CustomEarthPromos - Eco Blog US

Festival season is underway. With Coachella behind us and Sunfest fast approaching, Hatsume Fair last weekend, and Comic Con Revolution just two months ago, there are those who really enjoy festivals and conventions. But they aren't always the most Earth friendly places. With lots of trash, lots of energy usage, and lots of temporary stages and tents set up, they can have quite a carbon footprint. According to Rolling Stone, Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival's 2015 gathering generated 979 tons of waste in just 4 days! There is, however, a silver lining. If you want to take a hard look at each festival's impact and what green initiatives they are taking on, the Sustainable Concerts Working Group suggests considering these five factors: Encouraging or offering mass transit/carpools/bicycles to arrive Reducing landfill waste Using local, sustainable food sources Reducing emissions through the use of renewable energy Communicating progress and initiatives through key stakeholders If this concerns you, but you don't want to give up this beloved activity, consider these music festivals and what they are doing to reduce their carbon footprint--one beer cup at a time. Boom Festival Located in Portugal, Boom Festival's vision is "a festival dedicated to free spirits from all over the world." They have 20 years of initiatives behind them, and it doesn't look like they plan to stop any time soon! Held every two years on the shores of Lake Idhana-a-Nova during July's full moon, this gathering strives to teach festival goers how to co-exist with mother nature and other concert goers. This includes 100% compostable toilets and water treatment facilities, vegetable oil generators, permaculate gardens, and exactly zero corporate sponsors. Starting in 2012, they hosted Boom Off-Grid, which seeks to use solar energy whenever possible. Øyafestivalen This Norwegian bash has ambitions to be one of the greenest festivals in the world. How do they plan to accomplish that? They have a stage that is purely solar powered. They also offer organic and vegetarian food options served on edible plates. They offer free bike repairs, and boast a 74% recycling rate. They also offer cash back for turning discarded cups, handles, and cigarette butts! Shambala Shamabala, located in Northamptonshire in England, became the first and only festival to win the highly coveted five star Creative Green industry certificate in 2017. They did this by using 100% renewable power, going both meat and fish free, banning the sales of single-use plastic, among other initiatives. Held on a country estate in Northamptonshire, this Shambala highly encourages green transport. They offer cycling maps, subsidized shuttle busses powered by biofuels, and car sharing. They also plan to have at least 40% of their audience arrive by shared transport this year. Pickathon In 2017, UK publication The Independent asked "Is this Portland festival the most hipster event on the planet?" If hipster ...

The "biggest case of eco-fraud in US history" is what an environmental advocacy group is calling the massive cleanup at the old Hunters Point Naval Base in San Francisco. The old naval base was once a dumping ground for radioactive material. The US Navy spent more than $1 billion to cleanup the soil so the area could be redeveloped into 12,000 condos and apartments, plus retail and office space. Newly released documents, however, show that almost all the radiation data is unreliable. Homeowners worry they are living on dangerous ground. The Navy held a public meeting to discuss the future cleanup efforts, but residents don't trust the information and worry about the safety of future developments. "I'm a science teacher, so I definitely know about radiation." says Hunters Point resident Jonathan Lee. He bought one of the condos two years ago, but he worries the ground underneath can be contaminated. This could harm his 8-month-old daughter. Brian Butler, a community organizer with Greenaction, stated "This whole development is constantly trying to be presented as the city's  solution to the housing crisis. That's a lie. It's fool's gold." Most development is now on hold due to a recently released letter from the EPA to the Navy saying that the soil samples used for testing are unreliable and could even be fake. This means areas deemed safe for development might still be contaminated. "Maybe after decades of promising to clean this up, maybe you actually will," Butler said. "But it won't be for us. It will be for this new, more affluent, lighter complexioned demographic that seems to be moving in." He says it's time that the Navy is held accountable for years of botched cleanup efforts. "What we need is independent community oversight on all the testing moving forward and transparency with the community." Local news station KPIX 5 reached out to both the Navy and EPA, and the soil testing company, but they all refused to comment.

Vard Holdings Limited, a subsidiary of shipbuilder Fincantieri, reports that is has signed a letter of intent with cruise line Viking for the design and construction of two new cruise ships. This letter also includes an option for two more ships. Delivery is scheduled for the second quarters of 2021 and 2022. The new ships will be developed by Vard Design in Norway. While details are scarce, Vard did state environmentally friendly and safe operations will be key. They plan to design with an eye "among the most environmentally friendly ships." A representative for Viking told Travel Agent Central that they would not be commenting on the details of Vard's announcement. This announcement is just the latest in a series of major fleet expansions. The company reported it had signed a contract with Fincantieri in March. This contract is for an order that would see the delivery of six new ships by 2027. This would bring its ocean-going fleet up to a total of 16. Delivery is scheduled to begin in 2024. Viking's ocean fleet currently stands at four ships. This is following last month's delivery of the Viking Sun. The Viking Sun is now sailing a 141-day world cruise from Miami, Florida to London, England. Up next, the Viking Orion is scheduled to launch this summer. This will be followed by a currently unnamed sibling in 2019. Currently, Viking also offers its world famous river cruises aboard its fleet of longships. Viking has also recently announced combination ocean and river cruises.

