Cell phones, laptops, the Blackberry, iPods, texting, Twitter. Do you ever feel a little too in touch with the world? Next time you’re suffering from technology overload, cut the cord and spend some quality time with Mother Earth for a weekend. Here are some basic tips for a few days off the grid and out in nature. Make a list of everything you need and check it twice. There won’t be a convenience store around the corner if you forget something, so review these essentials to make sure you’re prepared. Dress for the occasion. Wear waterproof hiking boots and lightweight, water-resistant clothing that breathes. If you’re headed up to a high altitude, be ready for a temperature drop with plenty of layers. Even though it’s so easy, a caveman can do it, make sure you know how to start a fire. If you follow these simple steps , it should be a cinch. Invest in a tent and sleeping bag made for backcountry camping. Lightweight and compact, they’re easily portable. Bring a detailed map and compass and familiarize yourself with the area before setting out. Getting lost in the wilderness is no joke, so you’ll need to brush up on your navigation skills before venturing off the grid. Carry a camelback and make camp near a fresh water supply, such as a river or stream. Just remember to purify drinking water from these sources before quenching your thirst. Hang your food from a tree to avoid dangerous encounters with wild animals. Leaflets three, let it be! Learn to identify plants like poison ivy and poison oak and steer clear of them at all costs. An irritating rash is the last thing you want on your backcountry adventure. It’s inevitable that you’ll spend your weekend among insects, but these tips to keep bugs away will make their presence less of a nuisance. Brainstorm some fun games and activities for evenings around the campfire. (Check out this list of free activities , many of which you can do in nature.) Image: Nicholas_T

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10 Tips to Go Off the Grid This Weekend

Image from frogandprincess.wordpress.com We all know that we have to reduce our carbon footprint. We know that we have to do it soon to save the earth. Every day we are being bombarded with suggestions in magazines, papers, t.v. about how to reduce our carbon usage. But who to believe and which ones are the really important ones to do? A new report by the think tank Carbon Focus has narrowed it down to 4 steps. They claim that if we can change our behaviour in 4 different ways in the area… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint by One Ton a Year

You’re perusing the supermarket shelves when you find a product you’d like more information about. You pull out your mobile phone, scan a two-dimensional barcode and voila!, product information, coupons and even recipe ideas appear on your mobile. This form of interactive packaging may soon become reality, thanks to a joint Marketing Agreement entered into by DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers (P&IP), Graphic Packaging International, Inc. (GPI), Scanbuy, Inc. and Augme Mobile. Mobile 2D barcode technology for consumer use is growing in popularity, but isn’t readily available outside Asian countries. “While text messaging is currently the dominant method of consumer response in mobile marketing in the U.S., it is anticipated that in the near future the North American market will follow Japan’s lead, where over 70 percent of all cell phone users scan 2D mobile codes on a regular basis,” said Charlie Brignac, GPI Marketing Manager for Snap2C™. Using 2D barcode technology for interactive packaging has been tested in North America but never on a large scale. DuPont and GPI represent a massive number of packaged goods across many industries, making their attempt to bring interactive packaging to consumers a potential for mainstream change. GPI and DuPont PI&P have demonstrated the ability to place readable 2D barcodes on a variety of packaging surfaces, rigid and flexible. DuPont P&IP is focusing its mobile marketing efforts on Scanbuy’s 2D barcode called the EZcode. The EZcode format was designed for the camera phone using a program compatible with the world’s most commonly used mobile operating systems. GPI’s mobile marketing efforts are focused around its Snap2C™ packaging initiative, powered by partner Augme Mobile.  Through a platform called AD LIFE, the mobile marketing solutions company allows consumer interaction with products through 2D barcodes, SMS, audio and image recognition and other mobile consumer response mechanisms. Just a month after the barcode celebrated its 35th anniversary, technology is proving we’ve come a long way since that first Wrigley’s gum wrapper in 1973!

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Is Interactive Packaging in Our Future?

