How can we live lightly on the Earth and save money at the same time?
Staff members at the Worldwatch Institute, a global environmental organization, share ideas
on how to GO GREEN and SAVE GREEN at home and at work.
See: 10 Ways to Go Green and Save Green
Worldwatch Institute delivers the insights and ideas that empower decision makers to create an environmentally sustainable society that meets human needs. Worldwatch focuses on the 21st-century challenges of climate change, resource degradation, population growth, and poverty by developing and disseminating solid data and innovative strategies for achieving a sustainable society.
For more information, see: About Worldwatch
How are climate change, scarcer resources, population growth and other challenges reshaping society? From science to business to politics to living, our reporters track the high-stakes pursuit of a greener globe in a dialogue with experts and readers.
Access: Green – A blog about Energy and Environment from the New York Times
See also: Green Energy Reporter
Dr. Richard Cairncross, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Drexel University, is currently in El Salvador on a Fulbright Lectureship. He will be teaching a course on Renewable Energy at the University of El Salvador. He has created this blog called Sustainability and Renewable Energy In El Salvador: A Blog of Experiences on a Fulbright Lectureship in El Salvador to showcase and highlight his experiences there.
See also: Professor Cairncross Receives Fulbright Scholar Award to Teach Renewable Energy at the University of El Salvador
The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is an independent, nonprofit research group with over 40 years of forecasting experience. The core of their work is identifying emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform global society and the global marketplace.
IFTF recently announced the release of The Greening of Health: The Convergence of Health and Sustainability
Excerpts from this Report: “Many scientists and public health practitioners recognize that environmental conditions have a dramatic effect on health, but the general public has only recently come to understand that this causal relationship affects their day-to-day lives. IFTF research reveals that we are now learning to link our personal health not only to our immediate environments but also to the larger ecologies in which we live. We are beginning to relate the sustainability of the planet to the sustainability of our health as never before. At IFTF, we call this movement Green Health.”
The University Library Service is making a significant contribution to the sustainability aspirations of INSRV and the University. Summer 2009 saw a range of enhancements to several library buildings and the creation of effective learning spaces. More efficient working processes have also been introduced.
See: Sustainable Libraries
The mission of The Pelican Web is to collect and analyze knowledge on both obstacles and incentives for sustainable development and, specifically, integral human development; and to publish the monthly, free subscription, open access PelicanWeb’s Journal of Sustainable Development. The e-journal provides a monthly digest on current research pursuant to enhancing human solidarity, environmental sustainability, democratic governance, supporting technologies, and both secular and religious non-violence.
See:The PelicanWeb’s Journal of Sustainable Development and Knowledge Taxonomy and Links Database
with links to resources on sustainable development and many other subject areas.
The report includes a brief citation to our presentation during the American Society of Engineering Education in Austin, TX.
June 14-17, 2009 – Drexel Smart House and Drexel University’s Library presented a collaborative proposal for information-literacy development to the American Society of Engineering Education in Austin, TX.
See: Drexel Smart House Six Month Report and News and Interests from Drexel Green web site
A post just for a chuckle!
Gwyneth Paltrow, in her lifestyle newsletter GOOP, gives her top recommendations for Green Living. This week’s GOOP newsletter includes recyclable socks ($16) all the way to a full electric car ($12, 500+). As an added bonus, Cameron Diaz drops by to also give her top seven green products and services.
Everyone’s going green!
Abstract:
The Library-Smart House partnership seeks to design and implement a sustainable, virtual
environment for collaboration that will seamlessly integrate project communication and
information access. This virtual environment will provide a means for increased collaboration
between students, faculty, librarians and outside contributors as well as ensure the sustainability
of the project in coming years.
The Smart House is a student-led, multidisciplinary project to retrofit an existing house to be a
living-laboratory. The house will be a platform for testing innovations in the areas of energy,
health, environment, interaction, and lifestyle. The ultimate goal of the organization is to
improve the quality of life for those living and working in an urban residential setting. The
Smart House is a collaborative design project not only across different disciplines, but also
across student year and domain knowledge levels. This collaboration produces a wide array of
student information needs and presents a unique opportunity for library collaboration.
The Library plans to study the effectiveness of information literacy instructional techniques
through the contextual setting of the Smart House. The Library seeks to improve the ability of
participants to access, evaluate, and use high quality research materials effectively through a
variety of instructional strategies. By developing and maintaining a virtual infrastructure for
information awareness and access using relevant technologies, the library will be able to assist
students at their point of need. More direct instruction will be provided through a series of active
learning workshops combined with specialized research consultation. We believe that this project
will promote the lifelong learning skills necessary for the Engineer of 20201 by providing
interdisciplinary collaboration paired with information literacy instruction within the framework
of Smart House design.
Library-Smart House Collaboration for Information Literacy Development:
See: Paper and Presentation
Source: 2009 ASEE Annual Conference – Engineering Libraries Division
The Wall Street Journal published a new round of the paper/plastic/reusable bag debate. It’s a good article, but more telling are the comments from WSJ readers, who mainly seem to think that reusable bags are the worse of their options. The bag backlash is interesting…
