Tag Archives: free

Earth Day Pledge: Zero Waste For A Day

by DarwinDobbins Posted on April 19, 2016

Each year Earth Day reminds us that we all, collectively, must take care of this little blue and green home. After all, its the only one we have.  Now its all too easy to slip back into old habits come April 23rd. So, why not try something a little different for Earth Day this year?  This year, why not do something a little unorthodox — take the Earth911 Earth Day Zero Waste Challenge Pledge?

Earth Day Zero Waste Challenge

So what exactly is the challenge?  The challenge is quite simple — just two steps.

1) COMMIT

The first step is committing to the challenge by signing the Earth Day Pledge.  Don’t worry, there won’t be armed men knocking on your door to check that you’ve complied at the end of the day.  This is between you and the person you see in the mirror each morning.  Signing the pledge form is merely a reminder to yourself that you’re committing to producing zero waste for one day – Earth Day.  What better way to honor Earth than not trashing it – literally.

2) ACTION

Step two is taking action.  If its sounds too daunting – creating zero waste for an entire day – we’ve got some great resources for you below. You just may find that going zero waste for a day isn’t that tall an order.  One day may turn into a week.  A week could turn into a month.  You get the picture hopefully.  It’s all about small steps, small steps that when combined together translate into real change.  Make this year’s Earth Day a game changer.  As Bea Johnson detailed to Earth911,

“Zero Waste really starts outside the home, with the decisions that we make when we shop. If you do not buy packaging (by buying secondhand and in bulk for example), you don’t have to deal with its waste later.”

Finally, if you find yourself stumbling, don’t beat yourself up over it. Meaningful change comes with its share of setbacks and triumphs. If you live with others communicate with them about your pledge and be prepared to experience possible resistance.

Zero waste resources

There’s More to Zero Waste Than Being Green 
Zero Waste For One Week. How Hard Is It Really?
Zero Waste Home Cleaning And Laundry Tips
What Does Zero Waste Really Mean?
7 Steps Towards A Zero Waste Lifestyle
Moving Towards Zero Waste 
Is Zero Waste Grocery The Answer To Growing Landfills?
A Chat With Zero Waste Influencer Lauren Singer 
A Sit Down With Zero Waste Home’s Bea Johnson

Everything is bigger in Texas

Earth Day Texas creates a fun and engaging atmosphere for thought and experiential learning while encouraging attendees to be the change they wish to see in the world. Image Credit: Earth Day Texas

They say everything is bigger in Texas and here is another example.  Now the largest event of its type in the world, Earth Day Texas is held annually in April to celebrate progress, hope, and innovation bringing together environmental organizations, businesses, academic institutions, government agencies, speakers, interactive programming, and subject matter experts. Attendees will also enjoy numerous outdoor experiences, including live music, sustainable beer and food pavilions, electric bike test tracks, and family activities.  EDT creates a fun and engaging atmosphere for thought and experiential learning while encouraging attendees to be the change they wish to see in the world.

Earth911 is just one of over 700 vendors scheduled at this year’s EDT.  For full details about how you can participate in this FREE event, check out the Earth Day Texas website.  Stop by and visit us; we’ll be in the Grand Place building.

What are your Earth Day plans?  Share your plans in the comments section below.

Feature image credit: petrmalinak / Shutterstock

About
Latest Posts

Chase Ezell

As Managing Editor for Earth911, Chase oversees editorial direction and content publishing for the site. Prior to his current role and spanning more than a decade, Chase served in various Public Relations, Communications and Sustainability roles.

Latest posts by Chase Ezell (see all)

Earth Day Pledge: Zero Waste For A Day – April 19, 2016
Recycling Awareness Front, Center At Landmark Events – April 15, 2016
Zero Food Waste On Display At New Grocery Concept – April 12, 2016

earth911

Link – 

Earth Day Pledge: Zero Waste For A Day

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, Landmark, ONA, PUR, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Earth Day Pledge: Zero Waste For A Day

This South Carolina Republican Wants to Create a "Registry" for Responsible Journalists

by BenedicD53 Posted on January 19, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Perhaps inspired by Donald Trump’s recent call for a Muslim database, one South Carolina representative just introduced a measure to create a different kind of strange registry—this time to track journalists deemed “responsible” by the state.

