Sustainablog

Part 2: Do Fireworks Pose Significant Environmental Danger?

Pittsburgh, PA.  A place known for its peoples’ good ol’ blue collar fervor, our enthusiasm for everything from our football team (STEELERS!!) to our beer (Iron City) to our hoagies (Primanti’s, brother!).  We are thus naturally inclined to encourage bombastic public demonstrations of our affection–in this case, in celebrating ourselves!

I viewed the record-setting Pittsburgh 250 fireworks display from a wonderful vantage point on the North Shore, as I cheered my city on from the balcony of McFadden’s with a massive group of Couchsurfers visiting Pittsburgh for their regional meet-up weekend.  All the while I was marvelling at the bright splashes and the thundering bursts–thirty minutes in duration!–the thought kept flitting across my mind: “what exactly is IN that massive smoke cloud pooling across the river?”

The Composition of Fireworks, a page compiled by Reema Gondhia at Imperial College in London, gives you the factual rundown of the makeup of fireworks.  A firework’s chemical arrangement, however ingeniously designed to manifest our titillating visual delights, provides some unsettling names–chemicals with long rap sheets from research institutions indicating their threat to living systems.  Read on for some distrubing examples. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1: Pittsburgh’s Environmental Record–and “The Smoky City’s”
Love of Fireworks

On Saturday, October 4, 2008, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania celebrated its 250th birthday in a climax of a fireworks display, thirty minutes long and launched from 17 different locations around the city, including barges floating on Pittsburgh’s three rivers and off of downtown skyscrapers.

Pittsburgh loves its fireworks.

I’ve noticed that after every Pirates game, whether the outcome is good or bad, there are fireworks.  Steelers games.  Community events.  And now, Pittsburgh’s 250th birthday warrants the biggest blast of them all.  How many folks out there have actually watched fireworks for thirty straight minutes?  Since Pittsburgh’s 250th birthday celebration, I have.  Your neck hurts!

In the official press release about the event from Zambelli Internationale, Pittsburgh set a record of 17 firework launch positions, “the largest in the country.”  The site also describes a formidable array of effort: 40 professional pyrotechnicians and nearly 40,000 fireworks went into Pittsburgh’s big day.

Personally, while I was watching the spectacular displays, after a while I stopped being awed by the visual splendor and noticed my mind wandering to this thought: “what exactly is in those thick black clouds of firework byproduct eclipsing downtown?” Read the rest of this entry »

For many of us who take environmental protection into our own hands daily, a bicycle is an indispensible part of the dream.  Throw off those winter blues… bicycling can make your winter green!

Bicycles are an efficient way to transport yourself daily for a number of reasons.  To me, the most important benefit to using a bicycle is that it improves my health and fitness.  Probably the next most important to me is a bike’s economy.  You pay for occasional maintenance throughout the year, but on the whole, it is far cheaper than using a car, or even travelling by public transportation!

On the environmental front: unlike motor vehicles, bicycles produce no greenhouse gases from their use.  Their parts can often be manufactured from recycled materials.  Overall, while not perfect, bikes make for a significantly smaller footprint than any other existing mode of efficient, long-travel transportation out there.

The distance from my home to my work is 1.8 miles.  (Another good way to think green: move close to your essentials!)  Walking, that might take me 40 minutes!  But on my bike, I am there in 9-12 minutes.  As the nights get longer and the air gets crisper, however, I am reminded that unless I take certain measures, I will soon be prevented from using my bike to get to work by the “elements.”  Common enemies to the bicycle include: snow, slush, ice, gravel, and salt.

But if you’re like me, you strive to think green in all seasons… not just the warm and sunny ones.  Surely, winter is the least popular time to ride bikes–it’s cold and difficult, and just plain inconvenient!  However, who doesn’t need to keep fit in the winter months?  And with a few quick steps and some basic knowledge, you can equip yourself and your bike with the necessities to keep it sturdy and rideable throughout the winter months. Read the rest of this entry »

Every day, half a million school buses safely carry 24 million American children to school, field trips and athletic events.

Unfortunately, most buses are powered by diesel engines that actually pollute the air inside the bus. Studies show the pollution gets trapped inside the bus, where kids breathe it in.

Dr. John Balbus, EDF’s chief health scientist, answers common questions about school bus pollution and your child’s health.

Q:  I don’t see billowing clouds of black smoke behind the school bus. Does that mean the bus exhaust is clean?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Even clean-looking exhaust from tailpipes, and from the engine itself, can contain small particles and other toxic pollutants that can get inside the school bus, and in children’s lungs.

Q: How does diesel pollution get inside a school bus?