Project Re-Directory in Topeka, Kan. will kick off Aug. 1, providing the chance for residents to drop-off obsolete phone books in partnership with AT&T Real Yellow Pages and Keep America Beautiful-Topeka/Shawnee County. The annual event is timed with the distribution of new books to businesses and residences and will run through Sept. 21. Drop-off locations include Dillon stores and McDonald’s restaurants, as well as City Hall and the Household Hazardous Waste facility. Several businesses are offering incentives to recycle phone books: McDonald’s locations will provide a free small drink Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts collecting 10 or more directories will receive a Project Re-Directory patch The Topeka Zoo is offering two-for-one admission on August 8-9 and free T-shirts The zoo will also hold a special event on Aug. 7 featuring an appearance by the McDonald’s Hamburgler. Topeka was the first city in Kansas to offer a phone book recycling project, and it is celebrating the 20th anniversary this year. Phone books can be recycled into new directories or insulation, as well as other paper products. However, recycling involves extra steps than other paper products because of adhesive in the spine, so often they are accepted separately. For more information, contact Philicia McKee, Keep America Beautiful-Topeka/Shawnee County at (785) 235-0845.

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Topeka Celebrates 20 Years of Phone Book Recycling

Aurora is the beautiful natural phenomenon that has enchanted mankind with mysterious movements, surreal shapes, and vivid colors dancing across the night sky. People travel for thousands of miles to see the spectacular aurora light shows in the Earth’s atmosphere. The breathtaking color displays of the Aurora Borealis, also called the Northern Lights, as well as Aurora Australis, AKA the Southern Lights, appear on clear, cold nights in the arctic sky during periods of solar activity. Here are 47 auroral curtains to delight your senses without costing a fortune for the journey or enduring the harsh polar coldness. 5 Types of Auroras (images via: Alaska Education , Alaska Edu , Alaska Edu , Alaska Edu , Alaska Edu , Alaska Edu ) Aural forms can be split into a minimum of five different categories: active aurora, corona, homogeneous arc, rising vapor column, and rayed arc. The active aurora (bottom left) can appear like folds from 10 to 100 miles wide as they swirl and move. Corona auroras (middle left) look like rays that shoot out in all different directions from a single point. Homogeneous arcs (bottom right) are the least active form of aura and tend to look like diffuse glowing streaks in the sky. Rising vapor column auroras (middle right) are an illusion that appear to touch a distant landmark and rise like smoke. Rayed arcs (top) look like vertical stripes, fine pleats in the auroral curtain. Auroras can appear in many shapes and colors (images via: Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr ) Auroras come in many different shapes and colors. The brilliant dancing lights happen when charged electrons from the solar wind collide with elements in the Earth’s atmosphere. These geomagnetic disturbances create a fascinating phenomenon called substorms. As the charged particles bump around in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, they mix with atoms of nitrogen and oxygen. Glorious colors from the aurora depend upon the altitude and what atom is struck. Rainbow Auroras (images via: Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr ) Auroras come in all differing shades of a night rainbow. When molecules and atoms of the upper atmosphere collide, struck by high-energy electrons, they produce differing colors in auroral forms. Oxygen atoms produce brownish-red and green light. Nitrogen can appear like bluish light and sometimes as almost pink in coloring. Helium can look like purple light. Neon can give off an orangish flare with rippled edges. Activity of solar winds also plays a part of the colors and intensity of auroras. Green Auroras (images via: Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr ) The Aurora Borealis is centered around the geomagnetic North Pole. Green is the most common coloring for the gorgeous natural auroral formations. The green colorings are produced from oxygen and happen up to 150 miles in altitude. Also the middle of auroral curtain is greenish-white. The green tinted snaky bands and the shifting curtain seem to be painted across a large extent of the northern sky on clear, frigid nights. These breathtaking formations in the polar sky are highly influenced during periods of solar activity. Aurora Curtain – Shades of Red (images via: howstuffworks , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr ) The atmosphere at high altitudes contains a greater percentage of atomic oxygen.  This very thin atmosphere allows the atoms ample opportunity to emit red light. The red coming from oxygen happens up to 150 miles in altitude, but nitrogen can also give us reddish shades in the aurora curtain. The highest part of the auroral curtain is red, while the lower edge is pink. Exquisite red auroras, happening over 124 miles up, are rare gifts to mankind. Yellow Auroras (images via: PBase , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr ) The auroras twisting and shading the arctic sky during periods of strong geometric storms release varying amounts energy and light. Oxygen can take about a second to emit energy as green light, but up to two minutes to produce red light. These colors mix at moderate altitudes; red and green combined make yellow. Around 37 miles up in the atmosphere is where the common bright yellow-green colorations form. Beautiful Blue Auroras (images via: Flickr , Flickr ) Aurora Borealis most often happens from September to October and from March to April. Beautiful blue auroras are mostly a product of ionized nitrogen molecules and happen about 60 miles up in the frigid altitude. Sometimes they seem to dance around with grace and speed, covering almost all of the night sky. The blues can appear in any and all shapes like a rayed arc in the top picture and the active aurora in the bottom picture. Aquamarine Auroras (images via: Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr ) The aurora is made up of blue, green, and red light. However when these color mix, an aquamarine coloring is displayed as the natural light phenomenon.  These color variances are due to the nature of the atmosphere at these different altitudes and the way oxygen emits light. Six different types of auroras are featured above in shades of aquamarine. Plethora of Purple Auroras (images via: Flickr , Flickr , Flickr , Flickr ) The purples are emitted from nitrogen colliding in an ancient dance above 60 miles in altitude. At the lower edge of the auroral curtain, the density of molecules does not permit oxygen to emit light; therefore a purplish-pink color comes from a combination of red and blue in the geomagnetic substorms that are fired by high levels of energy flaring Earthward.

