Hard to Replace

Every hour, three species go extinct on Earth.
Experts predict that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by 2100, because they are hard to replace, if not impossible.

Brad Hasse satirizes the cruel reality directing a humorous but clever short video as an invitation to preserve what we have today.
“Hard to Replace” was presented in Les Yeux Ouverts At The Milan Triennale last month.

Bad apples

We love Apple. Apple knows more about clean design than anybody. So why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of their product range contain hazardous substances that other companies have agreed to abandon? A cutting edge company shouldn’t be cutting lives short by exposing children in China and India to dangerous chemicals. www.greenpeace.org/apple/
Also via Max.

rechargable solar panel

The idea of solar panel charging to battery isn’t so new anymore, but after reading this post from Treehugger, I wonder why I haven’t already got one of these:

With this portable solar panel, I charge my MP3 player, a portable amplifier, a set of battery-powered Sony surround sound speakers, a cellular phone, a digital camera, two LED lamps, a LED booklight, and a LED flashlight. If you are already positioning yourself to optimize sunlight, it is quite simple to do this. If I added a $50 solar panel, I can power two laptop computer, and have all of my audio-visual and computer devices running on renewable energy.
Link

The charger outputs 3.6/5.5V at 300mA, which works for most gadgets. Now instead of saying “oh, I forgot to charge my cellphone”, I can say “oh, it’s cloudy, i can’t charge my cellphone”. Awesome.

Babs 2 Brisbane – Taking a Stand on Air Travel

Say you live in Wales and one of your best friends is 10,000 miles (16,500 km) away in Brisbane, Australia. Futhermore you are a committed environmentalist working at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), as mentioned here and here. Then said friend asks you to be a bridesmaid at her wedding. Do you ring and book a flight, when CAT calculates that the air journey will create 5.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions? Do do you opt for a land-based journey of six weeks, using instead train bus and boat, with a calculated 1.4 tonnes of emissions? If you are Barbara Haddrill you decide on the latter. You set up a weblog to record the experience (and promptly get right royally pilloried by naysayers.) We’ve had the same debate rage on here on TreeHugger before (see after the fold), but we tip our hat to Babs for acting on her convictions, and bringing attention to the whole issue of more benign transport. Obviously a wind powered yacht would win the prize, but decidedly less of those about since Australia stopped being a penal colony! ::babs2brisbane.blogspot, via ABC Online.

our fabrica hats also off to you, barbara. freakin hardcore.