odi

Slow Food highlights the need for food biodiversity at Expo Milano

It is fitting that Slow Food has a prominent place at the World’s fair, which this year is hosted in Italy and promises to explore the topic of feeding the growing global population.




odi

Photos of New York City Underwater from Hurricane Sandy Flooding

I'm hunkered down in Brooklyn waiting for Hurricane Sandy to pass. Curious about what is happening nearby, I'm looking for photos of the flooding. Here's what I've found so far.




odi

Stockholm to get a forest of timber towers on top of a plywood podium park

It is the "highest, densest and most environmentally friendly new neighborhood" in Stockholm.




odi

'Modified' asks why Canada and U.S. refuse to label genetically modified foods

But more than that, the film is a love story about cooking and gardening -- and the importance of regaining control over where our food comes from.




odi

Illegal Logging by Pakistan's Timber Mafia Increased Flooding Devastation

Forget for the moment about to what degree climate change has influenced the flooding in Pakistan. A new article in China Dialogue brings to light a new angle on one very aggravating factor on the overwhelming devastation: Illegal logging by the 'timber




odi

Pakistani Timber Mafia & Climate Change Caused Much of Summer's Flooding

Back when 20% of Pakistan was underwater, I wrote about the influence of deforestation on the flooding--deforestation caused in no small part by illegal logging at the hands of the so-called timber mafia, a group with




odi

Rogue Storm From Bay of Bengal Caused 2010 Pakistan Flooding

We know that illegal logging contributed to the devastation caused by last summer's flooding in Pakistan, when up to 20% of the nation was underwater. New research now sheds light on how so much rain fell: A rogue




odi

Endangered Species List on the Periodic Table?

It sounds ridiculous: how could an element on the periodic table be an endangered species? The scientist, James Elser of Arizona State University, who is asking if we need a 'Red List' for phosphorous uses the




odi

The Pretty Good House 2.0 is a pretty good building standard (now with embodied carbon!)

Given how dreadful most new housing is these days, this is at least the minimum builders should build and customers should expect.




odi

People Provide Missing Piece in Biodiversity Puzzle

The head of a cooperative of honey harvesters, a park guide, and a doctor who uses a garden of medicinal plants to treat asthma and other ailments are




odi

Genetically Modified Eggplant Field Trials Halted by Court in Philippines

The move comes as a result of a petition from Greenpeace Southeast Asia, which asserts that GM crops can cause serious health issues.




odi

Quinoa, Commodities, and the Gentrification of the Food System

Demand for quinoa in developed countries means agrarian people in Bolivia and Peru can't afford the one-time staple crop. Is that entirely bad news? The answer is complicated.




odi

Fish Farm Taps Biodiesel From Fish Guts

A commercial fish farm in El Borboton, Honduras is using fish guts--heads, skins, and internal organs--to produce biodiesel. Instead of dumping what's left after filleting for commercial sale, Saint Peter's cooks the parts down to produce 300,000




odi

ON MNN: More on kitchen exhausts, exploding hoverboards and fire trucks

Why are our cities being designed around the needs of the trucks instead of vice versa?




odi

'Mushroom Death Suit' Could Remediate Bodily Toxins With Specially-Trained Mushrooms (Video)

Using mushrooms to challenge our unhealthy obsession with "body preservation," artist Jae Rhim Lee fabricates a suit that will remediate environmental toxins from dead bodies.




odi

Embodied carbon is in the spotlight

Architects are finally taking it seriously. It's about time.




odi

Why are they flooding the Grand Canyon?

The U.S. Department of the Interior has taken to releasing massive amounts of the Colorado River from dams, here's why.




odi

Palm Oil Biodiesel, Now With 2000% the Emissions of Fossil Fuels

Can we just all put palm oil biodiesel produced on deforested peatlands to rest already: A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme shows that biodiesel production under these




odi

Where Have All the Flowers (Daffodils) Gone?

This is England, the parks and gardens and countryside are supposed to be filled with golden daffodils by now. This is why we live here. But where are they? With this year's never ending winter and the long cold spell just




odi

Poland to Ban Monsanto’s Genetically Modified Corn

Following anti-Monsanto activism in other countries, Poland has announced plans to completely ban the growth of Monsanto’s genetically modified strain MON810.




odi

Foodies vs. food crusaders

Tom Laskawy warns we shouldn't confuse the two.




odi

Embodied Carbon called "The Blindspot of the Buildings Industry"

But some people are beginning to take the issue seriously. Anthony Pak writes a good article about it for Canadian Architect.




