We’ve all heard about foreign exchange programs that let you stay with families from other countries, but have you ever heard of an organic farm exchange program?

Well that’s exactly what WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) is: a program that gives hosts a chance to share their organic farming experience with volunteers and allows volunteers to help hosts with daily organic farming activities…

We’ve all heard about foreign exchange programs that let you stay with families from other countries, but have you ever heard of an organic farm exchange program?

Well that’s exactly what WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) is: a program that gives hosts a chance to share their organic farming experience with volunteers and allows volunteers to help hosts with daily organic farming activities.

There are currently over 500 hosts in the U.S.

What is WWOOF?

WWOOF was created in the UK in 1971 as a way to find help for people working on organic farms.

The organic farm hosts provide housing and food for the volunteers, who in return help them with their daily farming tasks.

In exchange for helping hosts with daily tasks, volunteers:

• Don’t have to pay hosts for their stay
• Get free accommodations and food
• Learn about organic growing and lifestyles

The volunteers not only get to travel to different states or countries, but they also get to learn about the unique eco-lifestyles of these organic farmers.

Neither the hosts nor volunteers pay each other for the experience, but there is a small fee charged by the WWOOF network to maintain the program.

The best thing is that the program is available in so many different countries, from Australia and Costa Rica to Spain and Uganda. You can see a complete listing of countries here.

If you’d like to be a volunteer you can click here, or if you’d like to be a host you can click here.

This is truly a great opportunity for students or anyone interested in organic farming to get first-hand experience from professional organic farmers. There really are so many more things you can learn in person than by reading a book or watching a television show.

Baltimore City is set to launch a new green energy efficiency and conservation program called The Baltimore Neighborhood Energy Challenge, which will challenge various neighborhoods to reduce their energy consumption over the next nine months.

Baltimore City is set to launch a new green energy efficiency and conservation program called The Baltimore Neighborhood Energy Challenge, which will challenge various neighborhoods to reduce their energy consumption over the next nine months.

Working with the Baltimore Community Foundation, an organization that helps businesses and donors carry out charity work, and using a grant of $500,000 donated by Constellation Energy Group Inc., Baltimore’s leading supplier of energy services, the city will aim to reduce its total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 15% by the year 2015.

The Plan

So, how is this new energy conservation program going to work? Here’s some information:

• Participating neighborhood households will receive free or subsidized energy-saving kits that come with information on energy conservation.
• The households will sign a waiver allowing Baltimore Gas & Electric Company, which is a subsidiary of Constellation Energy Inc., to measure their energy consumption before, during and after the pilot.
• Neighborhoods will be assigned “captains” that will recruit volunteers to educate neighborhood residents on energy use.

Sounds like a good plan, right? We think so, and we hope that if the new energy conservation program works, that it will extend out to the rest of the state and maybe even the nation.

Source: WBALTV.com

So we took some financial advice from our partner, Student Finance Domain, to teach all students how to be more financially prepared for life after college.

College is the time for you to open your first student checking account or college savings account. You need to know how to choose the right bank with the right student banking services, and make sure that it is convenient to your school and home…

Most eco-obsessed college students are too busy fighting global warming to learn how to balance a checkbook, how to invest their money or how to avoid credit card fraud.

So we took some financial advice from our partner, Student Finance Domain, to teach all students how to be more financially prepared for life after college.

Know the Basics

Here are the finance basics that all college students should know:

1. College is the time for you to open your first student checking account or college savings account. You need to know how to choose the right bank with the right student banking services, and make sure that it is convenient to your school and home.
2. Know how to balance a checkbook. This might just save you a lot of money.
3. If you’re in college you’re probably thinking about getting a student credit card or your first college credit card. Be sure to know what different types of credit cards are available to see which ones have better interest rates and rewards.
4. Know about credit card management and credit scores and reports. Being wise about your credit can lead to huge financial advantages in the future.
5. Create a college student budget plan to know how much you can afford to spend and what you can invest.
6. Beginner investing in stocks and bonds will be worth your wait in the future.
7. Student insurance can really save you from the high medical bills and unexpected events of college.
8. So many students rely on financial aid, so it’s important that they know how to apply for financial aid, the different types of financial aid forms, and how college grants and scholarships can help cover the cost of tuition.
9. There are so many different types of student loans to choose from, so you should always compare student loans to see which one is right for you. Student loans are available from the government and private institutions, which both offer undergraduate college student loans and graduate school loans.
10. Other resources are available to students to help them pay for college. Examples are federal work study, the Montgomery GI bill, student community service, ROTC and tuition payment plans.

