a sense of generosity, strengthen local community ties and promote environmental sustainability through reuse.
Ways with waste: A recycling centre filled with unwanted stuff. Through Freecycle, people now have another way to get rid of their waste – give them away, for free, to people who really need them.

Beal, 43, calls this phenomenon as “changing the world one gift at a time”. He said Freecycle could not have worked if people weren’t basically good and giving. TFN is a registered charity in the United States and Britain. It is a not-for-profit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for reuse in their own town or districts. To date, over 10,000 have volunteered their services as moderators to sort out offers and requests, as well as filter out inappropriate postings.

Resembling “a sort of grand cyber-curbside”, Freecycle is globally local – each city, town or district has volunteer moderators and a distinct e-mail group. It works by matching the giver with the requester through e-mail. A giver can decide whether to meet face-to-face, drop off the thing at a designated point, or just mail it over. Regardless of the item in question, no money changes hands and it is usually the recipient who pays for postage or bears the cost of transporting the item. At other times, the items are just left outside the house, and the giver posts a message informing the community of its availability.

TFN made its way to Malaysia in December 2004 and quickly split into a few chapters in different towns and cities. The most active chapters are Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya, while others have gone defunct due to long periods of inactivity.

Tengku Nora Tengku Nazaruddin, 33, is one of the moderators of the Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya chapters. She volunteered her services a few months ago after having experienced the power of Freecyle in England, where she had lived for a few years. “I was googling on how to give away some of my things after giving birth to my son. I had some maternity clothes that I felt would be much better given directly to those who need them, rather than just dropped off at any random charity,” said the home-maker, mother to a one-year-old boy.

One of the moderators for the Freecycle KL and PJ chapters, Tengku Nora Tengku Nazaruddin (pictured with her son, Adam) is now helping her parents de-clutter their home through Freecycle.

Freecycle promotes reuse, which is one step better than dropping stuff into recycling bins. Practised well, Freecycle affords the opportunity for the giver to be in touch with the receiver (though not necessarily face-to-face), so that meaningful human connections can be made. “It also gives confidence to the giver that he or she is meeting a real need, rather than risk having the item sit for months gathering dust in some thrift store,” said TFN.
One of the moderators for the Freecycle KL and PJ chapters, Tengku Nora Tengku Nazaruddin (pictured with her son, Adam) is now helping her parents de-clutter their home through Freecycle.

Naturally, Tengku Nora’s contact with Freecycling also extended to the “receiving end”. “I’ve received things like child walkers, baby chairs, bibs and three bags full of high quality toys through Freecycle. Even baby bowls and spoons were given to me. But of course, this was England, where people are more ready to give away things and Freecycle is really big over there. Since then, I have been hooked on giving. I’ve told my parents about the benefits of Freecycle so that they can de-clutter their house which is filled with so many things which they have not used for so long.”

Hwa Shi-Hsia, 27, a Malaysian working in Singapore, started Freecycling when she was studying in Madison, Wisconsin. “My experience in the US was fairly positive. I obtained some needed household items and in turn, fulfil other people’s needs. I had a pair of heavy winter boots that were too big for me but of such good quality that I was reluctant to throw them away. So it was heart-warming to hear that they could help another international student who had come to the US with insufficient winter clothing. A giant toy tiger that was a joke gift from a friend also went to the office of a child psychologist, who said her patients enjoy hugging it.

“I also joined Freecycle Singapore shortly after moving here but have not really been in need of any free items due to a higher income and sharing a home with my siblings and husband. I still find it beneficial to have a channel for redistributing items in good condition to others. However, Freecycling here has been somewhat annoying due to a number of inconsiderate people who told me they wanted something, but never showed up even after numerous e-mails, SMS, and willingness to reschedule on my part. If I have a large number of items to give away in the future, I will probably just put them in a box on the ground floor of my flat block and post an announcement, rather than arranging meetings with individuals. Nevertheless, I think most members have good intentions, and I see Freecycle as a positive sign for conservation against the backdrop of relentless consumerism in Singapore.”

Less is best

Monica Cheang, 41, a marketing communication manager in Singapore, has this to say after a bout of year-end “spring cleaning”: “Freecycle is a fantastic way to recycle as others can make use of those items which are no longer relevant to me. I love the idea of giving these things away free, as it helps teach me in a small way about the spirit of giving and also reminds me not to buy stuff unnecessarily in future. I have given away cupboards, clothes, shoes, costume jewellery, and a whole shelf of literature books. A lady who was operating a cafe collected the books and put them in her cafe for her patrons to read. I thought that was a pretty cool way to let others enjoy the books I used to love, so I did not feel too sad with the parting.

“I am reminded that we really need much less to live a meaningful and happy life. When I give away my things on Freecycle, I always think ‘Why on earth did I spend so much to buy this thing that I hardly used? Why did I have to buy three colours of the same thing? Why did I contribute so much waste? When I give away things, not only am I glad that someone can make good use of my crazy excesses, it makes me feel lighter, more carefree, and I am again reminded that less is best, and to make do with what I have whenever possible.”
Katie McDonald is thrilled with her 60-year-old Baldwin piano which she got through Freecycle. ‘That was the only way I was going to get a piano here, as they are rather pricey, with one capable of setting you back by a few thousand ringgit,’ she says.

Those who are on the “receiving” end have touching stories to tell. Katie McDonald, 26, a Briton working in Kuala Lumpur as an educational facilitator, asked for a piano and got one three days later. “A lady responded, asking whether I wanted a 60-year-old piano,” said the elated McDonald. She hired a piano restorer to refurbish the still-solid Baldwin upright piano.

Katie McDonald is thrilled with her 60-year-old Baldwin piano which she got through Freecycle. ‘That was the only way I was going to get a piano here, as they are rather pricey, with one capable of setting you back by a few thousand ringgit,’ she says.

Zatika Izati Puade, 34, an accountant in Kuala Lumpur, said: “I’m so grateful that some members are willing to donate their used magazines and books for this movement that I started last March called Gerakan Baca Sambil Menunggu (GBSM, or Read While You Wait). GBSM collects and distributes old magazines to local public hospitals and clinics so that patients can read while waiting for their turn to see the doctor.”

If anything, those who use Freecycle on a regular basis cannot help but marvel at the random acts of kindness and generosity that abound there. Cheryl Teh recounted an instance where charity extended well beyond what was offered. “Someone offered a high-pressure waterjet cleaner, and so I requested for it on behalf of a shelter I was volunteering with. However, after the giver had enquired more about the shelter, he proceeded to write a cheque along with his initial offering. We were all very taken aback but at the same time very grateful for his kindness.”

All these only go to show that while the proverbial free lunch is something we should be wary of, Freecycle is really something that deserves a second look.

For more information, go to free cycle.org.

Environmentally friendly tool for motorist

2010-09-13T21:50:00.005+08:00

My son is a car enthusiast who says that when he drive a car, he feels like the car is a part of him. I was amazed when he on his own stripped out the old wiring of his antique Mini Minor are rewired it all by himself. He had also overhauled the engine of that old car although in this major job he had to use other workshops for impossible which are impossible to do without expensive machineries and equipment. All this without any formal training in auto mechanics.

He had long dreamed of starting his own car repair workshop. So when I received an email alerting me to this RepairPal dealing with auto repair, I brought it to his attention at the earliest moment possible.

So what does he think of RepairPal? We tried going through the motion of a stranded motorist with a stalled car, namely
1. Get an estimate
2. Find a shop
3. Get car information
4. Track your service

First, getting an estimate. Apparently before one can get an estimate, one need to answer a series of questions in what looks like some kind of expert system. According to my son, the questions were too technical for a layman who would find difficulties in answering accurately the questions.

In any case, my personal opinion of RepairPal is that they are providing an extremely useful service which unfortunately is limited to only the United States at the moment. Such a service will come in handy especially when one get stranded in a remote place with a stalled car. This is where my son's Android Phone comes in handy as then use RepairPal "Find a Shop" which even will provide a map with the location of the repair shops all marked on the map. If you are located in the Chicago area, you can also look up Chicago auto repair.

RepairPay seem to go beyond just getting estimates and finding repair shops. It also provides a wealth of information including information on Toyota Camry which happened to be a very popular car where I live. The reputation of Toyota for reliability is such that people tend to ask "Have you ever seen a Toyota car breakdown?" expecting of course an answer in the negative.

RepairPay is also highly educational. For example, if you see the "Check engine light" comes on, you can surf over to check engine light for a comprehensive description of what is involved.

So who or what is RepairPal? From their "About RepairPal" page:

Located in Emeryville, California, RepairPal was founded in 2007 by a group of automobile enthusiasts and entrepreneurs who were frustrated by the expensive and tedious process of fixing and maintaining their vehicles. They created RepairPal to provide drivers with the most accurate, unbiased, and useful car ownership information available.

I just wish they would extend their service to cover the country where I live, for then we will get a very environmentally friendly tool for motorists

Free Swap search engine - ecofreek

2010-05-10T11:49:00.002+08:00

Are you looking for things which people are willing to give away free? Or looking to exchange things with others so as to not add bulk to the landfills. Try out EcoFreek.com the free and swap search engine which searches over 45+ sources for free and swappable items being given away by people who no longer need them

Environmentally friendly greeting and gift cards

2010-01-07T13:34:00.011+08:00

A few days ago, I received an email alerting me to the existence of Shop dot Com, in particular to the availability of gift cards. My curiosity was aroused for after all, I am the inventor of Envirocard which is an environmentally friendly greeting card which the recipient after tiring of keeping the card, instead of chucking the greeting card into the trashcan which will eventually end up in the landfill, can wash it and it will turn into a handkerchief, table cloth, dish washing cloth, etc.

Browsing the sidebar revealed free eCard which I tried out by creating a Happy New Year for environmental bloggers. The steps were simple and straight forward - click "personalize and send this card", fill in the recipient's email address, personal message up to 6000 characters, your name and email address, recipient's name, personal greeting, set date and go!

A link to the animated free e-card was given, but since it will only be online for 30 days, instead of giving you the link, here is some screen shot of the animated greeting card:

Count down to New Year, 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Happy New Year

Crackers to celebrate

Champange to celebrate

Fun bottomless rubbish bin - cleanliness

2009-11-08T11:31:00.002+08:00

Can we get more people to throw their rubbish in the bin by making it fun to do so? Watch the video below (the world's deepest trashcan):

Result: During one day, 72kg of rubbish was collected in the fun rubbish bin. That is 41kg more than the normal bin just a small distance away. Fun can obviously change behaviour for the better. They call it the fun theory. (A Volkswagen initiative)

Make recycling fun - Bottle bank arcade

2009-11-08T10:23:00.003+08:00

Can we get more people to use the bottle bank by making it fun to do?

At 0,4 Sodra Station, there is a Bottle Bank Arcade for recycling glass bottles:
How to play
Press START
Wait for light
Put bottle in
Collect points
OK? Lets play (watch the video below):

Result: Over one evening, the bottle bank arcade was used by nearly one hundred people. During the same period, the nearby conventional bottle bank was used twice.

Fun can obviously change behaviour for the better. They call it the fun theory (Volkswagen Initiative).

A vehicle I want to buy for my family

2009-09-17T23:00:00.004+08:00

Hey, I want to sell my Kelisa for this "conference vehicle"!!!!

Will write more about why I prefer the vehicle in the video above over my dear little Kelisa. If you can't wait, surf over to Trimming Your Fuel Consumption: A Few Tips To Increase Your MPG

Amazon paperless e-Book reader Kindle (video)

2009-02-28T13:24:00.003+08:00

Welcome to Kindle e-book reader, Amazon new wireless device that lets you read books, magazine, newspaper and blogs anywhere, anytime. Let's take a look at what it is like to read with Kindle. I'll find it, buy your favorite book, magazines, newspapers and blogs. And I'll point out some unique features too. OK here goes:

Kindle is about the same size as your typical paperback. And lighter than many, weighing in at just 10.3 ounces. The screen is easy on your eyes because Kindle uses and electronic display eliminates the kind of eye strains that you would get when reading a PC or a PDA. And the display doesn't use backlighting so just like paper, it is easy to read outside in a sunny day as it is inside your living room or your office.

You turn pages by a simple touch of a page-turn button, and because buttons are on both sides you can use either hand. Simply touch the next page button when you are ready to move forward, or the previous page button to go back. Use the select wheel when you want to choose an item on the page or menu. For example, when you want to pick a new book to read, use your thumb to roll the cursor up or down, and then press the select wheel to make your selection. If you need larger letters, change the size of the text by pressing the text key on the keyboard. There are 6 font sizes to choose from. Use whatever works for you, big or small.

And if you ever lose your place in a book, you will appreciate that Kindle automatically saves your place in everything you are reading, so you can always pick up from where you let off. You can also bookmark pages and return later, just scroll up to the top of the page and press the dog ear at the corner.

Now let's take a look at the Kindle bookstore where you can find and buy things to read right on your Kindle. First select SHOP in your Kindle Store menu, and there you go. You're connected. If you already knows what you want you can find it immediately using STORE SEARCH. Simply use the keyboard to type the name of the author or the title and press the SELECT button to choose it. Otherwise just browse like in a book store or at Amazon.com. You will see thousands of best sellers, new releases, reviews and personal recommendations. Most books in the store comes with a free sample, so you can either read a bit before you decide to buy. Once you're ready to buy, just one click of the select wheel download the book to your Kindle in under a minute. New York bestsellers and most new releases are just $9.99 or less. And anything you buy is also automatically backed up in Amazon.com in case your Kindle is ever lost or damanged

So you may be wondering how your book, magazine, blogs and newspapers get delivered to your Kindle. Well, Kindle uses the same wireless technology as advanced cellular phones, so you don't need to hunt for a hotspot like you would in WiFi. Your Kindle connects simply like your cell phone connects, but unlike a cell phone, you don't need to worry about signing up for an annual contract, finding the right data plans or even seeing a wireless bill. All your purchases include free wireless delivery to your Kindle bookstore via Amazon Whispernet.

Because your Kindle is wireless, you don't have to wait till you get in front of your computer to get new books, magazine, blogs or newspaper, and you never have to sign out or plug in to your PC to manage your library. In fact you don't need a computer at all to use your Kindle. You also don't have to worry about the hassle of recharging all the time. Kindle rechargable batteries will last long enough to turn thousands of pages. You can read for days without having to plug in.

Kindle automatically deliver your paper magazine like Newsweek or Forbes, and newspaper like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or the Washington Post. Each morning, by the time you wake up, your paper will be ready and waiting for you to read. You even get your magazines before they hit the newstands. And Kindle also updates blogs and feeds automatically all day long.

If you come across a word you don't know while reading, Kindle dictionary can look up it for you. No need to interrupt your reading to find a dictionary. Just scroll to the line where the word appears, press the select wheel and then choose LOOKUP from the menu. If there is a sentence, a paragraph or a page that you want to refer to later, you can highlight it, add a note, or even clip an entire page. You can also find a word or phrase found in any or all of the items that you have downloaded to your Kindle. Press the SEARCH key, use the keyboard to type the word into the search field and select GO. Kindle shows you everywhere that word appears. You also get links to the words definitions with a PDA, the web and the Kindle bookstore, so you can research even more.

If you have personal documents that you want to read on your Kindle like Microsof WORD files, you can email it to your Kindle. For just a small charge, Amazon will convert your document and deliver it wirelessly. Kindle eliminates the need to print or carry hard copies. Your personal documents are with you wherever you go.

Kindle have the capacity to hold over 200 books, newspaper, magazine and blogs and an SD memory card can expand your collection to hold even more. Kindle literally holds hundreds of pounds of reading material all in one small package. So not only is Kindle changing when, where and what you read, it is also changing how you read. With Kindle you can curl up on your couch for hours with a novel or sneak a quick read during those moments of free time each day. It's so simple to use. And once you tried Kindle you will find it's as easy as reading your favorite book

Kindle paperless electronic book Amazon

2009-02-28T11:42:00.003+08:00

Want to save trees? Get the Kindle e-book reader. This amazing electronic book reader uses a white electronic paper display which looks like paper. It downloads content over Amazon Whispernet using the Sprint EVDO network. The Kindle can be used without a computer, and Whispernet is accessible free of charge. A bonus is the free internet access to Wikipedia.

When the Kindle e-book reader was first launched, it was sold out within just five and a half hour and eager buyers had to wait till April 2008 before new stocks were available. Now that Kindle 2 is launched, be quick to grab one before it goes out of stock again.

Buy a Kindle

Kindle Books

Kindle Newspapers

Kindle Magazines

Kindle Accessories

Kindle Blogs

Entrepreneurship and the tough economic environment

2009-02-28T08:39:00.002+08:00

United States of America, in fact the whole world, is facing a new social and economic environment now, triggered off by the sub-prime crisis which have affected severely home owners and the banks that financed them. This crisis has not only affected home owners who borrowed to finance their home purchases but have affected everyone because it has affected consumer sentiments and the whole economy with workers being laid off and businesses facing greatly reduced business, school and college graduates unable to find jobs.

In this kind of unfriendly environment, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation which is probably the world's largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship really comes in very handy. One of Kauffman Foundation objective is to train the nation’s next generation of young entrepreneur.

The Kauffman Foundation recognize the role of the entrepreneur in fostering innovation and has embarked on a long-term, multimillion-dollar initiative known as Kauffman Laboratories for Enterprise Creation which seeks to increase the numbers as well as the success of high-growth enterprises.

