Just ran across this NYT article by Henry Fountain:  “Concrete Being Remixed with Environment in Mind.”  Concrete might actually help curb carbon emissions when created with a new formula:

In his mixes, Dr. MacDonald replaced much of the Portland cement with two industrial waste products — fly ash, left over from burning coal in power plants, and blast-furnace slag. Both are what are called pozzolans, reactive materials that help make the concrete stronger. Because the CO2 emissions associated with them are accounted for in electricity generation and steel making, they also help reduce the concrete’s carbon footprint. Some engineers and scientists are going further, with the goal of developing concrete that can capture and permanently sequester CO2 from power plants or other sources, so it cannot contribute to the warming of the planet.

I wonder if this new concrete is more economical as well.  It seems that the companies working on it are betting that it will be.  Concrete, and the space it takes up, was not something I had ever thought about in terms of carbon emissions.  I know that concrete supplants trees, but I didn’t think about it actually adding to the carbon footprint.  Since we do use so much concrete, it would be great if it could help reduce emissions.  I wonder what other everyday materials could be restructured to reduce our overall carbon production.

Watch this video respond with what you think about how the filmmaker uses words, images, and sounds to convey a message.  What is the most effective, influential, persuasive part?

If you want news articles to come to you, you can create a feed with a key word search.  Any time a new source is published, you will get notification.  If you look to the left of this blog page, you can see that I’ve created some feeds through Google News:  Recycling, Sustainable Living, Green Living.

Watch this short clip to see how to set it up.  Create a feed (or a couple of them) in Google News by doing a keyword search. Then go to this RSS feed creator and paste the feed URL and design the feed how you wish.  I have given you some suggestions in the video.

how_to_make_an_rss_feed_for_your_blog

We finally came up with our groups based on guiding questions that the class came up with.

What is Sustainable Living?

• Sarah
• Amanda
• Franni
• Jaylah

Why Should We Care about Living Sustainably?

• Marquis
• Taryn
• Ben
• Brad

What are the Economic Effects of Sustainable Living?

• Eric
• Joey E
• Jefferson
• Jon

What are the Environmental Effects of Sustainable Living?

• Joe D
• Curtis
• Daniel
• Amer

How can we Live Comfortably While Using Fewer Resources?

• Janelle
• Jacob
• Julia
• Ramze

Students:  Please fill in your choices for your research topic.  You must choose a first, second, and third choice.  If you do not choose, I will choose for you.

Click here for survey if it is not loading on the page.

After watching Edward Burtynsky’s TED video lecture, I clicked around his pet project, Worldchanging and found an article about the phrase “bright green” as opposed to just green.

What is bright green? In its simplest form, bright green environmentalism is a belief that sustainable innovation is the best path to lasting prosperity, and that any vision of sustainability which does not offer prosperity and well-being will not succeed. In short, it’s the belief that for the future to be green, it must also be bright. Bright green environmentalism is a call to use innovation, design, urban revitalization and entrepreneurial zeal to transform the systems that support our lives.

This thoughtful look at intersections of the economy and ecology seems like a reasonable way to get people to commit to living a sustainable life.  Maybe someone will invent recycled toilet paper that will still be soft.  A golden opportunity for someone

Since the class seemed to enjoy the TED talks so much–many students wrote about them in their own blogs–I thought I’d link to a search of dozens of TED talks on sustainability and green living.  Not all of them will give information that will directly link to our study, but all of them seem interesting.

Warning:  I have not previewed all of them.  Read the description and view at your own discretion.

TED talks “A Greener Future?”

One clip that focuses on how we use our limited resources is by photographer,  Edward Burtynsky.  He has taken photographs of areas in which humans have altered the natural landscape for our own purposes.  Take a look for yourself.

I just read a US News and World Report article by Amanda Ruggeri that showed up in my feed “Could the Recession Kill the Recycling Industry?”

In the article Ruggeri explains that the recyclers are having a hard time finding buyers for the recycled materials. The demand for recycled plastic and cardboard is down because there is less demand for everything. Importers of recycled material, like China, are not producing as much and therefore not shipping as many products.

What worries me is that if there is no demand for recycled goods, what will happen to recycling programs? Will people stop recycling because they think it doesn’t matter anymore? Will demand for recycled materials rise as the economy improves? Will entrepeneurs find ways to use the recycled materials?  I don’t know too much about the properties of recycled materials, but I know plastics are difficult to recycle.

My friend, Josh Wilmsmeyer, a science teacher, sent Ben and me a link to a TED video clip.  TED (which stands for Technology, Education, and Design) is a conference where really smart, innovative people get together and present ideas to other really smart and innovative people.  Luckily for the rest of us, these lectures are all available online.

The clip that Mr. Wilmsmeyer thought we might be interested in is about the dangers of plastics and what happens to them after we throw them out.  Watch the video and let me know what you think.

Just ran across this article in the NYT by Thomas L. Friedman.  He’s the author of The World is Flat which is very popular in academic and business circles.

This article talks about how our consumerism and how living beyond our means lead to the economic crisis we have today, and it also compares that to living beyond our environmental means that, left untouched, would lead to an even greater crisis:

“Just as a few lonely economists warned us we were living beyond our financial means and overdrawing our financial assets, scientists are warning us that we’re living beyond our ecological means and overdrawing our natural assets,” argues Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. But, he cautioned, as environmentalists have pointed out: “Mother Nature doesn’t do bailouts.”

Friedman also points us to Joseph Romm’s blog Climate Progress and a post about unsustainable junk that we own.  Romm wrote a book in 2006 about politics and climate change.