The more you know at a younger age about your personal finances, the better off you’ll be when you’re older.

It’s advantageous to know how to be eco-friendly and how to manage your money at the same time. The effects of both will make your future much better.

The largest retailer of consumer electronics has just started a trial e-waste recycling program in over 117 stores across 8 states.

Best Buy, which supplies a huge portion of the electronics waste that ends up in our overcrowded landfills, has finally succumbed to the pressure of environmentalists…

The largest retailer of consumer electronics has just started a trial e-waste recycling program in over 117 stores across 8 states.

Best Buy, which supplies a huge portion of the electronics waste that ends up in our overcrowded landfills, has finally succumbed to the pressure of environmentalists.

The Program

Although the retailer has already accepted cell phones, batteries and ink jet cartridges for several years, it is going to upgrade its e-waste intake by including computers and televisions up to 32 inches for consumers to drop off at stores.

Right now in the trial states, which are Northern California, Minneapolis and Baltimore, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia and Washington, D.C., consumers can bring in up to 2 gadgets per day.

You can see the complete list of participating stores here.

If the program is a success, it will hopefully expand to all the other 922 stores throughout the U.S.

You can read the entire article here.

This entire recycling program might just be a clever trick to get consumers to think that Best Buy is eco-friendly, when in actuality has a rather large company carbon footprint.

But at least the company is doing something, so it deserves some credit for its efforts.

We’ll just have to wait and see if the program works.

According to the EPA, Americans discard about 2 million pounds of electronic waste (e-waste) every year, but that’s nothing compared to the 50 million pounds that are produced by the entire world.

To battle the e-waste problem, the U.S. Postal Service is working with recycling company Clover Technologies Group to develop a free national collection program for small electronics…

According to the EPA, Americans discard about 2 million pounds of electronic waste (e-waste) every year, but that’s nothing compared to the 50 million pounds that are produced by the entire world.

To battle the e-waste problem, the U.S. Postal Service is working with recycling company Clover Technologies Group to develop a free national collection program for small electronics.

The Program

This would be the first ever national electronics recycling program in America.

The program would provide pre-paid envelopes to people to send in their unwanted electronics, like cell phones and cameras. Then Clover Technologies would refurbish and resell them.

If the program works, it would dramatically cut down or even discontinue our shipping of e-waste to developing countries.

Apparently the e-waste that is shipped to developing countries is either stripped for parts and then dumped into the ocean, or it is burned as fuel, emitting hazardous toxins into the air.

You can read the entire article here.

Not only would the program reduce U.S. shipping prices and encourage people to recycle, but it would also reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions around the world.

Right now the program is on trial in Chicago and Los Angeles, collecting only certain electronic devices. If it works, it will hopefully spread to other cities.

Let’s cross our fingers.

I search through various news sources every day to bring readers the latest news pertaining to the environment. And as much as I try to be unbiased or non-judgmental, I just couldn’t believe it when I saw the Yahoo! News headline ‘Environmentally Friendly Bombs Planned.’

After the initial shock of the headline, I decided to read the article first to try and understand the sense in using eco-friendly bombs that would destroy things over toxic bombs that would destroy things…

I search through various news sources every day to bring readers the latest news pertaining to the environment. And as much as I try to be unbiased or non-judgmental, I just couldn’t believe it when I saw the Yahoo! News headline ‘Environmentally Friendly Bombs Planned.’

After the initial shock of the headline, I decided to read the article first to try and understand the sense in using eco-friendly bombs that would destroy things over toxic bombs that would destroy things.

Here’s a summary of the article:

Scientists in Germany have discovered a more environmentally friendly alternative to the regular materials that are used in explosives.

Instead of using TNT, RDX and other common explosives that contain carbon, they decided to use a safer class of materials called tetrazoles, which contain nitrogen.

