Ecoscraps

Most teenagers are busy texting their friends or playing video games. Not Angela Primbas. This teen is taking matters into her own hands when it comes to pollution. She and two friends of hers have formed Save Our Streams (S.O.S.), and new group dedicated to stopping the pollution of their backyard streams and the entire Lake Erie Watershed.

Says Angela,

When I was a kid, I can remember seeing a sign that was posted on one of the beaches at Lake Erie that said the beach was closed to swimming because of pollution. That was a big wake-up call for me. I also learned about pollution in my seventh-grade science class. Environmental issues weren’t really part of my school’s curriculum, but I was lucky enough to have a science teacher who really cared about the environment and shared with us some facts about pollution. Between those two avenues, I learned about the toll that pollution is having on our community.

You can read more of the interview with Angela at Mother Nature Network.

Image via NeilsPhotography on Flickr.

US’ oldest environmental group launches social network for hikers

You’ve heard of trail networks, well how about the network, Trails?  Sierra Club Trails, that is. Don’t feel bad if you haven’t because it’s brand new. On Thursday, The Sierra Club launched what is being billed as the world’s first-ever comprehensive hiking wiki. Like other wikis, the meat behind Trails (or the GORP, as the case may be) is crowd-sourced, user-created and user-edited content.

In terms of the new Sierra Club project, anyone can post their favorite hikes, trails, routes, etc., and anyone else can come in and edit the descriptions so that the trails are constantly up-to-date. Users could potentially update entries with current trail conditions (i.e mud, snow, etc.) or, perhaps, with seasonal viewing tips (fall foliage, wildlife, etc.,).

In addition to hiking and paddling trails, the site also features tips for hikers, a birding blog, photo contests, and Nature Notes, a series of audio features based on interviews with naturalists and Sierra Club Outings leaders.

Project H has completed a Learning Landscape design, putting reclaimed tires to uses of exponential value: educating youth at the Kutamba School for AIDS Orphans in southern Uganda.

The tires are used in various math lessons, teaching the kids addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. When the sandbox grid of tires is not being used for math games, wooden benches are placed atop the precisely spaced tires, serving as rows of outdoor classroom seating.

The concept not only carries untold benefits for the students of now and the future, but given it is math-based and, therefore, uses the universal language, it can easily be adopted all across the world.

Project H Design is a non-profit organization and appreciates donations.

Sources: Dwell and Inhabitat

It’s that time of year again for all do-gooding nonprofit organizations who’ve made videos “to inspire and ignite social change” to step forward. The third annual DoGooderTV Nonprofit Video Awards are collecting your submissions. This year’s theme: “Everyone’s Doing It.”

Round one of judging will be completed on or around Mar. 26, 2009. As DoGooderTV says, “No membership, purchase or payment of any kind is necessary.”

Prizes will be awarded April 26-28 at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) in San Francisco on.

To see rules, categories and more information, check out dogooder.tv.

Sources: Ode Magazine and DoGooderTv

An order of Episcopalian nuns in New York City are setting a high bar for devoted ecoratti as they embark on a quest to build a new green convent. The new building will feature, solar heating and on-roof vegetable garden, rainwater collection and even compost toilets.

Why would a community of nuns, devoted as they presumably are to spiritual matters, take the relatively unusual step of embracing environmentalism so energetically?

“It’s a question of stewardship,” said Sister Faith Margaret, a Staten Island native. “Of responsibility.”

Praise The Lord!

Via: New York Times

Photo Credit: pagedooley at Flickr Under Creative Commons License

Usually, people who recycle and donate to charity are commended for their efforts, but Robert Jessberger of Bexley, Ohio is being asked to stop, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

Jessberger reportedly collects items that people in his neighborhood set out as trash. With some cleaning and fixing, most of the items he collects are good as new. He donates thousands of dollars worth of cleaned-up items to charity every year and sells the rest at an annual yardsale, which he has used to pay for seven vacations over the past several years.

The problem is this: taking trash without permission is illegal in Bexley. From the Columbus Dispatch:

Jessberger has proposed that Bexley issue trash-collecting licenses to “people of good character,” but the city’s police chief argues it’s an invitation to for-profit scrap collectors and identity thieves.

Jessberger has received warnings from police twice. But after the 49-year-old resident spoke up at a City Council meeting, Bexley Police Chief Larry Rinehart said he was going to tell officers they need to start writing citations.

Hopefully, they can resolve this issue so that Jessberger can keep recycling without opening the town to “unsavory characters” and other problems. In general, the community supports what he’s doing, and one neighbor even jokingly has offered to buy him a mask and cape.

Ever doubt the power of one person? Bob “Sea Otter” Jones has proven just how important a single person can be. He has single-handedly saved the Aleutian cackling goose.

The Aleutian cackling goose was once abundantly found in North America and Asia, but fur trappers in the 17th and 18th centuries all but eliminated the bird species. They relocated foxes to the birds’ nesting grounds to allow them to breed, but the foxes wreaked havoc on the geese, devouring their eggs, hunting their young, and even killing adults, who have long take-off times for flying. In 1940, researchers believed that the geese were extinct, but Bob “Sea Otter” Jones didn’t give up hope on the species.

By the time Sea Otter Jones began to work on eradicating foxes in the Aleutians, islands once green with guano-fertilized grass had turned brown. The fox had won and the cackling goose and many other island-nesting bird species had lost. But Jones was not convinced the goose was gone. He had seen many rare and strange things in his travels among the fog-draped islands. As he traveled, he searched for some sign of hope, a dove perhaps, or better yet a goose. And then it happened

Jones worked to remove all of the foxes from the islands where the geese once nested and chased down the few specimens he saw. After finding a family of 56 geese on one of the only fox-free islands, he began nursing the young and introducing them to other islands. Today, thanks to his work, there are tens of thousands of Aleutian cackling geese.

Picture via WikiCommons.

Pope Benedict XVI has once again called on Catholics everywhere to go green. This past week, he used his Epiphany Day homily to call for action against global warming and polluting.

This isn’t the first time the Pope has pushed to save the environment. In September of 2007, the Vatican installed solar panels; in December, he talked about our need to conserve energy; and last July, he equated the collection of material goods to the worship of false idols and asked people to realize that the Earth needs help.

“Perhaps reluctantly, we come to acknowledge that there are scars which mark the surface of our earth — erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world’s mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption.”

The Vatican has also supported renewable energy in the past.

Picture via Wikicommons from Fabio Pozzebom

The United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Division keeps tabs on what it considers some of the planet’s most egregious foes — and it has recently released that most wanted list.

John Karayannides (above) is one of a couple dozen offenders on the EPA’s list. Along with the headshots and descriptive information, the crimes are laid out telling the what, when and why.

For example, Karayannides is wanted for his role in the illegal dumping of 442 metric tons of diesel fuel-soaked wheat bound for Bangladesh in 1999. The relief aid-turned-ocean pollution resulted in Sabine Transportation, Inc. paying $2 million in fines, but Karayannides, the company’s former vice president, is at-large.

Source: The Daily Green and the Environmental Protection Agency

The story goes that in recent years, Jeff Clapp has made eco-art that helps preserve the sanctity of Mt. Everest’s natural beauty, and extends the value of a particular bit of Himalayan adventurers’ waste: oxygen canisters. Clapp has collected a number of the tanks that once littered Everest, and has crafted them into bells, bowls and ornaments.

Source: Snarf’d and Bells From Everest (Clapp’s site)