Prestigestl Window Washing Blog

Rarest Flower in the World Blooms in the UK (PICS)

TreeHugger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:26:00 +0000

Photos via the BBC It's one of the (if not the) rarest flower in the world: the Middlemist's Red exists in only two known locations: a greenhouse in the UK, and a garden in New Zealand. Imported to Britain two hundred years ago from China, back when flowers where a luxury item, it has since been exterminated in its original homeland. And now the Middlemist is blooming again--nice looking flower, right?...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Riding in New York with Village Voice Columnist Michael Musto (Video)

TreeHugger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:11:25 +0000

"Nobody used to ride a bike in New York, but now it's becoming mainstream" Our friend Clarence at Streetfilms rode around NYC with Village Voice entertainment columnist Read the full story on TreeHugger

Young Farmers are Combining Politics with Pitchforks

TreeHugger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:37:56 +0000

Image credit: Good The life of a farmer is a difficult one—meaning, for most, years of hard work, little money, and even less appreciation. Maybe it is this reason that passing down the family farm has become an increasingly difficult proposition....Read the full story on TreeHugger

After Smart Grids, Smart Sewage? Urine-Separating NoMix Toilet Gets Thumbs-Up in 7 European Countries

TreeHugger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:37:13 +0000

NoMix Toilet. Photo: Flickr Technological Innovations in the Bathroom? You Bet! Being green is all about solving problems and grabbing overlooked opportunities. It turns out that there's such a double-win in most bathrooms around the world; if we had "NoMix" toilets that separate urine from solid waste, municipal wastewater plants would have a significantly easier task (and produce more methane to generate electricity), and we could much more easily extract precious nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen for use as fertilizer (instead of using fossil fuels). So what's stopping us from going NoMix?...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Unilever & Solazyme Working On Algae Oil Process For Soaps And Other Personal Care Products

TreeHugger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:44:56 +0000

World consumption of most common commodity triglyceride vegetable oils. Image credit:Wikipedia Certain plant oils, especially palm oil, have a reputation of being produced unsustainably. Many plant oils are low-cost commodities (see table above for recent global volumes). Certain of the commodity plant oils are used extensively in soap and personal care products; and demand for these is increasing (a growing market segment does not accept animal fat-based product). For personal care products of the future, a key challenge is to find sustainable feedstoc...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Should Obama Send His Science Team on a National Campaign to Explain Climate Science?

TreeHugger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:17:00 +0000

Photo via LimJunYing It's been a couple months of seriously bad PR for climate science, both due to unfortunate errors made by scientists and (okay, mostly) a well-funded noise machine intent on preserving the status quo at any cost. So how can climate scientists dig themselves out of the negative publicity trench and help reeducate the public on the dangers of climate change? The Read the full story on TreeHugger

World’s Scientists to Carry Out Independent Review of IPCC

TreeHugger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:40:00 +0000

Photo via FreeSpeech Ban Ki-moon has announced that a comprehensive, independent review of the IPCC is to be carried out, after calls from world governments were made to do so. The Secretary General for the UN said that scientists from academies around the world will take part in the review, which will be headed by the Inter-Academy Council--and it will be conducted completely independently of the United Nations. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Mining Methane From A Rwandan Lake Offers to More Than Double Nation’s Electric Capacity

TreeHugger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:59:00 +0000

photo: Wikipedia This is one you definitely don't hear about too often: Over at Green Biz Marc Gunther is highlighting the efforts of Contour Global to extract methane from Lake Kivu, on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here's how they are doing it:...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Dying for a Cookie: Seemingly Harmless Foods That Aren’t

TreeHugger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:50:40 +0000

Michael Pollan's first food rule is simple: Eat Food, which he considers to be a different thing than what he calls edible foodlike substances, or "highly processed concoctions designed by food scientists, consisting mostly of ingredients derived from corn and soy that no normal person keeps in the pantry, and contain chemical additives with which the human body has not been long acquainted."

1. Palm Oil

Many of those substances are bad for our health, bad for our planet and show up in really surprising places. One of the most blatant examples is palm oil, which is now found in just about everything; alm...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Study Finds Large Animals in India are Facing Extinction Even in Protected Areas

TreeHugger — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:45:43 +0000

The Satkosia Gorge Sanctuary in India. Image credit: Raveesh Vyas India has had a system of wildlife sanctuaries since 1928. Now, there are more than 500 in the country ranging from dedicated tiger and bird reserves to more general areas intend to protect habitats rich in biological diversity. Unfortunately, Read the full story on TreeHugger