Here are some of the latest news stories about water and the environment:
To Sell Green, First Teach Green: The honor of “House of the Year” was given to a green home. “We wanted to prove that sustainable homes aren’t limited to the high end,” said Andrew J. Gil, the builder. “For entry-level housing, it is more than doable.”
Airdrop Design Pulls Water From Air to Irrigate Deserts: Australian innovator Edward Linacre, inspired by a desert-dwelling beetle’s self-hydration method, created a device that uses moisture in the air to irrigate plants in dry areas.
Selling Water, Health Care In The Developing World: A new public health plan from Healthpoint “combines videoconferencing with cheap diagnostic tests and inexpensive water filtration all in one building. The company believes that in this way it can deliver affordable health care and clean water to the world’s low-income people — and make money doing it.”
As solar power emerges as an increasingly popular green initiative in the States, other countries are also making moves to rely more heavily on this sustainable energy phenomenon. I recently went hiking in Nepal and was surprised to see solar panels and solar water heaters even in the most under-developed and remote villages in the Himalayas. I noticed that homes with tin roofs and no indoor plumbing boast modern solar energy technology while many American cities are largely absent of such innovations.
Here are some photos of solar technologies I found while hiking:
Solar panels and a rainbow. Ghandruk Village, Nepal.
Mix of old and new. A woman in traditional garb standing in front of a house equipped with solar energy technology.
Here are some of the latest news stories about solar energy:
Chevron Makes Use Of Solar Energy to Recover Oil: “What if solar energy is generated in order to extract oil from mature oil fields? Does this constitute a spectacular irony, or a clever application of renewable energy; one that may be justified in a world where oil is likely to remain fundamental to our economy for a considerable number of years to come?”
Aging Parking Meters Get Solar Upgrade: “A small solar-powered parking meter company is benefiting from the down economy and aging parking infrastructure.”
Why Americans Like Solar Energy: Executive Director of the Sierra Club, Michael Brune, discusses how “recent polling and surveys indicate that, by and large, regardless of our politics, we still think developing solar energy is a great idea. ”
Solar Power For Third-World Ag Boosted: U.S-based non-profit Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) is investing in a program that serves as “an integrated approach to implementing solar energy systems that empower rural communities in developing countries to improve their health, education, economic development and food and water security.”
School districts across California are scraping the bottom of the barrel to continue providing a quality education environment to students. Nevertheless, it seems like kids would still have access to a reliable source of drinking water at school. Shockingly, that’s not always the case.
The advocacy group Water in Schools recently brought wide-spread attention to the fact that thousands of students in California have no free tap water in school food service areas and how their nutrition suffers as a result. Without free water, sodas and sugary drinks become students’ beverage of choice and overconsumption of sugary beverages can lead to obesity and diabetes.
The Water in Schools project and its advocates have recently helped pass legislation that requires California school districts to provide free fresh drinking water during meal times at school cafeterias. It is Water in Schools’ hope that allowing kids the right to water and giving them an alternative to sugary drinks will help combat the occurrence of diabetes and other related illnesses that could be caused by overconsumption of such beverages.
A cursory examination of California’s education woes might lead one to believe that not drinking water during the day is the least of our students’ problems. But consider this:Over 30% of kids ages 10-17 in California are overweight or obese, a figure that has skyrocketed over the past three decades, and a child that is obese is exponentially more likely to become an obese adult than a child who does not have weight problems. CNN reports that, “America spends as much as $147 billion annually on the direct and indirect costs of obesity [for all ages]. In the year of the most recent CDC [(Centers for Disease Control)] study, 2006, that made up 9.1 percent of medical spending.” Water fountains might seem like an unnecessary expense when the education budget is so tight, but perhaps it is a worthy investment when considering the overall costs of childhood obesity for the government.
While 40% of the Californian school districts who responded to a Water in Schools survey still report no access to free drinking water in cafeterias, things seem to be looking up. Case studies show that schools are actively making an effort to provide students with an alternative to sugary drinks. In December 2010, President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act into law which includes a provision to require free drinking water to be available with school meals. Helping kids maintain a healthy weight isn’t easy, but substituting water for sugary drinks, which research suggests “could result in up to 235 fewer extra calories per day being taken in by children and adolescents,” is a good place to start. Hopefully the Water in Schools initiative and new legislation will lead to a healthier tomorrow for our students.
NOTE: I wrote this article for San Franola Granola’s blog. Check it out.
Here are some of the latest news stories about water and the environment:
Does a healthy environment harm jobs?: “Industry says millions of jobs will be lost if the EPA enacts planned regulations. Others say this is just a scare tactic and should be ignored, especially when lives are at stake.”
Around the World on Solar Power Alone: Green company PlanetSolar has recently launched the world’s first boat to circumnavigate the globe using solar power alone. This revolutionary catamaran, topped with solar panels that have an almost 6,000 square foot surface area, will travel from east to west along an equatorial route.
This Company Turns Plastic Bottles Back into Crude Oil: The energy company Vadxx is turning recyclable materials into crude oil. “While we might hope that some day we won’t need oil at all, for now, this is certainly a step up from drilling in the Arctic.”
Largest U.S. Dam Removal Begun: “The deconstruction of two obsolete dams in the U.S. Pacific Northwest will benefit more than a hundred species, experts say.”
