Posted on 01 June 2010 by Sustainability Digest
Though they may look like forests at first glance, palm oil plantations often have far lower biodiversity and store far less carbon than the genuine forests they replace. Photo: Achmad Rabin Taim via flickr.
One more story making the rounds last week that you may have missed in the midst of all the continued oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, but is worthwhile paying attention to: The top line is that the UN REDD program got $4 billion in funding, with $1 billion coming from Norway and going to Indonesia to h…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Posted on 11 May 2010 by Sustainability Digest
Photo: Public domain.
Scandinavian Invasion
Think Global (aka THINK, TH!NK, Th!nk, etc) has just completed a $40 million equity increase to invest into product R&D and expansion into North-America. The Norwegian company expects to become cash-flow positive in 2011. That’s good news, because the last time we wrote about THINK, they were on the verge of bankruptcy and even <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/think-city-e…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Related Blogs
Posted on 04 April 2010 by Sustainability Digest
Photo via cretananimalwelfare
The government of Norway announced on April 1st, perhaps hoping the unseemly news would be lost amid the fictitious headlines of the day, that the country’s whale hunting quota would be raised to the highest level in 25 years: 1286 whales can be killed this season. The announcement has some animal protection gr…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Posted on 21 February 2010 by Sustainability Digest
Posted on 20 January 2010 by Sustainability Digest
Image: Virgin Vacations
According to a list by Virgin Vacations, who suggest they relied on a methodology developed by the League of American Bicyclists (LAB), known as The Bicycle Friendly Communities Campaign, which uses five criteria (engineering, encouragement, education, enforcement, plus evaluation and planning) to identify cities that actively support bicycling.
Three of the top five from the eleven cities are in the USA, which at first glance might seem a little odd, but they are the only three American cities to have earned Platinum status from the LAB as US Bicycle Friendly Communities….Read the full story on TreeHugger
Posted on 19 January 2010 by Sustainability Digest
A gaggle of baby strollers in suburban Iceland.
Scandinavia, as much of the East Coast and Northern Europe, has experienced an especially cold and snow-filled winter. Yet chilly temperatures and massive snow won’t stop Scandinavian and Icelandic moms from their age-old practice of parking baby prams outside in all weathers…and leaving the babies napping. It’s sort of the turn-down-the-thermostat, slip-on-another-sweater theory, applied to unsuspecting tots. What do these moms know that the rest of us might learn and put in practice?…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Posted on 06 January 2010 by Sustainability Digest
Image: Eirikso
Here is your zen moment for the day. Pour yourself a cup of tea, relax, sit back and enjoy a year of seasons captured by Eirik Solheim and edited into a time lapse video which captures the pure beauty of nature’s changes over the course of 2009. Eirik’s 2008 video met with great success, with close to two million views on YouTube. For 2009, he has introduced a new twist….Read the full story on TreeHugger
Posted on 09 December 2009 by Sustainability Digest
Images via Various Architects
Have I mentioned that I love wood construction? That it sequesters carbon for the life of the building, is lightweight and gorgeous to look at? Now Various Architects (that’s their name, not a group) are proposing the most sustainable office building in Norway. Among other attributes, it is built of and clad in wood. At Archdaily they write:
“A structural system of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panel walls and floors was chosen for being locally sourced with a h…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Posted on 29 November 2009 by Sustainability Digest
From the troubling news that 9,400 sewers across the U.S. have illegally dumped untreated human waste, hazardous chemicals, and other dangerous materials into clean rivers and lakes over the past three years, to the news that Charles Diaz, who shot a cyclist in the head, was sentenced to 120 days, a lot happened this week in green. The results of a genetic research project found that more than half of tuna ordered from 31 restaurants were “misrepresented” or selling endangered southern bluefin tuna, the world’s first osmotic power plant opened in Norway, and readers sent in photos of their favorite antiques and heirlooms for our weekly…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Posted on 24 November 2009 by Sustainability Digest
all images: Statkraft
If you haven’t heard of osmotic power, you’re very much forgiven. Though Norway’s Statkraft has been researching the technology — which generates power by exploiting the hydrostatic pressure created when fresh water passes through a special membrane into salt water — since 1997, only now has the world’s first osmotic power plant prototype been opened: …Read the full story on TreeHugger