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47 Awesome Auroras to Delight Your Senses

Leeds University has resumed field trials of genetically modified potatoes just a year after protesters tore up the previous crop. 400 potato plants are being grown to test their modified resistance to a microscopic parasitic worm called a nematode. The failure to inform the public has led to environmental groups claiming the project is ‘underhand’. However, the original three-year permission, granted by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is valid, so the crops can be replanted without having to provide further notice. The land has been protected by fencing and CCTV cameras surrounding the crop and by not telling the public the exact location of the potatoes. DEFRA also says that an independent advisory committee on releases to the environment has said that the experiment will not compromise human health or the environment. Plants on land alongside the research crop will be destroyed when the experiment has finished and the actual field will be left fallow to stop cross-pollination into subsequent crops. Environmentalists fear contamination and cross-pollination However, Friends of the Earth (FOE) has said that the potatoes could contaminate other plants near the research site and that farmers, gardeners and people living nearby should know about it the trials. Food security drives experimentation This is part of a much wider issue in which the British Government is being heavily lobbied by biotechnology companies who say that warnings of food shortages caused by population increase and climate change mean that biotechnology offers the best chance of food security for the future. Potatoes courtesy of  ColinD40 at Flickr under a creative commons licence

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Genetically Modified Crops Back In The UK

Garbage is strange stuff; people are either trying to steal it or get rid of it where they shouldn’t, so an unsecured skip or dumpster is a target. Ray Saluccio of EarthSure is an inventor with a garbage company, and has now invented a solar powered dumpster enclosure that protects the dumpster, powers lights, video cameras and emergency phones, and sells the extra power back to the grid. All using land that it othewise under-utilized, being filled with dumpsters. It’s called the Solar Energy Enclosed Dumpster System (SEEDS) and is “engineered for the 22nd century.” … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Guard Your Garbage with Solar Power

As hungry workers nationwide kiss moral-boosting bonuses and office parties goodbye, at least one Minnesota employer is adding rather than subtracting a perk for his people: an organic vegetable garden for enjoying the fruits of their labor. The Dude Ranch in Delano, Minn. (30 minutes outside downtown Minneapolis) is the brainchild of Fred and Sarah Haberman, Co-Founders of Haberman Public Relations . Based on a community-supported agriculture (CSA) model, the plot is a working garden that has replaced the water cooler as the employee gathering place. But instead of spreading gossip, salaried locavores are spreading seeds, hoeing, raking and fertilizing fresh tomatoes, onions, potatoes, peppers, peas, green beans, herbs, broccoli, cabbage and beets. “At the end of the day, it’s an experiment but one that is reaping incredible rewards,” a passionate Haberman tells me. “People are coming out to the farm, relaxing, learning where their food comes from and what it looks like when it is in the earth.” Among the staff nurturing greener pastures are urban apartment dwellers in downtown Minneapolis who have never done any gardening or spent time in the country. This includes public relations executives representing Haberman clients like Organic Valley , Annie’s Homegrown , Country Choice Organics , NCGA (National Coop Grocers Assoc), and the Organic Trade Association , to name a sustainable few. “It’s our mission to tell the stories of food pioneers in the organic and sustainable agriculture realm and working the garden lets us learn as much as possible about what our clients go through as they grow food so we can walk our talk, so to speak,” says Haberman. That talk naturally includes corporate speak, such as “team-building opportunities” and “economic incentives” which are motivators for Haberman in landing this back-to-nature account for his underlings. In terms of the big picture, he’d  like to inspire other businesses to adopt his farm model and replace health care memberships and other perks with a field of dreamy crops. Hey, if the White House can do it, why not Pepsi? “The idea of creating a movement , getting other companies to adopt this new employee benefit really excited me because so many good things happen,” he says. ” You create an opportunity for people to buy foods without pesticides; you get families meeting each other in a calm rural setting; and allow more conscious food choices.” Haberman staffers, aided by a few experienced gardeners, will spend the summer and fall planting, tending and harvesting their own produce. Minneapolis is known for its big chills and strong weather patterns, and Haberman says he and the staff have been learning more about how that effects the crops as they play farmer on days off. “The ground in the beginning of this year was so dry it was like concrete, three inches below the surface,” Haberman remembers. “Today it rained and all I could think was ‘thank God!’ You open your eyes and snap out of your urban bubble and understand what small farmers are going through. Their income is largely based upon the weather.” But what if it turns out to be like Green Acres and the city folks decide to leave their concrete jungle for the rural paradise? “I guess we’ll just have to change our business model,” jokes Haberman, who adds he many workers are now heading out to the garden without his directing the activities. “I put something in motion and it’s exciting as it takes hold.” Meantime, the company is planning its first Dude Stock at the ranch this fall, a party to celebrate the harvest. Haberman put the concept on the web and the community is responding enthusiastically, including a chef from the organic restaurant, Corner Table, who has offered to come cook at the event. “A lot of us are cooking what we are growing, but this guy is head and shoulders above the rest.” Images: Haberman Modern Storytellers

