Daily Archives: January 23, 2009

Image credit: Flickr/jbcurio

If there’s one thing an eco-savvy shopper knows—it’s that post-holiday, mid-season quiet periods are the perfect time for scoring the hottest deals on otherwise high-priced items. And for those of us experiencing winter weather at its most brutal, it’s a good time to take stock of what you have, don’t have and need.

Whether you’ve shivered your way throughout winter without one warm, decent sweater or skidded over sidewalks without snow-appropriate boots, here are

Photo of a Swedish train by hgaronfolo1984 @ flickr.

Leisure travel is a Swedish pastime almost as integrated into the culture as filmjölk (sour cultured milk), Swedish meatballs, and moose hunting. Swedes know their international travel habits generate a lot of carbon dioxide emissions, yet they are loathe to give up the ability to escape the gray Swedish winters. The bad economy has caused some charter companies to cancel lots of trips, but charter train trips are expanind. Unfortunately, one of the most popula

Internet Energy Efficiency
At first glance, someone looking at the numbers for the energy consumption of the Internet might say: “The Internet was using 2x more power in 2006 than in 2000! That’s terrible!” But the whole picture looks more like: “Between 2000 and 2006, Internet traffic increased by 3.2 million times yet energy consumption only doubled!”

Read on for more details

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Lithium pellets covered in white lithium hydroxide. Public domain.

O Lithium, Where Art Thou?
Lithium is a soft alkali metal with a silver-white color, it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element. Most treehuggers and electronics-geeks will be familiar with it as one of the key chemical components of lithium-ion batteries, using in portable electronics and the most recent generation of electric vehicles.

But what happens when demand for it increases because of electric cars? Could we run out of the stuff? Could it become prohibi

Unsold Cars, Closing Manufacturing Plants, Etc.
We all knew that people were buying fewer cars these days – and Detroit’s problems, and bailout, made lots of headlines – but this situation is global. Will it be enough to drive down worldwide oil consumption significantly? Will new, more fuel-efficient cars be on the market by the time people start buying again?

The building industry is not just in the sewer, it has gone a lot lower than that. So when they planned the New American Home for the International Builders Show in Las Vegas, they could have done something appropriate for the times, perhaps a Katrina cottage like the one that blew everyone away at the IBS three years ago, or maybe a Clayton I-home, or perhaps a model jail for all the creeps who skipped out on their workers’ comp bills.

But no, they are goin

Green jobs rally in Vancouver, Canada. Photo: Green Jobs Now

The Sierra Club is a regular guest poster here at TreeHugger, mostly recently writing about the Dark Days For King Coal, and on how you can get in on green volunteer activities. Well, over at Yale Environment 360, Sierra Club executive director Carl P

Dallas Hansen writes in the National Post that unlike every other President since Manhattan lawyer Chester Arthur, Barack Obama gets cities.

Incredibly, for the first time in 127 years, we have a president whose primary residence sits where he can walk just minutes to shop for groceries, dine at dozens of restaurants, visit a museum or take a dance lesson. Unless he’s leaving the neighbourhood, Obama can leave his Ford Explorer Hybrid parked at home. Or he can get downtown in minutes via the 6 Jackson Park Express or by hopping on the Metra commuter train. At least he could’ve until the mandatory motorcades.

It was a big week for renewable energy in Mexico. Yesterday we reported that Wal-Mart Mexico has just installed a 174 KW solar array on the roof of one of its stores in the northern city of Aguascalientes. Thursday also brought the launch of one of the world’s biggest wind farms in the southern state of Oaxaca by the Mexican building materials multinational company CEMEX. The move is a step in the right direction by the global cement industry, which contributes about 5 percent of the planet’s total CO2 emissions

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We do go on about how a key to frugal green living is to pack your own lunch; on Planet green it is an obsession. But sometimes a lukewarm lunch is just so

.lukewarm. Trust the Japanese to come up with a USB-heated lunch bag for your Bento! As the Google translation so aptly puts it:

Fun fun time for your lunch, dinner is cold but we do not. Lunch not only beloved wife, can heat up your lunch bought at convenience stores.