The Kauffman Foundation, recognizing the important role of innovations, is also working on getting the numerous innovations spawn within universities to the marketplaces.

Environmentally Friendly Fans versus Aircon

2009-02-17T13:30:00.005+08:00

Comparison between fans and airconditioners

How does fans compare with aircons from the environmental aspect? Ceiling fans cool not by lowering the temperature but just be creating wind chill effect which can be quite effective. Because they do not cool by lowering temperature like aircons, the energy requirements are much lower than that compared with aircons. A fan depending on size that runs constantly cost only about $7 a month whereas the running cost of a room aircon is estimated to be about $58 which is 8 times more.

Fans suck air through the house, inducing a strong draft in rooms where windows are open as it pulls cooler, outdoor air inside and ventilation is much improved compared with aircons which for efficiency need doors and windows to be closed. Poorly maintained aircons can breed harmful micro-organism which can be bad for health. Fans thus create a more conducive environment from the health aspect.

From the manufacturing point of view, the manufacturing process of fan is much simpler than the manufacturing process of aircons and thus uses less materials and energy and thus produce less waste products and pollution.

From the economics point of view, the cost of fans are but a fraction of aircons, cost less to maintain and run. Fans are much more economical.

What kinds of fans do we have in the market. There are economical and decorative ceiling fans like craftmade ceiling fans also hunter ceiling fans and monte carlo ceiling fans. With so much choices the budget and environmentally conscious consumer is spoilt for choice.

Reuse Aluminium coated plastic bag preservation fruits vegetable

2009-02-12T14:15:00.003+08:00

Here is a way of reusing aluminium coated plastic bags such as the Quaker oats bag shown below:

This Aluminium coated plastic bag can be used to store fruits and vegetables in the fridge and its use can greatly prolong their shelf life. Look at the photos of some fruits and vegetable stored in such manner after many weeks. They still look fresh with no sign of dehydration:

YOU CAN PUT PLENTY OF FRUITS AND/OR VEGETABLES IN IT..

LOOK......AFTER 1 WEEK.....THE VEGETABLES ARE STILL FRESH! AMAZING, ISN'T IT ?? ? NO DEHYDRATION AT ALL.

LOOK AT THE OCRAS. THEY ARE STILL VERY, VERY FRESH WITHOUT ANY DEHYDRATION AT ALL.

BUT DON'T FOLD OR SEAL THE OPENING OF THE BAG. JUST LEAVE THE BAG OPEN AND IT WILL DO THE MAGIC WORK FOR YOU ALREADY. .....TRY IT OUT.....

YOU WOULD SURE LIKE IT VERY MUCH TOO.

INSTEAD OF THROWING THESE USEFUL THINGS AWAY, RE-USE IT AGAIN AND YOU WILL BE INHERENTLY JOINING THE GROUP OF "SAVING THE MOTHER-EARTH" CAMPAIGN TOO.

** PLEASE PASS IT ON **

Refurbished ICT equipment

2009-02-12T10:39:00.004+08:00

ICT, acronym for Information Communications Technology, is the technology for the twenty first century and is the technology to watch as it spin off many other industries. It can be said to be an environmentally friendly in many sense. It can be said that moving bits and bytes (electrons) is way better than moving atoms and molecules. ICT can and have greatly reduce physical traffic. It can and have reduced printing on paper (hard copies) being replaced by digital files (soft copies). It can have have introduced new way of working.

However, ICT uses hardware, some of which can hardly be called environmentally. This negative aspect of ICT can be ameliorated by the use of as much refurbished ITC equipment as possible, including refurbished network security equipment, refurbished routers and switches, refurbished servers and refurbished telecommunications equipment. By doing so, we can keep lots of electronic equipment from the dump sites.

Plants, environment, photosynthesis and oxygen

2009-01-21T09:14:00.006+08:00

Photosynthesis, carbon dioxide, oxygen

Photosynthesis is a metabolic pathway whereby plants converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially sugars, using the energy from sunlight, emitting life-giving oxygen in the process. Human do not have the chlorophyll and cannot manufacture food on its own plus consume food and oxygen produced by the plants and emit carbon dioxide in the process. Plants are therefore welcome addition for without oxygen there will be no life.

Plants and the environment

Carbon dioxide is a green house gas, that is, it traps heat from sunlight in the atmosphere. Increasing carbon dioxide will mean increasing the atmospheric temperature (global warming). Plants absorb carbon dioxide and are therefore carbon sink.

Plants are also esthetically pleasing to the eye and brightens up the environment in homes and workplaces. Homes and workplaces invariably have floors that are concreted and do not have the soil necessary for plant life. To bring life giving plants into homes and workplaces, planters which contain the soil necessary for the plants to grow.

For homes, one can have both indoor planters as well as outdoor planters, but for workplaces, only indoor planters. Hopefully in workplaces, the plants can act as a sink for those obnoxious cigarette smoke.

Online shopping for women's clothing - eco-fashion

2008-12-22T16:38:00.004+08:00

This is a given - women are like flowers. They all want to be pretty to attract men just like flowers want to be pretty to attract the pollinating bees. However there are environmentally friendly ways for women to shop for pretty women's clothing and there are less environmentally friendly ways too. The less environmentally way is to go shopping from mall to mall, mortar and bricks store to store. Rapidly depleting fossil fuel will be burnt to provide the energy in going from shopping mall to shopping mall and greenhouse gasses will be emitted worsening the global warming problem.

Here is an environmentally friendly way - online shopping for women's clothing. The site not only offers you the opportunity to go online window shopping, it also have eco-fashion tips with tips on how go environmentally friendly with your clothing.

For those who are expecting babies, you can also go online shopping for maternity clothing.

One of the hardest tasks for women who are of big sizes is finding clothing of the right size. For that, you can refer to plus size clothing for women

Green lungs save lives

2008-11-09T12:40:00.002+08:00

Want to live longer? Pester your city major or other politicians, town planners, etc., to increase green lungs (parks, forests, etc). According to a study by Dr Richard Mitchell from Glasgow University, and Dr Frank Popham, from the University of St Andrews, reported in Lancet as well as reported in other studies, contact with green spaces also helped reduce blood pressure and stress levels, perhaps even promoting faster healing after surgery. Green spaces, they say, are great stress busters.

Dr Terry Hartig, from the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University in Sweden, wrote: "This study offers valuable evidence that green space does more than 'pretty up' the neighbourhood - it appears to have real effects on health inequality, of a kind that politicians and health authorities should take seriously."

Anti-Reflective Coating Solar Panel Efficiency

2008-11-09T10:56:00.003+08:00

Photo of solar panels is property of Mike Spasoff

Great news!!! A newly developed anti-reflective coating claims to be able to boost the efficiency of solar panels and allows solar energy to be absorbed from almost any angle. Researchers comprising scientists from the Future Chips Constellation (FCC) at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York lead by Professor of Physics, Shawn-Yu Lin have created the anti-reflective coating using nanotechnology (engineering devices on a molecular scale). Their findings are published in the scientific journal Optics Letters in a paper titled "Realization of a near perfect antireflection coating for silicon solar energy utilization" described the anti-reflective coating as comprising of seven tiny layers of a combination of Silicon Dioxide (SiO₂) and Titanium Dioxide (TiO₂) nanorods positioned an an oblique angle, each about 50-100 nanometers in height.

Reduced reflection of solar energy can enhanced the efficiency of solar panels in 2 ways. First is the direct effect in increased absorption of solar energy;. Second is the indirect benefits in elimination of the energy needed to move the solar panels to track the sun.

Professor Lin claimed that these anti-reflective coating are easier to manufacture as its thickness need not be precise.

Professor Darren Bagnall from the Nanoscale Systems Integration Group at the UK's University of Southampton poured cold water on expectations of huge gains in solar panel technology as he said that while getting reflectivity from all angles of 3.5% and thus delivering more solar energy to the photovoltaic cells is impressive, it will only increase power extracted from the solar panels by 4 to 5%. More important is increasing the conversion to electrical energy efficiency.

Bye most environmentally unfriendly President US

2008-11-05T22:13:00.002+08:00

Everyone say bye-bye to the most environmentally unfriendly President of the United States of America, President George Bush. He was the one who was the obstacle to reducing green house gases and global warming. In addition, George Bush was also the world's most world unfriendly President of any country. This is a President who started 2 wars, who attacked other countries, who have the lousiest foreign policies ever. Good riddance George Bush!!!!!

Energy Star electrical appliances and computers

2008-10-31T20:22:00.003+08:00

When you next replace your old electrical appliances or computers, or even when you make new purchases of electrical appliances or computers, look for the above labels. Those electrical appliances computers which are energy efficient stick the above Energy Star label on their appliences and they are a testimony to the fact that those electrical appliances are power misers.

Environmentally friendly priced clothing

2008-10-31T18:38:00.004+08:00

Sad to say, the economic environment is toxic these days with failing banks and monstrous bail outs just to try to keep the economy going. So what would you call a find that found one can get a pretty dress for just USD$5.50 each (below):

I would call that an environmentally (economics speaking) friendly find. 6 dresses for $55 or just $5.50 each. That is just what the economy needs. And you can these wholesale clothing. Just what the econonomic environment needs, clothing wholesale.

Environmentally friendly kitchen

2008-10-31T08:42:00.000+08:00

Make your kitchen environmentally friendly by:

getting an power miser Energy Star refrigerator

covering food and liquid and thus minimizing evaporation
equiping with power miser Energy Star appliances

Say no to bottled water

2008-10-27T11:33:00.003+08:00

The vast majority of bottled water is nothing but filtered tap water. The bottled water industry have succeeded in making this fallacy that somehow bottled water is superior to tap water and made drinking bottled water the in thing plus made the public pay through their nose for the bottled water.

The transportation of bottled water also mandate the burning of precious fossil fuel, emits huge amount of pollutants and green house gases and contribute significantly to air pollution and global warming.

Make your own "bottled water". Get a good water filter and filter the tap water yourself for drinking. It is as good as any bottled water.

Web Hosting Review and Rating

2008-10-27T10:30:00.002+08:00

Google Blogger introduced the highly popular custom domains where you can purchase your own domain for your environmental blog and they can even host it for you for free. However, not hosting your own blog has its disadvantages. For example, if you want to have a favicon (short for favorites icon, also known as a website icon, shortcut icon, url icon, or bookmark icon), a small graphic image favicon.ico need to be uploaded to the root directory of your web server. However, bloggers with blogs hosted by Google Blogger do not have access to the root directory of the web server hosting the blog. For access to the root directory of the web server, a blogger have to host the blog himself.

However, there are so many web hosts. Which one to select? This is where web hosting ratings comes in useful. Before you commit yourself to any web host, it will be fruitful to read as many web hosting articles as possible to familiarize yourself with various aspects of web hosting.

If you are doing your blog on a shoestring, perhaps you can consider cheap web hosting. Want to save money on software, why not use Linux and get Linux web hosting? No time to manage the web server? Then managed web hosting may suit you, especially if you opt for full management where all the headaches are taken care of by the web host and you just concentrate on the content.

Environmentally friendly fast cooking

2008-10-04T19:46:00.002+08:00

I recently have some problems with high blood pressure. Probable cause are lack of exercise and high sodium level from regular eating out. I have thus started cooking my own food.

Being Enviroman, I naturally uses environmentally friendly method of cooking. I use gas instead of electric as source of heat as heat conversion rate of gas is much better than electrical heating. I cut up raw food into small pieces for faster cooking. Instead of cooking rice as source of carbohydrate, I cook oats which cooks much faster instead. I cook everything in the same pot and all at one go. Not only let, I recycled the heat in the sense that I remove the pot from the flame, place it on an insulating cork mat and cover with lid to retain the heat and let cooking proceed further from self heat. That is environmentally friendly cooking.

Cars are a necessary evil in my country

2008-10-04T15:48:00.003+08:00

In my country, the public transport is not up to par nor integrated. It is not unusual that when you take the transport to some destination, you have to take a few connections. Worst, because the public transport are operated by many parties, in order to catch a connection, one have to walk from a terminal to another terminal a long way off.

Residents are forced to use their own transport, especially their preferred mode of transport - cars. However, owning and maintaining a car is no simple task. Further, cars are a depreciating asset. Car owners should make efforts to protect your investment by maintaining the car in good condition.

When a car needs repair, the cost of repair may be jacked up or get a sloppy repair job. Thus a car owner should take the trouble to find the best Mechanic.

It is normal that cars will meet increasing repair and maintainance as years goes by. When the repair and maintainace cost gets prohibitive, it is better to sell the car and get a new one. When you need to sell the car, you can list your car for sale for free to save money.

Window shopping for classic toys with Shopwiki, the Wikipedia of online shopping

2008-10-02T10:09:00.006+08:00

I do not have a car and is getting along fine. I walk I take public transport. I have my trusty environmentally friendly transport, my Suzuki VS125 scooter which will take me to places which is impractical to walk or take transport. Occasionally my kids will chauffeur me around. Most of the time I just stay at home in front of the computer connected to the amazing Internet blogging.

However, sometimes I need to buy something that cannot be bought from the nearby shops. That is the time I go window shopping. However, conventional window shopping requires one to go from one retail outlet to another and driving around with the polluting and global warming green house gases.

There is an alternative - online window shopping. All I need is a computer, a web browser and a connection to the amazing Internet. Shopwiki is ideal for online window shopping as this is a website which is different from the others in the sense that while other websites only include paid insertions, Shopwiki is like the Wikipedia of online shopping. Shopwiki claims that they crawl every websites just the the search engines spiders. This means that Shopwiki will offer a very wide selection of merchandise

I am a grandfather of 2 and I am going to go online window shopping for classic kids toys for I wish my grandchildren to enjoy the same fun I had with toys like building sets and Matchbox cars.

Makeup (cosmetics) buying guide and expiry date

2008-08-09T10:37:00.006+08:00

With the escalating fuel prices, depleting fossil fuel plus global warming, it will be wise to read up on cosmetics buying guide before you proceed to shopping for cosmetics. You will then have a better idea of what to buy and avoid impulse buying which is normally a waste of money.

All makeup start with the makeup foundation. Then if there are unsightly areas you want to cover up, there will be the concealers.

This cosmetics buying guide is unusual in that it also include a cosmetics expiry date guide. For example, oil-free foundation expiry date is estimated to be about 18 months.

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Save tree, use email marketing

2008-07-20T23:53:00.004+08:00

I and my family gets very irritated at receiving junk mail, usually glossy paper. These junk mail are not only contributing to our environmental problems, they are actually counter productive. Instead of getting us to buy the products or services they hope to promote, they turn us off.

What marketeers should try is email marketing. It does not use paper or ink and does not involve chopping down of trees. It is almost zero waste.

However, in order to use email marketing effective, one has to be familiar with the quirks of email marketing and that can be overcome by email markerting education and training.

One more essential of email marketing is effective management of an email contact list.

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Zero Waste: Discount Coupon to Save Time and Efford

2008-06-11T09:52:00.002+08:00

Rule number 1 for environmentalist - REDUCE

The mantra for environmentalist is "reduce, reuse, recycle" in order of importance. The very first step is REDUCE and this is the most economical as it is solving the problem of over consumption and keeping superfluous stuff from the environment.

What should one do when one cannot reduce

That is, what if one just has to have that stuff, whatever that may be? Well, the very next thing is to see if you can save on the cost of acquisition. That is, get the lowest price possible. One of the way of cutting cost is to get coupon codes

Computer Hardware discount coupons

If you are reading this, it means you are online, connected to the Internet. If you are like me, surfing on the Internet (and for me, blogging. I do very heavy multi-tasking with a few browsers and within each browser, multiple tabs. Then there are opened files like Notepad files, Excel spreadsheet, WORD document, etc. When you are into this stage, having a large wide screen will save you lots of work and time. For example, let me minimize this Blogger post editor window in which I am preparing this post. What I have done is minimize (reduce) this post editor window. I need information from my Excel spread sheet, so I open the spread sheet, minimize it. I then grab the borders and drag them so that I can see both at the same time. I can thus jump from one "minimized window" to the other without wasting time and finger power (clicks). I drag the side to reduce the widths and place the 2 items I refer to frequently side-by-side so I can jump quickly from one to the other. See screen shot below (click to enlarge):

My computer has also been upgraded to one with a core 2 processor. However, I still sometimes find certain tasks to take too long. Perhaps I should further upgrade to quad core processor computer for even faster completion of tasks. Wonder if this computer hardware discount coupons can get me some very nice deal for my next compute upgrade.

Computer Software discount coupon

So far, I have been using free tools for my blogging tasks. However, as I go deeper plus now with my ambition to publish my Mission Driven Life^TM and my dream of taking over KL/Legacy, free tools and software probably is not enough for me to do a professional job. That brings me to Computer Software discount coupons

Environmentally friendly juicer, innovative turbo-broiled chicken recipe

2008-06-09T20:24:00.006+08:00

Zero Waste of Output of Juicer

I created an innovative and environmentally friendly recipe for turbo-broiled chicken which follows the concept of Zero Waste. The recipe is simple but need a juicer. Peeled garlic is fed into a juicer and the garlic juice plus the very fine fibers of the garlic are collected. In this manner, none of the output of the juicer is wasted (zero waste). The garlic juice plus fine fibers are mixed with stuff like honey, tom yam paste, oyster sauce, etc., and made into a marinade to be applied to a whole chicken or just parts like the chicken drum sticks (chicken drum sticks with part of bones broken are available for Ayamas at a price lower than unbroken chicken drum sticks and just as good, thus not wasting money).

