reduce water usage and cut out as many pesticides as possible. This matters, the article suggests, because as much as 30 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by agriculture.
The company fixed this by focusing on specific metrics that matter the most for sustainability, such as density and water usage.
Water flow and quality: Trees can lower the expenses because cities don't have to invest as much in expensive storm water treatment plants.
They also help filter water impurities. And besides the economic and energy saving benefits, urban trees can help to enhance the sense of place in neighborhoods
and communities at a relatively low cost compared to other costly beautification projects. But it's not a cost-free solution.
I heard the sound of water--like any good robot, it cleaned itself after every order.
They water your garden rain or shine. Sometimes they water your sidewalk, too--in other words, far from foolproof.
If you're as hopeless at horticulture as the Das Family there's another option: smart sprinklers.
and sensors to make sure you don't waste a single drop of precious, expensive water. That's a big deal here in California.
And the Campbell Union School District in Campbell, Calif. trimmed $108, 000 from its annual water bill when it installed a Hydropoint system in 2009.
taking into account specific features of your landscape--from soil type to slope and water runoff to location-specific weather data--to figure out exactly how much water to use.
when you combine two light bulbs, a bucket of water, and a solar panel? According to Agrisolar, a lot of dead bugs.
They came up with a system that involved milk crates lined with a landscaping fabric that allows water retention and air circulation.
Other than that, it water and the farmers. We bought the crates from a company that makes milk crates from recycled plastic.
they had to look at water infrastructure in Namibia. Farmers were using diesel pumps for groundwater.
So they deployed alternative technologies, such as rainwater harvesting and hybrid solar pumps. There's still a lot to be done.
CO2 and water. Via: Cleantechnica Images: Rendering of greenhouse, Plantagon
Tech, sustainability meet on the robotic marijuana farmmr. Greenthumb's latest gardening tool may just be...
an artificially-controlled indoor environment that provides lighting, mineral nutrients and water--but not much else.
and now having the ability utilize technology that effectively reuses resources like water instead of letting it go to waste by flushing it down a storm drain.
it's time for the health sector to get involved Earthquake could threaten California water supply Invention may lead to greener power plants Accidental environmentalist designs furniture from invasive species
New irrigation system helps farmers conserve water Infographic: What is the water footprint in the U s
Technology boosts Greek yogurt production, but angers traditionaliststhere are purists for just about every kind of food you can imagine.
On-site water purification: In 2007, Poste eliminated all bottled water by installing an on-site water filtration system,
allowing the restaurant to serve both carbonated and noncarbonated purified water. In 2008, the restaurant began using the Natura system,
which uses ultraviolet filtration. The restaurant serves the water in reusable bottles. My biggest concern was the shipping costs
and the plastic bottles in the landfill, Weland said. Bottled water a weird topic, because the filtered water can be better than what in the bottle.
Sustainable seafood: Weland said Poste only serves sustainable seafood, according to the guidelines from the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch List.
We work with Prime Seafood, he said. The owner is a former marine biologist. He always steering me toward what most sustainable,
The dark surface of the lake's water will then capture more heat from the sun
France Luxembourg Gardens is one of those quintessentially romantic Paris spots--Luxembourg Palace against a backdrop of a lake, fountains,
which includes Buckingham Fountain, hosts a number of high-profile festivals and events (including U s. President Barack Obama's ground-breaking presidential acceptance speech).
and get wet under the fountains at Millennium Park and enjoy a slew of events and festivals in Chicago's parks.
Hibiya Park is Tokyo's premier Western-style park, with fountains, ponds, winding paths, flowerbeds, sculptures,
With corn requiring more water and fertilizer than cotton, the crop shift, they say, is affecting water levels and quality in northwestern Mississippi.
Nitrogen levels in the Yazoo River, which feeds into the Mississippi, have grown 7 percent between 2002 and 2008, with repercussions for the Gulf's dead zone.
forming a grate-like exoskeleton that gives it structural strength but also filters water and nutrients efficiently.