Plogging. Doesn't that sound like the hilarious sound you just heard an animal make on YouTube? This Swedish workout, a combination of jogging and the Swedish term for pick up, "plocka upp," is "sweeping" the globe! The concept is quite simple: rather than jogging past the garbage you see on your route without even eyeing it, ploggers collect it and dispose of it properly. To plog even more efficiently, some ploggers include additional exercises as they bend to pick up the litter they find. This not only keeps heart rates pumping, it keeps the streets nice and clean. According to the fitness app Lifesum, which allows users to input and track calories burned during a plog, the eco-friendly workout is significantly more efficient than jogging alone. Plogging combines the benefits of jogging with a bending motion and the arm strength required to hold all of the garbage. Bending is is good for different muscles in your lower body (depending upon if you bend forwards or squat). A half hour of this burns about 288 calories compared to just 235 without trash. That's a difference of 53 calories--about as much in 8 fl oz of Kool-Aid! The craze is gaining steam on social media. More people are sharing pictures of the bags of trash--or realizing that they have always been plogging. There have been over 3,000 Instagram posts and various Facebook groups have popped up. The next time you go for a jog, stop to pick up some garbage along the way. Your body, and the environment, will thank you. Check out our eco-friendly water bottles to take stay hydrated during your eco-friendly work out!

Summer is coming--and faster than you might think. With only 2 months left until travel season approaches, you might want to do some globe-trotting. Unfortunately, a paradox exists at the heart of having worldly adventures: you love the world and want to see more of its vast peoples and various cultures, but by going to these spectacular places you increase your carbon footprint, thereby making these places less spectacular by damaging the very planet you are trying to learn from. If this thought scares you and you want to make that footprint smaller, maybe even do some good--fear not! These four apps will help you give back to the planet while you take in its splendor. Green Globe This free app, available for both ios and Android, is all about sustainable living. It helps you book a hotel, attraction, or even a business meeting with an eco-friendly service. With destinations all over the world, you are sure to be spoiled by the number of choices you have. You can guarantee your choice is green thanks to Green Globe's checklist of over 40 items, including recycling practices to giving back to the local environment. Spinlister Once you've arrived, the greenest way to get around is on a bicycle. Splinster is a peer-to-peer sharing app that lets you rent a bicycle from anyone in the area willing to let you borrow it. You can choose from different types of bikes, different loan lengths, and Splinster will show you your cost. It's almost always cheaper than any traditional mode of transportation (unless you go for a really high-end cycle), and has the added benefit of zero emissions! As a fun bonus, Spinlister also lets you rent winter and water sport equipment. This means it doesn't matter if you are snow or surfboarding, you can save money on equipment and emissions during every season. Find Spinlister on the App store CityMaps2Go This app, as it name suggests, provides city maps. The difference is that they have an astonishing level of detail. This saves you from having to purchase a large paper map, a transport map, or a guide to local attractions in a foreign location; this saves lots of paper. This app isn't free, but there is a trial version. When you download it, you get one free city and the option to upgrade to premium for the rest--and there are a lot. It is available for both iPhones and Androids. Tripit Paper--that isn't something we think about wasting while traveling. We think about gas, money, water, electricity, toiletries....But this app helps you save the one thing that falls by the wayside. Tripit collects all of your plans into one place so that you don't have to print off multiple itineraries. All you have to do is forward emails about your trip(s) to a single, automated email address. Tripit also works alongside other apps, such as AppInTheAir, which helps keep track of flights, and PackPoint, which helps you pack smarter. This app is available for free and features in-app purchases. Find it for Apple and Android.