After marinating for a long enough period for the marinade to soak into the chicken (the garlic act as antibiotic thus chicken will not spoil), then placed into a turbo-broiler. Wow, as the chicken is turbo-broiled, you can smell the sweet aroma. The turbo-broiled chicken is extremely tasty and my family loves it.

Juicer Reviews

The problem is, our turbo-broiler plus juicer is no longer with me. I will need to look for a new juicer, and what better way there is to start than by checking the juicer reviews. The above review for "All" uses yielded 51 different models of juicer. How to narrow down the search. Easy. In the left sidebar are various categories, among which are price and electrical power.

Juicer reviews according to price

As we are interested in zero waste (including money), let us look at the juicer priced juicer priced between $250 to $630, the lowest priced of the range. Looks adequate for the purpose intended as it looks like it is screw drive operated.

Juicer reviews according to power

Let us look at another category - Juicer reviews according to power, again the lowest power consumption among the categories. Low powered juicer is adequate as we are only interested in juicing soft stuff like garlic and onions to extract its juice for marinating. Fruits I prefer to eat it whole together with its fibers.

Ecotourism Florida United States America

2008-06-01T16:17:00.005+08:00

What is ecotourism or eco tourism or ecological tourism?

All three are the same and is just different using different words or phrases to described nature based tourism which, as far as possible, eliminate or reduce damages to the environment, flora and fauna. Often, ecotourist lean towards education and learning about the environment. The activities must also be sustainable. Some even include the culture of the local communities.

Florida for ecotourism?

Map of Florida was taken from Wikipedia: Florida

Florida in the United States of America is located at the south-eastern corner of United States with a tropical or sub-tropical climate. Florida is full of wildlife and a natural for ecotourism. Among the various environmentally friendly tourism you can partake in Florida are cruising along its many rivers and swamps, one of the more interesting one being the Indian River where you will see dolphins, manatees and many other wildlife. Ecotourists may also take nature hikes along trails such as the Palm Beach County Nature trails, undertake expeditions in the Everglades National Park or the Siesta Key. Plus don't forget the hundreds of miles of pristine beaches and the sea. Add to that the Florida Keys, some 1,700 islands in Florida and Florida become an irresistible destination for ecotourism.

Theme Parks in Florida

Photo of Donald Duck is property of Bruce Tuten

Florida deserves my nickname for it - theme park state of the world. The world famous Walt Disney World Resort which comprises 4 theme parks plus 2 water parks is located in Orlando which well deserve being referred to as the theme park capital of the world. In addition to Walt Disney World Resort, there are numerous theme parks such as Universal Studios, Dinosaur World, The Holyland Experience, and many more. If you already plan for ecotourism in Florida, why waste the chance of experiencing the magic of Florida's numerous theme parks?

Accommodation in Florida

In view of the numerous possibilities, it is inconceivable if you do not stay more than a day in Florida if you ever go to Florida. This invariably means you need to find accommodation. One of the possibilities you should look into is Florida vacation rentals or if you plan to roam the 1,700 plus islands of Florida Keys - Florida Keys vacation rentals.

Already in Florida? Might as well enjoy the numerous theme parks in Orlando. Vacation rentals are available from Orlando vacation rentals. Have fun!!!

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When relocation may be considered and help that you can get in relocation

2008-03-19T04:38:00.002+08:00

Elections in any democratic countries have the potential of creating a whole new political environment, and such new political environment can have impact on the environment as is intended in a blog like this. That is, matters related to pollution, environmental protection, conservation, green house gases and global warming, etc.

An extraordinary election took place in Malaysia, a highly imperfect democracratic country where the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition (National Coalition) had ruled the country using divide-and-rule racial politics, gerrymandering, use of money and unfair use of public funds and facilities for election purposes, very tight control over the mainstream media, intimidations and threats, detaintion without trial under the hated ISA (Internal Security Act) of dissendents, use of the OSA (Official Secrets Act) to deny the public from knowledge of important documents of vital public importance and which had no relations to the security of the country, the 3 pillars of democracy (Executive, Parliament and Judiciary) not playing its proper role, etc.

With regard to the environment as readers of this blog understand it, rivers had not only become public sewers, but as the DAP (Democratic Action Party) of Malaysia said of a river into which a DAP state assemblyman immersed himself into for only a few minutes, had become a toxic dump. This was because after the brief immersion in the "toxic river", he came out with rashes all over his body (from memory). Natives customary lands had been sized, allocated to logging companies and the forests logged over.

The Barisan Nasional (National Coalition) had ruled Malaysia for decades with a very comfortable two-third majority which allowed them to amend the Constitutions at their own whim and fancies and for trivial stuff and which they have abused.

At the 2008 Malaysia General Election, they got a rude shock. They suffered huge reverses, obtained only slightly over 50% of the votes, lost their assumed inassailable two-third majority in the Parliament, lost control over 5 states, and I believe led to new political environment in those states those lost control over. Hopefully, no longer will we see abuses to the environment as we know it, continue as it looks like those poliitcal parties which have sized control of those states have policies which are kinder to the environment and conservation.

In such circumstances, citizens in countries which have seen such significant shift in the political environment and who value the environment they live in might consider relocation to those states. If only they have the assistance of Relocation services that calls themself "butget friendly" as well as "just plain friendly".

There may be companies that may want to relocate their headquaters, but here, we are dealing more with individual and families, and for them, I think they would be more thinking of a Residential moving company.

If you happened to be in Texas or perhaps other states of the United States of America, it may pay to get a quote from Local movers. If you are reading this post, it means you are connected to the Internet, and getting a quote is as easy as just filling in a form online, no paper used, no need to travel and use up precious fossil fuel, most convenient.

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Conserve fossil fuel and electricity. Watch movies at home

2008-03-04T08:23:00.004+08:00

Still remember the good old days? I do. I still remember living in a small town where almost all the places I want to go is within walking distance. I remembered going to the cinema to watch the late King Elvis Presley gyrate and entertain us with memorable songs. I remembered also going for a sad Chinese movie and shedding a few tears (I am multi-lingual). Can't remember if the cinemas were air-conditioned or not.

The cinemas of today are no longer the same. Most of them are housed in huge multi storey shopping mall, fully air-conditioned and electricity guzzling monsters. They call them cinemaplex now. Much more comfortable than those hard wooden fold down seats we had to sit on those good old days once upon a time a long time ago. But now, in order to watch your favorite movie, you have to get into fossil fuel burning green house gas emitting car, grumble your way through the traffic jams, go round in circles to get up to the multi-storey car park, hunt for the scarce parking lot, park, and of course pay through your nose when you leave.

But that need not be the case. You can get yourself a DVD player, get your favorite DVD movies delivered to your doorsteps, sit comfortably in your favorite reclining chair and watch that movie in the comfort of your home. No more traffic jams. Isn't that heaven to you? Don't know about you, but I hate to be stuck in traffic jams. And DVD players are pretty cheap nowadays, even for the more expensive branded ones.

But which one to get? That website has an easy to understand ranking system, using the WIZERANK which is a number from 0 to 100. WIZERANK of 90 to 100 is "Buy with confidence", 75 to 89 means "Might meet your needs", 50 to 74 and you should "Proceed with caution" and finally 0 to 49 and they say it is "Not recommended".

Going by that ranking system, at the time of publishing, the DVD right at the top of the list is Toshiba HD-A3 720p/1080i HD DVD Player which earned itself a WIZERANK of 94 (Buy with confidence) and at number two with the same WIZERANK of 94 (Buy with confidence) is Pioneer DV-400V. There are altogether 4 DVD players with WIZERANK 94, so it is going to be a tough choice.

Paperless book

2008-03-02T22:40:00.003+08:00

With the increasing amount of paper being consumed and precious forest logged for paper production, environmentalist had been looking forward to paperless books. Looks like we have the first commercial one - Kindle: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device

Looks like a good start. Let us look forward to the success of such devices which will help us cut down the ever increasing usage of paper and cut short it growth, hopefully even revers the trend.

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Almost waterless urinal

2008-02-27T15:40:00.007+08:00

Each time someone uses a flush toilet as a urinal, a lot of sanitised meant-for-drinking-cooking water gets flushed down the sewage. That is a huge waste of precious and 20 years ago when learning about country's development, we were told that in the future, fresh water shortage is going to be one of the constraints obstructing further developments.

Recently I read about a waterless urinal in a building in my city, but had no time to check. Will do some Google searches later, but for the moment, I think this "almost waterless urinal" will do as it uses only a fraction of the water that get flushed down the sewage each time you flush a toilet. See photo below:

There is a better photo with a less discrete stream (droplets caught by flash when it should be showing an almost continuous stream)
Will update with a better one when I find it or I get a new one, but please don't try to look further down the photo.

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Environmentally friendly digital photography

2008-02-24T05:03:00.005+08:00

During my school days, I was President of the School Photography Club. We had a darkroom plus film negatives processing and photo development equipments and chemicals. The obnoxious smell of the chemicals are still fresh in my mind. I remembered how we dealt with the used chemical solutions - poured them down the drain. That was not exactly a very environmentally friendly disposal method.

Environmentally friendly digital photography

Digital photography made its debut not too long ago, but have made tremendous strides. Digital photography uses digital technology to make digital images and no film, paper or chemicals are involved. When I was working with film photography, I remembered the constraints placed on the number of photos I can take as each photo taken uses up the costly films, and the more photos you take, the more empty your wallet becomes. Plus you have to be take great care with getting a good shot as each shot you take is permanent, there is no going back and reusing the film for a spoilt photo. Now with digital cameras, you can shoot as many photos as you like. Don't like it, just delete it from the memory. No film wasted.

I still remember my first digital camera, one with just a view finder, a simple lens, small storage capacity and very low resolution. For the same price, you can get a much more sophisticated digital camera now. I used it more for uploading digital photos to the Web and avoid the photo printers that are now widely available for printing digital photos.

There are many different brands of digital cameras among which is the Vivitar digital cameras. Vivitar cameras are manufactured by Vivitar Corporation based in Oxnard, California. Vivitar Corporation was bought over by Syntax-Brillian Corporation, a manufacturer of high-definition TVs (HDTV) in November 2006 and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Syntax-Brillian. Most people who buy digital cameras are fixated upon megapixels, and they can range from the cheaper 0.31 Megapixel to 2.1 Megapixel digital cameras to the more expensive top of the range 8.1Megapixel to 8.5 Megapixel digital cameras. The low megapixel digital cameras are what I need as I only uses them to upload the digital photos to the web and they don't have to be large megapixel photos. If fact, for purpose of uploading to the web, if they are large format digital photos, I have to resize (downsize) them to shorten the uploading and downloading time. However, low Megapixel digital cameras are increasingly difficult to find as most digital camera manufacturers have joined the Megapixel race, competing with each other to outdo the other by producing higher and higher Megapixel digital cameras, and consumers are sucked into this "my digital camera is of higher Megapixels than yours" game. Actually, one would only need high Megapixel digital cameras only when one need to project them on very large screen or print very large format photos.

Recycle Confidential Papers

2008-02-20T06:33:00.005+08:00

Most organizations whether commercial, government and non-government organizations (NGO), etc., will have confidential papers that they would not want to fall into the wrong hands. On the other hand, environmental activists are screaming for greater efforts at recycling, and paper are one of the easiest used items to recycle. How do we reconcile the two? Easy. Get paper shredders.

However, a check of the above website showed that there are 134 paper shredders listed, and that not including other paper shredders listed. How would one go about choosing a paper shredder to shred confidential documents to be sent for recycling? One can always do some kind of evaluation of each shredder on the market, but that is going to take a mighty long time and great effort. The other way to fall back on collective wisdom, and that is exactly what wize.com claims to use and coming up with what they call WIZERANK which is a number ranging from 0 to 100 and very easy to interpret. Check the table below:

WIZERANK	Recommendation
90 - 100	Buy with confidence
75 - 89	Might meet your needs
50 - 74	Proceed with caution
0 - 49	Not recommended

However, WIZERANK is only one part of the story. Different people or organizations have different preferences, priorities and needs. You will notice at the above product review website, there is a left sidebar which you can use to filter products according to Price, Brands, Cut Style, Maximum Sheet Capacity and Speed. If you only small small sheet capacity paper shredder. At he time I checked, the top ranked paper, Adler Royal JS55 Shredder had a price tag of only $15, so if that is accurate, you will save a bundle of money. However, you will have to live with maximum sheet capacity of 5, but perhaps that is sufficient for you.

It will all depend on your budget, preferences, requirements, etc. But having a product review website will definitely help you zero in on the paper shredder you that suit your circumstances.

Recycle confidential papers, maintain confidentiality

2008-02-16T16:47:00.011+08:00

Most organizations whether commercial, government and non-government organizations (NGO), etc., will have confidential papers that they would not want ....

UPDATE: This post has been updated and you can view the updated version at Recycle confidential papers

Environmentally Friendly GPS (Global Positioning System) for finding your way around

2008-02-16T13:50:00.004+08:00

Environmentally friendly way of finding your way around

I have always been amazed why people like delivery men, taxi drivers or even ordinary folks don't carry a map in their motor vehicle, especially when searching for a place. I frequently choose to walk rather than take the care, and often have been stopped by all kinds of people asking for directions to certain places. Sometimes I can help, sometimes I just have to say sorry. I wish I have the guts to suggest to them to always carry a map of the place they intend to go to. It save time, precious and increasing expensive fossil fuel which they have to wastefully burn, emit more green house gasses (click BACK button to get back to this page) and make global warming, environmental problem of the century (click BACK button to get back to this page) worst. One should check out the map and plan one's journey even before departing to search for an unfamiliar place.

GPS, environmentally friendly way to finding your way around

Street Directory, which is a book I have containing maps of places in and around the place I live in, is a very useful aid to me. Just a few days ago, while traveling in a care with my nephew, our chattering turned from maps to GPS (Global Positioning System). You see, I like to put maps in my blogs, an example of which you can find in Map to Yat Yeh Hing Restaurant. That map was drawn to help participants in an event to easily find the meeting place without needlessly wasting time and petrol searching for the place.

That map was drawn with AutoCad. Now if I have a raster image of a map, I can import that into a file in AutoCAD, create a new layer, trace over the map, delete the raster image, take a screenshot, paste that into the Irfanview photo editor and if I need to highlight something, save the map into my computer, open it with Paint that comes with Window and highlight with ellipse or line drawings of arrows, and resave the map. I asked if I could export the maps from a GPS device into my computer, and my nephew think that is possible.

If that is true, I am going to look at GPS ratings to see if there is such a GPS can do what I want done. Looks like there is a very wide range of choices from fixed GPS devices to handheld GPS devices. There are lots more and it is going to be a real tough job to zero in onto one that may be the one I am looking for.

However, above, I am talking from the point of view of making maps to upload to the web which by itself is helping people find places in an environmentally friendly way. But owning your own rather than depending on a map you find on the Internet or a book containing maps is an even better way of helping you find your way around, and best of all, they have become affordable. From the above site, I see one can even get a GPS device for as cheap as less than $10!!!!

But on checking, looks like things are not as it seems, for the GPS devices in that page filtered by price less than $10 has no price tags, and the first device on further checking, had a price tag of $349 to $370 at the time of publishing!!! However, I believe that website is not static. By the time you check them, thing might be different. I think I will contact them and request for clarification.

Printers and the Environment

2008-02-13T10:25:00.010+08:00

I have previously published a post Digi D' House: An almost paperless office (click BACK button to get back to this page). Please note the phrase almost paperless. While most of the communications intra-staff and between staff and others are done via mobile phone calls, emails, etc., and documents are sent as paperless attachments, they still had to have a central printer to print hard copies that means paper plus toner.

There are many printer manufacturers plus different types of printers. Among the many printer manufacturers, I know that Canon, have an environmental program as you can check for yourself at Canon Environmental Activities. HP too have a printer cartridge recycling program as seen from Original HP printing supplies — environmentally sound. As for myself, Enviroman, I have a laser printer but try to avoid using it as far as I can. An example, I have Cute PDF printer installed plus uses online banking plus other online transactions. When I need to print receipts, I use Cute PDF printer to "print" digital receipts.

However, there is no escape from hard copies (paper). My son sometimes needs to print hard copies of his assignments. I have to print hard copies of receipts for Income Tax purposes. So it is impossible not to have a printer, in the above "almost paperless office" and my "almost paperless home".

However, I think that whenever we are in the market for a printer, we should look for printer reviews. Since both Canon and HP have some kind of environmental programs, I think we should try to confine our search for a Canon Printers or a Hewlett Packard Printers.

By the way, my printer happened to be a Canon printer - the Canon Laser Shot LBP300 laser printer.

Recyling bins: Aid to encourage recycling

2008-02-11T10:31:00.000+08:00

Recycling habits are hard to instill in people used to the old, wasteful, couldn’t care less attitudes. In some countries, effective recycling programs have to be enforced via regulations. In other countries, making it easy for people to recycle would be a big help, and one of the ways would be to place as many recycling bins as possible in as many convenient locations as possible. This has been done in my country where such recycling bins have been placed at strategic places like residence association’s centers, schools, shopping centers, etc.

