When Jen Slotterback found a well pad stake in her local park in Pennsylvania, she realized the forest would soon be taken over by a natural gas drilling -- the highly toxic and destructive process of hydraulic fracturing .
The board that governs the park was about to vote in only 11 days on whether to permit fracking.
She and her husband, with no experience of anything like this, acted quickly to get their message out to the community, gathering over 4,000 signatures in that short amount of time.
Result? The board unanimously voted against the drilling.
Now the Slotterbacks and Responsible Drilling Alliance are campaigning to save more than 700,000 acres of forest in Pennsylvania from fracking.
It's an inspiring example of how it can be done! You can sign their petition and keep spreading the word by sharing this clip!
Home Rule and Hydrofracking (click for full article)
What role does Home Rule play in protecting communities from the destructive practice of hydrofracking?
More and more communities are looking to home rule initiatives to protect them from the highly destructive practice of hydrofracking. Throughout the Catskills and in neighboring states, municipalities are exploring the use of bans and ordinances that protect aquifers or regulate zoning, hazardous waste, and road use in order to shape their own future.
Nextworld TV stopped by the sustainability station at Occupy Wall Street on October 24th and saw this amazing grey water treatment system in action.
Since there is an outdoor impromptu kitchen on site, water is used throughout the day for cleaning kitchen supplies. This grey water treatment set up cleans the water in stages, so that it can be used for watering the plants at Zuccotti Park!
Water is poured through a 50 gallon drum of wood chips and then continues down through two chambers with water loving plants, and comes out clean enough to water the flowers.
They set all of this up in the middle of Occupy Wall Street to send the message that we can co operate, that we can improve things together, that we can rethink the culture of waste.
One permaculture enthusiast working there says: "This is all about participation, not about watching it anymore, but making that shift.. taking an active part in building the world that we want to see... the change is going to come from all of us getting off the couch, getting off the computer, interacting with people. It's really magical, things are really starting to come together."
The sustainability station also collects compost and takes it to nearby community gardens, they collect recyclables and they have a bike hooked up to a generator.
Now we're talking!
--Bibi Farber
This gets a GOLD STAR for totally brilliant!
Free Heating Without The Pollution.
In Newfoundland, inventor Jim Meany has developed a forced convection solar heating unit that reuses aluminum cans as core heating elements in solar panels.
As the sun heats up the air inside the soda cans, painted black, a fan pushes cold air out of the house and lets the warmer air from the solar panel in through two dryer vents.
A dwelling of 1,000 square feet can have a complete air change in 1.5 hours. Comfortable room temperature can be maintained in a 1,000 square foot dwelling with 15 minutes of sunlight per hour.
His company Cansolair sells this unit, which is virtually maintenance free: you need no fuel, no insurance for parts.
It's a lifetime supply of free heat that pays for itself in 3-5 years... using recycled soda cans! Brilliant!
This video was produced by CBC The National
Please watch Pierce Brosnan's powerful new video on Iceland's illegal slaughter of whales. Then send a message urging President Obama to impose tough trade sanctions on Icelandic companies tied to whaling. We need to build overwhelming pressure on the White House to help end the abhorrent practice of whaling once and for all!
Canning the harvest from the garden will become increasingly important as we insist on eating inexpensive, safe, local
organic food year round.
This video shows a simple canning method for tomatoes, using a cold pack method.
Enjoy educating yourself and experimenting with these skills that our great grandparents took for granted!
Video:(3:17)
http://www.nextworldtv.com/page/4667.html
This video was produced by the Food Channel
The Aquaduct is a bike that purifies water! Pour water into one tank at the back, and start on your way home. The pedal power activates the filtration system and when you arrive, the clean tank at the front is filled with filtered water.
This is a product designed for the developing world, where women typically transport contaminated water and must boil it at home, wasting wood and energy all along the way.
A family of 4 needs a minimum of 20 gallons per day.
The Aquaduct can also be used to filter water while stationary.
What an inspiring invention!
Did you know that less than 1% of plastic bags are recycled?
What's worse, plastic bags do not biodegrade, they photo degrade. Over time they break down into smaller, more toxic petro-polymers which eventually contaminate soil and waterways everywhere.
Plastic has entered the food chain. The ratio of plastic to plankton, which the fish eat, is anywhere from 6:1 to 46:1, depending on where you take the sample.
See the surprising global efforts to ban them in this clear and compelling video. It will inspire you to cut these wicked things out of your life.
Our shopping bags ARE killing the oceans.
We can prevent millions more from being produced by not using them anymore.
Amazing: a pile of earth, with some sandbag tubes and barbed wire can be turned into a small house that is inexpensive, attractive, efficient, resistant to fire, floods, wind storms and earthquakes.
The folks at the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture teach professionals and students from all over the world how to build structures like this.
"They meet all building codes, are energy efficient, weather tight, and so solid they passed the most grueling stress tests." CNN
"Probably the most environmentally friendly homes you'll ever come across." BBC
See for yourself!
Creativity + Pizza Box = Energy.
What a profound reminder that we can look at our trash
differently and put it to work!
Here's how to reconfigure a pizza box with a few simple
supplies and turn it into a solar oven.
Now you're using a throw away item to heat food -- at no cost,
using only the sun.