The bill, proposed by Republican state lawmaker Mike Pitts, would establish vague requirements for journalists to submit to a registration process by the state. Journalists found in violation of the registry, by either not registering or breaking his rules, would be subjected to monetary fines and even criminal penalties—a lighter version of how the Kremlin treats its own pesky champions of free speech. As the Post and Courier reports, quoting Pitts, the Secretary of State’s Office would maintain a “responsible journalism registry” and create the criteria, with the help of a panel, on what qualifies a person to be a journalist—similar to the licensing for doctors and lawyers.

More from the very real “South Carolina Responsible Journalism Registry Law” proposal:

When asked if the proposal was retribution for some unflattering press coverage directed towards Pitts—the lawmaker has been repeatedly cited for some of his more eyebrow-raising spending habits—he told the Post and Courier it was actually aimed to combat stories he believes have been unfairly targeting gun ownership.

“It strikes me as ironic that the first question is constitutionality from a press that has no problem demonizing firearms,” Pitts, a lifetime NRA member, said. “With this statement I’m talking primarily about printed press and TV. The TV stations, the six o’clock news and the printed press has no qualms demonizing gun owners and gun ownership.”

Excerpt from:

This South Carolina Republican Wants to Create a "Registry" for Responsible Journalists

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, green energy, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This South Carolina Republican Wants to Create a "Registry" for Responsible Journalists

Marco Rubio Bravely Rules Out Negotiation With ISIS That No One Has Ever Proposed

by RXGAdam98611926 Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Marco Rubio has aired his first TV ad, and I suppose it’s no surprise that we’ve already seen it. The whole thing is his schtick about the fight against ISIS being a civilizational struggle etc. etc. Here it is:

Once again, Rubio offers up his odd bit about ISIS hating us because we let women drive. But forbidding women to drive is actually one of the few odious things that ISIS doesn’t do. It’s our great and good friend Saudi Arabia that has a problem with women drivers. I’m pretty sure Rubio has never said a bad word about the Kingdom, so it seems a little odd to obsess about this when he’s got such a huge panoply of other horrific stuff to choose from (we don’t behead heretics, we don’t sanction slavery, and so forth).

At the end Rubio gravely intones that “there can be no arrangement or negotiation.” Where did that come from? Rubio would just as soon not let anyone know this, but the Obama administration is pretty firmly at war with ISIS. We’re bombing them. We’re taking territory from them. We’re doing out best to wipe out their financial infrastructure. Obama’s official policy is to “degrade and destroy” ISIS. Nobody—literally nobody—has ever suggested negotiating with them.

But I suppose none of that matters. Mostly, this is just Rubio trying his best to use dramatic lighting and a grave tone to avoid looking like he’s 22, which is probably his greatest drawback in the presidential race. It’s unfair, but with that baby face and breakneck speaking style that sounds like he’s still on the college debating team, he just doesn’t look old enough to be the leader of the free world. He seems more like a well-regarded up-and-comer, not the guy who already upped and came.

Does the ad work? It seems a little to strained to me, but I’m hardly his target audience. We’ll see.

View original:  

Marco Rubio Bravely Rules Out Negotiation With ISIS That No One Has Ever Proposed

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Marco Rubio Bravely Rules Out Negotiation With ISIS That No One Has Ever Proposed

The World Economic Forum Delivers a Report Card on the US Economy

by DeanaRqopw Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

So how’s the ol’ US of A doing under the free-market-hating presidency of the socialist Barack Obama? Probably badly, I’ll bet. Let’s see what the World Economic Forum has to say. Their latest set of competitiveness rankings came out today, and among countries with populations over 10 million, the US was….

