Archive for December, 2008

National Geographic’s “The Green Room” has some tips on green ways to move the Obama family from Chicago to D.C.

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Question of the Week: How will you handle holiday waste?

Washington, D.C. –  Ever wanted to tell EPA what you thought on an environmental topic?  Each week, you have your chance in the EPA blog, Greenversations.  Each question is an open-ended blog entry; please share your thoughts as comments.

This week’s question: How will you handle holiday waste?

One of the “gifts of the season” we usually overlook is the amount of STUFF we have left over - food scraps, dead batteries, old fir trees, and more.  But most of these things can be recycled or reused in some way, or at least disposed of properly.

Share your answer: http://blog.epa.gov/blog/2008/12/29/qotw-how-will-you-handle-holiday-waste/.

“Paper towels billowing out of bathroom dispensers is, for some environmentalists, a painful symbol of waste,” writes the New York Times.  

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Christmas is over and your tree will soon be brown, but there is still something green you can do with it.

There are several ways to do this. Learn more here.

Gifts wrapped in silver and gold may be under your tree right now, but there’s one color to keep in mind before throwing holiday waste in the trash: green.

Learn more here.

According to EcoStiletto’s unscientific laundry room trials, Ecover laundry detergent proved to actually clean clothes much better than any other “green” brand.

“Best of all the eco-friendly laundry soaps. It’s phosphate-free, made from organic plants and minerals and totally biodegradeable—you can use it with gray water systems.”

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Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is making nearly $3 million available in 2009 to reduce pollution at the local level through the Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) program. CARE is a community-based program that builds partnerships to help the public understand and reduce toxic risks from numerous sources.

EPA will award CARE cooperative agreements in two levels. Level I awards range from $75,000 to $100,000 and will help establish community-based partnerships to develop local environmental priorities. Level II awards, ranging from $150,000 to $300,000 each, will support communities that have established broad-based partnerships, have identified the priority toxic risks in the community, and are prepared to measure results, implement risk-reduction activities and become self-sustaining. (more…)

GreenCo Solutions, Inc., a green cooperative owned by the majority of North Carolina’s electric cooperatives, has partnered with QVC, one of the world’s largest multimedia retailers, to install a 1-megawatt solar energy facility at the QVC Rocky Mount, Inc distribution center in Rocky Mount, NC.

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By Monte Mitchell
Media General News Service

BOONE, N.C. — When four Appalachian State University students were challenged to figure out just what they could build with plastic drinking bottles, they wound up pedaling off as winners of a regional contest sponsored by Google.

It turned out that Mountain Dew and Sprite bottles made a nice green color for a bicycle frame.

The bicycle made from plastic drinking bottles was the award-winning product of senior Andrew Drake and juniors Ryan Klinger, Spencer Price and Justin Henry. And it’s going to help pay for their studies. Among the prizes was $5,000 in scholarship money and a trip to see the Carolina Panthers dismantle the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last Monday. (more…)

NORTH CAROLINA — The N.C. Department of Commerce’s Office of Science and Technology is now accepting applications for the second round of N.C. Green Business Fund grants. The grants are designed to develop and commercialize promising technologies, products and services in the areas of biofuels, green building, clean technologies and renewable energy.

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