Recycling tires.

NBC 5 Reports:

City Testing Rubber Sidewalks, Solar Bus Shelters

CHICAGO -- Mayor Richard M. Daley's green initiative is gaining ground yet again -- this time with two new infrastructure technologies.

NBC5's Ellee Pai Hong checked it out.

Cheri Heramb with the Chicago Department of Transportation said the aim of the initiative is to become the "greenest city in the world."

Chicago is taking one more step toward that goal with new green infrastructure technology.

The DOT has kicked off a pilot program to test 550 feet of recycled rubber sidewalk over the next year, right across the street from the Chicago Center for Green Technology on the city's West Side.

Sadhu Johnston, with the city's Department of Environment, explained the logic behind rubber sidewalks."We've all seen video of huge mountains of tires. All of it sitting there for years. Well, here is a productive use of that rubber material," Johnston said.Heramb said the test is to see how durable the material is.

... (more at link)

The tire sidewalks just make sense to me, I'm not so sure why a bus stop needs solar power, and I question the math that shows how much money the city will "save." However, it seems like a solid step in the right direction concerning using the tires as alternate building materials. The tip: for your home landscaping I say just use old fashioned grass and dirt instead of decorative paths.

On gas taxes to fight global warming.

This is an interesting concept from Crooked Timber, basically it is if you create a large source of revenue for the government, such as a gas tax, then it eventually gets to the point where the government depends on the revenue, and works to preserve it. This argument is made with cigarette taxes for example (and other examples in the comments), we can ban trans fat, but not smoking? Come on, smoking has to kill many more people a year than trans fat, but its untouchable because of the large amount of money it brings in to each state. So fighting global warming by raising taxes might be good in the short term, but further gains might become more difficult after that due to government resistance to losing their revenue streams.

This just follows my philosophy that real change needs to start at the individual level, people need to take responsibility for what they individually doing to the planet and work from their to reduce their emissions. The green tip of the day is don't count on the government to come up with a global warming plan that actually works or anyone likes, the first people to get theirs will be the big contributors. This is basically what happened with Kyoto in Canada, the government gave out so many favors to big industry it became unworkable.

PG&E to start carbon offset program.

Chico Enterprise Record reports:

Concerned about your contribution to global warming?

Now you can clean up your mess.

In what is believed to be the first such effort by a major utility in the United States, Pacific Gas & Electric won approval Thursday to launch a program that will tell customers — house by house and business by business — how much carbon dioxide they emit every month, and then allow them to offset it to become "carbon neutral."

The program, called ClimateSmart, will begin in March or April. Participation is voluntary and will cost $4.31 a month for a typical household.

"We are convinced that climate change is a serious issue and we want to give our customers the opportunity to play a role in dealing with it," said Wendy Pulling, director of environmental policy for PG&E.

...(more at link)

I have mixed feelings on this, first off, its not certain that the things that PG&E will do to carbon offset are effective, see this which I posted a few days ago. Second, now non profits will have a much harder time competing in the area, especially when PG&E is ready to pour $16 million into advertising for their program. It is convenient to do though, if you can base it right off your electricity bill. If there is a choice, I still think paying more for electricity produced by renewable sources is the best bet, followed by using a non-profit to carbon offset, PG&E is better than doing nothing I suppose.

Not so good at math in Australia.

The Australian reports:

Sydney to go dark for greenhouse push

• Danah Behbehani
• December 15, 2006

SYDNEY will turn off its lights next year in a world-first initiative aimed at reducing greenhouse gas pollution.

Chief executive officer of the World Wildlife Fund Greg Bourne said Sydney residents would be asked to turn off all their lights for one hour on Saturday March 31 in an attempt to cut Sydney's emissions by 5 per cent in 2007.

More than one hour of one day will be needed to cut emissions by 5 percent for the year, but I guess they are thinking the baby steps approach will pan out. The tip is good though, turn off lights when not needed, when needed use fixtures with one light bulb, not multiple bulbs.

Trees, not so hot at cooling planet.

From the Guardian:

Planting trees to save planet is pointless, say ecologists

Alok Jha in San Francisco
Friday December 15, 2006
The Guardian

Planting trees to combat climate change is a waste of time, according to a study by ecologists who say that most forests do not have any overall effect on global temperature, while those furthest from the equator could actually be making global warming worse.

"The idea that you can go out and plant a tree and help reverse global warming is an appealing, feel-good thing," said Ken Caldeira of the global ecology department at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California, a co-author of the study. "To plant forests to mitigate climate change outside of the tropics is a waste of time."

The carbon dioxide used by trees for photosynthesis helps cool the Earth by reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But forests also trap heat from the sunlight they absorb. ...(more at link)

Not that all trees are bad, but don't think you can take the easiest way out and just go to a place such as Carbon Footprint and offset your emissions and be guilt free, its not so easy. Its better not to have emitted in the first place. Tip of the day is to cut back on emissions, not go full steam ahead and then try to make up for it by using easy methods with questionable results.

