Archive for July 2008

Enviropaedia’s online green guide is a stunner

I’ve seen the Enviropaedia book in shops and it’s never grabbed me, but their online Sustainable Lifestyle Guide is a completely different story. It looks beautiful and is packed with all the info you need to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Best of all, you don’t have to pay for it and no innocent trees [...]



SA is named a top-10 ethical destination

South Africa and Namibia have made it onto a list of the Top-10 ethical tourism destinations – the only two African countries to do so. The Developing World’s Best Ethical Destinations list is compiled by an American group called Ethical Traveler which assesses countries on their records in environmental protection, social welfare and human rights. [...]



Fossil fuel-free rally from Vic Falls to Cape Town

Are you the proud owner or developer of an electric, solar, hybrid, biofuel or hydrogen vehicle? Here’s a chance to show it off in a 4,000km rally from the Victoria Falls in Zambia, through the Caprivi and down through Namibia to Cape Town. Zero Rally Africa says the event will be one of the “greatest [...]



South Africa’s hot potatoes

In this year of the potato (so named by the United Nations General Assembly, believe it or not) the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) intends to apply to the government for permission to make genetically modified potatoes commercially available in South Africa. The SpuntaG2 potato is resistant against potato tuber moth damage and, if permission is [...]



Solar windows could soon tap into sun’s power

Windows that not only let sunlight into buildings but also use it to generate electricity may be a commercial reality in as little as three years’ time, MIT reports. A research team at the US university has found a way to concentrate solar energy onto solar cells situated around the edge of a pane of [...]



Put your hands in the air and gimme all your chip fat!

Rising oil prices have had a profound effect on the world, but one of the weirdest stories I read lately was in the New York Times about the rise in used cooking oil theft from fast-food outlets in the United States. In April a “bandit” was caught with 9,500 litres of cooking oil in his [...]