Image: Hyougushi via flickr
You'd think the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would have established limits on things like arsenic and heavy metals in our food supply by now. There are limits for certain specified foods, but most items fall through the cracks—including popular, kid-friendly beverages like apple juice. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Image credit: RAFI USA
Given the environmental and social impacts of smoking, most TreeHuggers are not huge fans of tobacco. (Cheap, biodegradable solar grown from tobacco still seems a ways off.) But what to do with all that land that was once used for growing tobacco, and what about the communities who depended on it? An enterprising community of farmers is busy finding alternatives and&mdash...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Photo: Flickr, CC
Bill Clinton wrote a short piece about what he thinks is the "best way to jump start job creation". His answer? Painting roofs white.
"Look at the tar roofs covering millions of American buildings. They absorb huge amounts of heat when it's hot. And they require more air conditioning to cool the rooms. [...] Every black roof in New York should be white; every roof in Chicago should be white; every roof in Little Rock should be white. Every flat tar...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Photo: Toyota
Big Deal for Electric Wheels
Tesla Motors is now a public company (which means it's traded on a stock exchange), so when something 'material' happens, something important enough to effect the fortunes of the company, the shareholders must be informed in a publicly-available filing with the SEC. well, if you look at this chart, you'll see that something pretty important seems to have happened...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Everyone knows that things are heating up around the world in a big way -- we hear all the time how temperature records are being broken left and right. (And people still manage to somehow disavow climate change's role) But it's important to pay attention to the kinds of records that are being broken, as Grist's Christopher Mims points out -- and he notes that when we see recording shattering nighttime temps (the minimum temp recorded in Oman last night was 107 degrees), we've got a special reas...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Twenty-plus people have died from the extreme heat that's been gripping half of the United States for the past several days. But humans aren't the only ones dropping dead: The Mitchell, South Dakota Daily Republic reports that at least 1,500 cattle have died due to heat exhaustion in the current heatwave. And those are just those which have been reported to the office of the State Veterinarian....Read the full story on TreeHugger
Photo credit: Napalm filled tires via Flickr/CC BY-SA
I love this story, published over on the right-wing pollster Rasmussen's editorial page. In it, a self-professed environmentalist confesses that he has been hoarding incandescent bulbs for months, in anticipation of the "light bulb ban" -- before realizing the error, and utter ridiculousness, of his doing so....Read the full story on TreeHugger
A New Area for Product Service Systems?
My sister is pregnant, so I've been hearing a little bit more than usual about baby clothes lately. Everybody seems to agree that 1) they're expensive and 2) they don't get much use, because they don't fit for very long. The most common - and green - solution to that problem is to get second-hand clothes from family, friends, or classified ads. But thanks to our increasingly online world, you can add to that list Plum, a company that bills itself as the "Netflix of baby clothes". Read on for more details......Read the full story on TreeHugger
Photo credit: eutrophication&hypoxia/Creative Commons
When I talk about the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, I can't help feeling inspired and a sense of pride and optimism. We've come so far since the campaign started back in 2002 - even in just the past few years. While we racked up successes along the road, I remember talking to one of my favorite Sierra Club activis...Read the full story on TreeHugger
A spherical robot equipped with a camera may navigate underground pipes of a nuclear reactor by propelling itself with an internal network of valves and pumps. Image: Harry Asada/d'Arbeloff Laboratory
According to a recent study released in June, about 75% of the US's nuclear reactors have sprung a leak in the past, often with a result of contaminating groundwater. The little ball pictured above could be one of many let loose in underground pipes at nuclear r...Read the full story on TreeHugger
photo: Oxfam East Africa/Creative Commons
With half of the United States under heat advisories, 22 people dead (and counting) from the extreme weather, the Horn of Africa experiencing the strongest drought in over half a century and famine conditions across parts of Somalia, how many more times can we comfortably repeat the mantra "though no single weather event can be linked directly to climate change, these sort of events are consistent with what climate models pr...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Photo: Peter Blanchard, Flickr/CC BY-SA
All hail the rise of super-weeds! Sure, we've already thanked Monsanto for helping a tenacious, fast-growing, brand new kind of plant evolve. But the latest revelations from a study published in Weed Scien...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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"Junk Food" by Option-G
Today is National Junk Food Day and that comes with a lot of negative connotations. Junk food is associated with childhood obesity and is a well-known provider of empty calories. However, a healthy lifestyle doesn't leave you without a way to celebrate National Read the full story on TreeHugger
Image credit: lukelukeluke, used under Creative Commons license.
Lloyd once famously declared that recycling is bullsh*t. But this was more to make the case for waste reduction and reuse, than to argue against recycling as a better alternative to throwing stuff away. The fact is that recycling has huge benefits for the environment—and that lesson can be learned through some surprising examples. T...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Image via YouTube Video
MIT's SENSEable City Lab has come up with the Backtalk project to find out more about what happens to gadgets when consumers are done with them. They've turned their research into art, and it is now on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But you can get a peek at the project -- and at the crazy mapping of old gadgets -- in this video. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Photo credit: Señor Codo via Fotopedia/CC BY-SA 3.0
Quick -- name the "most toxic" state in the U.S. Any guesses? Here's a clue: the largest source of toxic air pollution in the nation is our fleet of coal-fired power plants. But we've got hundreds of those suckers around the country, and their emissions can travel hundreds of miles. So the more power plants you've got in or around your state, the more toxic it's likely to be. Well, the NRDC has determined wh...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Photo by soggydan via Flickr CC
Yesterday the Obama administration announced a federal strategy for boosting recycling rates of electronics in the US, helping to get control over the flow of e-waste and boost jobs. It's a long-overdue move, however, some watchdog groups believe it is still too little to make a real difference....Read the full story on TreeHugger
images: NASA
File this one in the recent weather weirding category: NASA has released a satellite photo (h/t Mongabay) showing the Atacama desert in South America getting hit with a snow storm that has dumped up to 32" of snow across parts of it--the biggest snow storm to hit the region in half a century.
Full image below:...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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