Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

Well, lets not get ahead of ourselves. While flying cars are still only to be found in the movies, a car that runs completely on solar energy is no longer the stuff of science fiction. The technology is here and we hope that its only a matter of time until the world's largest car manufacturers are scrambling to get solar cars to consumers. When that day comes, we will have to thank people like Louis Palmer.

Palmer is currently driving the first completely solar powered car around the world to prove that oil independence is possible. The journey began on July 3rd 2007 in Lucerne, Switzerland and will include forty countries on five continents with absolutely no carbon emissions!
The car can travel up to 90 km/h for up to almost 200 miles on its fully charged batteries and on a sunny day can travel a distance of 260 miles, using its solar cells.

Palmer and his team are currently headed to Amsterdam and will finish up their journey in Lucerne on December 18, 2008.

Check out the solar taxi blog for information on the building of the car, the mission, the team, and the route. There is also a great video blog! http://www.solartaxi.com/blog/ How Inspiring!!!

AMERICA RECYCLES DAY!

To prepare you New Yorkers for the big event tomorrow (you can feel the excitement in the air, can't you?) - America Recycles Day! brought to you by the National Recycling Coalition when aluminum cans and cardboard boxes will be flying into recycling bins everywhere! TAKE THEIR RECYCLING PLEDGE!

Here are some helpful recycling tips for here in the Green Apple:

Pizza boxes are recyclable - if the bottom is really greasy, rip off the top and just put that in. Paper cups and plates are NOT recyclable - because they were holding your liquids. plus we know you don't use paper cups because you signed up for the Bring Your Own Mug Challenge!

ALL OTHER PAPER is recyclable

Take-out containers and plastic bags ARE NOT recyclable - only PLASTIC JUGS AND BOTTLES ARE!

Metal hangers (though you should first try to reuse yourself or return to a dry-cleaner for reuse), pots, cans, and EVEN ALUMINUM FOIL ARE recyclable!

When you see recycling mistakes happen - speak out! Talk to your neighbors, stick your hand in if you dare and remove non-recyclable items out of the bins and into the trash or vice-versa. Talk to your landlord! Sign up to be an OROE volunteer and school everyone! Get an OROE volunteer to lead a building-wide recycling training! Go ahead, look at the stickers on the bin, we dare you! Think its too overwhelming? Click here for the HOW-TO

Check out The Cycle, an animated step by step short by RecycleBank on the recycling process! http://www.explorethecycle.com/

CUE Turns 30 - Celebrates with Big Green Gala!

As the BK Eagle Reports, the Center for the Urban Environment, or CUE, which is known for its educational programs in collaboration with schools and its tours of city neighborhoods and parks, moved earlier this year to 168 Seventh St., a LEED gold-certified facility in Gowanus. At the same time, it changed its name from the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment to the Center for the Urban Environment because it now sponsors programs throughout the city. And now, on Monday night, the organization will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a “green-tie” affair at its offices, starting at 6:30 p.m. Honorees will include Sarah Beatty of Green Depot; Ronald Chalusian of New Visions for Public Schools; Helena Durst of the Durst Organization; and Marcel Van Ooyen of the Council on the Environment of New York City. The event will have lots of great green touches like catered food sourced from local farms, a virtual journal which will save paper, and literally green ties made from audio tape ribbon!

Read All About It!

National Recycling Day!

In preparation for National Recycling Day on November 15, here are some interesting paper recycling facts from Sprint Recycling in NYC

THE WAY IT IS
Paper waste comprises 40% of our municipal solid waste stream.
Less than 1/3 of our paper is manufactured from recycled sources, and in the U.S., 99% of the virgin fiber used for paper manufacturing comes from trees.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that by 2010, worldwide paper and paperboard consumption will increase 90% from 1993. This equates to a consumption level of 528 million tons.
U.S. businesses throw away 21 million tons of paper every year, the equivalent of 175 pounds per office worker.
On average, every American consumes over 730 pounds of paper a year, making the U.S. the world's greatest paper consumer. A 12-foot high wall stretching from New York City to Los Angeles could be built with our annual office and writing paper waste.
The 300 million rolls of fax paper we use each year is enough to go from the Earth to the moon 26 times.

THE GOOD NEWS

Benefits of RecyclingRecycling one ton of new paper translates into the savings of:
17 mature pulp-producing trees
78.75 gallons of oil
7,000 gallons of water
41,000 Kilowatt hours of energy

In keeping with NYC's mantra IF YOU CAN TEAR IT, WE CAN TAKE IT, don't forget to recycle ALL your paper except for that which comes into contact with food and post-it notes (because of the sticky stuff).

