If the logo and/or company claim the material is green, is it?

Three companies – Sami Designs, LLC, doing business as (d/b/a) Jonäno; CSE, Inc., d/b/a Mad Mod; and Pure Bamboo, LLC – have settled FTC complaints, agreeing to stop making false claims and to abide by the Commission’s Textile Fiber Products Identification Act (Textile Act) and Rules. Litigation continues against The M Group, Inc., d/b/a Bamboosa, and its principals.

According to the Commission’s complaints, the companies falsely claim that their rayon clothing and other textile products are “100% bamboo fiber.” They market them under such names as “ecoKashmere,” “Pure Bamboo,” “Bamboo Comfort,” and “BambooBaby.” Rayon is a man-made fiber created from the cellulose found in plants and trees and processed with a harsh chemical that releases hazardous air pollutants. Any plant or tree could be used as the cellulose source – including bamboo – but the fiber that is created is rayon.

By the way rayon does not retain any natural antimicrobial properties of the bamboo plant.

It is difficult to be diligent in this relatively new category, but do your homework if your purpose is to be green.

Check the related link below for more information.

Hi, this is very relevant, an average of 280,000 vehicles cross the bridge on an average work day. Imagine that many cars stuck crowed together and idling because of a lack of planning, CO2 and fossil fuel waste along with hours of peoples lives. This message needs to reach anyone who commutes.

The San Francisco Bay Bridge will be closed from 8 p.m. Thursday until 5 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 8. This is if everything goes according to plan.

Lets hope for the best and be prepared with alternate routes and alternate plans if possible.

Someone very important to me that I do not see often enough has sent me an e-mail reminder about why we must recycle. This is a subject I happen to know a bit about. However, we as humans get lazy and fall into bad habits easily. So this is a reminder of why it is so important to process our waste responsibly as well as minimize it. Reducing waste by minimizing packaging, using your own containers when you shop, finding ways to reuse items or re-purpose items, repair instead of replace and ultimately recycle items is crucial to a healthy environment for generations to come.

The following information may be new to some, but it is certainly a reminder of how important this is and a very real display of some of the mess we have already made.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is currently studying the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch. Follow the link below to find out more about it. I have also included a link to the Wikipedia entry on the subject and a quote from the introduction.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography Site
Wikipedia Entry for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

From Wikipedia: "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean ... and estimated to be twice the size of Texas.[1] The patch is characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of suspended plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography because most of its contents are suspended at or beneath the surface of the ocean."

Practice your RRRRR's - Renew, Reuse, Repair, Recycle, Re-purpose.

Clearly we want to do this via legitimate websites. The impact on the environment that is removed by this process is significant. A recent Carnegie Mellon University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University study confirms what we already assumed: Downloading music cuts energy consumption and CO2 emissions compared to shopping at your local record store.

The study found that buying digital music results in a 40 to 80 percent reduction in energy use and carbon emissions compared to distributing CDs, and that factors in the energy used to download the files over the Internet.

The study compared four different ways of obtaining and listening to music, listed from most energy intensive to the least: Buying a CD in-person at a record store, buying a CD online, downloading an album and then burning it to a CD (both with and without a jewel case), and downloading an album and listening to it digitally.

There were some situations that blurred the lines. If you walked to the music store instead of driving, that would equal the energy and emissions of downloading and then burning an album to disc, meaning the driving to the store is the worst part of buying music in person.

To find out more, check out the related link below.

As you will see if you look back just a few posts, I just wrote about this same subject. However, this is not a multicrystalline cell as I was writing about in the previous article.

This breakthrough came in the multi-cell combination category. This means that we are not talking about the cells people are used to seeing on roof tops, calculators, toys and other daily items. This is the super high efficiency stuff that costs too much for production use. This is the research that helps lead to breakthroughs and ultimately more power for less money somewhere in the future.

This record was set by the University of New South Wales in Australia. In this category, the previous record was 42.7 percent conversion efficiency. This new record is 43 percent conversion efficiency and requires gallium, indium, phosphorus and arsenic. This magic recipe is a long way from production, but every step forward helps.

Follow the related link for more information.

PS - I think someone may have jumbled their numbers, the University website lists last years record at 24.7 and the new record at 25 percent. I think someone transposed the first numbers and remembered it was the next whole number for the new record. This would also fit better with my somewhat long running knowledge on the subject. Although I am not an expert. I did check several other websites who are listing the 42.7 and 43 percent values.

University Article from Oct 2008 lists 24.7 percent efficiency. This is why I like to check the source and include a link for you.