
With the school year just beginning and Christmas not too far away there’s a great line of plush toys designed to help teach kids about the world around them that just may work well in the early elementary or PreK classroom or even as a stocking stuffer.
The toys, called Idbids, are a trio of colorful characters that each encourage kids to make “iddy biddy” steps to go green through various activities that work to simplify complex issues and make them easy for kids to understand.
Each character has green feet, it’s very own personality and is dedicated to a particular environmental element.
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Image source: San Diego Coastkeeper
Last night, the
Encinitas, CA City Council Natural Resources Committee voted to draft a
ban on plastic bags, which may include a fee for customers use of any single-use
plastic bags and paper bags as reported on KPBS. Next, its up to the City Attorney's office to develop language and guidelines for the program, which may be up for a vote this November.
The City of San Diego, the second largest city in California, is also considering a similar ban, as is the state of California. The California Ocean Protection Council is looking at not only banning plastic bags state-wide, but also requiring that all take-out container manufacturers take their products back and properly dispose of them. Countries around the world have already banned the bag. Coastal cities in the US - San Francisco, Annapolis, Manhattan Beach and now Encinitas - tend to be the first to enact similar bans....

Tonight we are hosting our monthly
Green Drinks Tokyo (every second Thursday of the month) in trendy Harajuku. Starting in August, greenz.jp has teamed up with Cafe Omamori and created Lounge Greenz in a three story building where people can come and chill out, just north of OmoteSando.
Last time, we had people lining up outside, waiting to get in, and from the balcony on the third floor we enjoyed a huge fireworks display sponsored by the city. The food is organic and vegetarian dishes are available. Special treat tonight: a talk by treehouse pioneer
Takashi Kobayashi (photo).
If your computer is ok with Flash graphics, I recommend the beautifully designed
Japan Treehouse Network website.
Treehouse.jp thinks this is a "road to freedom".
Lots of photos at
Treehouse Creator
About Green Drinks (now active in 402 cities worldwide!)
Written by Martin Frid at
greenz.jp...

A clever German campaign at
Click-and-Care shares gorgeous nature photos. But it gets better: sponsors will donate 10 cents (presumably euro cents, so about 15 US cents) for every photo downloaded -- to help green causes. The picture of the day tomorrow will be by Florian Moellers, formerly introduced on TreeHugger in association with
Wild Wonders of Europe....

Image source: Common Threadz
Common Threadz, not to be confused with
Patagonia's recycling program, has a buy-one-give-one type program meaning that for every item you purchase, the store will donate one school uniform to an orphan in Africa. Once
Common Threadz pays for the uniform with profits from your purchase, any money left over is then donated directly to the nonprofit associated with the tshirts' design. The current non-profit is the
Coalition for Educational and Scientific Literacy Assistance or
CESLA, which provides the uniforms to school children, among other things.
Why is this program so important? No school uniform = no school for many children in South Africa. This program is doubly important as the uniforms are going to children who don't have a family to purchase uniforms for them. Each of the designs is created by a famous
artist or celebrity, so there isn't one distinct look for the tshirts, though most of the themes deal with nature or people in some manner. The t-shirts are limited edition (only 250 printed), and most are 100% organic - they will all be printed on 100% organic tees by next year - and they use water based inks. Common Threadz is also working towards a zero carbon footprint for all of its operations....

The issue of carbon offsets is a contentious one: Some people panning them as doing little good or being distracting from the true environmental consequences of our lifestyle choices; other people praise them for providing a method to make a positive difference in the fight against global warming. If you’re in the latter camp there still remains the problem of determining which offset service to use. If that’s the question that’s been bugging you,
Environmental Defense Fund has the answer:...

Image source:
Beautiful Silverlake
Silver Lake Chamber of Commerce - Green Committee (SLCC-GC) was working overtime at this year's
Sunset Junction Street Festival to help both vendors and attendees "Think Before You Toss." As part of their Zero Waste Initiative, the SLCC-GC encouraged the over 25,000 attendees to not only sort their recycling but also to compost.
Attendees could pick up biodegradable containers and silverware as they sampled from over 20 vendors. Kids got a visit from the
Bag Monster, who handed out hugs and advice on recycling. Each recycling bin had a Bin Angel to monitor it, and who was allowed to carry away the loot, as
California pays for bottles. Several of the vendors made agreements to convert to biodegradable containers, cups, cutlery and bags after attending the event. ...

If you’re looking for the place where committed teachers, parents, administrators government officials and a whole host of other school related and not-so-school related personnel get together to compare best practices and stimulate their nerve endings when it comes to environmental issues and our schools there’s no better event than the Go Green Earth Summit, and the conference this year is next month in Syracuse, NY.
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Eve Blossom of Lulan
We asked you once already to
Vote for Architecture for Humanity and Lulan at Amex Members Project. It is a great project, run by
Eve Blossom, where "we currently support over 650 weavers,spinners,dyers and finishers using a holistic approach to produce eco-fabrics in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and India. Our goal is to increase the number of artisans to over 6,000, thus expanding our reach to more weaving families and communities."
Now we learn that enough of you
did vote for Architecture for Humanity's submission got into the top 25, with a good chance of being one of the 5 that gets funding. It's time for the vote-off.
But there is a catch- first time around anyone could vote; the final round is only open to cardholders. I don't know how many TreeHuggers carry American Express cards, but if you do, go to
membersproject to vote. If you don't but know anyone who does, get them to vote. That prize money will be put to very good use. ...