The results of the ‘safer’ explosions were less toxicity and pollution in the environment. And by mixing the two tetrazoles known as HBT and G2ZT with oxidizers, the bombs also avoided releasing hydrogen cyanide gas, which regular bombs usually emit after exploding.

Quoted German researcher Thomas Klapötke, ‘These compounds have great potential, especially for large caliber naval and tank guns.”

You can read the entire article here.

I’m hoping that I’m not the only one who finds this ‘discovery’ quite disturbing.

Instead of writing out my opinion (which would be long), I came up with a few questions for these scientists to think about:

• Maybe it’s just me, but regardless of what materials are in the bombs, when they explode, don’t they all destroy the environment and whatever else happens to be around? Is that safer?
• Does it really matter if hydrogen cyanide gas is released after the explosion if there is nothing alive to be subjected to those fumes?
• Nitrogen can cause asphyxiation, it can severely damage your mental judgment and liquid nitrogen can cause frostbite. Is it really that much safer than carbon?
• If you want to shoot eco-friendly explosives out of naval and tank guns, why don’t you just fill the guns with fruit? The sheer speed of the flying fruit would surely create an explosion upon impact, and the seeds would even replant themselves in the freshly exposed holes in the ground.

Okay, the last one was kind of sarcastic, but I personally think that every kind of explosive is dangerous. It seems silly to me to try and put a ‘green badge’ on something that is only used to de-green the planet.

But I still have faith in the advancement of technology. Maybe one day people will build zero emissions electric Hummers that will be used to transport food to impoverished third-world countries.

For the past 3 years 17 college engineering teams have competed in the Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainable Mobility competition, which was sponsored by General Motors Corporation and the Department of Energy.

The competition was designed to give student engineers a chance to research and develop advanced technology for vehicles that would reduce energy consumption and emissions, while also maintaining the performance of the vehicle…

For the past 3 years 17 college engineering teams have competed in the Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainable Mobility competition, which was sponsored by General Motors Corporation and the Department of Energy.

The competition gave students a chance to research and develop advanced technology for vehicles that would reduce energy consumption and emissions, but also maintain performance standards.

For the second year in a row, Mississippi State University students won first place.

The Challenge X Competition

The competition is broken down into three years:

Year 1

Begins with the judging and evaluation of each school’s modeling, simulation and testing of the vehicle’s powertrain and subsystems. Teams that master these key aspects will receive a donated GM Equinox after the June 2005 competition.

Years 2 and 3

Teams have to develop and integrate their advanced powertrain and subsystems into their donated GM Equinox. Teams will then be extensively judged on the vehicle’s energy use, emissions, utility, performance, engineering and K-12 Education Outreach.

The teams are provided with technical support and mentoring from GM and other sponsors, and they receive $10,000 in seed money. They can also receive up to $25,000 in additional production part, software and hardware from GM and other sponsors.

The Winners

The Mississippi team won first place with their through-the-road parallel hybrid electric vehicle. It had a 1.9 L GM direct injection turbo diesel engine fueled by biodiesel, which helped it achieve a 38% increase in fuel economy over the original test vehicle.

Here’s a picture of the team:

And the winning vehicle:

Second place went to the student team from the University of Wisconsin, and third place went to Ohio State University.

You can read the entire press release here.

This is a great way for a huge car company like GM to get involved with college students and the green movement. It shows the dedication that both parties have in protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The 37-foot Green Monster wall at Boston’s Fenway Park is famous for reducing a batter’s chance at hitting a home run, but now the park is getting something even greener that is going to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of the park by 18 tons per year.

The famous baseball stadium that has hosted ten World Series has just installed a solar heating system that consists of 28 Heliodyne solar hot water collectors and four 400-gallon storage tanks…

The 37-foot Green Monster wall at Boston’s Fenway Park is famous for reducing a batter’s chance at hitting a home run, but now the park is getting something even greener that is going to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of the park by 18 tons per year.

The famous baseball stadium that has hosted ten World Series has just installed a solar heating system that consists of 28 Heliodyne solar hot water collectors and four 400-gallon storage tanks.

The Red Sox will be the first team in Major League Baseball to have a solar thermal system at their ballpark.

A Citywide Effort

This eco-friendly makeover is part of Boston’s 2-year citywide initiative to support alternative energy sources.

