GOOD NEWS FOR THE EARTH
Creative things are being done for the earth all over the country and around the world! We couldn't fit all of them into the book, so we include more of them here.
Airplane
meal leftovers
come to earth
Food left by air travelers will no longer be wasted in Los Angeles. LAX
airport, which used to dump 8,000 tons of food a year, teamed up with
the LA Public Works Department to collect the remains and convert them
to fuel. Leftovers and discards are pulverized, mixed with water, and
heated. Bacteria decompose them and release methane, which is piped to
a power generating plant. (Discover, October, p. 17).
A Healthy Economy
14 million jobs have been created worldwide in the sustainable sector,
in industries such as wind power, photovoltaics (energy fuel cells), recycling,
and remanufacturing (taking back and restoring used equipment). (Green
at Work, January/February 2001, p. 32).
School
Children Inspire the Government
In Sweden, children raised $17,000 one year to save rainforest in Costa
Rica. The government was so impressed that it offered to match the children's
gift the following year. Then the kids really got down to work. In one
year, they collected $700,000! The government may have gulped a bit when
it found out what had happened, but it kept its word and a total of $1,400,000
was sent that year to help establish the Children's Eternal Rainforest
near Monteverde in Costa Rica. This preserve is now 54,000 acres.
Car-Sharing
Clubs
In Boston and several of its suburbs, a new organization lets urban dwellers
have the best of both worlds - convenient use of cars without the costs
and hassles of ownership. Subscribers to Zipcar can reserve a car through
a website, picking it up at one of the company's parking lots and using
a special card to unlock it and log their mileage. Sharing cars helps
members' budgets and reduces congestion, parking woes, greenhouse gas
emissions, and the energy embedded in cars. Such short-term car rental
is well established in Europe, and is expected to grow here. In San Francisco,
you can rent from Carshare.
More Good News for the Earth ...
Do you have a good news story you'd like to share? Send it to lriebel@saybrook.edu
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