Rarest Flower in the World Blooms in the UK (PICS)
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:26:00 -0500

Photos via the BBC It's one of the (if not the) rarest flower in the world: the Middlemist's Red exists in only two known locations: a greenhouse in the UK, and a garden in New Zealand. Imported to Britain two hundred years ago from China, back when flowers where a luxury item, it has since been exterminated in its original homeland. And now the Middlemist is blooming again--nice looking flower, right?...Read the full story on TreeHugger

"Nobody used to ride a bike in New York, but now it's becoming mainstream" Our friend Clarence at Streetfilms rode around NYC with Village Voice entertainment columnist Read the full story on TreeHugger

NoMix Toilet. Photo: Flickr Technological Innovations in the Bathroom? You Bet! Being green is all about solving problems and grabbing overlooked opportunities. It turns out that there's such a double-win in most bathrooms around the world; if we had "NoMix" toilets that separate urine from solid waste, municipal wastewater plants would have a significantly easier task (and produce more methane to generate electricity), and we could much more easily extract precious nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen for use as fertilizer (instead of using fossil fuels). So what's stopping us from going NoMix?...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Good The life of a farmer is a difficult one—meaning, for most, years of hard work, little money, and even less appreciation. Maybe it is this reason that passing down the family farm has become an increasingly difficult proposition....Read the full story on TreeHugger

World consumption of most common commodity triglyceride vegetable oils. Image credit:Wikipedia Certain plant oils, especially palm oil, have a reputation of being produced unsustainably. Many plant oils are low-cost commodities (see table above for recent global volumes). Certain of the commodity plant oils are used extensively in soap and personal care products; and demand for these is increasing (a growing market segment does not accept animal fat-based product). For personal care products of the future, a key challenge is to find sustainable feedstoc...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via LimJunYing It's been a couple months of seriously bad PR for climate science, both due to unfortunate errors made by scientists and (okay, mostly) a well-funded noise machine intent on preserving the status quo at any cost. So how can climate scientists dig themselves out of the negative publicity trench and help reeducate the public on the dangers of climate change? The Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via FreeSpeech Ban Ki-moon has announced that a comprehensive, independent review of the IPCC is to be carried out, after calls from world governments were made to do so. The Secretary General for the UN said that scientists from academies around the world will take part in the review, which will be headed by the Inter-Academy Council--and it will be conducted completely independently of the United Nations. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo: Wikipedia This is one you definitely don't hear about too often: Over at Green Biz Marc Gunther is highlighting the efforts of Contour Global to extract methane from Lake Kivu, on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here's how they are doing it:...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Michael Pollan's first food rule is simple: Eat Food, which he considers to be a different thing than what he calls edible foodlike substances, or "highly processed concoctions designed by food scientists, consisting mostly of ingredients derived from corn and soy that no normal person keeps in the pantry, and contain chemical additives with which the human body has not been long acquainted."

1. Palm Oil

Many of those substances are bad for our health, bad for our planet and show up in really surprising places. One of the most blatant examples is palm oil, which is now found in just about everything; alm...Read the full story on TreeHugger

The Satkosia Gorge Sanctuary in India. Image credit: Raveesh Vyas India has had a system of wildlife sanctuaries since 1928. Now, there are more than 500 in the country ranging from dedicated tiger and bird reserves to more general areas intend to protect habitats rich in biological diversity. Unfortunately, Read the full story on TreeHugger

Images: Studied Impact
It's hard to fathom much of the news from Dubai, especially when it comes to architecture. Then again, this city of excess has delivered some astonishing structures, including, of course, the world's tallest building. So it with a mixture of cynicism and excitement that we greet news of projects such as this. The proposed 10MW Tower, designed by Studied Impact, is a 50-story skyscraper that integrates three massive ren...Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo: chantrybee via flickr. Even if the sun entered a Grand Solar Minimum--like the one experienced in the late 17th century known as the Maunder Minimum, which brought about the Little Ice Age--it would still only offset less than a tenth of the warming caused by human release of greenhouse gases. That's the word from a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published in Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Ivan Prole Look at the bottle of juice you just drank. The detergent you're going to use. The plastic backer on the desk calendar. What's on all of them? That familiar "chasing arrows" graphic with a number in the middle. That means it's recyclable, right? Sorry, but not quite....Read the full story on TreeHugger

A market for salvaged goods in Cairo, Egypt. Photograph by David Lazar. What does "sustainability" mean to you? That's the question that JPG Magazine, a publication of reader-submitted photography, posed to members of its online community, who posted hundreds of images of peaceful landscapes, freshly grown Read the full story on TreeHugger

+ Is Lady Gaga a stealth refashionista? The empty soda cans in her hair could be the next haute hair accessory. + Woody Harrelson, Food Inc.'s Robert Kenner, Suzy Amis Cameron (wife of James), and Livia Firth (wife of Colin) were just some of the Oscar red-carpet attendees decked in sustainable style. + How our little Herminone has...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Guess who'll pay for the new energy tax? the ad reads, in lettering right above four portraits of hardworking Americans. Perhaps it's Getty Images, the stock photo company from which all four photos of supposedly 'real' Americans were taken? Or perhaps its actors and models, who posed for the photos? Okay, I give up, tell me, tell me! The only entity that will be paying--or should I say no longer getting paid out--is the oil industry. See, this ad is in response to Obama's attempt to remove 36 billions of dollars in government...Read the full story on TreeHugger

