Read the full story from SmartPlanet.
Weed may not be as green as you think.
Indoor marijuana growing operations in the United States are massive energy hogs, consuming some $5 billion worth of electricity each year, according to a new report.
That’s about 1 percent of the nation’s total power consumption.
Original folk style songs about the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (HAZCOM) (for U.S. readers) and the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) (for Canadian readers). Thanks to @maddie273 for the links (and the songs).
Read the full story in Biodiesel Magazine.
The U.S. EPA presented the regional President’s Environmental Youth Award to a group of students at Chicago-based Mother McAuley High School April 13. The school’s EcoMacs Biodiesel Team built a solar-powered biodiesel processor, which was donated to a community in Haiti.
Read the full story at Earth911.
April 22 will mark the 41st anniversary of Earth Day, but does it still have the same effect it did in the 70s? We asked the biggest names in the environmental industry to answer the question, “Is Earth Day Dead?”
Watch the video to see what happens when a flashmob aims to encourage recycling.
Read the full story at Grist.
Carbon emissions? Energy overuse? Sketchy labor relations? There’s an app for that, and it’s all of them. This infographic from Geekaphone (there’s way more, it’s huge — click on our excerpt to see the rest) illustrates that the iPhone, like basically any modern convenience, is probably going to kill us all sooner or later. (What up, Skynet?)
Read the full story at Shareable.
I grew up in the 80s with a single working mother and Madonna as my role models. Instead of dreaming about being a princess bride, I fantasized about having my own house to dance around in.
So when my beloved boyfriend of two years got down on one knee—in front of a dozen of our closest friends—and asked if I’d be his baby forever, I was speechless. It wasn’t the idea of marriage that terrified me: it was the wedding.
I adored the idea of taking vows publicly, ritualistically, in front of my dearest family and friends. But I felt a sickening dread when I considered the sheer volume of wasted money, resources, and energy that goes into most weddings. I had been to weddings where flowers worth more than my car were tossed out like trash, and read that the average American wedding costs 20,000 dollars, almost as much as my annual salary as a high school teacher.
I didn’t want to kick off my marriage with an orgy of consumption. More importantly, we couldn’t even afford to throw a wedding. That is, until we began redefining the very idea of what a wedding could be. Until we asked: what can we do ourselves?
By answering this question honestly, creatively, and with heavy doses of adrenaline, we managed to host a delightful wedding with sixty guests for under $5000. Because we orchestrated it all, from the compostable cutlery to the pinata, guests kept telling us how moved they were by the way our wedding reflected our values and indeed, our love.
Here are some tips on how to plan your own DIY wedding:
On April 22, 2011, Earth Day, Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), the peer-reviewed journal covering environmental health sciences as they relate to human health, will launch a website dedicated to this event. The site, available on Friday at http://ehponline.org/earthday2011, features a collection of recent EHP research, news, science education materials, and podcasts that relate to the overarching themes of air, land, water and climate.
EHP’s goal with the new site is to create a resource for anyone who wants to learn more about how Earth Day relates to human health. “Human health and the health of the Earth are inextricably linked. Where EHP usually focuses on the human health side of that relationship, Earth Day is a chance to focus on the environmental side,” said EHP Editor-in-Chief Hugh A. Tilson. The materials on the website are geared toward scientists, students, and the general public.
Earth Day 2011 also marks the 18th anniversary of EHP’s current format as a monthly news and research journal. Founded in 1972, EHP originally served as a vehicle for publishing conference proceedings in the nascent field of environmental health. The journal adopted its current format in 1993. With an impact factor of 6.19, EHP is the top-ranked original research journal in the category of public, environmental, and occupational health, according to the most recent Journal Citation Reports Science Edition.
EHP is published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. EHP is an open-access journal, and all content is available free online at http://www.ehponline.org/. Brogan & Partners Convergence Marketing handles marketing and public relations for the publication and is responsible for creation and distribution of this press release.
Read the full story at Science Daily. The full report is available here.
Most Americans now agree that climate change is occurring, but still disagree on why, with opinions about the cause of climate change defined by political party, not scientific understanding, according to new research from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.
Republicans most often point to natural causes of climate change while Democrats most often believe that human activities are the cause. The greatest polarization occurs among people who believe they have the best understanding.
Read the full story at Planet Ark.
Chinese consumers are willing to pay a small premium for environmentally friendly products, but they place responsibility to fix China’s environmental woes on the government, a study released on Monday said.
Convenience is the main factor driving shopping decisions for more than half of the 1,300 Chinese consumers across China surveyed by global advertising and marketing firm Ogilvy & Mather, but 71 percent said they would pay up to 10 percent more or higher for some “green” products.
Environmental News Bits 
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