Thattekad Bird Sanctuary, Kerala
Bird of the Day: Sri Lanka Bay-owl
Thattekad Bird Sanctuary, Kerala
Teaching Lego To Play Well By Eliminating Plastic
Tim Brooks, Lego’s vice president for environmental responsibility, says the company emits about a million tons of carbon dioxide each year. Credit Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York Times
For a company, and a product, that has been a part of so many lives for so long–and especially one whose name means to play well, it is still a shock to be reminded of their carbon footprint. And three years after first reading about their commitment, it is good to read details of their plan and progress:
Lego Wants to Completely Remake Its Toy Bricks (Without Anyone Noticing)
At Lego, petroleum-based plastics aren’t the packaging, they’re the product — and the bricks making up these dinosaurs have barely changed in more than 50 years. Credit Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York Times
BILLUND, Denmark — At the heart of this town lies a building that is a veritable temple to the area’s most famous creation, the humble Lego brick. It is filled with complex creations, from a 50-foot tree to a collection of multicolored dinosaurs, all of them built with a product that has barely changed in more than 50 years.
A short walk away in its research lab, though, Lego is trying to refashion the product it is best known for: It wants to eliminate its dependence on petroleum-based plastics, and build its toys entirely from plant-based or recycled materials by 2030. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Rufous-bellied Thrush
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Greening Indian Cities
Another creative commitment to Green Innovation. Thanks to the Times of India for this story about how Ahmedabad embraces green walls, goes vertical:
Aapnu Amdavad has a lot to boast about. From being the first city to have been declared India’s first Unesco World Heritage City to being home to some prime educational institutes, this city has gained prominence on the global map. Having said that, the city has its share of dark spots too. The fast diminishing green cover in the city is one of them. India’s fifth largest city has a tree cover of approximately 35 crores (as per a 2017 census), which although is 13% more than the number of trees in 2013, is still not enough. The ongoing metro project has also led to a lot of felling of trees. Taking into consideration all this, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has decided to build vertical gardens in the city. It recently set up a small vertical garden along one of the pillars at the flyover at Helmet crossroads.
What are vertical gardens? Essentially vertical gardens are the kind of gardens that grow vertically, along walls or pillars, with the help of trellis (which are wooden frames) or similar support systems. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Long-tailed Sibia
Leimhakong, Manipur
Behavioral Science & Green Innovation
Green registration plates are already in use in China. Photograph: Roman Pilipey/EPA-EFE/Rex/Shutterstock
The UK, whatever other challenges it may be experiencing, is proving itself creatively committed to green innovation:
Green number plates ‘could boost sales of electric cars’ in UK
Behavioural insights unit proposes new colour for registration plates to help ‘normalise the idea of clean vehicles’
Bird of the Day: Swainson’s Thrush
Boston, Massachusetts
Superpods & Ocean Heroes
This National Public Radio (USA) story led us to the video above, and then the source website, where we discovered several initiatives that are worth a closer look:
Ocean action: In 2017, Carmel-by-the-Sea’s City Council voted to require that restaurants stop using single-use plastic straws and utensils and instead provide only compostable to-go serviceware—and only upon request. The law took effect in the spring of 2018. The impetus came from a group of fifth-grade students from Carmel River Elementary School. They spoke at community forums and Carmel City Council meetings to advance the idea. Mayor Steve Dallas later credited them with playing a pivotal role in getting the ordinance enacted. “When it finally passed, the students were ecstatic,” says teacher, Niccole Tiffany, of her students. “It was a big lesson on the power of kids’ voices in actively creating change.” (Read more of her story here)
Thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for programs that inspire local citizens, especially youth, to environmental activism like this:
Saving Our Seas One Sip at a Time with “No Straw November”
Ocean action: Shelby O’Neil, a high school student from San Juan Bautista, created a successful campaign called “No Straw November,” asking people to pledge not to use plastic straws for one month. She’s earned national exposure through the Martha Stewart Living magazine and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. She convinced Alaska Airlines to ditch plastic straws and toothpicks on all its flights (a story picked up by Fortune magazine). Shelby was even flown to the headquarters of Delta Airlines to promote her campaign; spoke at Dreamforce, the annual user conference hosted by Salesforce.com in San Francisco; and won unanimous California Coastal Commission support for “No Straw November.” But she didn’t stop there. “For a Girl Scout Gold Award, I created a nonprofit called Jr Ocean Guardians,” says Shelby, “teaching younger schoolchildren the importance of the oceans and how they can help.” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Plum-headed Parakeet
female – Valparai, Tamil Nadu
Wind Powering 590,000 Homes
Drone footage shows world’s largest offshore windfarm – video
Thanks to the Guardian for this news about harnessing wind at a record scale:
World’s largest offshore windfarm opens off Cumbrian coast
Walney Extension will power 590,000 homes amid fears Brexit could stifle growth
Guardian Graphic | Source: Renewable
The world’s biggest offshore windfarm has officially opened in the Irish Sea, amid warnings that Brexit could increase costs for future projects.
