Saturday 24 November 2007

Recycing eWaste? Are you doing it right?

Do you know that they are companies in USA who will take your electronic waste (eWaste) off you to be recylced?

While you can get paid for paper, glass or aluminum cans you recycle, you may have to pay company, like GreenCitizen for recycling some of your electronic equipment. So, when you have to pay for recycling eWaste, what "services" are you paying the amount for? This video will give you an idea.



If you do not want to take the "green action" and pay just to get rid of eWaste, there are some other options that you can look into featured in this video.



So, before you discard your eWaste indiscriminately consider the following facts:

1) Your eWaste may land up in the backyard of poorer countries.
2) Toxic chemicals from your eWaste could be contaminating the environment.
3) Incorrect methods used to reduce the eWaste may be affecting the health of many innocent workers.

Friday 23 November 2007

Oil spill? Go find hair and mushrooms!

As Malaysia is a peninsula, this useful low cost tool invented by Phil McCrory could come in handy should an oil spill occurs on our straits. The following video features some volunteers using hair mats he has invented to cleanup oil spill from a cargo ship that hit the San Francisco Bay Bridge this year.



The hair mats used are supplied by Lisa Gautier who runs a nonprofit called Matter of Trust through which these are donated for emergency oil spill. She collects the hair from salons and send it to Georgia to be woven into hair mats the size of doormat.

So, what's the mushrooms for?

After the hair mats have been used to soak up the oil, oyster mushrooms and straw are layered on them to grow up to 6 weeks and by 12 weeks the mats turn into soil that are good enough to use for landscaping along roads.



Always love a 2-1 solution. And if you are a Salon owner or a Dog Groomer you can make it a 3-1 solution by signing up to mail your hair to them.

I wonder if our coconut husk would make a great oil spill sponging tool...

Saturday 17 November 2007

Global warming? Take an interest!

Check these videos produced by a high school science teacher if you are wondering if there is any truth to the global warming issues that you have heard about.

The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See (9.33mins)


Cannot make a decision as to what you should do next? Start by forwarding these videos to everyone you know and let them decide. In fact, this cool teacher has produced them in such a manner that even your children will find these usually "dry messages" engaging.

Patching Holes #3: The Manpollo Project (With Explosions) (10.56 min)


How It All Ends (9.58 min)


He even had his videos indexed to make it easy for you to follow through what he has created. So, if you missed one of his points and could not quite understand what he was trying to convey in one of the videos, just look through the index he has posted in the following video for the one you should be viewing for answers. Take a shot at indexing the videos for him if you can do a better job.

How It All Ends: Index (9.28min)


And, yes, you can do anything you want with his videos, including, making a profit out of them if you can. His objective is that YOU champion this cause to create the awareness of global warming.

Finally caught your interest? You can have all you want of wonderingmind42 and what he is into.

Just find the time and take some actions.

Thursday 15 November 2007

Coffee beans? Found in poo.

I was watching "Bizarre Foods" on Discovery Channel this morning. This time food expert and host, Andrew Zimmern, was down in Vietnam trying out Vietnamese coffee. What can be so bizarre about drinking coffee? Well, the farmers of these special coffee do not harvest the beans off the tree.

I saw one looking around the plantation floor and picked up something that looks like poo to me. Yes, there is nothing wrong with my eye sight; he is looking for droppings from civet, which is a kind of weasel. Look at it more closely and you can see coffee beans stuck all over.

These coffee beans have a unique flavor as they have been partially fermented by the digestive enzymes of the civets. Once the dung are washed off, the beans roasted, you have your Civet coffee ready to be grounded for brewing.

I did a research and discovered that most of the world's supply of Civet coffee is sold in Japan. People in USA are drinking it too. Then, there is Kopi Luwak from Indonesia, which is reported by Forbes to be the most expensive coffee in the world.

Infact, Kopi Luwak managed to provide better living condition for the poor farmers in Indonesia. 40% of the online sales are shared with the farmers, enabling them to buy portable generators for electricity for their homes and improve their lifestyle.

So, who said you cannot make life better with poo?