Recycling bins can be made of various types of materials. The preferable ones are recycle container that are themselves made from recycled materials such as recycled plastic. One has to be seen as practicing what one preaches. Other than recycled plastic, there are bins for recycling which are made from recycled milk jugs.

It is not enough to just place a single recycling bin at a location as then people will stuff it with paper, glass, aluminum, plastic, etc., into a single bin. This will mean you need to have people to sort them out and divide them into different stream for the recycling process. There should be more than one bin. One for paper, one for plastic, one for glass, etc. This will make for much easier, less labor intensive and more cost effective recycling.

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Save rainforest the easy way

2008-01-29T22:15:00.001+08:00

Many environmentalists and activists have to work hard to try to save our rapidly shrinking rainforest. Now here is an easy way to save rainforest. All you need to do is what you do in your routine life, make purchases for things you need to purchase anyway. Is there an easier way to do it?

Before we go into the mechanism of this very easy way to protect rainforest, let us discuss about why rainforest are important for us passengers of Spaceship Earth without any lifeboat:

Importance of rainforest

Rainforests are forests with heavy rainfall. Some define rainforest as those forest with minimum rainfall of 68 inches to 78 inches (1750 mm and 2000 mm) of rain per year.

Rainforests are habitats of two thirds of all the living animal and plant species on earth with hundreds of millions of new species of plants, insects and microorganisms are still undiscovered. Tropical rain forests have many trees with medicinal values and thus often called the world's largest pharmacy". Quinine, the medicine for malaria, was first extracted from the bark of the South American cinchona tree in 1817 by French researchers Joseph Bienaimé Caventou and Pierre Joseph Pelletier. Some 120 other modern prescription drugs are derived from rainforest plants. U.S. National Cancer Institute says that more than two-thirds of medicines with cancer-fighting properties come from rainforest plants. These are just tip of the iceberg as huge number of rainforest trees and plants are still undiscovered and could be further source of life-saving medicine. Many scientists and researchers are working feverishly to identify and study, even preserve in some form, resources from rainforests before they are destroyed.

The foliage of the trees in the rainforests act as buffer for tropical rainstorm. Rain drops are caught in the leaves and only slowly drip down to the forest floor and there, they have time to seep into the ground and only a fraction of it end up as surface runoff that flow into the rivers. Chop down the trees and you remove this buffer, resulting in rainfall not having sufficient time to soak into the ground and most of it go into the surface runoff which eventually flow into the rivers resulting in floods downstream. See Save trees. Trees save.

Rainforest are also habitats for many diverse species of birds, insects and animals. Destroy the rainforest and you destroy their habitats and their chances of survival. The same goes for the human inhabitants of the rainforests.

Many also say that the rainforests are earth's lung, providing us with the vital oxygen without which we cannot live. Others says the rainforest is oxygen neutral, meaning it consume as much oxygen as it emits. The real green lung may be the algae and the phytoplankton in the ocean. Let us not get into any arguments over this, but the fact is significant amount of oxygen is generated by the tropical rainforest through the process of photosynthesis.

Save rainforest the easy way

How is this possible? Very simple. Do some Credit card comparison. When I did that, at the time of publishing this post, Co-operative Bank think credit card was in the second pager. Just apply for a Co-operative Bank think credit card there. The Co-operative Bank has partnered with Cool Earth. Now although the website just has the "name" Cool Earth, what is displayed in title bar (the bar right at the top of the page) says "Cool Earth Action - Keeping......."

From the Page Source:

<title>Cool Earth Action - Keeping carbon where it belongs - Home</title>

Cool Earth (or Cool Earth Action) is a registered charity with registered charity number with registration Charity Number 1117978.

I have to do due diligence, so surfed over to Regulators of Charities in England and Wales. Note that the URL of the home page is

www.charity-commission.gov.uk

which means that it is an official government website, not a private one. On searching for charities by number 1117978, I got to the page

http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/registeredcharities/showcharity.asp?chyno=1117978

Since that page may need annual reviews or something, and in case if you surf over there, and you get a 404 Page Not Found or something, here is the screenshot of what I saw:

This showed that Cool Earth or Cool Earth Action is a registered charity in the Extract from the Central Register of Charities maintained by the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

With this new confidence, I can write more about what the Co-operative Bank in partnership with Cool Earth or Cool Earth Action is doing, which is as follows: when you get a new "think" credit card from the Co-operative Bank, and when you use the credit card for the first time, the Co-operative Bank will purchase half an acre of Brazilian rainforest which will become a protected forest in your name for 25 years. Further, each time you used your card to pay for something for an amount more than £100 using the card, the Co-operative Bank donate 25 pence towards a fund to make further purchases of Brazilian rainforests and with all the funds raised, they can purchase more rainforest and these rainforest will be give back to some local trusts. I don't know what trust, you will have to ask them. In addition, local residents will be employed to protect the rainforest. Anyway, these rainforest will be leased for 10 years to protect them from loggers. The most troublesome loggers are illegal ones, and illegal loggers are a big problem in my country and they even proposed to make jail compulsory for a convicted illegal logger, not just a paltry fine. But having local trusts plus local residents help protect rainforests from especially illegal loggers may also be very effective, I don't know. It seems it doesn't cost very much to protect an acre of rainforest. All it takes is just £70. To protect half an acre will cost half of that, that is, £35.

Now if you want to take the job upon yourself for extra safeguard, I think they will help you get a Google Earth map reference of your acre. With that Google Earth map reference, you can easily keep watch on your precious rainforest via the Internet. No need to fly all the way and camp yourself in your acre of rainforest. Sounds attractive enough to you? Nothing much to do except do what you normally do, that is, make payments with that special charity card, and it is all done for you. Can anything be simpler than that? With this simple and easy action you can protect an acre of rainforest for less than the price of an iPod.

You can check and compare charity credit cards, comparing Co-operative Bank think credit card with other charity credit cards listed there. You can also use the credit card guide to get more information on what you may be getting into before you take the plunge.

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Environmentally friendly transport.

2008-01-21T08:27:00.000+08:00

The most environmentally friendly transport you can have to to use your legs. Although I now am an Internet addict, I walk at every excuses I get, Seven-Eleven, shops, bank, pasar tani (farmers' market), pasar malam (night market), makan (dinner), LRT station, etc. However, there are times when this become impractical as it may be either too far or not accessible by public transport. Then I have to turn to the next environmentally friendly and convenient transport, my son's faithful Suzuki:

Why environmentally friendly and convenient? I uses less that Suzuki scooter when walking or public transport or when I am short on time. This scooter burns less green house gas emitting fossil fuel and contribute a little bit less to global warming, the environmental problem of the century.

However I have been frequently advised by my sisters (in fact just 2 days ago again) to think of the burden I will place on my children if anything happened to me. My children have also been discouraging me from using the scooter. I know exactly the risks I expose myself to and try to minimize it, but I have to admit it can never been eliminated. But I have found it so convenient and economical, plus I had the privilage of overtaking the King's very expensive Rolls Royce which was stuck in a jam. And I need not have to hunt for hard to find car parking, pay for them, usually can park the scooter very near where I want to go, don't need to pay toll. It is going to be very hard to give up.

However, I am a realist. If the unfortunate really happened, my children will be burdened with taking care of me. Worst, I don't know if I can get online anymore. I may have to make a decision soon and switch to my son's now seldom used, 30 year old Mini Austin

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Not environmentally friendly LCD Monitor:Benq Q20WS

2007-12-26T18:23:00.000+08:00

See this LCD monitor on the left? It is a Benq FP202W V3, Model Q2WS. Don't buy it. Why? I think it is not environmentally friendly and also may not make economic sense. I published another post Benq LCD Monitor FP202W V3, Model Q2WS: Don't waste your money and a visitor left a comment: "My 15" Benq has a similar issue, its blinking on and off. My take its faulty switch. After so many on and offs its blown. After reading your comment I am not going to bother trying to get it fixed. Just buy another one." Here is another dissatisfied Benq LCD Monitor purchaser. Looks like this problem is not limited to the model I bought as implied by the support person who contacted me as his is a 15" model while mine is 20" wide screen model. I am going to contact both the person who made tha comment as well as Benq support again and see what they have to say.

Here is more details about the not environmentally friendly and not budget friendly and inconvenient Benq LCD monitor I bought recently:

Benq
20" Wide TFT LCD Monitor (Version 3)
Maximum resolution WSXGA+ 1680*1050
Rating: 100 - 240V, 50 - 60Hz, 1amp

Product Name: FP202W V3
Model: Q20WS
Brightness: 300 nits
Contrast: 1000:1
Response time: 5ms
Senseye Technology
D-Sub/DVI Dual Input

I previously bad experience with a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitor a long time ago. The built-in switch of the computer monitor malfunction. I had to send it to the service center. They replaced the switch and charged me a bomb for it. After that, I resolved never to connect a monitor direct to the computer, but to plug the power into a A power strip (also known as a plug board, power board, power bar, distribution board, gangplug, plugbar, multibox, or relocatable power tap) which is a strip of electrical power sockets that attaches to the end of a flexible cable and allows multiple devices to be plugged in. In my country, it is also called an extension cable.

LCD monitors from Amazon

Why I consider Benq LCD Monitor FP202W V3, Model Q2WS not environmentally friendly

I am retired, an avid blogger, am environmentally conscious, I hates waste. I am glued to the computer and connected to the Internet almost all my waking hours, but I try to keep healthy by finding every excuses to walk. Thus, while my computer is on all my waking hours, and sometimes also overnight, I like to switch off the monitor to conserve electricity whenever I am away from the computer.

With Benq LCD Monitor FP202W V3, Model Q2WS, once you switch the monitor off, when you switch the power on again, the monitor will remain off until you switch it on again from the built-in switch on the monitor itself even though you never touch it when the monitor is powered off. So it is impossible to avoid touching its built-in switch. I am afraid that because of the constant switching on and off of the monitor built-in switch, one "fine", it will decide not to work anymore. Then I have to make a decision as to whether to spend money to repair it or to give up on the monitor and get a new one. Both is going to cost me money.

I contacted Benq support and was told that the reason for them designing the monitor that way is to protect power surge damaging the monitor. To the best of my knowledge, power surge is dependent on the electricity supplier and not when you switch on or off a computer monitor. Power surge can occur anytime. Power surge damage to electrical appliances can only be protected by a power surge protector and not by forcing the user to switch the electrical appliance using a built-in switch on the electrical appliance itself.

So my advice is, before you buy a computer monitor, check to see if the built-in switch has this feature. Do it especially if you are considering a Benq monitor.

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Save trees. Trees save

2007-12-20T10:25:00.000+08:00

Got this photo plus a very instructive quote: "Save trees. Trees save". As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words".

See that boy clinging to the lonely tree. The tree saved his life. However, I suspect he would not even be subjected to this terrible ordeal had the forests upstream not been indiscrimatedly cut down as then it is not likely this place would have been flooded.

If this does not make sense to you immediately, let me explain. When you have forest cover, during heavy rainfall, the rain drops get caught in the leaves of the trees and it takes time for them to drip down to the forest floor. Because of this time delay, the rain water have time to seep into the ground and the surface runoff is very much reduced (surface runoff is the water that flows on the surface of the forest and eventually ends up in the rivers).

When you clear the forests of trees, rain drops do not have time to seep into the ground and surface runoff is hugely increased. A huge amount of water flows into the rivers, leading to floods downstream. This is why we are seeing more frequent and more sever floods, often leading to loss of lives. So let us save the tress and the trees will save our lives. The photo below illustrate this point very meaningfully:

Note: the photo is widely distributed via email forwarding and the person who forwarded the email to me says she doesn't know the source of the photo. If you are the owner, or knows the owner, please leave a comment regarding the ownership and the use of the photo. If you are the copyright owner, and you want the photo to be removed or require an acknowledgement and/or a link to your website. please let me know by leaving a comment.

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Environment, conventional and herbal medicine

2007-12-15T11:57:00.000+08:00

Relationship between environment and medicine

What has medicine to do with the environment? Well, for one, not a few people have to go on long term medications. However, pharmacies will never dispense, say, a whole year of the required medications. Reasons are simple. They are afraid of misuse and overdose, leading to problems. Another is most medicine have a shelf life. They don't last forever. In other words, they have expiry dates.

Bricks and Mortar Pharmacies and the environment

What this lead to is multiple trips (traveling) to the bricks and mortar pharmacies. Directly or indirectly, this will involve burning of rapidly depleting and increasingly expensive fossil fuel, emitting green house gases (click BACK button to get back to this page) and making our environmental problem of the century, global warming (click BACK button to get back to this page) worst.

Also, conventional medicine often uses synthetic chemicals and complex processes which may lead to discharge of pollutants or harmful pollution when they are discharged from our bodies or are left overs or expired medicines are discarded.

Solutions?

Online Pharmacies and the environment

What can be the possible solutions? We have the greatest invention of the century, the environmentally friendly Internet (click BACK button to get back to this page). Need medicine? Just surf over to online pharmacies like Online Canadian Pharmacy Escrow Service do your online comparison shopping and when you find the medicine you want, place your order online and have it delivered right to your doorstep. No time wasted traveling and waiting in queues plus do you part to help our suffering Spaceship Earth which have no lifeboat for its passengers (you, me and our future generations).

Herbal medicine and the environment

There are some who think that production and consumption of herbal medicine causes less environmental damage. True or not, I do not know. You will have to do your own research. Whatever, if you happen to prefer herbal medicine, the Online Canadian Pharmacy Escrow Service also have herbal medicine.

Do check them out. It cost you nothing but a bit of electricity surfing from your computer at your cosy home.

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Enviroman says "Use ear plugs for hearing protection"

2007-11-24T15:20:00.000+08:00

Hearing Impairment

A person can be said to be hearing impaired if his or her ability to hear and understand sound is reduced or non-existent. Hearing impairment can occur in various form. The worst, already mentioned, in an absolute inability to hear sound, in other word, deaf. Nothing much can be done except help such unfortunates by teaching them sign language so that they can still communicate with each other and with those who are not deaf but knows sign language. There are also different degree of hearing impairment with some who can only hear very loud sound and others who cannot hear soft sound but can if a bit louder. Such hearing impairment is categorized as mild, moderate, severe or profound, obviously mild hearing impairment being much more preferable to profound impairment. One can get very technical using the lowest decibels (dB, some logarithmic unit used to measure the loudness of sound starting from 0 dB upward) that can be detected by the hearing impaired as a criteria to classify the degree of hearing impairment.

I taught about decibels, hearing protection and hearing loss when I was teaching Environmental Protection and Occupational Safety and Health. But I think it is not appropriate to go into the technicalities of it, so we will just take a sound level of lower decibel is softer than another sound level of higher decibel, and leave it at that.

Causes of hearing impairment

There are many causes of hearing impairment, some are biological related, some work and surrounding environment related and some medical related. Hearing impairment can be caused by obstruction of the ear canal, problems with the mechanism of transmission of sound eventually to the brain, or even inherited. These are what I would refer to as biological related causes.

Some disease and also consumption of certain medication can also lead to hearing impairment. I am no doctor nor pharmacist, so I wouldn't pretend to know a lot about these medical related causes of hearing impairment.

If you are exposed over long period of time to very loud sound in your work place or if you frequent noisy disco, this will gradually lead to hearing loss. I taught Occupational Safety and Health and teach my students about requiring workers to wear hearing protection gear such as ear muff or ear plugs. Other ways to protect workers in noisy work environment is to try to deal with the source of the noise and to limit the number of hours they can be exposed to noise intensity, the noisier it is, the less hours they should work at the noisy workplace. And of course it is my hope that my children don't frequent noisy disco or frequently listen to very loud music. These causes are referred to as Noise-Induced Hearing Loss and is preventable.

Hearing Impairment Prevention

If you, your loved ones or your employees have to be in a noisy environment, it would be wise to get hearing protection gear such as ear plugs which are available from hearing protection gear manufacturers like hearing protection earplugs from Hearos. If you cannot prevent your children for frequenting noisy disco, or if they work in such places or noisy music is part of their profession as musician, Hearos have Musician Ear Plugs. From experience from what we learn from noisy workplaces, people need to be persuaded of the necessity of hearing protection because we hear from Occupational Safety and Health practitioners, workers find it inconvenient and need to be persuaded of the need for them, perhaps even incorporating them into the regulations. I wouldn't be surprised if you face the problem with disco loving children. But it is essential if you want to prevent them from suffering from hearing loss eventually if they don't listen to you.

If the environment is really very noisy, there are Loud Noise Ear Plugs. Do you or they have a penchant for guns and love to go for target practices. Get Target Practice Hearing Protection to stay safe.

Air travel can also cause problems. Air pressure varies with height (altitude). The higher you go, the lower the pressure because there is less mass of air above you pressing upon you. Now when you nearer you are, the higher the pressure. Your body has a way of equalizing the pressure on the inside of the ear after the ear drum to equal that of the outside. The problem starts when you start gaining altitude as when you are sitting in an airplane that is climbing. Internal pressure and external pressure don't equalize immediately. So you get a situation where the air pressure inside your ear behind the ear drum is higher than the outside. This can cause ear popping and pressure pain and is an unpleasant situation. To prevent this Hearos has provided for Ear Plugs for Travel

Environment and the hearing impaired

We have already discussed about how exposure to noisy environment can cause hearing impairment. Now if you have not availed yourself or get your loved ones or employees to take the above hearing loss preventions, you or your loved ones may end up as a hearing impaired.