Walney Extension, off the Cumbrian coast, spans an area the size of 20,000 football pitches and has a capacity of 659 megawatts, enough to power the equivalent of 590,000 homes.
The project is a sign of how dramatically wind technology has progressed in the past five years since the previous biggest, the London Array, was finished.
The new windfarm uses less than half the number of turbines but is more powerful.
Matthew Wright, the UK managing director of Danish energy firm Ørsted, the project’s developer, said: “It’s another benchmark in terms of the scale. This – bigger turbines, with fewer positions and a bit further out – is really the shape of projects going forward.” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Speckled Piculet
Pangot,Uttarakhand
The Visual Shero of Afrofuturism
A still-life of accessories from various films that Carter has worked on: the headpiece of Queen Ramonda, in “Black Panther”; cufflinks for Martin Luther King, Jr., in “Selma”; and the dancing shoes worn by Shorty, a character in “Malcolm X,” who was played by Spike Lee. Photographs by Awol Erizku
In film and theatre, costume design is often as important as a setting and script to craft the sense of both character and story. It’s debatable whether non-fiction or fiction is more challenging, but Ruth E. Carter’s work carries the story for either one, with an attention to detail that brings the viewer back into history or forward into new worlds.
Be sure to click through the article for more of Awol Erizku’s dynamic photos, as well as watch the video below for more images and Carter’s own explanation of her work.
RUTH E. CARTER’S THREADS OF HISTORY
Throughout her career, the costume designer for “Black Panther” has created visions of black identity, past and future.
Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther” is a rare thing: a big-budget superhero movie that is unabashedly serious about great clothes. The film’s costume designer, Ruth E. Carter, evoked the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda by melding sci-fi with global fashion history, drawing influence from sources including the color symbolism of the Maasai people, samurai armor, and the jewelry of Ndebele women. She realized her vision with the help of an international team of researchers, buyers, tailors, beaders, and engineers, and by exploring the possibilities of 3-D-printing technology. For her efforts, she has been lauded as one of the essential visual storytellers of Afrofuturism. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Pale-billed Woodpecker
Orange Walk District, Belize
Author of Extreme Conservation, Interviewed
We recommend this interview in the Atlantic, with the author of the book above, a veteran conservationist reckoning with his career studying animals in the most extreme places on Earth:
In the winter of 2011, Joel Berger and his colleague Marci Johnson happened upon a ghostly Arctic death scene. Body parts and tufts of brown fur poked out of a frozen lagoon. This was all the biologists could find of a herd of 55 musk oxen they had been following.
The cause of mass mortality, they later determined, was an ice tsunami, the result of an unusual storm that slammed seawater and ice into the lagoon where the unfortunate musk oxen stood. Berger is a conservationist who works in some of the most hostile environments in the world, and he studies the enigmatic species, like musk oxen, that live there. His new book, Extreme Conservation, chronicles his career in Alaska, Siberia, Namibia, Tibet, Mongolia, and Bhutan. He is now a biologist at Colorado State University and a senior scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Pink-browed Rosefinch
Chopta Tungnath, Uttarakhand
A Story That May Make Your Day
The view above is a stretch of Continental Divide passing through Costa Rica’s central valley. The snapshot is taken from the road close to our home. I hike these mountains most mornings. On Saturdays I visit the farmer’s market in the town square. Beets were on my shopping list this week. One of the very few culinary banes of my youth, beets are now a favorite. A single shot glass of borscht, served to me in Leeuwarden, Holland solved that problem for me in 2004.