Brooklyn Green Team Pictures

Click here to see pictures of our Bring Your Own Mug challenge launch on Saturday at ReBar! Want to see your picture on our blog. If you sign-up for the challenge, email us at brooklyngreen@gmail.com with a picture of you and your travel mug and tell us your story!

Finally!

Mayor Mike has called for charging shoppers 6 cents for every plastic bag needed at the register. If the proposal passes, New York City would follow the lead of many European countries and become one of the first places in the United States to assess a so-called plastic bag tax. Seattle voters will weigh in on a similar measure next year, and other places, like Los Angeles and Dallas, have studied the idea. City officials estimate that the fee could generate $16 million a year, a figure that Mr. Bloomberg would no doubt appreciate, given the lingering and concussive effects of the global economic crisis on the city’s economy. But while the fee would burnish Mr. Bloomberg’s environmental record, it might not be a lasting source of revenue. Just a few weeks after Ireland adopted a similar, though much heftier tax in 2002 — charging shoppers 33 cents a bag — plastic bag use dropped 94 percent, and within a year, nearly everyone in that country had purchased reusable cloth bags. Still, the mayor believes that the 6-cent fee would have a major impact on consumers’ behavior.

More importantly than income for the city, think of the environmental impact, or non-impact!

READ ALL ABOUT IT
See what NYTime's Big City commentary says about the proposal.

The Bring Your Own Mug Challenge

Presented by Brooklyn Green Team in partnership with GreenEdge Collaborative NYC

THE BRING YOUR OWN MUG CHALLENGE!

"Why did they even buy me? I sit here on a dark crowded shelf day after day. And then...for a moment, I think my life is going to change. They open the cabinet, our eyes meet. Their gentle hand grazes against my aluminum body. At last! Today is the day they are going to proudly walk me down the street as I carefully hold and keep warm a most precious commodity - the morning coffee. But no, they move right past me and reach for the cereal box."

- Your travel mug, 2008

Does your travel mug feel this way? Neglected? Passed over for a wasteful, disposable, one-time-only, headed for the landfill paper cup? Don't let this happen.

THE FACTS: CAN YOU SWIG IT?

Today, there is no way to compost or recycle the billions of disposable coffee cups used in the U.S. each year. That's because cups are lined with a petroleum-based plastic (polyethylene) to prevent leaking.

Most disposable coffee cups have a life of only 5 minutes before they are tossed in the trash.

In a single week, the average coffee joint goes through 4,000 cups and plastic lids!

Every year, Americans drink more than 100 billion cups of coffee. Of those, 14.4 billion are served in disposable paper cups-enough to wrap the earth 55 times if placed end-to-end!

SOLUTIONS

Use a travel mug. Often made of stainless steel, they keep your liquid hotter longer than a disposable cup.

Encourage stores to offer a discount for bringing your own and patronage those who already do.

If you buy coffee five days a week, with your travel mug instead, you could save 260 cups from the landfill!

SIGN UP email brooklyngreen@gmail.com and write BRING MY OWN! include first and last name and zipcode

Thank you Recycline! Thank you EPA Watersense! Thank you Environmental Defense Fund! Thank you Blue Marble Ice Cream! Thank you VivaTerra! Thank you Lion in the Sun! Thank you Camilla Boutique!

POW. YOU'VE BEEN GREENED!

Party With Brooklyn Green Team Tonight!

Join us tonight at 8pm at REBAR (168 Front Street-Dumbo). We'll praise you for taking shorter showers and challenge you yet again. We'll unveil our newest challenge, offer you raffle prizes, drink specials and you can even sign up for wind power through Con Edison Solutions! Hope to see you there!

The Creative Ecosystem

Brooklyn Artists Gym is concerned with the ecosystem. The creative ecosystem in Brooklyn in which their artists thrive and work and the one we all live within. That's why they're throwing their first annual fundraiser, "Shades of Green," in big green fashion tonight at a big, glam green building - Center for the Urban Environment's LEED Certified headquarters in Gowanus (right next door to BAG).  There were green lights everywhere, crazy cameras that showed dancers 4x over, good food and great artwork for sale and for raffle. Marty Markowitz presented one of BAG Fund's scholarships for single-parent artists and high school artists which was a very touching moment.

