A Norwegian-American Woman’s Legacy To Our Green Future

Founded in 1889, the story of Foss Maritime based out of Seattle, Washington, is a quintessential example of the American Dream: Thea Foss, a young Norwegian immigrant and her husband, Andrew, turned one rowboat into what eventually became a world class fleet of tugboats. It started in Tacoma, Washington when Thea Foss bought a used rowboat, hoping to rent it out to help with the family’s finances. After painting it pristine white with green trim (nice foresight!), she sold the rowboat at a profit and used the money to buy several more boats. By 1904, the company boasted 10 launches, a shipyard, a 60-passenger oil powered boat, and a small rescue craft to help disabled vessels. (more…)

It’s All Greek To Me

A Bit From The Green Glossary For Everyday People:

Eco-footprint – Measures how much land and water area a human requires to produce the resources he consumes and to absorb his wastes. It compares human demand with planet Earth’s ecological capacity to regenerate. Estimating how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle. Example: For 2005, humanity’s total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.3 planet Earths – in other words, humanity uses ecological services 1.3 times as fast as Earth can renew them. If you want to calculate your own eco-footprint, try this site … (more…)

It’s become almost a reflex to bash aviation’s role in climate change. Passenger
planes are big, they emit stuff into the atmosphere, so they must be bad. It’s
true, but it’s not quite that simple.

Last week, climate and atmospheric scientists from the US and Europe presented
research to a group of aviation types gathered at the Royal Society of London.
Much of their focus was on nitrogen oxide (NOx), and what they found is that
simply dismissing NOx as just another nasty greenhouse gas is not only bad
science, but could also be unwise policy. (more…)

According to the Arbor Day Foundation, we need more trees where we live.

Why do we need more trees?:

Wildlife – Trees help make nature a part of our daily lives.
Trees provide nesting sites for songbirds, and
food and cover for a wide variety of wildlife.

Conserve Energy – Cities without trees are “heat islands”.
100 million additional mature trees in U.S. cities
would save $2 billion per year in energy costs. (more…)

Here we go with some little tidbits ……

100 million trees worth of junk mail arrives in American mail boxes each year.

————————————-

Every year, 20 million tons of packaging goes into landfills. (more…)

A professor, at Rutgers University, has developed an inorganic paint called Ultimate
Paint.  This paint is displaying some very remarkable abilities.  Such as: graffiti
resistant; repairs concrete; mold resistant; fire proof; dries nearly as hard as a
diamond, and lasts 1,000 years.  How do they know?  The chemistry of the coating is
an aluminosilicate, the same formula used for the Chinese terracotta army which is
more than 2,000 years old. (more…)