Images: Zipcar Car-Sharing Goes High-Tech Car-sharing is a great way to have most of the benefits or owning a car without most of the downsides. Zipcar , one of the heavy-hitters of the car-sharing world, has release a new iPhone and iPod Touch free app that will make interacting with the company’s reservation service and vehicles better than ever, and that’s good news because the more attractive and convenient car-sharing becomes, the more cars we can take off our roads…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Zipcar iPhone App Makes Car-Sharing Even Better (as Long as You Don’t Abuse Remote Honking)

The flu is already spreading like a Malibu wildfire in my Bay Area community with dozens of kids out the first few weeks of school and contaminated parents unable to play nurse. It’s going to happen, no way of avoiding it all together, but there are some simple steps to build immunity and combat the spreading of germs at home. Some people opt for the influenza vaccine, which the Centers for Disease Control ( CDC ) says protects against the three main flu strains causing the most illness during the season. This year’s vaccine contains three new virus strains : A/Brisbane/59/2007(H1N1)-like virus, A/Brisbane/10/2007 (H3N2)-like virus and B/Brisbane 60/2008-like antigens. The government says it is believed the 2009-10 influenza vaccine can protect you from getting sick from these three viruses, or it can make your illness milder if you get a related but different influenza virus strain. For those choosing not to get the shot, most methods of fighting and containing the enemy involve keeping your hands and surroundings clean and lying low when you know you’re not well and can infect others. The good news for the planet is that none of the hygiene practices require harmful chemicals to kill the enemy. 1. Hand Washing Discovered only 150 years ago, frequent hand washing is the most effective way to keep germs from making you sick and spreading to your pals. According to Every Day Health , it doesn’t matter what kind of soap is used as long as the water is warm and the soap lathers and spreads over the hands sufficiently to trap the germs. Soap and water works best (meaning you don’t have to use a chemical-doused sanitizer that can actually lead to worse viruses). Here are the steps recommended by the CDC : – Wet your hands with clean water – warm, if available – and apply soap. – Lather by rubbing hands together; be sure to cover all surfaces. – Continue rubbing hands together for 15 to 20 seconds – sing “Happy Birthday” twice in your head. – Thoroughly rinse hands under running water to ensure removal of residual germs. – Use paper towels or an air dryer to dry hands and then, if possible, use a paper towel to turn off the faucet. 2. Sponge Duty Sponges used to wash dishes and wipe down counters harbor massive amounts of bacteria, at times even salmonella.  While we are urged to replace them often to keep our kitchens clean, many sponges are made from plastics which means even more petroleum waste in our environment. According to Living Green , the added environmental danger with many synthetic sponges is that they often contain Triclosan , an antibacterial and antifungal agent banned by Canada in household products this past August. Even though it’s registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as being a pesticide, it is frequently used in many antibacterial soaps, deodorants, toothpastes and cosmetics. The chemical is linked to health problems and harms fragile aquatic ecosystems and waterways. While replacing sponges regularly is a good hygienic practice, stick to buying ones made from cellulose fiber (cellulose is sourced from plantation forests or recycled). Read the label carefully as some cellulose sponges are impregnated with polyester, a form of plastic. Keep your green cellulose sponge as dry as possible between uses, to avoid bacteria.  Sterilize them by soaking for a few minutes in boiled water, or try a dilute bleach/hydrogen peroxide solution. The U.S. Dept of Agriculture also recommends killing bacteria and mold by microwaving a damp sponge or dishwashing a sponge with a drying cycle (the method my family uses). 3. Stay Home When you are Sick Take cover when you are sick (just like covering your cough) by keeping away from other students, workers and friends. State health departments urge employees to stay home when they are infected for good reason. It’s the right thing to do for you and your community. Ask a friend or a loved one to make a nice pot of organic chicken soup, crank up the vitamins and heal thyself. Work can added undue stress that undermines a quick recovery. Work can wait. 4. Resist Sharing Personal Items You don’t share brushes to avoid lice. And you don’t share eating utensils, drinking glasses, towels or other personal items if you want to avoid flu and colds. While sharing is a good gesture, there is a big exception when it comes to hygiene. 5. Love Yourself More An excellent reference guide by Our Home Remedies follows the non-nonsense Farmer’s Almanac approach of boosting your immune system with rest, healthy foods like fresh leafy veggies and organic fruit, Vitamin C, garlic and thyme, and beneficial teas. We know when we are not loving ourselves because we don’t sleep and become run down , dehydrated and tend to reach for high sugar foods to revive us, rather than what we really need. Image: hlkljgk

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5 Natural Ways to Fight the Flu

Photo via Engadget So Kindle seems to be bombing out among university students as a replacement for textbooks, at least in one trial run. But we mention that the Tablet from Apple could be a better solution since it is more interactive, and more familiar to anyone currently using an iPhone. And word on the street is that’s just where Apple is headed with the new device, along with revolutionizing newspapers and magazines. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Apple’s Tablet to Take Over Textbooks, Magazines, Newspapers

Businesses in Hawaii and Ontario can adopt renewable energy technologies with greater assurance that the investments will pay off now that the state and province have enacted feed-in tariff programs. Under feed-in tariffs, a set rate for electricity generated – usually above the cost of production – helps promote the adoption of renewable energy. In Hawaii, the

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Hawaii, Ontario Enact Feed-in Tariffs for Renewables

A management consulting firm released a new report outlining the steps any company can take to get on the path toward environmental sustainability. How many of these has your firm already accomplished?

