“When all these factors are added together the net social gain is DKK 1.22 per cycled kilometer. For purposes of comparison there is a net social loss of DKK 0.69 per kilometer driven by car.” 1.22 Danish crowns is about 25 cents and a kilometer is 6/10 of a mile, so we are talking about a net economic gain to society of 42 cents for every bicycle mile traveled. That’s a good number to have in your back pocket.
Google doesn’t monetize the space reserved for Web Clips in the GMail Trash folder. Instead, it shows some remarkable recycling tips and facts in the space at the top of your folder!
Gmail Recycling Tips
Here’s a complete collection of recycling tips and facts collected from GMail Trash area.
» Recycling a 3-foot-high stack of newspapers can save one whole tree.
» Newspapers can be reused as wrapping paper for gifts.
» Film canisters can be reused to store nails, screws, buttons and pins.
» Recycled cans can be made into airplanes, appliances, furniture and more.
» Recycled plastic bottles can be made into rugs, jackets, fences and more.
» Junk mail and newspaper can be reused as package stuffing.
» You can make a lovely hat out of previously-used aluminum foil.
» Recycled paper takes about 60% less energy and water to make than new paper.
» There is no limit to the number of times an aluminum can can be recycled.
» Empty tissue boxes can provide easy and handy storage for plastic grocery bags.
» Unneeded printouts can be cut and stapled to make notepads.
» Plastic bags can be reused as bin liners or package stuffing.
» Recycled glass bottles can be made into roads, tiles, even surfboards.
» Rubber shoe soles can be recycled to make basketball courts and soccer fields.
So the next time you plan to empty that GMail Trash folder, don’t forget to read those interesting recycling facts. we at Awarenessideas.com want to remind people to recycle, too, but we’re offering reminders in the physical realm. we’ve got a lot of great ways to promote recycling and energy conservation in your workplace and even at home! see some of what we have to offer here.
If you need a bag at the grocery store they’ll charge you a dime or therabouts and the bag is biodegradable … I have one that I’ll give to Diane Holmes [City of Ottawa Councillor] when I return.
Hope all of you are well … I’ve been internet deprived for most of my travels but for now I have it this little apartment.
We get a little bit dirty, but in a good way. Getting rid of dirt and being clean is seen as a good thing. But what happens when we take clean to the extreme? Plus, why it could pay not to apply the elbow grease. Also in the show, we reveal the winner in our Odd Jobs competition.
Clean obsession
For those of us a little obsessed with cleaning, the price might be higher than we think. Even when it comes to your particular way of washing a couple of glasses, plates, and cutlery. Host Marnie Chesterton rolls her sleeves up for a scrubbing session with a stickler for cleaning, Ashleigh Elson, and measures the impact.
More: Ashleigh comes clean about her ultra-hygienic ways in My clean obsession
Clean is in the genes
Many anthropologists argue that humans have learned to avoid dirt because we know it’s unhealthy – after all, unclean conditions lead to illness and disease. But hygiene expert Val Curtis claims our fixation with keeping clean is genetic: animals, including the apes we evolved from, are programmed to avoid situations associated with disease. Which means genes that favoured a clean environment outperformed those that didn’t.
Val is Director & Reader in Hygiene at The Hygiene Centre, a research group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine.
Val Curtis mentioned the health benefits of handwashing and October 15 2011 is Global Handwashing Day - find out more here
Clean green shower
Every year, the PICNIC Green Challenge offers a 500,000 euro reward to a business idea that will help us live better. This year’s winner is a shower – especially useful for those parents fed up with the long showers their teenage daughters girls take – that cleans and recycles the water it uses for immediate reuse. Marnie speaks to its innovator,Nick Christy (photo below)
Pollution balloon Matthieu Gobbi lives in Paris and is very conscious of his city’s pollution levels. He also wants his fellow Parisians to become more aware of what they’re breathing in. So he’s launched a massive balloon that changes colour to let you know the pollution levels at an easy skyward glance.