Now not being able to hear sound can lead to dangerous situations. For example, warnings of danger may not be heard and can lead to accidents, harm and injuries. Thus the hearing impaired has to be careful that if their hearing impairment is not compensated for, they stay in a safe environment so that they are not exposed to danger. However, it is hardly reasonable to expect the hearing impaired to always stay at home, so we come to how we can compensate for such hearing impairments. There are hearing aids available, but unfortunately Hearos do not have them. Maybe one day they will as they are related products. But I suppose Hearos is concentrating on the wiser steps, provision of hearing protection, and as the saying goes, prevention is much, much, much better than cure. Why wait till you need to wear hearing aids when hearing loss is preventable?

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Halloween costumes and the environment

2007-10-24T14:07:00.000+08:00

What is Halloween

Halloween is a festival celebrated on the night of every 31st of October. Kids (and adults in the more "adult" type of activities) take part in activities like trick-or-treating, visiting "haunted houses", costume parties, Halloween festivals, bonfires, visiting "haunted houses" and viewing horror films, etc. Halloween is derived from the Pagan festival Samhain which is celebrated by the Celts of Ireland and Great Britain. When Irish and Scottish migrated to the United States of America in the late twentieth century, they carried the festival to North America in the nineteenth century. Some western countries also followed suit. Halloween is not celebrated in Asia, South America, Africa, obviously not in the Middle East. It is not widely celebrated in Australia where it is celebrated as Guy Fawkes Day on the 5th of November.

It is the time when people buy Halloween costumes, accessories and decorations from online merchants like Halloween Costumes and Decorations Store. Popular with children are costumes like Superman Costumes and now with this craze with Harry Potter, Harry Potter Costumes.

Halloween and the Environment

The big question for us is, what to do with the Halloween costume after the festival? Children grows up and out of their Halloween costume. What do they do with them? Throw them away? I hope not. Maybe you can follow what Enviroman Says (click BACK button to get back to this page) and freecycle your undersized children's Halloween costume away. There is also a site Recycling Database: recycle Halloween costumes. I think the proper word for that program is REUSE, not recycle. There, you can donate to charity for another person to use or donate to schools as props/costumes for school plays. Please keep those things out of the dump site. Maybe that environmentally friendly action will even keep Halloween Costumes and Decorations Store happy, for then they get another go at getting another order for a new costume from you.

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Green Thinking for the Average Joe: Another environmental blog

2007-10-15T00:16:00.000+08:00

I say the more, the merrier. What am I referring to? Environmental blogs. We cannot have too many of them (meaning, the more, the merrier). Our suffering Mother Earth, or what I often refer to as our only spaceship earth still without no lifeboat. She needs all the help she can get.

So I am pleasantly encouraged to learn of the existence of Eco Joes: Green Thinking for the Average Joe, another environmental blog. It says for the average joe, the ones that need convincing, something drastic need to be done.

From the topics in the Categories, I see that Eco Joes have covered many topics, Let us focus on a few. There is the recycle Category which at the time of publishing, have only one post "Recycle Your Cell Phone For Money And The Environment". I wish the title of that post could be "Reuse Your Cell Phone For Money And The Environment". Why? Because Reuse was what promted the creation of this blog. Because I think the familiar symbol for recyle with 3 arrows represents the 3Rs - Reduce, Reuse and recyle, I believe in order of importance with recycle filling the last (therefore least desirable) spot.

It is much better to reduce the amount of waste that we generate, for example by cutting down on beautiful packaging. I was very happy when I asked my daughter what was that she was taking out (to the car), and she answered it is a present. But why now gift wrap paper? No need, she said. That is one answer I loved. A present minus the trims. For there is just too much unnecessary packaging we get these days, genereting huge amount of avoidable waste. What to know my feelings about presents? Surf over to My first grandchild at his grandfather's 58th birthday. I can't smile for the camera. If I try, I always end up with a very artificial smile. On that occassion, I ended up not with a smile, but got caught on photos with a genuine laugh. Those photos enabled me to crop out my mugshot with a rare laughing face I could use for profile photos like the one for my now main blog Blogger Tips and Tricks. But my laugh would have been even heartier if they had not use any gift wrap paper. Just wondering, is it ever possible to persuade people to reduce or stop the practice of wrapping up presents with gift wrapping paper which often ends up in the recycle bins or the dumpsite. Or at least try to Reuse the gift wrap paper by carefully unwrapping the gift without tearing it so that it can be reused again when you need to gift wrap a present. I do that.

Why am I talking so much about Reuse. If you want to know, read the profile in this blog or surf over to Envirocard. Unfortunately, except for usable throwaway or repairable Cell Phones can't be reused. I reread that post. In my opinion, it should be retitled "Reuse Your Cell Phone For Money And The Environment", for it is not talking about sending the hand phones to be recyled into something, but to be sold for a song or donated away for someone else to use. That is Reuse, not recyle. To me, there is a huge difference between the two terms.

Hey, looks like I am not as observant as I should be as a former Boy Scout. there is a reusing Category and I see 2 articles there! In my opinion, the post "Recycle Your Cell Phone For Money And The Environment" should get its title changed and placed in this Category instead. By the way, I see almost the same statement "Lots of chemicals have to be used to recycle paper bags" as the one I made in my profile for this blog, except I said a lot more.

What else can we find on that environmental blog? One more of interest to me is the bike Category. that also have only one post - "Use Bikes Instead of Cars In College". Why bike? Along with walking, it is one of the most environmentally friendly form of transport. I bought a Peugeot lightweight racing bike from a flea market when I was in Geneva for the Geneva International Invention Exhibition to cycle around Geneva during my stay there. I even stayed at a caravan beside the beautiful Geneva lake instead of one of those expensive hotels nearer to town and nearer to the Exhibition Hall. I had a good time staying beside the Geneva lake although it involves cycling great distance. But cycling is very safe in Geneva. Not only do I get to see Geneva touring on the bike, I saved enough on public transport to pay for the cost of the bike.

I like the bike so much that at the end of the exhibition, I unassembled it, packed the components up and flew it back to Malaysia. Unfortunately, Malaysia is not so conducive to cycling around with the hot weather and the unfriendly motor vehicles. I eventually freecycled it away via Freecycle Petaling Jaya.

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The magic of snow (but we may lose it if we don't do something)

2007-10-05T23:00:00.000+08:00

It is becoming clearer by the day. Global warming is on and snow in ski resorts and snow covered mountain resorts are reporting rising temperature and decreasing snow.

Meili Snow Mountain is located near northwest Yunnan's border with Tibet and considered the highest mountain in Yunnan and one of China's - and the world's - most spectacular mountains.Meili Snow Mountain's Mingyong glacier has receded by 40 meters in the last 13 years, according to deputy director of Diqing Prefecture's Meteorological Bureau, Liu Jiaxun. He said that average temperature rose from 4.8 degrees Celsius to 5.2 degrees Celsius from 1990 to 2006. He predicted that Mount Meili will be have absolutely no snow within 80 years if current global warming rates persist.

A scientist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Ruby Leung, said even under the most optimistic scenario, reduction in Western mountain snow cover from the Sierra Nevada range that feeds California in the south to the snowcapped volcanic peaks of the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest, will lead to increased fall and winter flooding, severe spring and summer drought that will create havoc with the West's agriculture, fisheries and hydropower industry. Leung also predicted that while there are currently snow in the mountains into April, in the middle of the century. snow will melt off much earlier than that. According to Leung, research have show that shows in the past 50 years coastal mountain ranges have already lost 60 percent of their snowpack.

I can state without hesitation that the best part of my memories are those of the time I spent in Grindelwald, a Swiss Alps skiing resort in winter. Snow is abundant there, and there is something magical about snow. It creates a feeling within me that is very hard to describe. But one thing is for sure, I will want to spend some time in a place like Grindelwald again. However, BBC News has published a report that some famous Swiss ski resorts, among them Wengen, Muerren, Grindelwald and Gstaad, are the first in the Alps to start planning for a future that is likely to contain less snow. That means I don't have much time left, as if I wait too long, many of the mountain resorts like Grindelwald will have very much less or even no snow then. A recent study from the University of Zurich says some lower-lying resorts in Switzerland are already experiencing unreliable snowfall. Many mountain and skiing resorts are talking about artificial snowmaking. I wonder if it will have the same magic as real snow.

The photo on the left is not Grindelwald, but Whistler, a place that reminds me of Grindelwald. Whistler is a Canadian resort town in British Columbia, Canada which has been voted among the top destinations in North America by major ski magazines for the past 15 years (Wikipedia). According to Whistler accommodation, Whistler has been the number 1 rated ski resort in North America for the last 8 years in a row with average snowfall over 30 feet or 9 metres per year, plus the season lasts all the way from November through to August. That means only 2 months of snow-free season. Not only that, to me the cottage shown in the photo look pretty Swiss chalet like.

One thing is for sure, if I ever get the chance to visit Canada, the place I would like to head for first is Whistler, hoping to relive the magic of Grindelwald. If that ever happens, I will need Whistler lodging, for I have no one to squat with in Whistler. But that wouldn't be a bad proposition, for there are plenty of nice comfortable accommodation available in Whistler. An example is Aspens 2, a true ski-in ski-out lodge, with the ski slopes just a 20 seconds walk away.

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Carbon Dioxide Emissions by Country: Ranking

2007-09-08T15:57:00.001+08:00

Global warming caused by emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other green house gases used to be a controversial topic with some scientists claiming that the world's climate is definitely getting warmer because of emission of carbon dioxide and other green house gases while others says it is a just a natural cycle of warming and cooling of the world's weather. Evidences are piling up to support those of the first opinion with polar ice, glaciers, mountain snow peaks melting (including that of the highest mountain in the world - Mount Everest), climate of countries changing, some say hurricanes getting more frequent and more ferocious, birds and animals migrating further north to warmer climate, etc.

One thing I know is my country is now hotter for I sleep topless and without fan or air conditioning. Anyway, many are hoping governments will do something about it, and for that it is good to know which country are emitting more carbon dioxide, the major green house gas. So here is an excel file ranking countries by its carbon emission. The figures are taken from Wikipedia - List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions by carbon dioxide emissions. You can scroll down the page to view the countries lower down the list by using the thin vertial scroll bar at the right:

Energy Saving Lighting fixtures and lamps

2007-09-06T18:22:00.000+08:00

Everyone who is a bit environmentally conscious seems to be going for energy saving lighting fixtures and lamps, saying it uses less electrical energy for the same light output and last longer. So I went looking for some online lighting fixtures merchant that offers such stuff and tried lighting.

Among others, I found kichler lighting and maxim lighting with their collection of energy saving indoor pendants at in one page under the category Energy Saving Indoor Pendants Page 2. I don't expect this page to be static as the merchant add or take away products, so I will put a screenshot of what I see below in case if you go to the page and you see something different:

I found that minka lavery lighting have what they call their Energy Lamps, a collection of which can be seen at Vintage Rust Collection by Minka Lavery Energy Star.

Google search engine goes environmentally friendly?

2007-07-23T18:20:00.000+08:00

My daughter forwarded this email to me, and I think more people should know about it. It referred to an article by Mark Ontkush. If you want to find the original article, you can always type or copy-paste "Mark Ontkush" and see if you can find the article. No link was given in the forward, but this is what the message says:

When your screen is white - an empty word page, or the Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when it is black it consumes only 59 watts. Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved. In a response to this article Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white version, but with a lower energy consumption, check it out: Blackle. Use this site as your search engine and do your bit for the planet.

I just paid that new (to me) search engine a visit and I saw "109,496.714 Watt hours saved" below the search box. I don't know if that is displayed real time or updated. I will visit the new search engine again and check.

OK, noticed a link About Blackle at the bottom which tells what Blacle is all about and found the article that gave Google? the inspiration to set up the new search engine (I put a ? because other than other than that Google trademarked icon, , I couldn't' see any connection to Google because the word "google" is not in the URL. I will try to contact Google and see if I can get confirmation that Blackle is really the new official environmentally friendly Google search engine.

The article referred to above is Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year

Update 24 July 2007: It's not a Google product, (note the copyright to Heap Media). Someone suggested that it is a Google Custom Search Engine. There are a lot of comments in the post that inspired Blackle. If I have time, I will highlight the pertinent ones. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about the impact of Blackle to the environment, do surf over to that article and read the comments. There is a long list of them.

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Dispose your old refrigerators

2007-06-28T21:12:00.000+08:00

If you live in Cobourg, Colborne, or are rural Ontario customers of Ontario Power Authority, you can have your old, working referigerators, window air conditioners and small to mid-sized freezers disposed of free wihtout worrying that CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) will be released into the environment by calling 1-877-797-9473.

It is also a economical and environmentally-friendly step to change old, inefficient refrigerators, air conditioners and freezers to new, more energy efficient ones. According to Lakefront Utilities manager of compliance and finance Dereck Paul, you can get energy savings of about $100 a year. This translate to a payback period of about 7 years in getting your investment back plus do your part for the environment and reduce your contribution to CO2 emission and global warming.

Cycle to work: Denmark shows the way

2007-06-24T13:33:00.000+08:00

In Denmark, there are many people uses the bike and not for leisure, but to to to work, go to the movies, visit friends and relatives, etc. In Copenhagen, he bikes are the dominant form of transport. There are dedicated bike lanes, and paved bumps separate the bike lanes from the cars, and there are no pedestrians in the bike lanes. At each crosswalk there are red and green traffic lights just for the bikes.

And the bikes have lights. The vast majority still uses the old dynamo that grinds against your tire to generate electricity for the back red light and front headlamp. That is much environmentally friendly than using battery operated lights.

They also have a free loaner bikes program. Copenhagen has installed 1,500 city bikes that they loan to the public and by poping A 20 kronor ($3.60) coin into a lock, you get to use the bike plus get the money back when you park the bike in the city bike zone for the next user.

The "Mayor" of Putrajaya, the new administrative capital for Malaysia carved out from large chunck of palm oil plantations (a white elephant in my opinion and one which makes things who need official things done very inconvenient because of long travel needed) asked the civil servants (majority of the population of Putrajaya are civil servants) to cyle to work, but I doubt anyone responded. For one, I doubt the "Mayor" himself cycle to work. There are no dedicated bicycle lanes and the weather is hot and very sunny, unlike the cool climate in Denmark.

In Copenhagen, exiting a cab always elicits the same remark from the driver: "Watch out for the bicycles!"

That's because in this city the bikes are the dominant form of transport,

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Environmentally friendly Internet

2007-04-20T18:38:00.000+08:00

I am broke (cash), but I have assets. In any case, will writing is not that complicated a thing. I need to make a will. I decided to draft it myself. It is done. Only thing is, for added safety net, I was hoping for someone competent to vet it. I have a niece who is a practicing lawyer. I asked his father where she stays and was disappointed to learn that she stay 15km away from my home. But still, it will involve using a car, burning up depleting fossil fuel, contributing to the atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming. In any case, I am retired and just don't like to leave the house.

Then a bulb lighted up in my little brain. Why not do it through the environmentally friendly Internet. I don't need to travel. I don't need to print a hard copy and used up paper. I just need to send the draft as an email attachment.

I did a search in me email Inbox and found her email address. I asked if she is willing to vet it. It will probably only takes a couple of minutes. She answered OK if it is a simple will. If it is anything complicated, she will ask me to get a professional to do it. Fair to me. I sent the email with the draft as an attachment and now waiting for her response.

Thank you environmentally friendly Internet.

BTW the link "global warming" leads to an interesting site BlurtIt where you can ask any question and get an answer. I am not only interested in answering questions, but also hope to use the site to increase environmental awareness which to us and our future generation is crucial. I want to find out if I answer a question related to the environment and put a link to a site relevant to the answer, I want to know if the link in the answer is clickable. Go to Can I put a clickable link in an answer in BlurtIt?. There is a link in the answer and it IS clickable, which in my opinion makes the site much more useful because sometimes a question need more than a couple of sentences to properly answer a question. If I am not wrong, the maximum number of word you can put in the answer is 100. Further, I don't think you can put images, especially screenshots in the answer which often helps greatly in making the answer much clearer. By answering questions and putting clickable links to environmental sites, one can help increase environmental awarenes

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House built from trash

2007-04-04T15:34:00.000+08:00

clipped from www.livescience.com

Houses of the Future Could Be Made from Trash

Last year’s
trash could become next year’s model home, thanks to the invention of a new
type of construction material made entirely from waste products.

“Bitublocks,”
created by engineer John Forth of the University of Leeds in England, are composed of recycled glass, sewage
sludge, incinerator ash, the by-products of metal purification and pulverized
fuel ash from power stations.

“Bitublocks
use up to 100 percent waste materials and avoid sending them to landfill, which
is quite unheard of in the building industry,” Forth said.

Forth hopes
his new invention will revolutionize the building industry by providing a
sustainable, low-energy replacement for concrete
blocks.

“Less
energy is required to manufacture the Bitublock than a traditional concrete
block, and it’s about six times as strong, so it’s quite a high-performance
product,” Forth said.

