March 24 is Shutdown Day
Can you survive without your computer for one day? Can you survive without bathing in its flourescent glow? Head on over to the Shutdown Day website to answer.
Shutdown day is supposed to be a social experiment to find out what will happen when you go 24 hours without a computer. All I can say is that there will be some good to come out of this: imagine all the energy we'll save and the good it'll do to the environment.
There is also this site called 1day. It's a bit more extreme than Shutdown Day -- they want you to make the smallest carbon footprint possible. That means, on March 21 you should turn off your TV, cellphone, computer, etc. Me thinks this will be harder to do. ;)
Globe and Smart in Fast Company Fast 50
Globe Telecom and Smart Communications made it to the Fast Company 6th Annual Fast 50, Report from the Future: 50 profit-driven solutions for what ails the planet.
Globe got it because of its G-Cash program while Smart is in for its "telecom in a sachet" or Smart Load.
photo from Fast Company website
Light a candle for children in online child pornography
Head on over to Light A Million Candles to show your concern and outrage over online child pornography.
I wish there was more info on the site about what is happening and what is being done about it.
Endangered plant as dollar earner
This is an interesting twist in trying to save an endangered species... making money from it.
The UP Mindanao will soft launch a program during the Dabaw Agro-Trade Fair where they will present the Philippine Pitcher Plant as a source of income while preserving it.
via Mindanews
LittleThingsCount.org
This site is officially earth friendly
Wind powered, to be more specific. I recently bought green-e certificates from Native Energy. Since we were hosting in the US anyway we might as well offset all the electricity we use.
Socially Responsible Travel
I've been away for quite a while -- been very busy doing work and going on vacation. Having said that I'd like to get back into the groove by tackling socially responsible travel. I've happened upon 3 websites that do just that:
1. ResponsibleTravel.com
2. The Adventure Company
3. Nature Awareness and Conservation Club, Inc. (NACCI)
The first two sites are UK based. NACCI is based here in Philippines. ResposibleTravel.com, in particular, has a comprehensive set of packages just for the Philippines. Even I would like to take one of them if only they weren't so expensive.
Update: Just found another site via CThings called TribeWanted.com. Their purpose is to create an ecological and sustanable community online and off in Adventure Island, Fiji. It's based on the timeshare model and costs about $220/$440/$660. Becoming members means you get to vote on how the tribe is built even when you're online.
Opportunity International
A recent article in the Oxford Mail features a charity worker from Opportunity International who comes to the Philippines and meets people being helped by her organization.
Here are some people they have helped:
I really admire this kind of work being done. I am just so for it. It really is helping people help themselves.
This is so inline with a project I am currently working on. It's in a similar line with what I have in mind. I do hope people will find it useful and help out.
Socially Responsible and Environmentally Friendly Web Hosting
Computers by themselves consume a lot of energy. I know because a good portion of my Meralco bill is due to my computer use. Imagine the energy consumed by a web hosting company with servers and air conditioners running 24/7.
Lynn from Sustainable Business has a couple of posts (here and here) about web hosting companies that are socially responsible and environmentally friendly.
I’m doing my best to make my whole operation as socially responsible and as environmentally responsible as possible. Having said that, getting a green web host is a no-brainer. Right now, I still have to finish the contract with my current web host but once that’s done I’m switching to a green web host. What I can do right now though is offer this to my clients and promote it on this web site. Hopefully the readers of this blog will take the green route as well.
Here’s a list of web hosting companies to consider:
Acorn Host
AISO
EcoHosting
ecoSky
Elfon
Green Web Host
Locomotive Media
Planetmind Internetworks
Solar Web Works
SolarHost
SustainableWebsites
WebCTel
Please take note that some companies do not use solar or wind power to run their equipment. They purchase something called alternative energey credits or green certificates to offset their use of fossil fuels.
Here are posts from other blogs about green web hosting:
Go Get a Green Site
More Wind and Solar-Powered Web Hosting
This Blog Is 100 Percent Solar
H 2... oh, that's much simpler part 2
First it was cleaning water just by using the sun. Now its scallop and oyster shells.
Three students watched a documentary video of a Japanese fisherman throwing oyster shells in a pond and found that it cleaned the water. They applied the idea to scallop shells and found that it cleared dirty dish water in 24 hours.
They discovered the shells’ shape and chemical makeup neutralizes pH and also helps filter out coliform bacteria, sediment and heavy metals
Live oysters can clean water by filtering plankton and other waterborne detritus. An article here suggests that recycling oyster shells by heating and crushing them is an alternative way of creating a cheap water-cleaning compound.
I don’t know about scallop shells but there is an abundance of oyster shells here in Manila (because of its proximity to Bacoor, Cavite). I wonder if anyone is using this knowledge to clean water.