Much like the sea sponge maneuvers water through its latticelike exoskeleton, Lord Norman Foster's tower--officially 30 St mary Axe,
such as using its body to absorb water in a hot, arid landscape where life sustaining resources are rare--has provided already tangible advances in sustainable design.
or repel water. At this moment buildings are made of materials that are very difficult to recycle, sometimes impossible,
She described Biolime as like a child crystal garden, where colorful crystals grow once the minerals are submerged in water.
and we know it works with the Venice water, Armstrong said. It not ready, but the principles are there.
Book publishers creating these highly asset-intense apps are really fish out of water. It not what they do.
As long as the wind blows across the Mojave, these rugged individuals can pump a little ground water,
But you don't start building a lifeboat when the water's up to your knees, and as you can probably feel,
A barrier also prevents wastewater from coming into contact with the trees. There are about 1, 000 such trees left.
while decreasing the amount of water needed for irrigation. That's just one of the high-level takeaways shared by Ian Hope-Johnstone, director of agricultural sustainability for Pepsico global operations, with whom
and water consumption associated with its agricultural operations by 50 percent over the next five years.
So-called precision agriculture of the type being embraced by Pepsico could help reduce water usage by up to 50 percent
while conserving the water, in order to host more people in the square for large events. Architect's take:
as people are able to manage consumption of resources (electricity, water, food, even bandwidth) in ways that place less of a burden on the environment while saving households money.
which would mean a city with much dirtier air, hotter temperatures, polluted water, and desertlike streets and public places in short a city that would be neither healthful nor livable,
but her prey disappeared into the water. At lunchtime, the chefs grilled an alligator that had been killed the night before.
U s. used less water in 2005 than in 1975, despite 30%more populationthe United states is using less water now than during the peak years of 1975 and 1980,
despite a 30 percent population increase during the same time period, according to a new U s. Geological Survey report.
the lion's share of water use comes from two places: irrigation and power generation.
Meanwhile, water withdrawals for the public supply--water towers, etc. --have increased steadily since 1950 along with increases in population,
Not surprisingly, the states with the most power generation and irrigation applications used the most fresh surface water:
Thankfully, the average amount of water withdrawn to produce a kilowatt-hour of electricity in the U s. has decreased steadily from 1950 to 2005,
which passes water through coolers a single time before discarding
UN conference on biodiversity kicks off in Indiadelhi--For the next two years, India will steer efforts to save the Earth's biodiversity during a time
The urine is routed through a biofilter before being mixed with water and made available to the adjacent plants (large bamboo stalks, in the prototype).
Sensors in the bags alert passersby that the plant needs water or fertilizer or these signals can be sent to community members via text message.
At the same time, soil is the catchment area for water that becomes part of our drinking water. So we need the tools to understand how soil is used,
how it s rejuvenated by the microflora and how it stores water. Then we will need a robust monitoring system to help us know what diseases are there now and
and reusing grey water from the buildings water system. In fact the vertical gardens will require an onsite management team.
when the water is running low. The plants have sensors that tweet updates so he can know in real-time how his garden is doing.
a urinal for girls Invention uses sunlight to produce clean water New irrigation system helps farmers conserve water
and is balanced (the buckwheat to water ratio). The Japanese chef explains that soba-making is a challenge.
Water Wednesday: Smarter home irrigation technologiescontributor s Note: This is an ongoing column in water sustainability, consumption and management issues.
The rationale is simple: water is a more urgent priority for corporate social responsibility programs
and becoming more so every day. My husband and I are perfectly sympatico when it comes to the perennials
We actually only water new shrubs or plants that haven't established and stop short of sprinkling the lawn except on very rare occasions.
These companies, Cyber-Rain and ET Water, have released both recently cloud services that provide guidance about
when you should water--and how much. Cyber-Rain's application, called XCI Cloud, works in conjunction with the company's controller technologies to help residential users better control watering.
Cyber-Rain claims that the system investment might be covered in certain places by water utility rebate programs.
it figures its customers have saved 120 million gallons of water. Said Cyber-Rain CEO Diana Schulz:
ET Water's GNOME Smart Irrigation Calculator, which is billed as ET Water's first consumer application doesn't rely on any particular sensor technology.