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Enviroman says: Abolish the F1 races

2007-04-02T08:46:00.000+08:00

The F1 races are really wasteful and bad for the environment. Tremendous amount of fossil fuel are burnt to transport the F1 teams, their racing machines and accompanying maintainance equipments with corresponding spewing of large amount of CO2 into the atmosphere as they travel from one racing circuit to another around the world. Another round of wasteful burning of precious fossil fuel plus generation of the green house gas into the atmosphere as the racing machines goes round and round the racing circuit meaninglessly.

What are the benefits accruing from the F1 races? Technologies to make cars go faster? What is the point if cars are bound by the speed limits on the highways.

Enviroman says, "Abolish the F1 races".

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Way out for city traffic congestions, air pollution and global warming?

2007-03-27T16:51:00.000+08:00

Utopian "bike-sharing" ideas had been tried in Europe in the 1960s, most famously in Amsterdam. However, the bikes were stolen and became too beaten-up to ride.Cyclocity, a subsidiary of the outdoor advertising behemoth JCDecaux first successfully operates Lyon's program of bicycle rental in which city dwellers and visitors can rent bikes from one station and return them at other station. JCDecaux developed a sturdier, less vandal-prone bike, along with a rental system to discourage theft: each rider must leave a credit card or refundable deposit of about €150 ($250). In Lyon, about 10 per cent of the bikes are stolen each year, but many are later recovered. However, the program can be considered successful.

This success has lead to Cyclocity been awarded a 10 year public-private partnership deal to operate a similar service in Paris in return for the right to use the city's exclusive right to use over 1628 city-owned billboards. In the deal, by July 15, Parisians will have available thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city. The rental will be free for the first half hour, €1 for the next, €2 for the third, and so on.

By the end of the year, there should be 20,600 bikes at 1450 stations - or about one station every 250 metres across the entire city. Based on experience elsewhere - particularly in Lyon, France's third-largest city - regular users of the bikes will ride them almost free. JCDecaux is expected to recoup its cost of running the system from its exclusive use of Paris billboards. Sounds like a great arrangement.

Anthonin Darbon, director of Cyclocity said 95 per cent of the roughly 20,000 daily bicycle rentals in Lyon are free because of their length. One can expect the ratio to be the same in Paris.

The program is expected to cut traffic congestion, air pollution, make parking of vehicles easire and enhanced Paris's image as a greener, quiter and more relaxed place. Let us hope that the program will be a success and that other cities will be encouraged to introduce similar service. Already, is is reported that London, Dublin, Sydney and Melbourne are considering similar rental programs.

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An environmentally friendly and profitable way to turn food waste to fertilizer and Profit

2007-03-26T08:23:00.000+08:00

The Selangor subsidiary PKPS Agro Industries Sdn. Bhd. started a project last year to turn food waste from the Seri Kembangan wholesale market to marketable fertilizer.

An average 10 tons of vegetable and fruit waste is dumped into waste bins daily from the Seri Kembangan wholesale market, and these waste is carted to the composting factory at the rear of the market where it is grounded, mixed with goat feaces to facilitate the composting process. The whole cycle takes 45 days. The compost is then taken to a machine to separate drbris such as plastic, packed in bags and sold as fertilizer.

It is a small step, but a step in the right direction in reducing the 4,000 tons of waste generated daily in Selangor that is going to landfills.

Update 14 June 2007

I have previously updated a post Increasing the efficiency of aeration in wastewater treatment which involved BlurtIt which is an interesting site where you can post questions and get answers. I have found another question which is related to this post at Composting.

, so I am going to make a response there. As described in the post above, I am going to do the same thing, that is prepare my answer, make a word count, paste the message into the "Answer" box and click "Answer now". Below in the scroll box is the message I prepared in MS Word which I pasted in the first message:

Have a look at this post <a href=” http://enviromansays.blogspot.com/2007/03/environmentally-friendly-and-profitable_26.html”>Environmentally friendly and profitable way to turn food waste into fertilizers and profit from it</a> and see what can be composted and how it can be profitable at the same time.

and this is the result of using the "word count" tool in Words:

Words: 39
Characters (no spaces): 267
Characters (with spaces): 305

As the site said, maximum number of "words" is 100, so I didn't know what will happen when I click "Answer now". The answer was published, but somehow the HTML was turned into just the anchor text which is not clickable. I tried again, this time editing it so that it contains less words but with the HTML for the hyperlink still there. Again, just the anchor text was displayed and was not clickable. I gave up and just post the URL. I don't know why my question at Feedback on an innovation please. had a clickable link, but this time I couldn't get a clickable link.

As in Increasing the efficiency of aeration in wastewater treatment, I am going to try to get some answers by asking for support at Contact Us and hope to get a response. If and when I get a response, I will update this post.

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Pill to help reduce green house gas release

2007-03-24T07:31:00.000+08:00

Nearly everyone must have heard about green house gases (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) and increase in concentration of green house gases lead to global warming. Many has tagged global warming as the biggest environmental challenge of the century.

One of the green house gases - methane, is released when cow feeding on grass burbs. This contribute 4% of the greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have estimated that the methane gas in the atmosphere has increased 600% over the past 50 years.

German scientist has recently announced the invention of a pill to reduce burping by cows which release methane. The pill, a fist sized tablet contain microbiotic substances which slowly dissolve in the cow's stomach over several months and uses the methane to produce glucose instead of burping it out. This would also helps the cow in producing more milk.

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Free pixel advertisement for Enviroman

2007-03-13T12:51:00.000+08:00

Following the footstep of Alex Tew's immensely successful Million Dollar Homepage, someone has set up a site to allow bloggers to put both free and paid image ads. Unfortunately, free means limiting the image to 60x20 pixels, and free means using the free button generator. The condition for using their free service is that I have to place a backlink to their sites, and you can find it at the bottom of this page. Let's see if this can lead to any increased traffic or better PageRank for this site.

Environmentally friendly and profitable way to dispose of waste hay

2007-03-06T22:56:00.000+08:00

A Malaysian company Watanwaja Agrofarm (M) Sdn. Bhd. run by the enterprising pair - Jarnuri Tahrir and Rozaini Abdul Halim has after 2 decades of research and development and learning from Korea and Indonesia, developed a way of using the hundreds of tonnes of waste hay left over from padi harvest at the end of every harvest season at Sabak Bernam and turn it into saleable fertilizer and live-stock feed. The waste hay previously are normally burnt, causing air pollution. So this development is highly welcomed from an environmental point of view, and also generate some income for the padi farmers and Watanwaja.

Watanwaja pays the farmers RM130 for hay collected from each padi lot. The hay is then transported to their processing center where hay is feed to special cows which then turn the hay into manure. The cows are yellowish and imported from China. Watanwajaya has a breeding program and has plans to breed more cows to be distributed to padi farmers through the local farmers' association. There are plans also to use goats.

Watanwaja will provide the farmers with the hay to feed the cows and goats, and in return the farmers will buy the animal dung from them for their fertilizer processing.

With this program, it is expected that 80% of the hay will be used to process into fertilizers and 20% will be left at the padi fields for compost. Open burning will drastically be reduced.

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Domain names and environmental sites

2007-03-03T04:23:00.000+08:00

Want to start an environmental site? The first thing you have to do is to register a suitable domain. Unfortunately, in most cases, the domain name that you prefer have already been registered and not available to you. Fortuantely there is a possibility of buying the domain name that you prefer at Buy premium domain names.

There is a search box in the home page of the site. I tried putting in the search term "environment" and got this result: Premium Domain Search Results for "environment". In it, I found 525 domain names related to environment.

There is also an Advanced Search Tool for you to narrow down the search to more specific terms.

You can also sell domain names through Sell Your Domains. If you have already registered a domain name that is likely to be sought after, you can sell it to or through BuyDomains.com.

BuyDomains.com also offers Domain Name Financing if finance is a problem. For loans below $5000, no approval is needed. Prequalification is needed for loans above $5000. Approval can be obtained in as little as a day.

There is also a Business Resource Center at www.buydomains.com where you can find business related help.

Environment Comics

2007-03-01T13:06:00.000+08:00

NOTE: New comics every week

Found this nice environmental comics while surfing and enjoyed it very much. Hope you like it too. The cartoon is updated every week curtesy of cartoonists Dan Wright and Dave Ponce. This will be a sticky post (a post that always stay at the top of the main page of a blog). To find out how to make a post sticky, hop over to How to make a post stay on top. New posts, if any, will be after this post.

Update: 2 August 2007: The cartoon seem to have stopped being updated every week. The date has therefore been changed so that it is no longer a "sticky post".

Books from Amazon

Cartoon Guide to the Environment

The Cartoon Guide to Genetics

Environment

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Recycle your old spectacles

2007-02-15T10:15:00.000+08:00

Bespectacled people, especially the trendy youngs, are likely to change their spectacles every 2 or 3 years. Now they don't have to end up in the landfill because there is a collection campaign under a collaborative project between Lions Club and the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ or Majlis Bandaran Petaling Jaya).

The old spectacles will be cleaned, repaired and distributed to the under-privileged in the poor countries of Africa, Asia and Central America.

The programme called the Give the Gift of Sight was started off by Luxottica Group, a United States eyeware company as a corporate charity programme in 1998 with the support of Lions Club International and now has come to the Malaysian shore. Actually, this programme has been going on with The Lions Club collecting used eyeware, but now have joined hands with MBPJ.

The programme will contribute towards solving the mounting garbage problem as well as helping the poor of the world.

The collection centers are at MBPJ headquater, Menara MBPJ, DIJROA Community Recycling Center, Ming Tien Food Court at Taman Megah, Taman Megah Resident Association, Magnum in Taman Megah, Taman Mayang Resident Association, Morning Market at Road SS2/63 in front of MJ restaurant, Lovely Disabled Home in SS2, Beautiful Gate at Road SS2/24, Petaling Jaya Community Center at Road 17/23, ICT Center at Jalan 17/1A, London Optical in Damansara Utama, Malaya Optical at Jalan Yong Shook Lin, Section 5 Resident Association (Photo Shp of Jalan Chantek), Sekolah Kebangsaan Sri Kelana, Rukun Tetangga Jalan Carey, Rukun Tetangga Section 1A, Rukun Tetangga SS5, Komuniti Link at Summit Shopping Center, Saujana Apartment Resident Association in Damansara Damai, Rukun Tetangga Kampung Chempaka, JKKK Kampung Kayu Ara, Resident Association SS3, Klinik Huang in SS3, Rukun Tetangga Sea Park, Clinic MBPJ, Rukun Tetangga Section 4A, MBPJ Landscape Department in Taman Bandaran Kelana Jaya, Hotel Lisa De Inn and Hotel PJ De Inn.

Further details and for donation in bulk, contact Lee Lik Shyan at 012-2081 489.

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22 million hectares of Forest Reserve for Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei

2007-02-14T09:52:00.000+08:00

An agreement named "Heart of Borneo" (HoB) to create a 22 million hectares of protected forest reserved was inked by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei at Bali. This means that 31% of the Borneo island, the third largest island in the world will be marked for protection. The area houses one of the most diverse and populous number of plants and animals. The agreement will make way for extra trainning ground for environmental management, increase social activities such as outdoor recreation, develope eco-tourism, ethno-tourism and adventure tourism.

Although not confirmed, it will lead to no or reduced logging in the area, that means lower income from timber related activities. By right, the 3 countries should be compensated for this loss as the benefits accrue not only to the 3 nations, but to the world.

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Malaysian kids for the environment

2007-01-30T12:50:00.000+08:00

A song "Pokok-Pokok" (literally "trees") also called "Tears of the Trees" composed by the children of the Tree Theatre Group, Malaysia, has been choosen to be sung to inspire participants of the 24th United Nations Environmental Programme's Government Council meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. It will also be accompanied by a colorful 10-minute eco-play in which the children will act out parts of the world's fragile eco-system in which the greedy loggers will play the villains.

Members of the Tree Theatre Group are 45 pupils of Sekolah Kebangsaan Bukit Damansara together with its 12 ex-students who have been practicing hard to give a good performance.

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) has also picked the song for a web-based animation for its Billion Tree Campaign, a worldwide tree planting initiative open to governments, communities, groups and individuals.

Source: The Star

This blog has changed for the better because I migrated my old (classic) Blogger account to the New Blogger (formerly beta) account

2007-01-21T17:02:00.000+08:00

This post is not exactly about the environment, but about some unexpected pleasant change to the blog, in particular to this sticky post Environmental Cartoons. The environment cartoon is put there by curtesy of cartoonists Dan Wright and Dave Ponce of Rustle the Leaf and previously, when this blog was in the old (classic) Blogger account, the cartoon was small and the text hardly readable, and I have to put a suggestion to click on the cartoon to enlarge it so that the text become readable.

Bloggers who use the Google Blogger platform for their blogs will know that the old (classic) Blogger is being replaced by the New Blogger (formerly beta) and while Blogger was encouraging everyone to migrate to the New Blogger, there were many horror stories from those who migrated, like being unable to see their blogs in the Dashboard (the page from which you can select your blogs, publish a post, etc) and thus unable to access their blogs and edit or publish. I thus have much reservation about migrating my classic Blogger account to the New Blogger account. However, for reasons I do not know myself why, I eventually decided to migrate, and I must say it went smoothly, and took only minutes, unlike the horror stories of days in the Google Blogger Help group.

I have the choice of sticking to my classic Blogger template for this blog, but decided to migrate to the standard New Blogger template, then to Ramani's 3 column template. To my horror, I discovered that the environmental cartoon which used to be small was enlarged (and the text readable), but extended into the right sidebar (see screenshot below):

This was with the Opera browser. I didn't check, but I am reasonably sure that in the Internet Explorer browser, the right sidebar will be pushed to the bottom of the page. So I decided to revert to my previous old classic Blogger template (see Switching from Blogger beta back to Blogger classic).

On reverting to my previous old classic template, I discovered to my pleasant suprise that the environmental cartoon was enlarged, and that one need not click on the cartoon to be able to read the text.

UPDATE: 22 January 2007: There is still some lingering problem. The sidebar is now at the bottom of the page. This is with Thur's modified 3 column template. I migrated to the New Blogger template and immediately changed it to the Denim New Blogger template modified by Stavanger of Blogcrowd forum to 3 column. However, I have to change the width of the main and sidebars. See New Blogger template modified to 3 column by Stavanger. It is somewhere at the bottom of the post.

Digi D'House: An almost paperless office Part II

2007-01-16T01:38:00.000+08:00

I had earlier written a post Digi D'Block, an almost paperless office (click "BACK" button to get back to this page). Looks like I was taken only on an incomplete tour of the D'House (D'Block). In my first post on the D'House, someone wrote a long comment, questioning the success of such open office. I was hoping that someone from Digi would respond, but no response was forthcoming, so the reason for this second post, which is a kind of response to the comment.

Reporters of the Star: D'House surprise, ALLAN KOAY, and another Work form anywhere were probably taken on a more comprehensive tour of D'House, got more detailed briefings and wrote more detailed reports on it.

Allan was taken to see one of the heads of the company. He wrote:"If I hadn’t been told that he’s one of the heads of the company, I wouldn’t have known. He didn’t have a high-back chair or a larger computer screen. In fact, everyone has the same working space, the same kind of chair, the same kind of table (sometimes shared by three or four persons), the same kind of computer. No one person stands out. Yet, each and every person gets to do his or her own thing, so to speak. They can sit anywhere; yes, even in the cafeteria or rest areas (otherwise known in more hip terms as “chill areas. It’s not unusual to see employees sitting in the lounge area, enjoying the open air and the sound of the waterfall in the background, pastry and coffee next to them, and a notebook or laptop in front of them. Which brought me to my second question: “How does anyone get any work done?”

They don’t know, said the staff, things just somehow get done. The meeting rooms, too, are very creatively named – Caribbean, Trinidad, Tobago, Sipadan, Koh Samui. Paradise islands. Noticed anything. They seemed to be named after holiday spots.

Regarding work, Adzhar Ibrahim, director of human resource development: “It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Do you trust people first and hope that they return the trust, or do you say, you prove to me that you’re trustworthy and I will trust you? I think our philosophy is that, ‘Hey, you’re a decent person and we will trust you.’ If it becomes a problem, then we’ll deal with it. But surprisingly, I don’t think we’ve had any issues of people running away or not working. You can’t hide. Where are you going to hide? And if you need to read the newspaper, you can go ahead and read it. But on the other hand, if you read the newspaper the whole day, everybody will see. So there is some peer pressure.”

He admitted that the system is not perfect, and there will always be a few who will take advantage of it. He said the decision was whether to have rules that cater to a small minority but inconvenience everyone else, or to have rules for the majority and deal with the minority on a case-by-case basis.

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Environmentally Friendly Greeting Cards - Where are they?

2006-12-21T12:11:00.000+08:00

It is the time for sending out seasons greeting cards, and tons of paper greeting cards is expected to be sent/received which will eventually end up for recycling or in the landfills. I did a little test, I made a search on Google for "Environmentally Friendly Greeting Cards", and all the results on the first few pages were for greeting cards printed on recycled paper, using vegetable ink, plantable greeting cards, etc.

I couldn't find any link to eCards which doesn't use paper. I had to modify my search terms by adding to it "Environmentally friendly greeting card eCard". Only then I saw on the first page
Care2.com ecard: "Xmas Blues (Flash)" by Camilla Eriksson (no. 2)
Cyber-Cards.com: Your premier internet resource for free eCards! (no. 3)

and to my pleasant suprise, I found my own (this site) at no. 4!