Pejibaye, a fruit from one of the many palm varieties growing in this region, is considered a local staple. We find that it has a resemblance to chestnut, so we use it to prepare stuffing to accompany the roasting of something or other on the fourth Thursday of November.
This time of year dragon fruit appears and if it is a sunny morning their color is motivational. That is, I find their color energizing.
But something about the name must explain why, as with beets in my youth, I have not been motivated to eat this fruit.
I am waiting for someone to demonstrate the best way.
I listen to a mix of music and podcasts during the mountain walks. Music energizes the steep uphill grinds while podcasts fill the downhills and straightaways, where I can concentrate. I recommend clicking on the My Ames Is True tab here and I also recommend not reading the blurb describing what it is about. Enjoy the surprise. This podcast is best listened to with no introduction, except for the fact that it is told by Michael Lewis on This American Life. It may make your day.
Bird of the Day: Dusky Woodswallow
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Celebrating Labor Day, Usual Style
The chef Alvin Cailan made his name on eggs—in sandwich form, at a food truck called Eggslut, in L.A. At the Usual, he has graduated to chicken, battered and fried so that its crust is as craggy as a mountain range. It’s served with blueberry muffins and house-made ranch, plus a garlicky hot sauce on request. Photograph by Christaan Felber for The New Yorker
The photo above is an immediate trigger for me, in that today is Labor Day in the USA. It is a holiday I recall with fondness from my youth. It signified the end of summer, which was never in itself to be celebrated, but it also signified the beginning of school. And for me school was the center of life, so the closing of summer meant back to all good things. This year, as summer closes, not so much. But the photo above allows me a moment of solace.
Amie and I recently passed through Los Angeles en route to a wedding, and came across this “questionably named”restaurant (not the one pictured above, but the one referred to in the first paragraph below). I do not think of myself as a prude, but when I see a name like that I immediately become uninterested. The shock of the new is not the problem. Coarsening of language and culture is the problem. Enough. A good rule of thumb might be something like this question: would you be happy telling your young child(ren) the name of this place where we are going to eat?
But then again I am occasionally surprised by how, after judging a book by its cover, I can reconsider and think otherwise. In this case the cover of the book (i.e. the name of the restaurant) is still one I would rather have been different, but the contents of the book have my full attention. Thanks to Hannah Goldfield for providing this case in point:
Standout Fried Chicken Amid Familiar Fare at the Usual
At Alvin Cailan’s first sit-down restaurant, in the Nolitan Hotel, the Eggslut creator graduates to the full bird.
For the chef Alvin Cailan, the egg came first. The egg sandwich, to be specific, a messy, photogenic one on a brioche bun, first served in 2011, from a food truck, questionably named Eggslut, in Los Angeles. Eggslut became a pop-up in New York (since popped down) and then a mini-chain, with several outposts in the L.A. area and one in Las Vegas. Cailan built his name on the egg. Now, at the Usual, his first proper sit-down venture, recently opened in the Nolitan Hotel, he has graduated to the chicken. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Green Bee-eater
Vijayapura, Karnataka
The Future Is Bright, And Getting Brighter
TENGKU BAHAR / GETTY
Since the dawn of agriculture, humans have been unwillingly nourishing insects by growing plants that they then devour. Their mandibles consume somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of crops produced around the world. And these losses are likely to grow as the world slowly warms.
By looking at how insects will respond to rising temperatures, a team of researchers led by Curtis Deutsch and Joshua Tewksbury have calculated how rice, maize, and wheat—which provide 42 percent of humanity’s calories—will fare as the globe heats up. The results aren’t pretty.
They estimate that the portion of these grains that’s lost to insects will increase by 10 to 25 percent for every extra degree Celsius of warming. Continue reading
Organikos 