Rather, it uses information that you provide about your landscaping along with weather conditions and landscape profiles to figure out
or shouldn't water your yard. The weather information comes the Weatherbug service which is interesting
I wouldn't be surprised to see more water utilities consider layering such applications into their web sites
After all, Pike Research predicts that there will be 32 million smart water meters in use by the 2016 time frame.
such as wind and water Anthrophony-The noise that humans make, which can be produced by a variety of instruments
Listen to the water, if you have a stream nearby. Try to observe things that you've never listened to before.
it's time for the health sector to get involved Earthquake could threaten California s water supply Tech,
I spent an hour chatting up a huge Indian conglomerate that already describes itself as carbon-positive, water-positive and waste-recycling positive.
because it makes ITC's ability to push into the carbon-positive, water-positive and waste-positive side of the sustainability equation all the more intriguing.
On being water-positive: ITC has made this claim for eight consecutive years, pointing to its efforts to create three times more rainwater harvesting potential than the net water consumed by ITC's operations.
Balaji notes that much of the rainfall in India comes during a 45-day window in certain parts of the country,
so ITC has invested in creating water harvesting facilities that bring more water resources to the communities in
and this damage affects every aspect of your life from your water to your food to your medicine.
such as the cleaning of our air and water and the provision of fertile soil simply haven t been accounted for oe they do not figure in a country's GDP,
For example utility companies that manage watersheds are seeing how biodiversity helps provide clean water, by protecting biodiversity they reduce their water-treatment costs,
biodiversity protection is good for business. This is part of a much bigger need, to think ecologically,
than believing we can go on disregarding it until our basic needs, clean air, water, and food come at an every increasing cost.
services such as nutrient and water cycling, soil aeration, pest control, and pollination are essential in sustaining the global food supply.
Examples of health-related ecosystem services include water filtration, flood regulation and waste removal. Intact ecosystems can protect humans from natural disasters, such as cyclones.
underground water and ocean, says lead researcher Takayuki Takahashi of Fukushima University. We will draw the map to show the movement of radioactivity.
and improve air and water quality in the Chesapeake bay region. The program offers WGES Cleansteps Carbon Offsets to natural gas customers in Washington, Maryland and Virginia and helps clean up the bay through the Carbon Reduction Fund.
they ll look at ways to reduce their use of water and energy. Their next question is how do I transport to my customers,
a cup you could go drink some water with. Who uses 3-D printers now and do you expect they'll become more mainstream?
The businesses also cut their water usage by about 5 percent and diverted 1, 200 tons of waste materials from landfills.
The french rank among the top bottled-water consumers in the world leading to an enormous amount of bottles ending up in recycling bins or worse, in trash cans.
At $21, the world's cheapest water purifiertata Chemicals has announced what it believes is the cheapest water purifier in the world.
The India-based company, which made its name from the launch of the Nano compact, the world's cheapest car,
or running water to operate. Safe drinking water is the most basic of human needs, Tata Sons chairman  Ratan Tata said in prepared remarks.
 The social cost of water contamination is already enormous and increases every year.  Although todays announcement is about giving millions more people affordable access to safe water,
it is an important step in the long-term strategy to find a solution to provide affordable access to safe water for All the Swach's filter uses a combination of paddy husk ash and silver particles to kill 80
percent of bacteria that cause waterborne disease. Â The filter lasts 200 days for a family of five.
The water purifier puts some of it to better use. The company said it will initially produce 1 million units per year,
where 85 percent of the population consumes unfiltered water. If successful, the company may export the device to Africa
which is 50 percent water. You take that and densify it into a liquid with lower moisture content and higher density,
Since 2005, the hotel has reduced its water pressure, Â implemented a colder wash cycle for laundry Â
 That's enough heat to heat all the hot water that  I need for the kitchen, for the laundry and for all the guest rooms.
We're constantly circulating this water throughout the  building. Now that we got that in place,
and use it to heat the hot water or heat the building or heat the pool or wash the laundry.
Investments for new office buildings are all gravitating toward the water and not the traditional downtown.
Money-conscious Beijingers worry that water is injected into pork in order to increase its weight. One of the codes printed onto pig skin with a laser.
Access to land, water, technology, education, capital and the greater domestic and international markets--that's the answer, right?