odi

Saraye: Traditional Tatami Purses from Cambodia

We love products that support or revive traditional crafts. Check out, for ex ample, the work of Kallari, fair trade suppliers of traditional Amazonian baskets, which we reported on here. Now we've come across another cool basket supplier, this time




odi

Cambodia's First Ethanol Plant Will Use One-Fifth of Nation's Cassava Crop

Just a quick one on ethanol and Southeast Asia: Chinaview.cn is reporting that Cambodia has opened the nation’s first ethanol production facility. Using cassava as a feedstock, at least initially all of the




odi

Ecstasy (MDMA) Threatens Rare Cambodian Tree

What could ravers and other all-night clubbers of the world possibly have to do with the increasingly rare Mreah Prew Phnom trees (Cinnamomum parathenoxylon), found in




odi

Conservation Canines Trained To Sniff Out Tigers in Cambodia

For the first time, conservationists from WWF are putting dogs' superb sense of smell on the trail of tigers in Cambodia. Coming from the University of Washington Conservation Canines program, the dogs are trained to sniff out




odi

Rare Video of Wild Cambodian Elephant Released by Wildlife Conservation Society

There are only an estimated 116 wild Asian elephants in Cambodia's Seima Protection Area, and until now most of the photographic evidence of them has be taken by camera traps. New footage released by the Wildlife Conservation Society changes that. The




odi

Purple Buddha: Cambodia's hidden mines upcycled into jewelry (Video)

Metals from Cambodia's mines, left buried since its civil war, are recycled into elegant jewelry, made by locally trained and fairly paid artisans.




odi

Architectural critic: Embodied energy matters

Architects ignore it. "Heads of sustainability" ignore it. Critics have ignored it, but this may be changing.




odi

CO2 doesn't know borders, but we are shipping embodied carbon all over the world

Brad Plumer looks at the issue of "outsourced pollution."




odi

Dead bodies are emerging from Mount Everest's melting glaciers

With a warming climate, the remains of unlucky mountaineers are beginning to rise from the ice.




odi

2050 is too late to start thinking about embodied carbon

A conference on sustainable construction in the Can of Ham is in denial about upfront carbon emissions




odi

Slow Food Pop-Tarts, Made with Serious Love (A Foodie Gift Find!)

With science pointing to all the pitfalls of sugar on human health and longevity, I have ever more reason to curb desserts and hidden sugars. Sadly, "reason" lacks in my vocabulary during the holidays. On




odi

Photo: Tiny owl, prodigious personality

Our photo of the day proves that size doesn't matter.




odi

British architects declare climate and biodiversity emergency

Architects all over the world should be doing this too.




odi

Odin the dog protects his goats during Sonoma fire, takes in baby deer too

The stubborn hero refused to leave his goats ... miraculously, they all survived the firestorm.




odi

Organic Goodies Make Perfect Green Thank-You Gift

Our mothers taught us (well, some of us) to send thank-you notes and to bring a gift when staying at someone's house or cottage as a guest. But what to bring? You don't know their taste, or you don't like their taste or you know that they don't need




odi

Did climate change cause the Alberta flooding?

Nobody can say for certain. But that doesn't mean that the Conservative politicians have to deny it.




odi

Architects have to deal with the "wicked problem of embodied carbon."

A British critic calls two green icons, rammed earth and Passivhaus, "architectural trickery at its most cynical."




odi

Full Planet, Empty Plates: Chapter 5. Eroding Soils Darkening Our Future

Sometime within the last century, soil erosion began to exceed new soil formation. Now, nearly a third of the world’s cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming, reducing the land’s inherent fertility.




odi

"Peak Fertilizer" To Make Manure A Valuable Commodity

Synthetic fertilizer is likely to become significantly more costly for US farmers. This trend will make manure a valuable commodity once again (as it was prior to the 1950s). There are two main reasons for the




odi

All over the world, engineers declare climate and biodiversity emergency

This is turning into a really big bandwagon.




odi

Solar farms can enhance biodiversity and sequester soil carbon too

New research, backed by conservation groups in the UK, suggest solar farms may offer opportunities for a more biodiverse countryside.




odi

Brooklyn townhouse retrofit embodies a “slow building” ethos

There are many special things about the home of Gennaro Brooks-Church, the director of the green building firm Eco Brooklyn.




odi

New Haven, Connecticut to Get Waste Oil Biodiesel Plant

One way to get around many of the problems attributed to biofuel production (land use changes, effect on food prices, etc) is by using waste vegetable oil to produce biodiesel. Now it looks like New Haven, Connecticut will be




odi

UConn Tests Demonstrate Great Potential of Hemp Biodiesel

Some regular TreeHugger readers (and commenters, you know who you are...) are no doubt exclaiming that they being saying the same thing for years, that hemp makes great biofuel--if only the Feds would get out of the way. Well, researchers




odi

Holy Bat Cloud: Designer's Eco-Sculpture Boosts Bat Biodiversity

One architect creates a series of intriguing artificial habitats for threatened bat populations.




odi

Angry Venetians say cruise ships are partly to blame for flooding

It's another nail in the coffin for these monstrous purveyors of industrial tourism.




odi

Coastal flooding could cost $1 trillion by 2050, as Task Force warns to prepare for future storms

We've long known that sea level rise caused by global warming would threaten communities along the coasts, but a new study puts a startling figure on the potential damage. Meanwhile, the Hurricane Sandy Task Force releases a report.




odi

Zara's 'sustainable' hoodie is anything but

Swiss investigators followed the money through a sweatshirt's supply chain.