Polystyrene foam, more commonly known by the brand name Styrofoam, is well known as the only materials that is completely unrecyclable....UNTIL NOW! Traditionally, the strength of atoms in styrofoam production not only gives it a long shelf life but this shelf life also transfers over to landfills. Styrofoam only breaks down through a process called photodegradation, or "breakdown by light." Unfortunately, trapped in a landfill, buried under layers of other garbage, no light can reach it. This can leave styrofoam, which makes up about 30 percent of landfill volume in the United States, around for millions of years. And while styrofoam is not biodegradable, it does fragment into smaller pieces, choking and clogging the digestive systems of animals who unfortunately ingest it. How do we fix this problem? By stripping away all of the filler material, leaving just the bare fibres, researches have show that the resulting "nanowood" outperforms almost all existing insulators. Wood is the new earth-friendly styrofoam! Liangbing Hu led the team that developed nanowood. He is an assistant professor at the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland--College Park in the department of Materials Science and Engineering. The team's process is relatively simple: the wood is exposed to three cheap, simple chemicals--sodium hydroxide (lye or caustic soda), sodium sulphite, and hydrogen peroxide. Together, these strip out the cell walls leaving just the skeletal nanofibres of cellulose. The surviving nanofibres' parallel arrangement is what gives the material its unusual properties. Heat can't travel easily across the fibres and is mostly reflected. All the solid filler material in wood that would otherwise convey heat is gone and has been replaced by poorly-conducting air. Because the surviving fibres are parallel, they help any heat that does penetrate the material vanish. This combination of stopping heat penetration in one direction and guiding it away in the other provides nanowood's edge over other insulators according to Hu. According to Jeff Youngblood, a professor of Materials Engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, whose work also focuses on producing industrial materials from wood, "This really shows that nature has outperformed humankind, once again. We just have to unlock her secrets." Lab tests have shown that nanowood's capacity to block heat all the way through is on par with styrofoam, and both materials are hundreds of times better at this than epoxy, wool, and glass. Nanowood is also incredibly strong. It is able to withstand loads of up to 13 Megapascals, equivalent to almost 2,000 pounds per square inch! The sample tested was only 15 centimeters long and 2 centimeters thick, but researchers say that it can be made in virtually any size or shape already obtainable by wood. Due to its versatility, it can be used to insulate a variety of products including entire buildings, tiny computing ...

College just got greener. Syracuse University, in Syracuse, New York, has filed a proposal to create its first major with a broad focus on the relationship between humans and the planet. The new, integrated "Environment, Sustainability, and Policy" (ESP) major between SU and State University System of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) will asses ways in which "careful stewardship of natural resources requires the integration of multiple scientific disciplines and an understanding of the complexities of human societies," according to Shere Abbott, a professor of Geography at SU's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and the vice president of sustainability initiatives at SU. The major is on track to be certified by the upcoming fall semester. It can easily be combined with other majors. This allows students to incorporate a focus on sustainability into their primary field of study. More than 100 American colleges, including the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL and the main campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL, already offer a sustainability major according to StartClass' 2017 data. Professor Abbott has said that the need for communication between scientists and politicians is becoming more and more apparent due to the increasing complexity of environmental issues. For this reason, the ESP major helps students see the human-environmental relationship through a holistic lens. "The purpose is to blend natural and human sciences thinking and to integrate science and policy." Students studying ESP will be required to maintain a "base major" in one of the schools at SU. Students will also be expected to take core environmental science courses, environmental humanities and data analysis, a base major-specific course on scientific policy, and complete a senior capstone project. This new major is especially useful when paired with base majors such as anthropology, biology, geography, or engineering--among others. It isn't exclusive to Syracuse either. Cornell University, also in New York (Ithaca), unveiled their own sustainability major this past fall. Dean of Cornell's College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Kathryn Boor, said that student demand and practical necessity coupled to bring about the major. "Not only are students interested in environment and sustainability, but also there is a strong, growing need for students who can understand environmental issues from different disciplinary vantage points." This is a promising sign, with excitement about sustainability at SU, Cornell, and elsewhere in academia. With an ESP major on the horizon, students can be the change they wish to see in an eco-friendly world.