First. How about that? But it was probably even better before Obama took over, wasn’t it? Let’s see. In 2009 we ranked #1 among big countries with a score of 5.59. This year we’re #1 with a score of 5.61. That’s hard to fathom. But there you have it. Our competitiveness in the global free market seems to have improved a bit during Obama’s tenure. I wonder if Fox News will bother reporting this?

View article:  

The World Economic Forum Delivers a Report Card on the US Economy

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The World Economic Forum Delivers a Report Card on the US Economy

Blaming Culture Is a Liberal Thing? Seriously?

by xfz0119 Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Over at National Review, Charles Cooke writes about the gruesome murder of WDBJ reporters Alison Parker and Adam Ward on Wednesday:

As I have written over and over again during the last few years, I do not believe that we can learn a great deal from the justifications that are forwarded by public killers….Mine, however, is not the only view out there. Indeed, there is a sizeable contingent within the United States that takes the question of what murderers purport to believe extremely seriously indeed. It is because of these people that we had to examine “toxic masculinity” in the wake of the Isla Vista shooting….etc.

….Half-joking on Twitter, the Free Beacon’s Sonny Bunch reacted to this news by observing that, “instead of going on a killing spree, this guy should’ve gotten a columnist gig at the Guardian.” As with all humor, there is some truth at the root of this barb….For what reason is this guy exempt? Why do we not need to have a “national conversation” about hypersensitivity?

The answer, I imagine, is politics, for this instinct seems only to run one way.

Generally speaking, I agree with Cooke. Crazy people are always going to find something to justify their worldview, and they’re going to find it somewhere out in the real world. The fact that any particular crazy person decides to have it in for the IRS or Greenpeace or women who laughed at him in high school doesn’t mean a lot. It only becomes meaningful if some particular excuse starts showing up a lot. Beyond that, I even agree that the culture of hypersensitivity has gotten out of hand in some precincts of the left.

That said….is Cooke kidding? This instinct only runs one way? After the Columbine massacre in 1999, Newt Gingrich denounced the “liberal political elite” for “being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done.” Conservatives have been raising Cain about the pernicious effects of Hollywood liberalism, video games, and the decline of religion for decades. Hysteria about the counterculture and liberal moral decay goes back at least to the 60s. I could go on endlessly in this vein, but I don’t want to bore you.

Complaining about the effects of liberal culture—whether on shooters specifically, crime more generally, or on all of society—has been a right-wing mainstay for as long as I’ve been alive. The left may be catching up, but it still has a ways to go.

Link – 

Blaming Culture Is a Liberal Thing? Seriously?

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Blaming Culture Is a Liberal Thing? Seriously?

This electric scooter comes with swappable batteries

by GVVGiabytvivwc Posted on June 18, 2015

This electric scooter comes with swappable batteries

By on 18 Jun 2015commentsShare

Eat your heart out, Elon Musk: A Taiwanese company called Gogoro has developed an electric scooter that, according to The Verge, can get 62 miles on a single charge, while traveling at up to 60 miles per hour. And when that charge runs out, instead of plugging in, drivers will just have to swing by a swapping station for fresh batteries.

Here’s The Verge with more details:

For [$4,140], customers get the scooter itself, one year of theft insurance, and two years of free maintenance and roadside servicing. More importantly, they also get two years’ access to “all-you-can-swap” electric batteries from Gogoro’s charging stations. These batteries are the only way of charging the Superscooter though, and Gogoro is staying quiet about how much they’ll cost after the initial two years are up.

[…]

Horace Luke, Gogoro’s co-founder and a former HTC executive, announced the news in a press conference earlier today, describing the Smartscooter’s reception in Taipei as “beyond our imagination.” The Taiwanese capital is acting as a testing ground for the scooter, with a flagship store — the Gogoro Experience Center — designed to show off the vehicle’s selling points. If this model succeeds in Taipei, then we can expect to see the Gogoro expanding across scooter-loving Asian countries in the coming years.