Brooklyn Artists Gym, which hosts a 10,000 square foot artist studio and gallery facility, is committed to support the creative process and "ecosystem" by providing artists with studio space and technical support at critical points in their life cycle. Shades of Green promoted BAG's role in enabling sustainability of artists and art and represents the growing intersection between the green movement and the arts community. This event featured guest DJ Miss Mocha who spun great tunes, Brooklyn-based guitarist Mike Gamble (Scrambler) who showed off his experimental talents and performed as a one-man band, rising star Chen Lo whose spoken word inspired and touched on two important topics: the environment and Obama, and Hip Hop purist Baba Israel with Yako 440 who got the crowd on their feet, taught beat-box, and amazed with their skills. 

lots of food, drinks, silent auction, a goody bag that rivals your seventh birthday, and the proceeds support BK art and artists all while having fun in a eco-friendly way. What could be better? 

Run for One Planet Hits NYC!!!

Brooklyn Green Team is thrilled to have found Matt Hill and Stephanie Tait in NYC - one stop along their great journey - a carbon neutral year-long run around the continent! These two green superheroes are running around Canada and the US to garner attention for their cause: saving the planet. Today Matt and Stephanie spoke to students at PS 8 in Brooklyn. The Run for One Planet is an ongoing run endeavour focused on "Inspiring Environmental Action, One Step at a Time."

What is the goal of your journey? Do you feel you will accomplish it?

Our journey has 3 goals:

1) Complete a marathon each every day the tour goes totaling roughly 244 marathons by May 2009

2) Inspire 1 million Americans and Canadians to commit to doing 1 new action for the health of our Planet

3) raise $1 million for our Legacy of Action after completion of the North American tour to act as seed money for grass roots community enhancement projects (funding local initiatives to make a difference globally) We feel VERY strong and excited that we will accomplish our goals, and at the same time the journey is more important than the destination.

How hard is it to stay green while traveling around?

We had a worm compost onboard since day 1 and had to stop when the weather got really hot. However, just last week (Oct. 5th) we went to clean it and would you know it, all the red wrigglers had made many babies and eaten all the organic material we had been feeding them between May and July and to our amazement, thick, rich and incredible soil!! It made my week! Now that we are into Fall we are starting up again as we enter America. Border security said we couldn't bring live worms across from Canada so we are beginning anew Oct. 20th, so hope to have them well on their way by the time we reach New York. It has been a bit harder being as green as we are able at home. The Evolution RV uses a lot of fuel. However, we often debate how much more would three people be using in 3 separate homes, driving 3 cars and all the other energy usage? We spent almost a year putting as many E-alternatives on and inside the RV. It's not perfect but we have tried very hard to do as much as possible to lighten our footprint and are off-setting the total tour Co2 emissions with Eco Neutral out of Vancouver B.C.

Have there been days where you simply couldn't run and if so, how do you get back on the road?

I have to be honest, there has never been a day I've felt I couldn't run. Our mission is too strong and even though, yes, we have both had very hard days both being exhausted, sore and beat up, this inspires us even more to just put one foot in front of the other.

What has been the best part of your journey so far?

People! The best part so far would be the culmination of the last 22 months of training, planning, struggling, celebrating and now running, is meeting so many amazing people for the last 5 1/2 months across Canada, and now about to enter America and meet more amazing people to make a difference for the health of our Planet. It kind of feels like the best is yet to come.

Does a sense of awareness for what is happening to the planet vary greatly at each place you stop?

The awareness from different places we stop at varies GREATLY. It's funny because we have been surprised by some places thinking they were going to be one way and they're the opposite and vice versa. There are always people though in every area that are right on it and it doesn't always mean from big city (no awareness) to small town (big awareness). Both are everywhere which bodes well if we keep at it and stretch peoples thinking and re-teach how to do things everyday. It starts with learning new habits and then the thinking changes of how we are connected to our environment.

How much further?

About 6,000 miles to go!!!!!

What can people reading this do to support your efforts?

They can log onto http://www.runforoneplanet.com/ and Take the Action Challenge and just commit to doing 1 new action for our Earth (remember, small steps add up). If they also feel so inclined to Support our Legacy with a donation, it is gratefully accepted.

Good Luck Guys!!!

YES WE CAN!

THIS IS HISTORY FOLKS. SOAK IT IN. A HUGE VICTORY FOR THE PLANET.