Biomimetic irrigation system wins James Dyson Awarda concept for efficiently harvesting water to irrigate crops by condensing water underground
then direct the resulting condensed water to plants, was inspired initially by how the Namib beetle collects dewdrops on its back.
Better still, you can grow algae on arid land and in brackish water, which avoids competing with food production, unlike the corn and soybeans that coat much of the Midwest's farmland.
stripping water of its oxygen and harming fish--and maybe humans--in the process. But supporters say there's nothing to worry about,
When that hunk-o-junk meets the seawater, a chemical reaction happens that turns the slimy mass into a little rock-like object that can be collected from the beaches.
IBM analytics technology helps Sun World use drip irrigation to decrease its water usage by 8. 5%.That difference is readily apparent in a new agribusiness case study that was brought to my attention by the IBM mid-market group.
The company has been acting on its water consumption to change irrigation techniques, a practice that has helped now it reduce water usage by 8. 5 percent per unit since 2006.
But the operation only seriously began realizing the full value of its historical data until earlier this year,
which helps provide information on crop yields, farm labor costs, water usage trends and growing patterns.
BERLIN--At the furthest end of a century-old beer brewery yard in Berlin, a shipping container with a greenhouse on top hums with the gentle sound of pumping water.
Upstairs, rows of tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and even flowers line the walls amidst the zen-like sounds of trickling water.
which takes wastewater from the fish and filters it to feed the plants above, before recirculating it back down to the fish.
but it uses about one tenth of the water required for traditional agriculture. It also has the potential to help both fish
and water are costly. Here in the middle of Berlin, the single container farm functions as a prototype for Christian Echternacht and Nicolas Leschke, founders of the social business Efficient City Farming (ECF.
we're also looking to minimize water consumption. A single container farm can feed two or three families for a year.
But at a cost of 32,000 euros, plus some additional overhead for electricity and water, the project makes little business sense on a small scale.
During the rainy season, farmers break up soil then saturated with water. Using a roller, the first few inches of the soil are compacted
Crops planted in the water-saving soil live off this reserved moisture instead of irrigation. Water stress concentrates sugar
and nutrients in the crops making them extra flavorful. But, dry farming yields are often one-third the size of those from more industrial farms, Coren reports.
Monsanto has another idea for facing the water shortage. The agriculture biotechnology company has been testing out drought-resistant corn seeds.
The genetically modified corn takes up water more gradually from the soil so it needs less of the wet stuff overall.
Å We spend so much time agonizing over making better water bottles how is it sourced, how is made it--instead of asking:
Why are we shipping water from France to begin with? Why are we carrying them around to begin with?
which we want in some cases (we want the water bottle to biodegrade), but what about buildings?
 The water that is expelled during the dung-cleaning is used also by Gendalal, a 60-year-old farmer,
Climateminder helps farms be smarter about water usagecalifornia start-up Climateminder, which is selling technology that its founder first put to the test in Turkish greenhouses,
is piloting an environmental monitoring system that helps agribusiness concerns be smarter about how much water they use.
a former electronics engineer with IBM and Sun who got the idea for a water-monitoring system
Val Babajov, president of Climateminder, says his company's goal is to help agricultural concerns produce the same yield with less water.
It goes without saying that Mulligan's idea also ignores the actual services that various ecosystems render to us humans refreshing the air, cleaning water, reducing pests, and so on.
Beverage giants offer water footprint insightsin conjunction with last week's worldwide push to champion sustainable water consumption practices, Pepsico and the Coca-cola Company have published extensive
reports that detail their specific business practices around championing clean water. The Pepsico one, entitled Water Stewardship:
Good for Business. Good for Society, amplifies the water stewardship goals that the company outlined in April 2010
when it released its broader update on its corporate sustainability efforts. At that time, it set out a goal to improve water efficiency for each unit of production by 20 percent by 2015.
So far, it has managed a 15 percent efficiency gain against its 2006 baseline. Last year, that efficiency improvement amount to a savings of more than 12 billion liters of water.
Another big theme for Pepsico is water balance, that is, the idea that it can use technology
and new business practices to give back more water to the earth and particular regions than is used actually in its operations.