The scooter comes with all kinds of cool bells and whistles, which you can check out in the video above, but it’s unclear how the price of the Smartscooter (and its batteries) will change after this initial two-year trial period. It’s also unclear where all those batteries will end up when they eventually die. In this (very flattering) review of the scooter, The Verge gets us almost there:

The company rates each battery to last for 2,000 recharge cycles, but expects to lose 20 percent of the original capacity after a quarter of that usage. So, after 500 cycles, Gogoro batteries are taken out of circulation — in order to ensure reliability for users, who are told to expect a 60-mile range from a pair of fully charged batteries. The discarded batteries will then be repurposed to help power data centers, home appliances, and offices. A good example is energy time-shifting: charging up the batteries at night, when the price of electricity is lower, and then using them to power something like a refrigerator during the day. Once that second life is over, Gogoro’s aim will be to give the batteries away to impoverished areas around the world where people have no easy access to electricity.

And when that third life is over? It sounds like those batteries could be destined for the notorious e-waste dumps of the developing world. **Sigh** I guess no battery’s perfect … yet.

Source:
Gogoro’s all-electric Smartscooters will start at $4,140 in Taipei

, The Verge.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get Grist in your inbox

Original link – 

This electric scooter comes with swappable batteries

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, green energy, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This electric scooter comes with swappable batteries

Neil Young to Donald Trump: Don’t Rock in My Free World

by NoelChildress8 Posted on June 16, 2015

Mother Jones

When Donald Trump strode on to the stage at Trump Tower on Tuesday to announce that he would enter the Republican race for president, a rock and roll anthem blared: Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” It was an odd choice, given that the 1989 song seemed to slam a Republican administration for not giving a damn about the poor. And Young has taken exception to Trump’s appropriation of his tune. A statement issued to Mother Jones for Young by his longtime manager Elliot Roberts suggests Young was not pleased by Trump’s use of the song:

Donald Trump’s use of “Rockin’ in the Free World” was not authorized. Mr. Young is a longtime supporter of Bernie Sanders.

In other words, it may be a free world, but you’re not free to steal my song.

Here’s Young’s classic:

More here:  

Neil Young to Donald Trump: Don’t Rock in My Free World

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Neil Young to Donald Trump: Don’t Rock in My Free World

The Constitution doesn’t care about your uterus

by ShaniAtkinson Posted on May 21, 2015

The Constitution doesn’t care about your uterus

By on 21 May 2015commentsShare

There’s a moment in almost every American woman’s life when she thinks to herself: “Hold up — why are we still arguing about what I can and cannot do with my uterus?” And then she realizes that there is no sense-making answer to that question, and that the fact that the debate exists at all is definitively absurd.

Jill Lepore, in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, sheds some light on why we’re stuck in a hellish tango around the constitutional validity of our reproductive rights:

The Constitution never mentions sex, marriage, or reproduction. This is because the political order that the Constitution established was a fraternity of free men who, believing themselves to have been created equal, consented to be governed. Women did not and could not give their consent: they were neither free nor equal. Rule over women lay entirely outside a Lockean social contract in a relationship not of liberty and equality but of confinement and subjugation. As Mary Astell wondered, in 1706, “If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves?”

Essentially, the Constitution is inadequate. It speaks directly only to the sort of people who were enfranchised in 1787; the rest of us are left to make arguments by amendment and, failing that, by indirection.

I’m not going to waste your time with my take on it — just go read the whole thing.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Continue reading here: 

The Constitution doesn’t care about your uterus

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Constitution doesn’t care about your uterus

Some Climate Engineering Ideas Are Insane. This One Isn’t.

by EusebiaBailey Posted on February 26, 2015

Mother Jones

This story originally appeared on the Slate website and is reproduced here apart of the Climate Desk collaboration.