It doesn't just warm the pizza-- it warms your soul!
Video: (2:59)
NextWorld TV
THE LAST MOUNTAIN
You won't want to miss The Last Mountain, a new documentary about mountaintop removal mining, featuring NRDC Senior Attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the local citizens who are fighting back against this horrific practice.
Learn more at
The Last Mountain website.
Here are step by step instructions on how to make a great cheap and simple rain barrel, from a plastic tub made for olives.
As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting people from"diverting" water that falls on their own homes and land are still in effect in many Western states.
Now more people are speaking up against these absurd, antiquated laws and demanding the right to collect rainfall on their property.
In addition to the garden, harvested rain water can be used for solar showers, flushing toilets, power washers, drinking and cooking, drip irrigation, green houses, orchards, livestock, ponds, hot tubs, pools, washing cars, compost tea, and plenty more.
See here how easy this is. Just drill some holes, add a net and attach fixtures.
Video: (2:40)
http://www.nextworldtv.com/page/1728.html
This video was produced by Envirosponsible.com
Here's a rooftop farm that's feeding about 10 families.
Community Growers in Milwaukee, WI sells shares of the harvest on a subscription basis during the season.
Water is an issue because of the additional heat on the roof, and the lettuce may wilt early. But the rooftop tomatoes came
up a week before all the land grown tomatoes!
Most important: It was previously useless space.
Video: (3:38)
http://www.nextworldtv.com/page/4237.html
What is a CSA?
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture . This simply means that local people support a farm that supplies their family with locally grown vegetables and fruits.
A CSA is supported through the purchase of shares. Each person who buys a share will be able to pick up fresh produce once a week from June through November at the farm. If youve never had fresh picked produce, youre in for a treat! Once youve tried it, youll never want to shop for produce again!
Introducing the most revolutionary and sustainable model for a grocery store ever:
In.gredients plans to open in 2011 in Austin, TX. It will be a zero waste grocery store with NO packaging for their food.
Customers will be able to buy the exact quantities they need in containers they bring themselves.
Americans tend to throw away 25% of the food purchased, and 40% of our garbage is just from packaging.
This is the grocery store we have all been waiting for!
Spread the word far and wide!
Video (1:18)
http://www.nextworldtv.com/page/4319.html
David Wolfe, a leading authority on nutrition and raw food, points out the value of a simple mushroom growing on a tree stump.
The cloud mushroom's healing properties include immune system
enhancing and anti-cancer properties, plus it detoxifies the liver of plastic by-products!
It grows in every state of the US and Canada.
If you learn to identify it, take it home and make a healing tea.
Video: (1:23)
http://www.nextworldtv.com/page/4345.html
This video was produced by 21daystohealth.com
The two simple things you can do to stop sending dollars to Monsanto are:
1. Stop using conventional sugar
2. Stop using weed killer
Learn why this is crucial in this 3 minute video.
You do this -- and you tell a friend. Please forward this video far and wide.
This will divert millions per year from this evil company. We can take our crops, our health and the health of our land back
Now.
Video: (3:00)
http://www.nextworldtv.com/page/4421.html
Work With Nature, Not Against It
The most environmentally friendlyand cutestweed and brush control solution ever: goats!
A herd of 30 goats can clear 100 square meters of unwanted vegetation like blackberry bushes, thistle, weeds and other invasive plants per day.
They even love poison ivy!
Why forcibly remove, bulldoze and tear up vegetation, when goats can nibble it away instead? Brush removal and weed control can be expensive and destructive to the environment.
Goats can tackle difficult terrain, protected areas, heavily trafficked, populated or landscaped areas. Goats are sensitive enough for protected areas like wetlands, agile enough to clear hillsides, determined to reach higher foliage and impervious to thorns.
When the work is finished, the goats have left behind their droppings which serve as fertilizer.
Editor's note: The use of goats and other cattle is a growing movement in response to the overuse of chemicals and fossil fuels to clear the land. However, a word of caution: goats will pull plants up by the roots, thus denuding an entire region, if not carefully regulated. It happened in the middle east, where the goats were brought in as farm animals after the Phoenicians stripped the cedar forests of Lebanon for their sailing vessels; the grand forests have never recovered, and all attempts at replanting were defeated by local goat herders whose animals needed the forage.
Scavenged Objects = Practical Projects
John Starnes, a self proclaimed "dumpster diving tightwad since 1976", created this outdoor solar shower water heater, that uses just one gallon of either rain or tap water.
It only cost him $1, for the reflector he bought at Dollar Tree. The rest of these materials he reclaimed from dumpsters.
With the right positioning and the help of the reflector, 20 minutes in the sun is enough to heat up the water, plenty hot enough to shower in, by filling the jug painted black, with either rainwater or tap water.
"I love how scavenged objects can be the catalysts for creative and practical projects" he says.
Granted, he lives in South Tampa, Florida so the idea of showering outside everyday, which he does in whatever spot in the yard the water will most benefit his plants- may not be something we can all enjoy, but nonetheless: here is a simple, brilliant idea that serves to inspire our own exploration of ways to turn objects we already have into something useful -- and then share the knowledge! Thank you John Starnes!
Most of the content on these pages comes from the pages of Next World TV, compiled by the irrepressible Bibi Farber.
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