Diesel pollution can enter a school bus from both the tailpipe and the engine. In school buses, the engine is in the front, right near the door, so every time the door opens, engine and tailpipe exhaust get sucked inside.

Read the rest of this entry »

When the future of our planet’s environment is concerned, one of the groups that we hope are paying attention is those currently attending college. They will be the leaders, the decision makers, the discoverers and changers of the future. But at the moment, they are simply learning the value of calculus and being exposed to copious amounts of beer.

But thanks to the National Wildlife Federation’s just released Campus Environment 2008 report card, conducted in partnership with Princeton Survey Research Associates International, we can at least be certain that, in addition to learning about beer and the opposite sex, our college students are getting a lesson in green.

The report follows up on its first run, back in 2001, by providing a review of programs at 1,068 institutions, grading them on an A to D scale for collective, national performance on a range of issues such as energy, water, transportation, waste reduction and environmental literacy.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post was originally published on Eco-Libris blog on August 22.

Last week we wrote here about our partner Chegg and their renting textbooks’ model. This is a great model and it’s an example of the innovative thinking that tries to find an alternative to the current expensive (average of USD 1,000 per year in the US), not environmental friendly and irritating textbook system.

And this search has generated another great idea which has a good chance to influence the future of the textbook industry: open source free online textbooks. This innovative concept comes from Flat World Knowledge (thanks to Springwise for the update!)

How does it work exactly? Flat World Knowledge explains on their website
Read the rest of this entry »

This is a guest post by freelance environmental writer Tom Schueneman, publisher of GlobalWarmingisReal.com

Sierra Magazine has recently announced its list of the ten “coolest schools in America” for 2008.

For our purposes here “cool” doesn’t refer to the level of party, but to the school’s efforts to address climate change and sustainability.

Until recently, that sort of cool remained largely the domain of small, private colleges, but no more. The colleges ranking in this year’s list represent a diverse range of institutions, from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina with 850 students, to Arizona State, the country’s second largest, with 51,500 students. Being cool is in. Read the rest of this entry »

Though I’ve never experienced the college dorm setting in my lifetime, I have spent far too much of my time watching TV shows focusing on the college dorm (Gilmore Girls anyone?). So this story has a little bit of a soft spot with me, on top of the fact that it is just really cool environmental awareness and friendliness.

Students at Sarah Lawrence’s Warren Green Hall will this fall be composting together, monitoring their electricity usage and drying their dirty laundry on a clothesline. They’ll be sharing appliances, cooking and shopping together too, to reduce waste and energy, and using the electric light as little as possible.
Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous posts on sacred places, I have claimed that:
1) Sacred places in our past are crucial for making us appreciate nature and formulate an ecological consciousness. So they are crucial for environmentalism.
2) Sacred places are readily available in our present lives, not isolated to extreme or remote locations. So if we want to save the wilderness/wildness in nature and the wildness in people, then we have to recognize and sanctify the nature in our lives and the nature in ourselves.

Now (for the sake of time), I would like to say a bit about sacred places future.

How can we ensure that our children and those beyond have places that they can hold sacred? Obviously, on a general level we have to continue (increase!) efforts to preserve species, habitats, resources, and overall biological diversity. That goes without saying. I want focus here on how we can ensure that our children will be sensitive to nature–that every future generation can be a Generation W (Wild) filled with lots and lots of little green men and women.

Even as we fall more and more under the tyranny of technology, even as we enter a “brave new world” that is more like the one Huxley envisioned than Shakespeare, there are many possible sacred places for future children. But I think some of the most will be green homes, green schools, and green screens.

Read the rest of this entry »

Americans do not have a particularly easy time getting jobs in Canada. I am not saying it’s impossible, mind you, just difficult. But, if you reside in one of the 50 plus countries of the British Commonwealth, you might have a much easier time getting the proper papers to be permitted to stay and work legally in Canada. Why would you want to do so? According to a recent article in the Globe and Mail, so-called “green jobs” are proliferating at such a rate there is a veritable shortage of suitable candidates.

It seems that these environmental jobs are not only for scientists anymore. Canadian employers are targeting multi-taskers, interdisciplinarians and passionate folks who want work to protect the environment as their ideal candidates. One thing is clear, however, the number of green job opportunities is growing considerably. According to Grant Trump, president of the Calgary-based Environmental Careers Organization of Canada:

“The opportunities in environmental careers are exploding. Demand is outstripping supply and it’s affecting industry’s ability to meet the environmental challenge. Right now, there are 530,000 jobs in Canada related to the environment, and we are projecting job growth over the next five years to increase by 8.8 per cent. This represents a rate that is 24-per-cent faster than the overall Canadian employment increase.” Read the rest of this entry »