According to technological optimists, in the next two or three decades, humanity will embark on a new era of possibility. Super-smart computers and other advances may even make certain types of less risky, large-scale climate actions a reality. Open any number of sci-fi books from the last few decades and you have an idea of how nanotechnology could make planetary-scale engineering possible. (Kim Stanley Robinson’s work comes immediately to mind.) Maybe swarms of self-replicating photosynthetic nanobots will be able to quickly and cheaply suck CO2 from the air? What about coating all the world’s rooftops in organic solar panels? Or optimizing biofuel production from algae on the molecular scale? The possibilities are mind-boggling.

Earlier this month, delegates from virtually every country on Earth gathered in Geneva to produce the initial draft of a global climate agreement to be signed in Paris later this year. In it were several references to net zero or negative emissions after 2050.

On our current path, humanity is still tracking at (or even slightly above) the worst-case climate scenario laid out about a decade ago. The latest comprehensive update from the world’s climate scientists outlined a best-case scenario that is now likely to require a ramp-up of carbon capture-and-storage to meet emissions targets. If it works, sucking excess carbon dioxide from the air could result in net negative global carbon emissions by the end of the century, and likely provide our best hope for returning concentrations to pre-industrial levels in our lifetimes. If it works.

We’re still far, far from that trajectory—emissions continue to increase each year at the global level. We’ve waited so long to address escalating carbon emissions that we must honestly consider research into these technologies. And, let’s face it, trying to shift humanity off fossil fuels any time soon feels increasingly like a lost cause.

Continue Reading »

Taken from:

Some Climate Engineering Ideas Are Insane. This One Isn’t.

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, solar, solar panels, solar power, Thermos, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Some Climate Engineering Ideas Are Insane. This One Isn’t.

McDonald’s Creates Worst Marketing Campaign in History of Marketing

by CarleyFreehill Posted on February 6, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This morning, Kate Bachelder went into McDonald’s to get an Egg McMuffin. When she tried to pay the cashier, however, things turned weird:

I wouldn’t need money today, she explained, as I had been randomly chosen for the store’s “Pay with Lovin’ ” campaign, the company’s latest public-relations blitz, announced Sunday….Between Feb. 2 and Valentine’s Day, the company says, participating McDonald’s locations will give away 100 meals to unsuspecting patrons in an effort to spread “the lovin’.”

If the “Pay with Lovin’ ” scenario looks touching on television, it is less so in real life. A crew member produced a heart-shaped pencil box stuffed with slips of paper, and instructed me to pick one. My fellow customers seemed to look on with pity as I drew my fate: “Ask someone to dance.” I stood there for a mortified second or two, and then the cashier mercifully suggested that we all dance together. Not wanting to be a spoilsport, I forced a smile and “raised the roof” a couple of times, as employees tried to lure cringing customers into forming some kind of conga line, asking them when they’d last been asked to dance.

The public embarrassment ended soon enough, and I slunk away with my free breakfast, thinking: Now there’s an idea that never should have left the conference room.

Speaking personally, I can say that the Pay with Lovin’ scenario did not look touching on television. It looked horrifying. And I suspect very strongly that in real life it’s even more horrifying than my feeble little imagination can imagine.

And for what it’s worth, when I saw the ads, it actually wasn’t Mickey D’s guinea pig customers who I initially felt sorry for. It was the cashiers. Those are the poor folks who have to execute this marketing monstrosity. Every morning they have to paste on a smile and pretend to be thrilled at the opportunity to force some sleepy customer to write a poem or declare who she loves or perform a jig or whatever. Isn’t it exciting!?! You get to pay with lovin’ today!

Somebody needs to be fired at McDonald’s. Maybe a whole bunch of people. I don’t know who, but someone has to pay. Right now.

Link – 

McDonald’s Creates Worst Marketing Campaign in History of Marketing

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on McDonald’s Creates Worst Marketing Campaign in History of Marketing