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Are 12 Steps Enough to Get to Sustainability?

John Pucher We have noted before that suburbs make you fat. Now research by John Pucher of Rutgers University suggests that cars make you fat. And before you start commenting “correlation does not imply causation”, consider that it makes a great deal of sense. Blogger Felix Salmon calls it the Urban Diet, noting that people who don’t have a car c… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Cars Make You Fat

This report from Kanal Consulting focuses on practical ways that organizations can implement sustainability to improve the bottom line and the environment. 

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12 Steps to Sustainability

When it comes to addressing climate change, including measuring and reducing its carbon footprint, Whirlpool leads the pack in the large appliance sector, according to a new analysis. Similarly, Steelcase leaves other furniture makers in the dust for sharing its efforts to measure climate change impacts with the public and setting clear goals to reduce its energy use and emissions.

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Steelcase and Whirlpool Emerge as Sector Climate Leaders

Welcome to The September Issue , a frockumentary chronicling the genius behind the fattest ever edition of Vogue, weighing in at over four pounds, reaching 13 million readers and boosting the sinking morale of the $300-billion global fashion industry. I don’t know about you but I don’t like my documentaries contrived any more than my fashion. Albeit entertaining, this one by R.J. Cutler smacks of high level spin and pretense. Adding to the “entertainment value” was an art-versus-bottom dollar subplot pitting the painfully bored Vogue chief Anna Wintour against brilliant, model-turned-photo stylist Grace Coddington , both British veterans who have been with the magazine for more than 20 years. Coddington makes a statement with her unkempt orange mane and naked, aging face, an appearance which defies everything that lets Vogue survive, namely stick-figured, cover-girl celebs with flawless airbrushed faces who are posed like Barbies in lay-outs specifically engineered to sell fashion. True, it’s always been about the sales, but four pounds of retail pitching might be overkill. Coddington cringes throughout the film as she battles her nemesis Wintour. We the audience tend to root for the vulnerable underdog in the power struggle as the boss eliminates various elements of Coddington’s romantic fashion spreads at her whim – images labored over with great attention to lighting and detail to add depth to the 2007 September book. One comes away with little empathy for the emaciated Wintour, who, so taken with herself as a removed icon, keeps her trademark goggles on while observing the indoor runway shows. Guess she figures she has seen it all so missing a few nuances of color and texture shouldn’t be a big deal. Her vacant expression dares the wizards behind the curtain to try and impress her. If Coddington is the magazine’s soul, Wintour emerges the cold-blooded business brain going through the tedious motions but never really responding to her vibrant environment. Never mind that hundreds of talented, unemployed journalists are waiting in the wings for that chance-of-a-lifetime job monopolized by Wintour for two decades. Appearing even more bored that the overblown caricature portrayed brilliantly by Meryl Streep in Prada , Wintour seems desperate to pad Vogue and her paycheck at any cost – even resurrecting fur on the cover in the 90s to save the dying trade. A longtime Peta target for her Cruella Deville attraction to pelts, Wintour is pompous in her disregard for the mission of animal rights groups who have fought hard to sensitize humans to animal cruelty and the absurdity of slaughtering  for fashion’s sake alone. Recently, she told Sixty Minutes she needed to get security to protect her from anti-fur militants. She insisted she likes fur and that is the only reason she wears it. Right. I find the most staged scene in the film is Vogue’s annual meeting in Paris with the movers and shakers of the retail world, such as the head of Neiman Marcus, who nudges Wintour to wield her influence to get couture houses to speed up delivery of gowns to an ever-increasing and demanding clientele. Hogwash! There was no increasing demand for $15,000 gowns even prior to the recession, and the only demanding clientele is the celebrity stylist crowd that manipulates its clout to borrow treasures for a day. The only message I came away with is that it might be time for Wintour to hang up her Warhol wig, glasses and venti Starbucks paper cup and give someone else a shot at salvaging her doomed fashion rag . Perhaps it should be someone like Grace, who embodies her name while clinging to what matters most to fashion visionaries and fans – the process of creating and wearing desirable, three-dimensional art.

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The Devil Wears Fur and Her Hurt on Her Sleeve

In a move that could galvanize industrial opposition to cap and trade, the EPA is proposing that large emitters use the “best available” technologies to minimize GHG emissions when facilities are constructed or significantly modified. The rule would apply to large industrial operations and utilities that emit more than 25,000 tons of GHGs a year. EPA Administrator

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EPA to Require Large Emitters to use ‘Best Technologies’ to Reduce Emissions