It has been another fabulous season for ethical fashion and all of us green bloggers are delighted to see the ethical designers' collections going from strength to strength. From New York to London to Paris there have been some truly desirable fashion forward pieces for Autumn Winter 2010. Emma Grady did an amazing job of covering Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo: Mari Tefre/Svalbard Global Seed Vault The doomsday Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway--begun as protection against any potential future calamity that threatens global food production--just turned two years old and has also just passed the half million mark in terms of seed varieties saved. This makes it the most diverse collection of crop diversity anywhere in the world. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Credit: Cecilia Cassini Ten-year old Cecilia Cassini might just be the youngest fashion designer in the world. The California-based fifth grader has been sewing since she received her first sewing machine at the age of six. She now makes a profit from her collection of one-off garments made with fabric and re-purposed clothingRead the full story on TreeHugger

Just in time for South Africa to host the World Cup, a group of Harvard students have created a way to provide energy from a soccer ball. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the sOccket.

The Caribbean nation of Anguilla may be lush with tropical forests but it lacks the farms to eat fresh fruits and veggies. Enter hydroponic farming.

If you're into equality and all things green, definitely have a look at this contest from Read the full story on TreeHugger

Images via SolidWorks How can designers make products that they can be sure have a minimized environmental footprint? The software they use during the design phase can make all the difference. A new tool, called SolidWorks Sustainability software shows designers the air, water, carbon, energy and disposal impact of every decision they make on every part of a product. That way, they can come up with the most environmentally friendly version of their product, without having to go back to the drawing ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo: Yusuke Kawasaki via flickr. The US has agreed to back an international ban on trade in critically endangered bluefin tuna, and now the European Union nations will do so as well, with Malta being the only dissenting vote. That still leaves us with Japan, which consumes about 80% of the world's bluefin tuna, saying it won't participate when Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Funny or Die TreeHugger has covered hand-powered chainsaws before, and even chainsaws lubricated with mushroom spores, but we've never done much on electric chainsaws. I'm thinking we should get something up soon though, before Pleatherface dons his cruelty-free mask and pays us a visit. Although if this serial killer's competence i...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via casers jean We're fast to post about packaging failures, which are all too common. But happily, we sometimes get to post about packaging brilliance. Cisco is giving us just such an opportunity. The company has taken up a pilot program for a packaging diet, and will see a savings of about $24 million just by getting smart and rethinking the materials and size of packaging, and the transportation of products. Check out how they're doing it, and the kind of example they're setting for other companies who are due for a rethink of how they're boxing up and sending out their g...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via Engadget Two new foldable solar chargers from AmbienTech have hit the market. But...They look a little odd, right? That's because they're the first mobile chargers to use spherical solar cells. Each cell has around 1,900 spheres collecting solar energy. They're strong, bendable, and just look cool. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Images by B. Alter It's been Fairtrade Fortnight, and in celebration Starbucks has released a special new Fairtrade coffee from Rwanda. It's part of their complete switch-over last year to selling only 100% Fairtrade espresso-based coffees in the UK and Ireland. This makes Starbucks the largest buyer of Fairtrade Certified Coffee in the world which is pretty impressive, no matter what you think of them. This TreeHugger was invited to a Starbucks tasting and informal discussion with coffee farmers and producers from Costa Rica and Tanzania. As a long-time anything-but-Starbucks coffee drinker, I att...Read the full story on TreeHugger

A coffee cup as a plant pot, coke cans for Halloween cape, a detergent bottle as worm harvester or washing tablet net bags for toy storage; these are all things people have done with the packaging they found in their daily lives. Reuse is often better than recycling, so when the consumer gives a packaging a second life before eventually recycling it wherever possible, he saves resources. The object he or she reused has gained the value of the item he or she would have had to buy otherwise. Packaging has become a visible problem to all of us, and although governments tent to push towards packaging reduction and recycling, re-using co...Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo via flickr Coal activist Ted Nace today published a must-read post in Grist on the importance of taking on coal via a variety of strategies, effectively coming at the country's Number 1 contributor to climate change from every angle possible. Nace, the man behind the indispensable Coalswarm, lays out the case for why coal has got to go and offers a roadmap for taking...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via MotorTrend VW's 2011 Touareg Hybrid The 2010 Geneva Motor Show was filled with so many splashy auto announcements--Porsche's first ever plug-in hybrid, a new Aud...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via Whatson The so-called "conventional wisdom" has been pretty unremitting in deeming any sort of comprehensive energy reform legislation dead in the water this year. But that's still not looking to be the case--some rather unlikely champions, including GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, have continued pushing for a bill that puts a price on car...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Good Times are tough for everyone—including municipal governments. One are that has suffered from diminished budgets is public transport. Across the country, transit workers are losing their jobs, making it that much harder to maintain the systems and schedules. Though there are some signs of economic recovery, more public transit jobs are expected to be lost before things get better....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Public domain Other Truck Fleets, Pay Attention Did you know that replacing a pre-1994 diesel truck (or at least the engine) with a 2004-2006 model could cut soot pollution by about 2/3, and reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions by more than half? Post 2007 diesel trucks are even better, with a reduction of soot particles by about 95% and NOx by at least 3/4. That's a pretty big difference (though it doesn't solve CO2 emissions), and it esp...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Trinity College, Dublin TreeHugger loves Product Service Systems, where you borrow and share instead of own. They are also called libraries, and Kris De Decker of No-Tech Magazine points us to a lovely post by Brian Kaller, a former newspaper reporter now living in rural Ireland. He loves his local library, but more importantly, writes about the principle beh...Read the full story on TreeHugger