Looks like eCards still have a long way to go before they replaces paper-based greeting cards.

Acually, if they had put a link to Envirocard, that would be more relevant.

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Top 25 Environmental Gift Ideas

2006-12-20T10:29:00.000+08:00

Top 25 Environmental Gift Ideas
by: Shannon Kilkenny

Now that Thanksgiving is over, Christmas gift buying is in full swing. The challenge is on! With only a few shopping days left and perhaps many gifts still to buy; here are a few ways to minimize your shopping time and frustration and simultaneously make a significant difference for the environment. When making a few changes in your buying styles and habits you can have a considerable impact on the environment with little effort.

It’s really fairly easy. Just follow some of the gift ideas below and enjoy the satisfaction of being part of the “green” movement by greening your gifts. Make it a truly “green” holiday this year. Take heed!

Remember try to give gifts that people need, can use and are practical. Be creative! Try these……

1. Tickets to movies, concerts, museums, sporting events, outdoor activities or an annual pass to national parks.

2. House or garden plants, herbs, seeds and bulbs. Pots and planters boxes made from natural ingredients.

3. Gift certificates to clothing, electronics, books, grocery, or vitamin stores.

4. Donate to one or more Charities in the name of your recipient.

5. Give the gift of YOU! Make coupons for services such as babysitting, a night out at the movies, dinners dates, weekends away, massages, yard work, dog-walking or help write a resume or article, give a computer lesson or offer some other talent or skill you can share.

6. An old book or collector’s item. Things with a unique meaning. Shop at antique stores, estate sales or flea markets.

7. Cook home-baked sweets and put in a reusable tin box, a kitchen container, or another usable item.

8. Any homemade item. A knitted hat or scarf.

9. Fair-trade organic chocolate or coffee. Always a hit.

10. Clothes and other items made from hemp, wool, or organic cotton.

11. A roll of postage stamps.

12. Office supplies such as recycled paper and envelops.

13 Energy efficient light bulbs, battery re-chargers, or solar-powered products.

14. First aid kits or emergency road side equipment.

15. Board and card games that will be used over and over again.

16. For your children, you can open a savings account, buy stocks or bonds.

17. A gift gasoline card for your teenager or college student.

18. A calendar marked with important dates, such as birthdays, anniversaries, and family gatherings.

19. A book of favorite recipes.

20. Carbon offsetting. This purchase erases negative energy footprint of reducing carbon emissions.

21. Music and books. itunes or the equivalent downloadable books and music.

22. Plant trees in the name of your beneficiary.

23. Name a star after

24. Have a party and invite everyone over as your gift.

25. A years membership to an Environmental organization, a health spa, the auto club.

The list is really endless if you just take a moment to think about your purchase. If you consider where the product was made, what it is made of, who made it, what actually went in to the manufacturing of the product, you might want to reconsider that purchase. Fact: A manufactured item will generate 70 times its weight in waste during manufacturing. Wow!

To learn more about how become more environmental conscious when planning your holiday parties and events, planning conferences, workshops and seminars, and events of all sizes, shapes, and styles, visit my website: Successful Event Planning (close new window/tab to get back to this page).

About The Author
As an Event Planner, Writer, Author and Environmentalist Ms. Shannon Kilkenny is in the process of writing her next book which is dedicated to "greening" the hospitality and event planning industry. Her first book “The Complete Guide to Successful Event Planning” is due out Dec. 06. Visit Successful Event Planning (close new window/tab to get back to this page) for more information. Email me: eventresults@aol.com

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Digi D' House: An almost paperless office

2006-11-24T21:20:00.000+08:00

I was invited by my new son-in-law to the official opening of his company's new office block, the Digi D'House in the Subang High Technology Park. It was called the D'Family Day, to which all the employees and their relatives are invited. There was plenty of food and drinks, and I had my lunch PLUS my dinner there. There were also clowns, some in stilts to entertain the guests, particularly the children. The Digi Celebrateens (talented teenagers spoted by Digi) were also there with their songs and performances to entertain the guests.

We were taken on a tour of the new offices (3 blocks). It was like an office I have never seen before. There were no cubicles, only open offices. And not only that, there were workstations, some with desktop computers, others with only means to connect the employees' laptops. There were NO drawers! Anything that need to be locked up had to be placed in individual lockers in another room. No one have exclusive use to any particular desk. They are free to use any particular available desk to work on. And at the end of the day, everyone's desk have to be cleared of stuff.

Everything was wireless. Communication was by mobile phone and emails (Digi is a mobile phone operator, so calls are free). Thus papers were hardly used. If anything need to be printed, or if any stationery needed, there are printer centers where paper and a printer is available. You just print from your computer and then go to the nearest printer station to collect your printed materials. This is not used often, so D' Block can be described as an almost paperless office. A good move towards a more environmentally friendly office.

At the back of the office blocks was a natural rock cliff, with a waterfall, and there are steps to climb to the top of the top of the cliff for anyone so inclined. At the top of the cliff is an exercise station. With all this, one would expect the staff of D' Block to be pretty fit.

Here are the photographs of the rock cliff cum waterfall and the exercise station:
Rock cliff cum waterfall

Exercise station at the top of the cliff

Hope someone from Digi may drop by and comment in what other ways Digi's offices are environmentally friendly.

Environmental education: Start them young

2006-11-09T10:32:00.000+08:00

Habits are formed from young. Thus it is important to introduce environmental education and practices to children when they are still young. This is exactly what Fairview International School in Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur is doing.

Fairview International School has introduced a year long campaign to encourage recycling among its students. Students are taught to separate recyclable items and group them into paper, plastic, tin and glass and deposit them into separate bins provided by Alam Flora placed at 12 locations in the school compound. Money from the sale of the recyclable items at the end of the campaign will be channeled to a charity home selected by the school.

Alam Flora also gave talk on the importance of recycling and the uses of recycled materials.

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How to Save Gas in the Kitchen

2006-11-05T22:18:00.000+08:00

How to Save Gas in the Kitchen
by: Thomas Yoon

In my previous articles, I have discussed many ways to save fuel for your vehicle. I have mentioned steps like adopting good driving habits, maintaining your car in peak condition, planning your trips, carpooling, avoiding traffic jams, driving smaller vehicles, choosing more efficient cars, adding energy saving devices and many others.

By following some of the items listed above, you should be able to get a very good performance from the fuel you fill up into your tank and save on your vehicle fuel costs.

Today, we are going to discuss more ways of saving fuel, but this time in our kitchens. Saving cooking gas requires a different approach from saving vehicle fuel. is is because the gas stove uses external burning of fuel, unlike engines that uses internal combustion of fuel.

Gas fuel like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or natural gas (Methane) is commonly used for cooking at home because it is clean and easily available. If we are able to control the usage, we could possibly save considerable amounts of money too.

With the world's oil and gas prices at such a high level, many of us are hard-pressed to try to squeeze the maximum work out of the fuel we use. One of the best strategies to use is to avoid wastage that can lead to loss of energy.

Below are some of the ways you can save gas in the kitchen:

1. Light up your stove only when you are ready to cook and the ingredients are within reach. This requires good coordination and planning by the cook. This means that heat is not wasted during the waiting period. The flame is only used for doing useful work - heating the food.

2. Use pressure cookers because they require less fuel for heating and thus reduce cooking time. There is a scientific explanation for this. Water boils at 100 degree Celsius at normal atmospheric pressures. When the cooking pot is pressurized above atmospheric, the water boils at a higher temperature. At that higher temperature, whatever meat or other ingredients inside the pot get cooked faster.

3. Avoid using too much water when cooking as it wastes fuel and it takes a longer time to evaporate. Water boils at 100 degree Celsius in a normal pot. It remains at this temperature no matter how much more you heat it further. It just evaporates, and the heat is lost through the evaporation of the steam. The temperature will not rise further in the water. The more water there is, the more the fuel required to bring it to boil.

4. Reduce the flame when boiling starts to save fuel. This relates to item 3 above. A small flame is sufficient to maintain the boiling of the water at 100 degree Celsius. A big flame will not bring the water to a higher temperature.

5. Cover cooking pots and pans with a lid to prevent heat from evaporating. This again relates to item 3 above. By covering the pot with a lid, the energy supplied to the water is prevented from being lost through evaporation of the steam. In fact, the useful energy contained in the steam is utilized and transferred to cook the food.

6. Use a small burner as it consumes 6% to 10% less gas than a big burner. To be efficient, as much of the heat from a flame must be transmitted to the pot. With a big flame below a relatively small pot, the hot gases flowing along the sides of the pot has less chance of being extracted. Only hot gases in contact with the pot have any chance of being extracted. Any hot gases not in contact with the pot are lost to the atmosphere.

7. Clean the burner if you see an orange, yellow or non-uniform flame. This means there is incomplete combustion of the fuel. Usually this is due to some obstruction in the air or gas passages in the gas stove. Incomplete combustion means that some of the fuel is not burnt but is deposited as carbon. That's a waste of the total heating capacity of the fuel.

You do not have to understand thermodynamics in order to save fuel in your cooking stove. However, many of the strategies outlined above is derived from the understanding of the properties of water and steam, principles of heat transfer like conduction, convection, radiation, combustion of fuel, venturi and gas burner design.

For the cook in the kitchen, just remember - reduce wastage and maintain efficiency.

About The Author
Thomas Yoon

Many years of working experience in Marine, Facilities, Construction has given the author material for writing e-books and articles related to engineering, and management. Subscribe to facworld ezine by sending an email to Subscribe Facworld More information at www.free-marine.com" target="_blank">Free Marine and Free Engineering.

Cutting Energy Bills With Roof Replacement

2006-11-05T19:18:00.001+08:00

Cutting Energy Bills With Roof Replacement
by: Michael Clem

It’s that time of year again - the weather is getting a bit cooler as the fall and winter seasons begin. The dropping temperatures will inevitably affect energy costs, and as you look at ways to keep your energy bill down by winterizing your home, remember to consider the roof.

Taking steps to keep your energy bill under control, such as finding drafts and sealing them, replacing old insulation, and checking your vinyl siding and windows for wear and tear are all futile efforts with an old, battered roof.

The Cost of Your Old Roof

Just as a hat keeps you warm in the winter, your roof functions in a similar way for your home – it holds the heat in. But if your roof is old and worn, if your home has no “hat,” your efforts to heat your home could literally be going through the roof. In addition, an old roof is often leaky, contributing to mold and bacteria overgrowth in your home. The end result can be chronic allergy problems and even respiratory infections for you and your family, because you are breathing in contaminated air.

A trained professional roofing contractor is best-equipped to identify problem areas on your roof and let you know whether minor repairs need to be done, or if there is enough damage, wear and tear to warrant a roof replacement instead.

The Value of a New Roof

Replacing your roof is an investment, helping to cut your energy costs and increase the value of your home. A 2005 annual report by Remodeling Online Magazine reported the average cost of replacing a roof can range anywhere from about $11,500 to $17,000, depending on where you live in the United States.

And your new roof can prove to be a lucrative investment if you ever decide to move. GAF Materials Corp., (a manufacturer of residential and commercial building supplies including roofing materials) reports that, according to a group of realtors surveyed, up to 40 percent of your home’s curb appeal is your roof. Though its impact is more subtle, the appearance of your roof can attract buyers to your home and increase the resale value of your home when you’re ready to sell.

Before You Shop

Often, a poor-quality roofing job does not show any signs of a problem for years. Getting a new roof is a major investment in your home, so be very careful when you begin to look for a contractor. In addition to making sure you see a portfolio of their previous work, ask for references and make sure you call them.

When looking for a roofing contractor, you want a qualified professional who will use the best materials and back up their work with a good warranty that doesn’t just cover the roofing materials, but also covers the labor to repair those roofing materials should you need repairs done.

If you have a roofing contractor in your local area that is a Certified Master Elite Roofer – only 2% of all roofers in the U.S. carry this distinction – you can rest assured that the work done on your home is excellent quality and is covered under a strong warranty.

Roofing Accessories to Consider

As you talk with contractors, keep in mind that the installation of a new roof involves more than just nailing in your shingles. A good roofing job will include at least a waterproof leak barrier, and ideally an additional layer of protection from the elements, sometimes called “roof deck protection.” Once this foundation is laid, then your shingles will be laid down.

Also discuss attic ventilation with your roofing contractor – without it, in the summer, your attic can get so hot that it actually bakes your shingles. And in the winter, the hot moist air heating your home can get trapped in your attic, soak and diminish the effectiveness of your insulation, and increase your energy bill.

Lastly, if you were ever thinking of getting skylights for your home, now is the best time to plan for them.

Many homeowners wait until their roof is leaking, there is major, visible damage or there is a complete catastrophe before replacing their roof. What these homeowners don’t realize is they are wasting money on their energy bills in the meantime. A new roof will increase the beauty of your home, cut your energy bills, and play a major role in your ability to sell your home at your asking price. Find out the condition of your roof before the winter weather sets in so that you can be aware of its condition and avoid the headaches that come when catastrophe pushes you into the emergency purchase of a new roof.

About The Author
Michael Clem is Operations Manager of Creative Energy of Richmond, Virginia, a home improvement expert in Central Virginia. A Certified Master Elite Roofer, the company is a Creative Energy Exteriors.

The Biggest Mistake American Homeowners Make

2006-11-05T19:06:00.000+08:00

The Biggest Mistake American Homeowners Make
by: Dale Adams

The biggest mistake that 90% of American homeowners make is putting a dark colored shingle on their roof. Scientific studies reveal that different color shingles absorb and reflect different amounts of heat. White shingles will conduct less and reflect more heat, whereas black shingles will contain and absorb the most heat.

Almost every consumer knows that black socks or dark shirts will absorb more heat versus lighter colors. Since most people realize this basic concept I have trouble comprehending why 90% of the buildings in our nation have dark colored roofs. Putting a black roof on your home or building is not the smartest thing you could do.

It is common knowledge that colors affect us differently. White colors elevate us while dark colors depress us. Every morning when I get up I pull the curtains and let the light shine in. I want to be happy and feel good. When I poke my head outside to see what’s going on in the world I like to see white color roofs versus their depressing counterparts. Are these dark colored roofs contributing to the epidemic of depression in our nation?

Roof heat transfer is the process of transferring the almost 200-degree roof temperatures into your attic. Attics can reach temperatures over 140 degrees. This heat creates moisture that falls to your attic floor on your insulation. This moisture causes your insulation to become less effective and this heat then sinks into your home. Insulation slows and prevents some of the heat transfer into your home but I can assure you it never stops this heat transfer. This heat then causes you’re A/C unit to work. The hotter your roof gets, the harder and longer your air conditioning unit needs to run. The more your air-conditioning unit runs, the shorter it’s lifespan becomes. Roof heat transfer is a term every American should become aware of.

A white roof will reflect 30% of solar heat gain versus a black roof. Some people claim that a dark roof is better in colder climates. Although I am still doing research in this area, I believe they could be wrong. I haven’t found any studies yet that prove this theory.

Something every American should realize is that yes we have a shortage of oil, but we have even less natural gas. Years ago when oil wells were drilled it was common for oil producers to find gushers. Gushers were caused by the pressure from natural gas that pushed the oil to the surface. There is normally more oil than natural gas in every case. If no natural gas exists, oil producers have to install pumps to suck the oil out. You rarely hear of any large deposits of oil and almost never hear about gushers. When you hear about the shortage of oil, this should alarm you when you consider natural gas and your electric bill.

Most of our electric plants run on natural gas. It will take decades to build alternative power plants. Environmentalist don’t want pollution causing coal plants built and most Americans are resistant to having a Chernobyl nuclear plant in their back yard. Since no other solutions are rapidly approaching, conservation is a necessity. We need to do everything we can to lower our consumption of electric power and natural gas.

Many people get very upset when the price of gasoline rises. Buildings use far more natural resources than our automobiles. If you conserve energy in your home it will have a direct effect on demand and prices for other petroleum products.

If you are the manager of a business that has buildings you are doing a great disservice to our nation and your company by installing a dark colored roof. Your job is to save your business money. The more money you make for your business, the more money you will make. Dark colored tar roofs are petroleum- based so you are contributing to our demand for foreign oil. It is not only unwise it is un-American.

If you are the Grand Pu Ba of a homeowner association that insists every home in the neighborhood has a dark colored roof to match, you need to alter your antiquated by-laws.

I like to think that environmentalist are leading the nation by example and informing others as well as themselves how to conserve our natural resources. They would gain a lot more credibility by doing so.

Anti-war protestors should realize the war revolves around oil. If you sincerely want this war to subside you should do your part to prevent our dependence on other nations. Chances are very high that WW III will arise over natural resources and the need of.

The lower gasoline prices are just temporary and will surely rise after the elections. People who believe they can complain and the government will force oil companies to lower prices are deluding themselves. The only way that could happen is if we threw out our present form of government and converted to a socialist country. We live in a capitalist society and supply and demand will dictate prices. Since there is an ever-increasing shortage of natural resources prices will continue to reach higher. Our only choice is to consume less and constantly search for alternative energy.

Conserving our natural resources is truly a matter of national security.

About The Author
Dale Adams of Majestic Publishers is the author and self publisher of the new book, “Care Giving Made Easy – How to be an Awesome Caregiver” and the soon to be released, “How to Make Your Home Sell - Even In A Slow Market” His many experiences include being a Security Consultant, General Contractor and Energy Conservation Specialist. To learn more valuable information visit: Majestic Publishers (close new window to get back to this page).