This year Pepsico (and Coca-cola, too, as you'll read in a minute) started working with the Nature Conservancy on initiatives focused on water balance.
So, for example, the water filtration and purification system that the company is using in Casa Grande, Ariz.
is recycling and reusing approximately 80 percent of the process water used in production. In the United kingdom, the company is working in way to capture the water in the potatoes that go into making its crisps (American translation=potato chips.
Turns out there is a lot of water in raw spuds. This practice has helped the facility reduce water usage by 42 percent so far.
There are a number of other examples in the report, notably ones that are related to agricultural practices.
The report published by Coca-cola and the Nature Conservancy, Product Water Footprint Assessments: Practical application in Corporate Water Stewardship, drills down more deeply into three specific examples of how Coca-cola is working on this problem.
The company defines a product water footprint as the total volume of freshwater consumed, directly and indirectly,
to produce a product. To put a finer point on it, Coca-cola notes that there is a big difference between water footprinting and carbon footprinting.
Here's what it says in the report: With carbon footprints, one can compare similar products
(if the same boundaries and methodology are used) knowing that lower carbon (or zero carbon) is better.
On the other hand, water footprints help identify where water is used in the production of a production and
what type of water is used. Water is local and thus water footprint numbers must be considered in the context of the local watershed.
The focus of the Coca-cola report is on water footprint assessments of the following: Coca-cola sold in a 0. 5 liter PET bottle,
specifically one produced by Coca-cola Enterprises in The netherlands Beet sugar supplied to Coca-cola in Europe Minute maid
and Simply Orange products sold into the North american market Those assessments are provided for three different types of water uses:
Green water uses, which pertains to the use of rainwater trapped in the soil Blue water uses,
referring to surface and ground water Grey water, which is defined as the volume of water that is needed to assimilate pollutants The assessments break down all three of the scenarios described above for these different types of uses.
The footprints differ depending on where products are sourced. So, for example, the Coca-cola Simply Orange product,
when sourced in Florida, has the following footprint per liter: 386 liters for green water, 154 liters for blue water, 100 liters in grey water.
If you source the oranges from both Florida and Brazil, those numbers change: the greenwater footprint is 407 liters per liter of product,
the blue water footprint is 127 liters, and the grey water footprint is 117 liters.
Here's the common theme in both these reports: The biggest piece of water footprints is related to the way different ingredients are grown in the field rather than the impact of factory processes.
Here's a comment from Denise Knight, the director of water and sustainable agriculture for Coca-cola:
We see significant opportunity to engage more directly with our agricultural suppliers to advance sustainable water use for the cultivation of ingredients in our supply chain.
Our initial efforts will focus on the sustainable sourcing of sugarcane, oranges and corn. More evidence that water conservation technology in the field is a smart corporate sustainability investment
Coming soon: commercial scale rooftop producelufa Farms has broken even on its operations in chilly Montreal, over 50 degrees of latitude  north  of the Equator.
The next time you're in Montreal or New york, the lettuce in your Caesar salad might come from the building across the way.
For the Precision Pourover, that means managing water temperature and motion with impeccable timing. Buchanan writes:
the metered rhythm determined by countless experiments in Starbucks'development labs. The water temperature is accurate and stable to a tenth of a degree.
and water supply isn t, if you ll pardon the pun, sustainable. By encouraging more smaller farmers to be involved,
including disproportionate amounts of water and fossil fuel that s needed to make chemical fertilizer, mechanize working the land and its crops,
what is local Look at ways to reduce food waste Focus on water management Harness the skills of women farmers
and threaten communities, water supplies, and wildlife habitat. For years, the Forest Service has struggled to keep up with a backlog of thinning
with the landscape and infrastructure designed to serve as tools for dealing with the area's overabundance of water.
To direct rainwater runoff away from buildings, and to prevent water overflow, bioswales are incorporated along the street edges throughout the ground plane.
The bioswales also act as a rainwater filtration system retaining excess water for irrigation of the gardens and parks within the development...
In case of excessive storm water, green roofs are designed to mitigate the runoff and assist water and air purification...
The green wall acts as an air filtration system and creates its own microclimate which mitigates heat gain in the units as well as reducing both indoor air
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011