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Organic Veggie Plot Is the New Office Gathering Spot

Each year, nearly 300 million tires are disposed of in the U.S. alone. The EPA estimates that markets exist for approximately 80 percent of those tires, leaving an estimated 60 million scrap tires to be stockpiled or landfilled. Luckily, the market for scrap tires continues to increase. Whether used as fuel, ground and recycled into new products, retreaded or used in civil engineering projects, their rate of recycling and reuse continues to climb. One such method of reuse is beginning to gain popularity among eco-friendly builders: building with tires. Rammed-Earth Construction As the name suggests, the primary material used in rammed-earth construction is, well, compacted earth. We’ve used sand, clay and other compacted soils for centuries in building, from Jericho, the oldest recorded city in history, to the modern day architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Rammed-earth homes are designed to maximize energy-efficiency, remaining relatively warm in winter months and cool in summer months. Their dense design is ideal for thermal mass storage and their orientation is meant to capture lower winter sun rays and block more direct summer rays. Recycled automotive tires filled with compacted earth form what are called rammed-earth bricks and are used in place of traditional wood framing. Soil is tightly packed into the frame of the tire, with a cardboard sheet placed across the base. A typical 2,000 square-foot home uses 1,000 scrap tires on average. Small gaps in the frames, due to the tires being round, are filled with recycled materials, typically aluminum cans or bottles and adobe. Tire-Bale Construction An alternative to rammed-earth tire bricks, tire-bales have been used recently as a way of utilizing scrap resources without the intense labor of packing 1,000 tire bricks. A tire-bale is a square brick of approximately 100 compressed tires, weighing about 2,000 pounds. Homes built with tire bales use thousands of compressed tires, many more than standard rammed-earth bricks. They are stacked like oversize bricks to frame the outside walls of the home. After the walls of rammed-earth and tire-bale walls are smoothed with earth, they are finished with layers of plaster or stucco. Fire Hazard? It may be an automatic assumption that homes made of tires, which are highly flammable, would pose serious fire risks. Because the tires are sealed within thick walls, they are not reacting with oxygen. The layer of plaster covering the tires also provides additional fire resistance. The buildings meet and often exceed fire requirements.

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Building With Tires

The T-Mobile pay-as-you-go phone has new packaging that will cut plastic use by 45 percent, which also equates to a 40 percent reduction in transport materials. The packaging is manufactured by Alloyd Brands , a division of Tegrant Corporation. The company specializes in packaging that reduces material use and weight, in addition to reusable packaging. T-Mobile is using the Natralock® blister cards, which are a mixture of PET plastic and paperboard. They are designed to be difficult to tear apart but able to disassemble using scissors without injuring hands. The video below shows a demonstration. The only issue not addressed with the reduction in plastic use is disposal. While the paperboard is recyclable with other mixed paper, many programs that accept PET plastic only take it in bottle form. The cell phones themselves are recyclable, just like any other telephone. T-Mobile will accept phones , batteries, PDAs and accessories for recycling at any of its retail stores, with proceeds benefiting the T-Mobile Huddle Up program that connects children with mentors and after-school programs.

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T-Mobile Cuts Packaging Plastic Use in Half