Humans living far beyond planet's means - WWF

2006-10-24T17:10:00.000+08:00

Here is a newspaper article about WWF's report that humans are living beyond the our only spaceship Earth" Humans living FAR beyond planet's means (close new window to get back to this page).

Here is a summary of what the article says:

Humans are stripping nature at a rate that will need 2 planets' worth (which we don't have) of natural resources every year by 2050 at current trends.

We are currently, (my own addition) in serious ecological overshoot, consuming resources faster than the Earth can replace them.

Everyone must change lifestyles like cutting down use of fossil fuels, improving management of farming, fisheries, etc.

In 2003, humans' demand on the planet's annual ability to provide everything from food to energy and recycle all human waste was exceeded by 25%. Obviously, if that is true, it is would be even more serious by now.

United Nation projections shows a surge to 9,000,000,000 people around 2050. What will happen then, I wonder. I just married off 2 daughters, and I am not looking forward to becoming a grandfather. But what can I say to them? Don't have children? What about their needs and desire? Who will look after them in their old age if they don't have children?

humans heat-trapping emissions are blamed for global warming, the fastest growing cause of strain.

Birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals populations had fallen 30% due to factors including loss of habitats to farms, plantations, etc.

What can we do to reverse such trends? Maybe I should put this question in Yahoo Answers and see what answers we will get? In fact, I will. Even better, if you have some idea, do put them down in the comments section.

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Environmentally Friendly Sleeping

2006-10-23T09:52:00.000+08:00

I live in a tropical country where the temperature many people find hot. I am also retired, so spend practically most of the time in the house, mainly on the computer. Many people in my country switch on fans, air conditioners, etc. to keep cool. Me, I just go around shirtless (but not bottomless), and I don't need a fan. Many people also sleep with the air conditioner on, and not only that, they have the temperature turned down so low they sleep covered with a blanket. I find it a sheer waste, waste extra electricity and contribute to CO2 emission and global warming. I have an air-conditioner in my bedroom. It came with the house I bought. For years, I have never used it. And sleeping? Me, I just sleep topless and I also don't need a fan. Do I qualify to use the nickname Enviroman on the Web?

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Environmentally friendly books

2006-10-17T22:14:00.000+08:00

Here is a publisher who is publishing environmentally friendly books - digital books. Do check them out at Gbooks. You may also join as an affliate for their programs, help your readers of your environmental sites to be more environmentally-friendly and help generate revenue for your environmental activities.

Even more environmentally friendly way to recycle paper

2006-10-17T13:39:00.000+08:00

In my country, there are collectors who cruise around housing estates to collect old newspapers for recycling, and even things like old car batteries, scrap metal. Previously, I used to only collect old newspapers and then pass it to them for which I get a small sum of money. Now rather than throwing away used envelopes, junk mail, company reports (I remove the staples first if they are stapled), used papers, etc. And the collectors do accept them. I do not know if I am even paid extra for it and I don't ask, but I doubt it. However, I have at least kept some stuff out of the dump sites.

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Save a billion £; a year for Britain

2006-09-19T12:59:00.000+08:00

British Gas has done something very unusual for a commercial company. It has started a campaign to encourage its customers to use less of its products, meaning less profits (but better for the environment). It says that for every 3£ Britain spend on heating and lighting at home, 1£ is immediately wasted. The British Gas engineers has calculated that 8 simple changes. they can save 50£ per household per year, and that translate to a billion £ annually, a reduction of 2.1 million tonnes of carbod dioxide and immense benefit to the environment.

The simple steps are as follows:

Step 1
Turning your thermostat down by 1 degree centigrade could save around £49 a year (based on a three bedroom semi-detached gas heated house).

Step 2
By turning your TV and all accessories attached to it off of standby, you could save around £46 a year.

Step 3
Put your washing on at 40 degrees, not 60, and save around £12.

Step 4
Switch 5 of your 60 watt bulbs to new energy saving bulbs. Based on 3 hours of usage a day, this will save around £33.

Step 5
Fill for just one cup rather than whole kettle and save around £30.

Step 6
Take your mobile phone charger out of the plug socket and save around £5.

Step 7
Only use the dishwasher when it's full, and save up to £15.

Step 8
If you have radiators against external walls, put silver foil behind them to reflect the heat back into the room and save around £15 (based on a three bedroom semi-detached gas heated.

Do these simple steps today and save energy, cut your bills and help save the environment.

Environmentally friendly travelling

2006-08-25T12:05:00.000+08:00

It is now very nice that one is able to travel to any part of the world in a short time by air. However, one should take into consideration the amount of carbon dioxide (a green house gas) one would contribute to the atmosphere. Here is a site that calculate for you your carbon dioxide contribution by just inputing one's origin and destination. Go to Climate Care. All you have to do is to pick your origin and destination from a drop-down menu, fill in the box for the number of passengers, tick the radio button for one-way or return and click "Calculate my emissions". On the same site, you can also calculate carbon dioxide emission from the house by inputing the amount of electricity, gas and heating oil you use. Another section allow you to calculate the carbon dioxide emission from the car by inputing the miles/kilometre travelled per year, the type of fuel (petrol, diesel or L.P.G.) amd the vehicle fuel economy. There are also sections on offsetting your carbon emission. Interesting site you should visit.

You can also educate yourself about environmentally responsible travelling by subscribing for their newsletter (digital version) at International Ecotourism Society.

You can search for environmentally friendly hotels at Have a Green Summer or join the discussions for environmentally responsible travelling at the Google group Green Travel.

Global warming: Even Inuit (Eskimo) have to install air conditioners

2006-08-07T10:14:00.000+08:00

Here are signs that global warming is real. Inuit people are better known for building igloos during hunts on the polar ice. With global warming speeding up, Inuit in the village of Kuujjuaq in Quebec, Canada, are installing 10 air conditioners for about 25 office workers. Temperatures in Kuujjuaq have hit 31 degree Celsius (88 degree Fahrenheit) in late July.

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Save gasoline, save money, save the environment

2006-08-05T11:32:00.000+08:00

Automobiles and the high gasoline prices causes 3 problems. It hits our pockets, causes pollution and contribute to the global warming problem. The average motor vehicle contributes 4 tons of pollution to the environment annually. 90% of the atmosphere carbon monoxide comes from motor vehicle. An average mid-sized motor vehicle emits annually 4.5 metric tons of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (U.S. Emits Nearly Half World's Automotive Carbon Dioxide).

What can we do to reduce these problems?

Avoid aggressive driving. It can save 5-33%
Drive under 60mph or 96km/hr. For every 5 mph over that cause 20¢ extra per gallon, or for every 9km/hr over that causes extra 5¢ per litre.

Remove excess weight. Every extra 100lb or 50kg causes fuel efficiency to drop 2%
Avoid excess idling whenever possible

On the highway, use cruise control or try to maintain a constant speed. This will save fuel

Use overdrive gear whenever possible as it reduces engine speed, saving fuel as well as reducing wear and tear

Keep your engine properly tuned. It will save you 4% in fuel

Change your air filter regularly. It can save you up to 10%

Check tyre pressure regularly and inflated to vehicle specifications. It can save you up to 3%

Use recommended grade of motor oil. It can save you 1-2%

Source: High Fuel Prices Killing Families, Vehicle Emissions Killing the Environment

Enviroman says: "I think, therefore I.....

2006-06-02T12:50:00.000+08:00

Rene Descartes is a famous French philosopher, mathematician and scientist. Rene Descartes most famous philosophical saying is Cogito ergo sum or I think, therefore I am. Enviroman turn this statement into a plea for the environment I think, therefore I reduce, reuse and recycle.

This environmental cartoon is drawn by Foo Song Pe. . You are free to use this graphic to promote environmental activities, but a link back to this site will be highly appreciated.

You are free to use the cartoon for your Website or your blog by right-clicking on the cartoon, select "save image as" into your computer harddisk, then upload it to your Website or blog. A link back to this post or blog will be highly appreciated, though not compulsory. If yours is a Blogger blog, a better idea will be to copy the HTML for the cartoon below and paste it into your post. Then you will not be using up your quota for the memory for your blog, and thus conservere your Blogger limit. To copy the HTML, highlight all the codes, then right-click and select save to save it to clipboard. Then paste it into the relevant part of your post.

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Gas Prices

2006-05-14T06:50:00.000+08:00

Gas prices are going up everyday. Rather than wasting petrol going round looking for the gas station with the lowest gas price, check for the lowest price on the Internet. Just enter your Zip code and it will tell you the lowest price and the highest price in your area. Check out MSN Auto Local Gas Prices.

What to do when smog and pollen are high

2006-03-30T15:06:00.000+08:00

Dr. Chang suggests the following Top Tips when smog and pollen are high:

1. Go Online: Check out your provincial online resource for air quality forecasting.
2. Avoid Outdoor Activity: Consider teleconferencing; close windows at home and in the car; leave lawn and garden care to others; and/or join a gym.
3. Block Smog and Allergens: Treat your symptoms with a second-generation antihistamine. Cetirizine (the medicinal ingredient in Non-Drowsy Reactine) was found to work faster (0.5 hours versus two hours) and last longer than desloratadine (the medicinal ingredient found in Aerius, an evolution of Claritin), showcasing the difference at shelf between treatment options3. Further, Reactine has the longest safety record (15 years) among second-generation antihistamines.
4. Slash Smog: Help reduce smog/pollution by conserving electricity, not allowing cars to idle, avoiding mowing lawns when the Air Quality Index is poor, and not using oil-based products where possible. Further, limit the amount of wood burned in fireplaces or woodstoves.

Source: "Smollen" season has arrived.

Into Thin Air: The Problem of Air Pollution

Air Pollution: Its Origin and Control

Manufacturing gasoline from cowdung

2006-03-08T14:49:00.000+08:00

Sakae Shibusawa, an agriculture engineering professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and his team claim that they have successully extracted a half ounce of gasoline from every 3.5 ounces of cow dung. They were helped by staff from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. They did this by applying a 30-atmosphere pressure and temperature of 572 degree Fahrenheit to the cow dung in the presence of unspecified catalysts.

The team hopes to improve the technology further so that it can be used commercially within 5 years.

From Corn Waste To Bio-fuel : An article from: E : the Environmental Magazine [HTML] (Digital)

Methane from Community Wastes (Elsevier Applied Biotechnology Series)

Turning Garbage into Oil

2006-03-08T10:57:00.000+08:00

Brian Appel and Changing World Technologies have developed a system that can convert any organic waste (municipal garbage, used tires, plastic wastes, offal, oil refinery residues, etc.) into a high quality gasoline, clean burning gas and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers or specialty chemicals. It does this by doing the same thing as mother earth, that is, using intense heat and pressure, but in hours.

They have just completed the first industrial-size installation. The experimental factory takes turkey parts mixed with leftover restaurant grease and water and runs the smelly mixture through grinders, boilers and separation tanks. Along the way, the mixture is heated up twice - to about 500 and 1,000 degrees respectively and subjected to intense pressure 50 times normal atmospheric pressure. Every ton of turkey slop that goes in results in 640 pounds of clean burning oils that are sold as fuels, 100 pounds of methane, buthane and propane gas that are burned on site to generate the electricity that power the process, and 60 pounds of solid minerals that are sold as fertilizer. The only waste that is left behind is distilled water, plus there are no smokestacks belching pollution-laden smoke, no discharge pipes spewing wastewater, and enough electricity is generated to power itself without using any additional energy.

"This system will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock," says Appel. "If a 175 pound man fell in at one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, 7 pouns of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water."

Biodiesel: Growing A New Energy Economy

21st Century Essential Guide to Methane and Biogas: Landfill Methane and Manure for Energy, AgStar Program, Recovery and Mitigation, Greenhouse Gas Emissions ... Biofuels, Bioenergy, and Biobased Products (CD-ROM)

Einstein says the world needs a new economic model

2005-10-28T09:27:00.000+08:00

Let's hope the world listen to "Einstein". See also post below "World needs a new economic model".

World needs a new economic model

2005-10-20T12:34:00.000+08:00

China's economy is growing at breakneck pace, and according to a report on the country by Greenpeace, is threatening not only a national, but a global ecological disaster. Greenpeace report only confirm what Enviroman has feared all along.

It does not need much intelligence to be able to visualise the environmental horror that will ensure if every Chinese enjoy a living standard comparable to the Americans. If China consumes oil at the same rate as the US, they will be consuming 99 million barrels a day while the whole world is currently producing only 84 million barrels a day. If it consume paper at the same rate, it will consume twice as much paper as the whole world is producing. Same car ownership rate will mean a fleet of 1.1 billion cars compared with the world current fleet of 800 million. The world will soon run up against the limits of earth's natural resources, if we are not already there yet.

China is only trying to achieve what the West is already enjoying now, and has been for decades. So what do we tell the Chinese (and also the rest of the world)? Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington has put it very well. He said: "we're going to have to develop a new economic model. Instead of a fossil-fuel based, automobile-centred, throw-away economy we will have to have a renewable-energy based, diversified transport system, and comprehensive reuse and recycle economies. If we want civilisation to survive, we will have to have that. Otherwise civilisation will collapse"

Enviroman asks: "Will the world listen?"

China's voracious growth threatens environment: Greenpeace

The China Crisis: Spectacular Growth Now Biggest Threat To Environment

China Crisis: threat to the global environment

LEARNING FROM CHINA. Why the Western Economic Model Will not Work for the World.

No more white Christmas?

2005-10-19T12:42:00.000+08:00

Noah Diffenbaugh, an atmospheric scientist at Purdue University says: "Summer is likely to be more severely hot everywhere in the U.S. In the Southwest, if you imagine the hottest two and a half weeks of the year, you're looking at that becoming three months long. Phoenix [Arizona] will get three months of what is now the hottest two weeks of the year. Winter weather could be affected as well. You're looking at the coldest couple of weeks of the year not existing anymore in lot of places. Certainly winter as we know it likely will disappear in the Northeast."

These are his conclusions as a results of a study together with researchers at Purdue and the Abdus Salarn International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. The study was conducted with computer simulations using climate data and projections of greenhouse gas levels.

Higher temperatures has more dangerous consequences than just missing white Christmas. It can lead to unpredictable weather, drought in some places, floods in others, sea level will rise, some low lying islands will disappear from the surface of the earth, disease-carrying mosquitos will expand their range, some species will be pushed to extinction. According to many experts, some of these effects has already begun.

Enviroman says: "time to take climatic changes and global warming seriously."

What is Enviroman doing about it? For one, he is taking public transport whenever possible. See Enviroman on Transport.

What is Simon Oosterman doing about it? He and his gang went many steps further. They cycled NAKED!. See World Naked Bike Ride

No Winter by 2105? New Study Offers Grim Forecast for U.S.

Support Enviroman and support yourself, your children, your grandchildren.....

2005-10-19T11:43:00.000+08:00

Spaceship Earth is in a sorry state, but many apparently are not aware of it, or if they are, they don't care. Enviroman is on an environmental awareness campaign via this blog and other blogs:

Envirocard
Zero Waste
Zero Energy Input Waterwheel Aerator

To increase readership, Enviroman is participating in blog traffic and traffic exchanges, and it is successful as readership has increased. However, it is tedious work, and Enviroman has created another blog to try to drum up some support:

Support Enviroman

We hope you will lend your support too.

Les Degonfles on the warpath

2005-10-11T04:33:00.000+08:00

Enviroman says: "Hip, hip, hurray." Enviroman is of the opinion that for best results, one should use things for purposes which they were designed for. And four-wheel-drives were definately not designed for town use and guzzle precious petrol unnecessarily.

A group of about 20 people who called themself Les Degonfles (The Deflated) has declared war on SUVs (Sports Utility Vehicles) in Paris, saying they belong to the countrysides and have no place in Paris. Under cover of darkness, Sous-Adjudant Marrant (Sub-Warrant Officer Joker) and his troops deflate tires without damaging them, smear doors with mud and paste handbills on windshields proclaiming that the vehicles are dangerous, polluting behemoths that do not belong in the city.

Marrant said: "We use mud to say that if the owners will not take the four-wheel-drives to the countryside, we will bring the countryside to the four-wheel-drives."

Marrant and his activists plan to take his anti-SUV operations on Saturday, this time in daylight, to France, Britain, Canada and Australia. He is also writing a children's song as an anthem for the cause and hopes to record a dance-mix version before Saturday.

SUV Drivers in Paris Get Wind Knocked Out of Them

http://degonfle.blogg.org

Still more good tidings

2005-10-11T01:58:00.000+08:00

Well, it looked like Enviroman's nomination of Malaysia's Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as the Environmentally-friendly Prime Minister is justified. See The Environmentally Friendly Prime Minister, Good Tidings and More Good Tidings.

The administration (City Hall) of the Prime Minister has recommended to the Cabinet that Bukit Kiara, a green lung in Kuala Lumpur is not suitable for the development of a proposed broadcasting centre and sources said that most likely the Cabinet will be in favour of preserving the green lung following City Hall's recommendations. City Hall concurred with the rationale of the Friends of Bukit Kiara (FoBK) pro-tem commitee that the green lung be protected. FoBK chairman Liew Khooi Cheng told the Malay Mail that nothing was more satisfactory than getting to keep the green lung. Now it remain to see what the Cabinet will do.