Archive for Eco Friendly
Meatless Monday with Porcini Parsley Pasta from Rachel Ray
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It is another Meatless Monday and we find ourselves asking the all important question: What’s for dinner? Well, here is an eco-friendly organic recipe, that is easy to make and the ingredients are readily available. This recipe comes courtesy of my favorite food-network-personality-turned-daytime-talk-show-host Rachel Ray. This recipe does say that you can use either vegetable or chicken stock, but please remember that if you want the taste of chicken stock without having meat in the pasta you can use an eco-friendly organic vegetarian chicken stock mix. Another way to make this an even healthier meal is to use either whole wheat or spelt pasta, whichever you can find in your supermarket.
Ingredients:
- Salt and Pepper
- 1 pound pappardelle or fettuccine noodle Pasta
- 1 quart vegetable or vegetarian chicken stock
- 1 ounce dried porcini mushrooms
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 4 large organic shallots, chopped
- 1 cup packed flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
- 1 cup dry white wine
- A wedge of Pecorino Romano cheese, for grating at the table
Preparation:
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt it, add the pasta and cook to al dente. Drain.
- While the pasta is working, in a saucepan, simmer the vegetable stock and porcinis until the mushrooms have softened, 15 minutes.
- In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Stir in the shallots and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, until softened, 7-8 minutes. Add the wine and reduce heat to low.
- Read More→
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The height of Eco-Friendly - World’s tallest buildings face new contender
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London's Post Office Tower
It all started with the church in the village where I grew up , it’s stone spire could be seen from a few miles away as it was the tallest building in our little town. As a youngster I was ridiculously impressed by tall and grand buildings, as a little kid when visiting London I was amazed at the twin spires of Westminster Abbey (69 M 225 FT) and the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral (112 M 366 FT), before then being transfixed by the tallest tower (at the time) in London - The Post Office Tower (now named the BT Tower standing at 188 M 617 FT). As a small boy that building seemed impossibly tall and so it remained until the first time I visited Paris on a school trip when I was about eight. It was there that I first saw the Eiffel Tower - not so much a building as a steel observation deck but certainly enough to thrill me and the tallest yet (not to mention very metric exactly 300.0M or 984 feet).
burj-khalifa in Dubai
My dad used to travel to the US and Canada on business a lot and when I was ten we were taken on a family trip which was really masquerading as a business trip but my tall building buzz saw new highs. We flew into JFK and I was lucky enough to visit and go to the top of the Empire State Building (381M) and The World Trade Centre (417M 1368 FT). At more than double the height of the Post Office Tower plus the incredible vastness of the building I remember just looking up in awe - and of course there were two of them! It seemed to my 10 year old brain that the trip was designed around my tall building hobby (it wasn’t) as we also visited Chicago which of course features the Sears Tower, the tallest in the world at the time (442M 1451 FT). My holy grail was visited and I had the photos to prove it.
As I grew older my interest in tall buildings waned, and although I ended up living in one and working in one for a short time I found other interests that replaced my early passion. I’ve paid marginal attention as the Sears Tower was trumped by new skyscrapers in Asia and wept (for reasons beyond the obvious) when the twin towers in New York came crashing down on that dark day in 2001. My interest was rekindled by the recent construction and opening of the new top tower in Dubai - the Burj Khalifa is a staggering height (828M 2717 FT). I can’t even conceive of a building being that tall and photographs and videos such as the one beneath make it seem computer generated against the desert background.
From an environmental perspective the newest buildings are also using more methods of green construction. Not just smaller buildings and homes are benefiting from new concepts of sustainable construction by skyscrapers around the world are also incorporating design ideas that consider more than height. There is now news of a potential tower being constructed later this decade in Miami, Florida that would not only been taller than the current pinnacle in Dubai but also potentially the one of the largest eco-friendly buildings ever built.
The proposed Miapolis
The proposed structure is the Miapolis, if it gets built the 975 meter high tower could potentially beat out Dubai’s Burj Khalifa as the world’s tallest building if built. Designed by KOBI KARP, Miapolis would be more than just a building - it would be a vertical self-contained city. They utilize the most cutting-edge sustainable systems and practices within the design, it would be the largest LEED-certified structure at any rating level in the United States. The staggering 160-floor tower would contain entertainment and residential spaces within including an amusement park, observatory, restaurants, 2 million sq ft of shops, over 1000 apartments, 1 million sq ft of office space and a 792 room hotel. *(some elevators too I’m guessing)
Miapolis’ eco-credibility includes the use of 60% wind energy, a modular green roof, greenhouse gas management, water desalinization, storm and wastewater management, solid waste management and much more. Will it actually happen? There is a list of proposed super towers as long as my arm that never came to fruition - but to think that the tallest building in the world might also boast a very green core - that would be the height of eco-friendly.