EPA plays catch up

According to the NY Times:

"The Environmental Protection Agency rewrote one of the great fictions of American life on Monday by changing the formula for calculating miles-per-gallon numbers on the window stickers of new cars, to take account of higher speeds, more aggressive driving, more air-conditioning use and other factors not in the old system.

The rules cover 2008 models, some of which will be on sale next month. It does not change the actual mileage, only the advice to consumers. Congress ordered the change 18 months ago because of widespread dissatisfaction with the accuracy of the old numbers."

This is a very welcome change, everyone knew it was off, but it was hard to estimate. I'm somewhat amazed that Congress actually changed the rule to something more accurate. Enviroblog and Autoblog have more. The Real Green tip of the day: Consumer Reports testing provides the most accurate MPG information, check it before buying a new car.

Bad cows.

According to the UN News Center:

"Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation, and smarter production methods, including improved animal diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions, are urgently needed, according to a new United Nations report released today."

This is actually good news, but I'm afraid it will be used to undermine current research into cleaner, more fuel efficient cars. If its put to good use, we could see significant progress without much more sacrifice than giving up triple cheeseburgers. This also means we should cut all cattle subsidies, the same way we should cut all oil subsidies. Anyway, the green tip for the day is obvious, avoid beef products. Organic beef products are particularly bad as you get less cow for more land.

Western Watersheds Project, Ralph Maughan, and Participate have more.

Supporting green companies.

GT has an informative post on the RealChange Sustainability Expedition, sounds like some minor progress was made. Support companies that make real efforts to help the environment when you can. However, be wary of companies just paying lip service, ie. Ford Motor.

Wal-Mart goes small(er)

According to Packworld:

"At Pack Expo on November 1, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. announced to a standing-room-only crowd of 520 a packaging scorecard to continue its commitment of reducing packaging across its global supply chain by 5 percent by 2013, helping Wal-Mart and its suppliers improve packaging and conserve resources."

2013 seems like a bit off to lower packaging by 5%, but I'm guessing for alot of items its nearly impossible. Wal-Mart should get some credit anyway for addressing the problem when often they're only bashed. The fact is the efficiencies Wal-Mart uses are generally good for the environment, better distribution means less energy use. Core77 Blog and Treehugger have more.

Anyway, my tip of the day is in the article:

"The company used as an example Unilever's ALL Small & Mighty concentrated detergent that saved 478 million gallons of water and 129 million lb of plastic resin. The item's out-of-stocks was also reduced by half."

Try out ALL Small & Mighty or similar to save on packaging, my wife also likes the fact that you don't have to cart a giant jug down to the laundry.

Ditch the catalogs.

From Planet Ark:

"VANCOUVER, British Columbia - The publisher of the Victoria's Secret catalog agreed on Wednesday not to buy paper produced from habitat of threatened Canadian caribou, a move environmentalist hailed as a victory in efforts to limit logging in Canada's boreal forests."

Someday the internet will replace catalogs completely. Until then we have to put up with supposed environmentalist groups Limited Brands and ForestEthics cheering incredibly minor changes by these catalog companies. Real greens never use catalogs and are careful to make sure they don't sign up to receive them. Urban Eco has the right idea and information on how to stop junk mail.

Hybrid sales down.

According to SF Gate:

"Sales of gas-electric hybrid vehicles have fallen sharply since August, a result of declining gasoline prices, shrinking federal tax credits for some brands and uncertainty over carpool-lane stickers in California, the leading hybrid market."

It is not any sort of good news to learn the popularity of hybrids is so dependent on government subsidy and high gas prices. I am still waiting on the economy hybrid, with entry level hybrids going for $26k, its just not appealing to people as cheap as me. Although its hard, I say earn your way into the carpool lane the old fashioned way, by actually carpooling.

People still drive around alot.

According to SF Gate:

"For every 10 percent increase in price during the late 1970s, demand fell 2.1 to 3.4 percent, researchers found. But in the past five years, every 10 percent price increase drove down gasoline purchases by a mere 0.34 to 0.77 percent."

This is not really good news, higher prices don't really do much to cut down on driving. This is probably why hybrid cars aren't that popular either despite nothing but good press and rave reviews. This makes sense, all of my family's options for cutting down on driving are pretty painful. Its not like a go for rides in the country just for the fun of it. Almost everyone already does their chores (banking, shopping, etc.) on the way home from work, not much else easy you can do. Driving less is hard, driving just isn't fun enough to be wasteful about.

Carpooling is very difficult to coordinate and can involve fairly big sacrifices, I car pool now, but this means I have to stay at work an hour longer two days a week than I have to, not always fun. Picking up another person would probably be impossible, especially at a small business like I work at. I suppose that just leaves the usual boring advice, keep your car tuned, and your golf clubs in the garage, good luck.