Breathing clean air in New Delhi Kamal Meattle is an entrepreneur and successful businessman in New Delhi who was forced to work in a completely sealed office complex to avoid contact with the city’s air, which was killing him. He decided to use plants to grow clean air in his office. It’s helped save his life (photo below).
The sacred lotus
The lotus plant has been revered for centuries by Hindus and Buddhists for its pure and sacred qualities. And it’s easy to see why. Even though it often lives in muddy waters it never seems to get dirty. It’s this ability to keep clean that fascinated German botanist Christoph Neinhuis. He talks to Marnie about taking this property and using it to lighten the human cleaning burden.
Oil spill revisited
One of the biggest clean–up operations there’s ever been was in the spring of 2010, when a damaged pipeline one mile under the Gulf of Mexico sent oil gushing into the sea for weeks on end.
The Deepwater Horizon was a major environmental disaster and at the time Earth Beat spoke to one of the men who was responsible for the clean-up. He was Tony Wood, the director of the National Spill School in the US. We thought we’d have another chat with him to find out how it’s all been going.
Gulf Shores beach, Alabama, before and after clean-up
Perfume competition winner
On our Odd Jobs show, we asked you to name the oddest job you had ever heard of, to win a unique unisex perfume, mixed by Dr Roman Kaiser. The winner is Henry Kurniadi from Taipei, Taiwan who wrote:
“I was born to a Chinese-Indonesian family. Us Chinese have a lot of extraordinary traditions related to funerals. But not since I come to Taiwan four years ago, I realize an even weirder tradition. A professional funeral stripper (yes, you read correctly) was hired, to dance (to their underwear) on top of electric-powered neon cars during a Taiwanese funeral. These cars would travel inside the district where the deceased lived. This phenomenon is currently restricted to rural areas outside the big cities like Taipei and Kaohsiung, as it is officially against the law to display public nudity in Taiwan.” Click for a video
In March, we did a blog post about a most unusual project. Artist, Alexis Williams was commissioned by the Ottawa Art Gallery to create an edible sculpture using old phone books to grow edible fungi.
You might be wondering what the FullCircles connection is. Well, Alexis used FullCircles to collect old phone books. And we donated some maple sawdust for her to use for growing mushrooms.
Her project is coming right along! Check out Alexis’ Mushroom Blog for regular updates. This is one of the most colourful, exciting blogs I’ve ever seen. Great work, Alexis!
Here’s Alexis’ July 1 blog entry:
While dumping some spent oyster cakes today I noticed the original oyster column prototype that I built for the New Art Festival in the Glebe that had been banished to the compost due to contamination was covered in big lilac coloured mushrooms! This means 2 things: Oysters are resilient and can overcome Thrichederma infection and neglect, and that the phone books take a bit longer than I expected to fruit. This is good news
While I was away I lost quite a few phone books to Thrichederma so I started a new sculpture with my unhealthy phone books in hopes that some of them will fruit and to see if it’s possible to build with multiple species of phone books touching each other.
I was expecting the Ghost Fungus to produce large brightly bioluminescent fruit, but for its mycelium to not glow. A strain with glowing mycelium would be ideal for this project since the mycelium will be exposed but I’ve had trouble with the Panelus stipticus, so I am using the Ghost Fungus instead. I heard today that the mycoremediation team from the Re:Generate Long Crew snuck off in the night with one of my glow in the dark books. They opened the pages to find glowing mycelial patterns. They said it felt like I had given them a book of magical secrets!
Forests-Nature At Your Service-cover one third of the earth’s land mass, performing vital functions and services around the world which make our planet alive with possibilities. In fact, 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods. They play a key role in our battle against climate change, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere while storing carbon dioxide. Thousands of activities are organized worldwide, with beach clean-ups, concerts, exhibits, film festivals, community events and much more.This year’s global host, India – a country of wide biodiversity.[2]