The initiative, called the Solar Boston program, costs $600,000, and its goal is to increase the city’s solar power output by 50 times its current level by 2015.

The solar panels were manufactured by Heliodyne Inc. of Richmond, California, a company that develops top-performing solar hot water systems.

They were installed by groSolar, a company that provides photovoltaic (PV) cells for homes and businesses.

The solar-heated water will not only be used for the stadium, but also for all the restaurants located on the park’s lower level.

You can read the entire article here.

The use of this solar-heated water system will reduce the park’s average gas consumption by one-third.

Maybe this initiative will inspire the Red Sox players to go green and maintain their World Series title in the name of alternative energy. Maybe not.

Regardless, this a great way to save energy, and we hope other organizations will adopt the initiative.

It’s impossible to ignore what has recently happened to the people and surrounding environment of the Southeastern Asian country of Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

According to an article on CNN.com, the death toll in Myanmar thus far is estimated at 100,000, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in Myanmar history…

It’s impossible to ignore what has recently happened to the people and surrounding environment of the Southeastern Asian country of Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

According to an article on CNN.com, the death toll in Myanmar thus far is estimated at 100,000, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in Myanmar history.

This is just one image from the New York Times that shows the effect of the cyclone:

You can see the rest of the images here.

The cyclone that ripped through the country has not only killed thousands of people and damaged entire homes and villages, but it has left people injured, sick and without any family or friends.

One 68-year old fisherman, Thein Myint, lost all 28 members of his entire family, according to NPR.

The disaster has also left thousands of unclaimed bodies still floating in the water and has forced many people to live in tight-knit shelters, both of which make the survivors very susceptible to spreading diseases such as HIV/AIDS and cholera.

Even though aid from outside sources is strictly regulated by Myanmar’s government, there are still many countries and organizations out there fighting to help the victims of the disaster.

The efforts of some countries include Canada sending 2,000 emergency shelter kits and the U.S. military sending cargo planes full of water, mosquito nets and blankets.

It seems like we are worlds away from Myanmar, but we can still do our part to help the victims and their environment recover.

Here are a few ways that you can help:

Will ship safety, health, shelter and other materials to Bangkok. There is a supporter that will match your gift donation dollar for dollar, up to $250,000, if you donate now.

Buy an item, sell an item on eBay or make an online donation to contribute to the Myanmar relief effort, or any other global cause or fundrasing mission.

Google users can donate to UNICEF or Direct Relief International. When you donate, so does Google, and they’ll donate up to $1 million.

The American Red Cross has contributed $250,000 to relief efforts, has shipped shelter kits and emergency supplies, and has volunteers that have distributed containers to Myanmar survivors for safe drinking water.

Works with organizations such as International Development Enterprises (IDE) and Madre to provide water, shelter and other emergency supplies.

Has an office in Myanmar to help the survivors get proper shelter, drinking water and power.

There are many other organizations and people who are committed to helping the victims of the Myanmar cyclone disaster.

By making a small donation or even spreading the word about relief efforts for Myanmar, you can make a difference in the lives of these people who truly need your help.

It’s no secret that a nice cold beer is something that many people look forward to after a long day of work or an intense week of studying for exams.

But did you ever think you could make all those empty beer bottles you have just laying in your recycling bin a part of your home?

It’s no secret that a nice cold beer is something that many people look forward to after a long day of work or an intense week of studying for exams.

But did you ever think you could make all those empty beer bottles you have just laying in your recycling bin a part of your home?

An article from Ananova.com features Ma Yanjun, a farmer from the Qiqiao village in China, who has given new meaning to the term recycling. He has created his own rooftop solar-powered water heating system by using empty beer bottles.

By attaching 66 green beer bottles to his rooftop and using a series of hoses to supply water to the bottles, Ma has created a unique way for the sun to provide hot water for his home.

He even has enough hot water for all three members of his family to shower once a day.

Take a look at Ma and his creation below:

His solar-powered system was so successful that 10 other families in the village have adapted it to suit their housing needs.

This is a great green idea that could help thousands of people who can not afford the most modernized solar panel systems that are out today.

What’s even better is that people can enjoy their beer, and then afterwards, enjoy a nice, hot shower thanks to the leftover bottles.