Recently in Environment Category

The U.S. Army has contracted two bridges made from a thermoplastic composite and recycled plastic. To demonstrate its strength a 70-ton M1A1 Abrams tank was driven across the bridge at its official unveiling in September.

According to Axion, the company with the contract to build the bridge, its recycled plastic railroad ties are actually longer-lasting that typical creosote-treated wood railroad ties.
news.cnet.com

Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas...An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic is dumped in the world's oceans every year... theskinner

Interesting study by the Environmental Working Group that rates radiation of hundreds of cell phones. The Blackberry Storm was rated as a low emitter while the study hinted that many very popular phones like the Apple iPhone 3G and Blackberry Curve 8330 emit much higher levels of radiation.

These studies, usually not very popular with the cell phone industry, have been going on for years.

Recent studies find significantly higher risks for brain and salivary gland tumors among people using cell phones for 10 years or longer. The state of the science is provocative and troubling, and much more research is essential. (ewg.org)

The effects of electromagnetic radiation is a long-term health study, which translates into the reality that those of use who use handsets the most next to our heads are the test subjects of future clinical studies.

With any phone limiting exposure to the head can be accomplished with using a blue tooth ear piece (that emits a fraction of the radiation of handsets), the phone's speaker and texting.

Maybe 30 years from now we will be talking about the effects of electromagnetic pollution.

Giant Food Stores has blended energy saving technology into their new Manchester, Pa. store.

Skylights are balanced with florescent lighting automatically.

As the store gets darker from cloud cover, the lights automatically compensate. On a sunny day, the main overhead lights stay off.

The freezers are illuminated with strips of white LED lights and LED arrays are used in several display lights. The freezers also are designed not to use heaters in the doors to prevent fogging.

Water-free urinals cut down on water use and sewer plant processing.

Locally grown vegetables cut energy to transport produce long distances and push money into the local economy.

The grand opening is tomorrow.

Now that the rain has ended and the forecast is for mostly sun next week, small motors will fire up everywhere spewing pollution and burning gas.

Americans spend more than three billion hours per year using lawn and garden equipment. Currently, a push mower emits as much hourly pollution as 11 cars and a riding mower emits as much as 34 cars. eponline.com

Nowmowgrass.com offers up to "90% Less work and 75% less water".

And no mowing means less burning gas for pointless vegetation management. Anyone try growing this stuff?

Printing can be a toxic business. In the mechanical printing world, oil based inks gave way to soy based. The York Newspaper Company newspaper products are printed with soy based ink

In the increasingly digital reformulation of large scale printing Hewlett-Packard has developed latex inks for large scale printing operations like billboards. According to the HP site, "new water-based HP Latex Inks provide the benefits of solvent-ink technology--like outdoor durability--without imposing the typical environmental, health, and safety considerations."

An HP Designjet Latex printer and a Gandi Aquajet Dye Sub printer that uses water based inks to print on fabric will be part of a graphics trade show at Color Reflections at 400 Green Street, Philadelphia on Earth Day.

When you wake up every day, who thinks about this? People take it for granted that the sun's there every day. It hits a little closer to home.

-JoAnn Graham, York Township.

Before dawn Wednesday, more than 75 people gathered inside Temple Beth Israel in York Township to celebrate the heavens' return to their positions at the beginning of time.

The blessing of the sun, or Birchat HaChama in Hebrew, comes 'round once every 28 years on the Jewish calendar.

Environmental concerns, including awareness about global warming, helped bring global attention to the event, which until this year was little known outside the Orthodox Jewish community.

Leroy "Buck" Mortorff describes the importance of using virgin oak barrels for Chardonnay wine during a tour Sunday of the Four Springs Winery in Seven Valleys, Pa. The barrels made from Pennsylvania oak are then used to make red wines.

The hardwood comes from old woodlands in the western part of the state. Mortorff said that if the trees that make the barrels are grown on landfill the taste is unpredictable.

Long before food production became monopolized and globalized, a farmer could do a bit of everything and get by. If it was a bad year for wheat, maybe milk prices would be up or the pigs would get a good price at market.

Today, a farmer must compete with huge retail outlets commanding a price for their goods fed by consumers who grab the reward of low price and quickly wheel away what they think is a cheap deal.

A concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, the type of farm that has drawn heated concerns from environmentalists and instilled fear in neighbors is the evolution of this market. The farmer, or corporation, sees a way of minimizing costs by specializing and creating a "machine" that churns out huge quantities of a product.

It can be a risky operation for the farmer and neighbors surrounding the operation.

Loans are often needed to fund such an operation and if the market is down for one specific product than the lack of farming diversity shines through.

Concentrating thousands of any creature in a small space creates a problem of removing waste that will generally overtax the local environment because limiting the impact would exceed the profit of the operation.

It's easy to pick sides in this argument of farmer verses homeowner, verses local and federal government, but the solution to this problem lies in consumers understanding and caring about the impact of their purchasing decisions.

First lady Michelle Obama helped break ground on a new White House organic "kitchen garden" Friday. It will be the first working garden at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. since Eleanor Roosevelt planted a so-called "victory garden" at the height of World War II. cnn.com

Victory gardens spang up during WWII as a way for people to help with the work effort, reduce the demand on the food supply and most importantly bond with a common experience.

A group here in my own town, Emigsville, was busy today tilling their plot for planting. The group effort of weeding and watering hopes to yield some home grown produce.

In the same way Victory Gardens helped to promote a community bond for the war effort, community gardens today help promote a feeling of self-sufficiency and control of what they are eating for consumers by an increasingly globalized, monopolized food supply.

Want organic food? Don't put chemicals on your garden. How simple.