Seaweed--whether you think it's the grossest thing in the ocean or a delicious addition to your favorite sushi, three women are farming it out in California. Even though California already serves up a third of the nation's vegetables, and two thirds of the fruits and nuts that we eat each year, excitement continues to grow. The state's potential for aquaculture has entrepreneurs looking to put California seaweed on the international foodie map. It's hard to imagine the famed coastline still holding a "best-kept secret", but Tessa Emmer, Catherine O'Hare, and Avery Resor are the braintrust behind Salt Point Seaweed. This Bay Area company launched last June and has been harvesting wild seaweed off the Mendocino County, just north of San Francisco, coast for almost a year. The women behind the project then sell this seaweed to local chefs, community-supported seafood sellers, and retail locations. Their latest goal? To become the West Coast's first active, open-water seaweed farming operation. The idea came to these women after living in East Africa and witnessing seaweed's increasing role in their cuisine. As local fish populations dwindled, resourceful women used seaweed as a replacement. It easily grows rapidly without the requirement of external inputs. Emor and Resor, who both have backgrounds in natural resource management, drew inspiration from a female run aquafarm in Zanzibar. "There were so many women farmers using it as an alternative revenue model in declining fisheries environments. We started wondering why it wasn't happening in California." questions Emmer. O'Hare got involved with seaweed farming as a hobby after moving to the Bay Area. Immediately, she saw the culinary potential for Northern California's innovative, health-centric food scene. "There's so much interest in local food in the Bay Area, but no one is taking advantage of the wealth of local seaweed we have right here." Seaweed can offer more than just an interesting addition to your favorite dish. It could also be a major asset in the fight against climate change, ocean acidification, and the decimation of aquatic ecosystems (due to unsustainable fishing and farming). The plant readily absorbs excess phosphorus, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide from the water, deacidifying it and making it safe for marine species such as shellfish. Seaweed has also shown promise as a fossil fuel substitute. (It is also protein-rich and contains more than 25 vitamins and 50 minerals!) It's the three-tiered benefit that leads O'Hare to call seaweed a "win win win." "It's a great global solution to ocean acidification, unsustainable food systems, and climate change. We thought if we could figure out how to do it, we could help people all over the world do the same." Though it has seen a rise in popularity, more than 90 percent of the seaweed we eat comes from Asia. Similar species, however, grow in abundance right where these women have their farm. There are local strains ...

Students in the carpentry program at Nashoba Technical Valley High School in Westford, Massachusetts, are learning to build not only furniture, but also a cleaner environment. The New England high school's carpentry and cabinetmaking program has entered this year's eighth annual Eco-Carpentry Challenge. This challenge promotes resourcefulness and recycling, and provides students with a creative opportunity to develop their carpentry skills. Sponsored by Boston based non-profit The Furniture Trust, carpentry students across Mass. take used office furniture supplied by the trust and re-purpose it into new furniture. There are no design requirements or themes. The contest encourages teams of up-and-coming carpenters to be unrestricted in their creativity. When finished, Nashoba Tech's project will be brought to Boston's District Hall. Each project from the ten participating schools will be on display in District Hall on Thursday, May 10th. Here, a panel of judges consisting of industry professionals will review the finalists and present monetary awards. According to Johnathan Pryor, one of NTVHS's carpentry instructors, "They take all this old office furniture and, rather than landfill it, they have carpentry students re-purpose it for non-profit organizations." Pryor said that this is the first time the school has entered this contest. He expects this to expand beyond his program and include the Automotive Technology, Automotive Collision Repair & Refinishing, and Advanced Manufacturing students. "We'll try and collaborate as much as we can and get other programs involved. This seems like a real worthwhile project."

Respected publication Air Transport World recently had their 44th annual Airline Industry Achievement Awards. The winner? Air Canada has been named the 2018 Eco-Airline of the year. ATW cited cited the carrier's commitment to emissions reduction as part of their environmental accomplishments. Air Canada achieved this through supporting the development of alternative fuels and numerous green programs and partnerships--including being the first airline in the world to voluntarily join the World Bank's IMF Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition. "Air Canada has made sustainability central to its decision-making and business processes, and this includes acting responsibly with respect to the environment. We are very pleased that ATW has recognized the effectiveness of our environmental programs, including our participation in the development and support of alternative fuels in Canada, and our efforts to contribute to healthier communities. We have made great strides , improving fuel efficiency by 40 percent since 1990, and this award will further spur us on to the goals we have set for ourselves to continually improve our environmental performance," stated Calvin Rovinescu. He is the President and Chief Executive of Air Canada. The award is given to airlines that practice and innovate in exceptional eco-operations. Judges looked for an industry-leading commitment to technologies and efforts that increased operational efficiency, and reduced emissions and dependence on oil when giving out this year's award. "The panel of ATW editors who judged the 2018 awards were especially impressed with how Air Canada constantly maintains its leadership position as an eco-responsible airline in technological areas such as the development of biofuels, but also goes much further. Air Canada as a company is a committed leader in sustainability, becoming the world's first airline to  voluntarily join the World Bank's IMF Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition. And Air Canada things out of the box in its drive to be an eco-responsible company, donating old business class duvets to good causes where they can be re-used, and partnering with Diabetes Canada so that uniforms can be recycles. One editor noted it was remarkable how many organizations and companies Air Canada partners with in its sustainable initiatives, spreading its eco-efforts on a global scale far beyond aviation," said Karen Walker, Editor-in-Chief for Air Transport World. This is Air Canada's second award this year with regards to its sustainability programs. The airline's corporate sustainability report, Citizens of the World, was named "Best Sustainability Report in the Transportation Category" by the Finance and Sustainability Initiative. FSI is a non-profit that brings together finance professionals dedicated to promoting sustainable finance and responsible investment to financial institutions, companies, and universities. This is the second year in a row the airline has ...