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An eco-friendly Garry Marshall movie – Valentines Day
Posted by: | CommentsDid you know that the mega-successful movie Valentines Day, directed by the incomparable Garry Marshall, is the first movie ever to go green? Well, it was. Garry said that even in the beginning Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema were both behind the idea of an eco-friendly movie set. Marshall explained that both the studio and production company understood that this might cost more, but that it needed to be done. However, in the end, Marshall says that it turned out that they were able to break even, in the sense that the addition cost incurred was nullified by the savings that an eco-friendly production like this can yield.
So how did they merge the idea of social responsibility with an eco-friendly focus? It was done in ways both big and small. Marshall mentioned that they did something as simple as change the plates used by craft services to biodegradable plates. Ashton Kutcher, One of the many stars of the movie, explained to Mother Nature Network’s Ecollywood that “there was a lot of dedication on this movie to using solar panels and clean energy and recycling. The fact that the movie was shot in L.A. actually made that easier to make happen. I think that every opportunity we have in our industry to make what we’re doing a more environmentally conscious effort is a good thing.”
The film utilized reusable set pieces, solar-powered lighting, hybrid or biodiesel vehicles, solar and biodiesel generators to achieve an eco-friendly movie set. Warner Brothers estimates that it reduced the carbon dioxide emissions by 67 metric tons. This all showcases the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) because every level of this production understood why they should be implementing these changes. Garry Marshall has been quoted as saying “there are a lot of things wrong with our environment, so to ‘go green’ seemed to be a very good thing. It’s not that big and effort; if we could do it, others can do it”.
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Green Gazette (Issue 40) Eco-retailing, Plastiki and winning the lottery
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s March! How did that happen - I’m sure I was just adjusting to it being a new decade just a few weeks ago and suddenly January and February have both come and gone. Nevertheless I’ll move forward with the latest installment of the Green Gazette where we share with you all the green news and ideas that are fit to print (in an online sense).
This is giant retail news from the UK - I can’t think of a good equivalent in North America (perhaps Target?) but the British retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) has announced a green commitment that is beyond compare. You can read all about it via this link from the Environmental Leader but I’ll be happy to share the abbreviated version with you. M&S have made a statement that by 2020 every product that they sell must be able to boast of ‘at least one eco or ethical attribute’. Phase one is that 50% of suppliers have reached the threshold by 2015 and 100% by the end of the decade. It’s a fantastic step and part of the retailers huge ‘Plan A’ which calls for the company, by 2012, to become carbon neutral, send no waste to landfills and extend sustainable sourcing. The actual scope of the project is as ambitious as it is impacting, as the retailer currently carries some 36,000 product lines. Very exciting!
Plastiki
Do you remember Kon-Tiki, the (eco) boat/raft constructed by Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl from limited parts to demonstrate his theory that the native people of South America had constructed a craft to traverse the South Pacific many hundreds of years prior to the European golden age of explorers? No? I had to read the book in school and while many of the details escape me all these years later the name of the boat certainly remains. Thus I found it novel that banking heir turned environmentalist David de Rothschild has named his vessel ‘Plas-tiki’ as a modern day homage to the sailing Dane. Plas-tiki is a remarkable boat also, made up of some 12,000 recycled 2 litre plastic bottles. His mission is of similar stature and involves sailing from California to the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The giant garbage patch is a huge soup of plastic waste and other man made sludge that circles in on itself in the middle of our largest ocean. Estimates on size range from 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) to more than 15,000,000 square kilometres (5,800,000 sq mi) (0.41% to 8.1% of the size of the Pacific Ocean), or up to “twice the size of the continental United States” The area may contain over 100 million tons of debris. His trip is aimed to bring attention to the growing area of the ocean that is essentially dying due to the poor water quality. If he sticks to his plans he’ll not be stuck in the patch and will continue onward to Australia. You can follow his eco-adventure via his blog. Incidentally Kon-Tiki was almost a success, read the book!
Finally a story of good luck and what a lucky couple then did with it. Winning a lottery of over £56 million in the UK (over $82 million) an
Lottery Winners Eco-Farm
English couple did what many winners would do and moved into a new home. After giving their old home to their cleaner (they had a cleaner) Nigel Page and Justine Laycock purchased a 400-year-old dairy farm. Where’s the green in that you might wonder? The farm was restored by developer Paul Lavelle, who spent £2 million transforming it into an eco-friendly home. It features a ’solar park’ where 20 panels captured the (occasional) heat of the sun and store it in rocks in the ground and later distributed to the home. The house uses just 10% of the energy required to run a normal household. The farm is almost 100 per cent carbon neutral, you can read more about it in the Daily Mail.
That’s all for now!
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