Image source: Do It Green! Minnesota
For those living in Minnesota and wanting to go green, look no further than the Do It Green! Minnesota Magazine, (formerly the
Twin Cities Green Guide). Now in its second year, the magazine offers over 100 articles on becoming more environmentally conscious around your home and neighborhood.
The magazine is not a "buy green guide," though there are some business resources on the last few pages, but rather a huge resource on how to get your hands dirty saving the planet. Each page includes a new article on a green topic, as well as additional business and reading resources, to provide you with more information. Some of the more interesting articles include: "Sue's Starters for Global Warming Action," "The Connection Between Recycling and Global Warming" "Who is Teaching Your Child?" "Good Neighbor Agreements" and "Eco by Stealth." "The How to Get Your Representatives to Listen" is written by Minnesota House of Representatives Elected Official Paul Gardner....

This one’s fun for the whole family ––
who’s talking the green talk?
Obama or
McCain? And since when?
SpeechWars, a nifty research tool developed by Jerusalemite Ben Reis, can help you find out what green words presidential candidates are really using in their speeches, and since when.
Just visit the site, type in your word, hit go and compare. The analyses are based on over 125 speeches downloaded for each candidate from their respective campaign and senatorial websites. And it’s such an interesting tool that the US States Library of Congress has selected SpeechWars for inclusion in its official historic collection of Internet materials related to 2008’s election.
Before we get to the green stuff, some of the terms that McCain mentions more often than Obama include
freedom, values, peace, democracy, human, international, security, leader. Click through for the vocab that dominates Obama's tongue, and to see how our hopefuls fare with “greener” words, like solar, climate, or energy.
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Image source: Planet Green
Sitting at your desk bored at work? Scanning TH for the 15th time today while waiting for your TPS report to print out? Heres something you and the whole office gang can get into - the
Battleground Earth Lightbulb Game. Its just you and a fleet of lightbulbs - think
Atari's Asteroids game- and its your mission to rid the world of those nasty lightbulbs. A word to the wise, shoot ahead of where the bulb is going if you want even a "shot" at hitting them. How to hit the green/red ones? Now that takes skill and I've got no clue. The smashing lightbulb sound effects are really addicting, almost as much as this game is.
There are even secret effects loaded in like "rapid-fire" gun where basically you have a machine gun set on automatic and can really take down some lightbulbs. If you have a mouse you can really do some damage - it takes a little more skill if you're working with a mousepad. Top scores are posted at the end of each game. Shooting lightbulbs in the desert? Not eco-friendly. Shooting virtual lightbulbs in the desert? You're on! You can check out the real
Battleground Earth and find out a few more eco-friendly tips at
Planet Green....

Despite the fact that there’s often so many things stacked against kids growing up in the inner-city, there’s one young eco-hero that’s defying the odds and making an incredible difference while helping to shed a bit of light on how successful students can be at affecting change in their own neighborhoods.
Because when Juan Hernandez recently moved to West Oakland from Bakersfield, California and found his asthma flaring up to the point where he could no longer engage in his favorite sport, running, he decided to step up and do something about it.
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The Used Mattress Dilemma
What’s the eco-conscionable thing to do with a used mattress? Pawn it off on a (really) broke friend? Try to give it to Goodwill or list it for giveaway on the Free page on
Craigslist? These options are tough, because the idea of sleeping on a used mattress just strikes most as creepy—it’s like wearing secondhand underwear. So you likely do what most of us do—haul it out to the curb and leave it by the trash for the garbage men. As a result, around 40 million mattresses get flipped into the
landfills every year. And let’s face it—the options for eco friendly solutions seem pretty slim.
Enter
Architecture for Humanity and
Rubicon National Social Innovations: they’ve teamed up to launch the
Discarded Dreams design competition bent on reusing that seemingly unrecyclable bedding.
...

Wind power has arrived. In case you’ve been living in a cave powered by unsustainable energy for the last couple years, the
wind power industry has been steadily growing and is perhaps most effective and viable forms of
alternative energy on the market.
But you know all that. What you likely don’t know is exactly what the future of the ever-expanding, dynamic
wind power industry holds. And if you want to find out, you just have to head on over to Delaware this week . . .
...

The College Sustainability Report Card 2009 is almost upon academia. It’s that dreaded time--when all those green-talking universities who haven’t put in the due legwork have to forge their parent’s signatures; when environmentally unfriendly colleges try to pencil in a line down the far right side of the ‘F.’ Yes, it’s time for the
Sustainable Endowment Institute’s intense annual eco-evaluation of the universities and colleges of the U.S. and Canada. Does your college have what it takes to profess with the greenest of the green?...

photo:
Gilbert Rodriguez
In a practical sense, to make the type of changes in theory and practice which many TreeHugger readers would probably like to see happen to make the world a more ecologically sustainable place, we may have to compartmentalize a bit. Overturning the whole system may prove difficult, but at least according to Yale University’s Gus Speth that is the type of change needed.
Orion Magazine currently has an
interview with Speth which I think is important to read, but here are some excerpts to give you to set the tone:
...

Image source: Fighting Goliath Film
Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, documents how a group of citizens stood up to the proposed development of 19-coal-fired power plants in central and east Texas. Mayors, ranchers, CEOs, community groups, legislators, lawyers and citizens, who might otherwise have had nothing in common, all joined together for different reasons but one purpose: to stop the states' fast-track approval of coal-plant construction. The group eventually came to include over 36 cities and local government offices across the state.
Robert Redford narrates the movie and says that he got involved because he was so inspired by the movie. Both the idea that these different interests could still come together for the environment and also that we can move towards renewable energy supplies. Redford hopes the movie inspires other communities to band together, both for battling coal or working for environmental justice in their area. The film has already opened in Texas and will be shown in Utah and Nevada next week, where several coal plants are also planned for construction....
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