Non Toxic Vision

What to eat? by Marion Nestle

This is what you find me reading in the NY subway these days. This is probably one of the most educational and at the same time interesting books I have read in a long time that I really really like. Marion Nestle also entertains her own blog: foodpolitics.com which looks amazing and covers any topic you ever wanted to ask about food and any food related question.

Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health (the department she chaired from 1988-2003) and Professor of Sociology at New York University. Her degrees include a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition, both from the University of California, Berkeley. She also is the author of six books.

Climate Dress by DIFFUS

The Climate Dress is made of conductive embroidery, over hundred of tiny LED lights inserted into the embroidery, a CO2 sensor and an Arduino Lilypad microprocessor. The LEDs visualize the level of CO2 in the nearby surroundings and are powered trough the embroidery!

For The Climate Dress soft conductive thread is used that has a similar consistence to the kind of thread used for traditional and industrial embroidery production. This way it is possible to make embroidery that become more than an aesthetic element in clothing and interior textiles.

The embroidery becomes functional conveying electricity and computer information and thereby give "power to the dress". The dress senses the CO2 concentration in the air, then accordingly creates diverse light patterns varying from slow, regular light pulsations to short and hectic. The technology, which integrates ”soft circuits” into the production of embroidery, is an innovative process. It is the result of a fruitful collaboration between Copenhagen based design studio diffus, Swiss embroidery company Forster-Rohner, the Danish research-based limited company Alexandra Institute and finally the Danish School of Design.

More information on the Climate Dress

Executive bonuses tied to green targets

I found this article by Richard Milne and Michael Steen (in Amsterdam) in today's Financial Times:

..."Two Dutch companies have proposed linking top manager's pay to broad measures of environmental sustainability and worker and customer satisfaction, giving a novel twist to the debate on how to reward executive performance. DSM, the Dutch life sciences group, will today announce that half the bonuses for its management board will be tied to targets such as the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, the introduction of new environmentally-friendly products, and improvements in workforce morale. Earlier this week, TNT, the Dutch mail operator, unveiled similar plans that also included customer satisfaction.

Feike Sijbesma, DSM's CEO, said the company would focus on what he called "the triple bottom line: people, profits, planet"...

To read the entire article go to www.ft.com

Tuscan town turns against Chinese immigrants

On February 10, 2010 I found this article in the Financial Times: Tuscan town turns against Chinese immigrants, which caught my immediate attention. 

It seems when it was convenient Chinese immigrants were tolerated in Prato, Italy. Now that the economic environment changed the attitude changed with it. My question however is: Does it make any difference anymore where your products are made? For quite some time now I have tried to avoid buying goods made in China, Taiwan, India, Bangladesh, Romania etc. to ensure I am limiting my purchases made in sweatshops. So now these goods are "Made in Italy", which I have always considered OK - until now that is.

Now I would like to see a different kind of label: Made in an "exploitation free environment" - then I don't care so much where it is made.

Any thoughts?

Drilling in the Marcellus Shale

I found the newsletter sent out by MUG ManhattanUsersGuide incredibly informative and thought you might enjoy it as well.:

Halliburton again.

Your drinking water is protected by the EPA's Safe Drinking Water Act, except when it's not. The Halliburton Loophole, as it is known, was passed by Congress in 2005, an exemption that literally and figuratively undermines the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Why the loophole? Fracking.

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is a method in which water (huge amounts are needed), plus sand, plus chemicals are high-pressured into tightly packed shale. That causes the rocks to fracture, allowing for extraction of oil and gases otherwise trapped. You with us so far?

The technology to do this extraction has improved in recent years so that companies like Halliburton are suddenly chomping at the drill bit to frack the shale bounty. These companies lobbied Congress for the right to frack freely, without the regulatory oversight of the Safe Drinking Water Act interfering with their bottom line. Congress granted this drill-baby-drill exemption four years ago.

Without careful monitoring, however, and some say even with it, the environmental impact of this kind of drilling can be disastrous. Among the consequences: contaminated drinking water from the hydrofracking fluid runoff.

One example. As Abrahm Lustgarten at ProPublica has reported, water near the gas-rich, recently fracked fields in Wyoming's Sublette Country was analyzed this past summer. Lustgarten reports that the water contained benzene, "a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people."

The Marcellus Shale is a rock formation of black shale that covers 54,000 square miles across four states: Ohio, West Viriginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Marcellus has lots of natural gas, ready for the fracking, and, indeed, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, they're already drilling – and spilling. Drilling will begin in New York if the state's Department of Environmental Conservation gives the go-ahead, after their environmental impact review ends next month.

When you cut through the noise, the results seem clear. If Halliburton and friends are allowed to frack the million acres of Marcellus in the NYC watershed without proper regulation, it will just be a matter of time, and not a lot of it, before our drinking water becomes toxic.

Here's what you can do.

Learn more by reading this overview from the Natural Resources Defense Council (PDF).

Submit your comments to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Urge Congress to close the Halliburton Loophole.

Support Riverkeeper.

So why did we wait so long??

So we know the effects of Global Warming since 52 years. How does that make you feel?

Best in Snow

This amazing house is located in Lech, Austria.

All of the timber for the frame and cladding was sourced from sustainably managed forests.

On the roof, solar panels are installed, which are cleared of snow during the winter so that they can function year-round. “The house holds heat very well,” the houses owner says. In the summer, excess heat is mitigated through natural cross-ventilation. The shutters that protect the windows from damage double as sun shades, and some rooms of the house have additional internal blinds.

“Most of the new houses in the region address sustainability,” says Dietrich, the project's architect. “In Marcell’s case it was particularly important because of the climate in Lech, where there are long winters with cold temperatures. The house had to cope with the climate while using as little energy as possible.”

This is a take from an article I found in Dwell Magazine: Best in Snow

Bringing Electric Vehicles to NYC

The Road to Widespread Adoption of Electric Vehicles is a discussion of the use of these cars in NYC, considering such things as recharging stations and electric grid capacity. It takes place Thursday, February 11th, 6-8pm, at the NY Academy of Sciences.

This event info was sent to my by MUG - ManhattanUsersGuide.

El Anatsui - an artists profile

 
El Anatsui was born 1944 in Ghana - the youngest of his father's 32 children. 

When I entered last year's Armory Show in New York City I was welcomed by this huge wall-hugging art installation. Upon further inspection I realized I looked at flattened bottle caps.

I found this great description on www.nmafa.si.edu: "...Throughout his career Ghanaian artist El Anatsui has experimented with a variety of media, including wood, ceramics and paint. Most recently, he has focused on discarded metal objects, hundreds or even thousands of which are joined together to create truly remarkable works of art. Anatsui indicates that the word gawu (derived from Ewe, his native language) has several potential meanings, including "metal" and "a fashioned cloak." The term, therefore, manages to encapsulate the medium, process and format of the works on view, reflecting the artist's transformation of discarded materials into objects of striking beauty and originality.

The metal fragments that constitute the raw material of Anatsui's work have had a profound impact on the West African societies that use, reuse and finally discard them. Several of his metal "cloths" are constructed with aluminum wrappings from the tops of bottles that once contained spirits from local distilleries. The three-dimensional sculptures are made of the discarded tops of evaporated milk tins, rusty metal graters and old printing plates, all gathered in and around Nsukka, Nigeria, where the artist has lived and worked for the last 28 years..."

Learn more about El Anatsui on: http://www.nmafa.si.edu