The "GREEN" thread

I used to buy almost everything at Wholefoods (except my produce and fruit that I get delivered to my door from my organic coop).
I think I'll go back to vitamin cottage to be safe.

If You Eat Organic Food, Have You Just Been Betrayed?

articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/arch...rganic-movement.aspx

Here's a bit of good news: Traditional wisdom has held that organic farming is
nice...but isn't efficient enough to feed the world's population. But
this new study shows that ecological agriculture is *more* efficient
than chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-ga...n-double-food-output

Site may Interest you....

http://www.cgfi.org/

interesting site TPP, thanks for sharing!

Welcome, I like it, too.

Going to post this twice Science & Green:
Pepsi Unveils Eco-Friendly Bottles Published March 15, 2011|Associated Press



PepsiCo Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a bottle made entirely of plant material, which it says bests the technology of competitor Coca-Cola and reduces its potential carbon footprint.

The bottle is made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and other materials. Ultimately, Pepsi plans to also use orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other leftovers from its food business.

The new bottle looks, feels and protects the drink inside exactly the same as its current bottles, said Rocco Papalia, senior vice president of advanced research at PepsiCo. "It's indistinguishable."

PepsiCo says it is the world's first bottle of a common type of plastic called PET made entirely of plant-based materials. Coca-Cola Co. currently produces a bottle using 30 percent plant-based materials and recently estimated it would be several years before it has a 100 percent plant bottle that's commercially viable.

"We've cracked the code," said Papalia.

The discovery potentially changes the industry standard for plastic packaging. Traditional plastic, called PET, is used in beverage bottles, food pouches, coatings and other common products.

The plastic is the go-to because it's lightweight and shatter-resistant, its safety is well-researched and it doesn't affect flavors. It is not biodegradable or compostable. But it is fully recyclable, a characteristic both companies maintain in their new creations.

Traditional PET plastic is made using fossil fuels, like petroleum, a limited resource that's rising in price. By using plant material instead, companies reduce their environmental impact. Pepsi says the new plastic will cost about the same as traditional plastic.

PepsiCo plans to test the product in 2012 in a few hundred thousand bottles. Once the company is sure it can successfully produce the bottle at that scale, it will begin converting all its products over.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/15/pepsi-unveils-eco-friendly-bottles/

Science: A Way for Guinness to Go ‘Green’ March 16, 2011 7:45 P.M. By Greg Pollowitz
I wonder how many cans of Guinness I have to drink tomorrow to lower my carbon footprint.
As St. Patrick’s Day draws near, many of you may be anticipating a nice chilled glass of Guinness, complete with a creamy foam head. But if you’re not propping up a bar in Ireland, and are instead pouring your beer out of a can at home, that long-lasting head can only be produced with the help of a plastic widget.
Simply pouring a carbonated beer, such as a lager, from the can into a glass is enough to generate a head. But this is not the case for stouts, which are infused with nitrogen bubbles, rather than carbon dioxide, in order to create their uniquely smooth texture. The small plastic widgets in each can of stout contain pressurized nitrogen, which is released once the can is opened, triggering some of the dissolved nitrogen in the beer to bubble up into a head.
Using applied mathematics, including the ideal gas equation and a fourth-order Runge-Kutta(1)scheme with a time step of 10-3, however, a team from the University of Limerick in Ireland recently discovered(2)that microscopic plant fibers made of cellulose, such as cotton, can also froth up a stout.
In a paper publishing their findings(3)earlier this month, the Limerick mathematicians conclude:
A typical pouring time for a stout beer is 30 seconds. In this time about 108 post critical nuclei must be released. A single fibre produces one bubble every 1.28 seconds. Therefore about 4.3 × 106 fibres are needed. If each fibre occupies a surface of area λ2 then the total area that must be occupied by fibres is 8.3 × 10-4 m2.
Or, in plain English, embedding a 1 inch square of food-safe biodegradable cellulose fibers in a Guinness can would produce a perfect creamy head, doing away with the need for plastic widgets altogether. And although the technology is a long away from the shelves yet, removing plastic from our food chain is certainly something to drink to.
The rest here(4).

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runge%E2%80%93Kutta_methods
(2) http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110308/full/news.2011.140.html
(3) http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.0508 (4) http://www.good.is/post/new-technology-creates-a-more-eco-friendly-head-on-your-guinness/
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore

Will you participate? I am!

Earth Hour 2011 Official video
[youtube:2812g910][/youtube:2812g910]
This Earth Hour 2011: 8.30pm, Saturday 26 March, celebrate your action for the planet with the people of world, and add more to your Earth Hour. From its inception as a single-city initiative -- Sydney, Australia - in 2007, Earth Hour has grown into a global symbol of hope and movement for change....

Garden As If Your Life Depended On It, Because It Does

Under the influence and auspices of the prevailing economy, most Americans have forgotten how to provide for themselves. We've become accustomed to earning money with which we buy provisions. That process is about to have the legs kicked out from under it.

Why Is Gardening So Important Now?

There are at least five reasons why more of us should take up spade, rake and hoe, make compost and raise good soil and garden beds with a vengeance, starting this spring and with an eye toward forever.

Read more here: www.alternet.org/food/150428/garden_as_i...it,_because_it_does/

All you Greenies, remember R,R,R... Start buliding... if he can... so can you...

Homeless man builds his own car — out of junk
With no mechanical training, he scrounges together the 'shrimpmobile'