This fall, it will send cups used at its Chicago stores to Green Bay, where a Georgia Pacific paper mill will turn them into Starbucks napkins. The effort is a major push by Starbucks to create a commercial market for its used cups, which include 1 billion plastic cups for cold drinks.

Over the past few weeks, it has put recycle and compost bins into 90 Seattle stores to comply with a new city ordinance.

By Thursday, every grocery store, restaurant and coffee shop in Seattle will be required to recycle and compost, and to provide recyclable or compostable to-go packaging for everything from ground beef to lattes. The new ordinance will prevent 6,000 tons of food and service ware from piling onto garbage heaps. Starbucks’ cups also are recycled or composted in San Francisco and Ontario, because of laws there.

In areas without such mandates, commercial demand determines which products are recycled.

“The biggest roadblock to recycling is the lack of demand” for old paper, said Jim Hanna, Starbucks’ director of environmental impact and global responsibility. “We need to create demand for recyclers for our products.”

The effort is similar to something Coca-Cola has done in South Carolina, where it invested $60 million in a plant that makes soda pop bottles from old soda bottles and other recycled plastic.

Environmental activists at the As You Sow Foundation in San Francisco, which led a shareholder initiative earlier this year to push Starbucks to recycle more, is impressed with its latest efforts. The initiative received 11 percent of the vote, a healthy chunk considering that mutual funds and other institutions own three-quarters of Starbucks’ stock.

“Their goal is not just to have recycling bins in stores by 2015, but to find markets so all those paper cups actually get recycled,” said Conrad MacKerron, director of corporate social responsibility at the nonprofit. Finding a market for paper cups is harder than for items like aluminum cans, he said.

Read the full article here.

The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Antanas Mockus is a Colombian mathematician, philosopher and politician. After serving as rector at Bogota’s Universidad Nacional, Mockus went on to become mayor of Bogota twice. He is renowned for his eccentric, outside the box thinking, which has led him to perform some unusual but thought-provoking stunts.

It said environmentally friendly industries could provide export-dependent regional economies with new sources of growth to help make up for weakened demand in crisis-hit United States and Europe.

“The impact of the crisis has revealed the vulnerability of the region to external shocks,” the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific said in its annual economic and social survey of the region.

“Asian and Pacific countries therefore need to find new sources of domestic and regional demand … to help sustain their dynamism and allow for a gradual unwinding of global imbalances.”

The UN praised efforts by China and South Korea for their “significant initiatives” to promote green technology as well as shift domestic consumption and production patterns to a more “environmentally sustainable path”.

Government-backed investment in “energy and material-saving innovations” could see “greener” industries and businesses become drivers of growth as well as provide more affordable products for the poor, the report said.

But it was essential developed countries share their green expertise with poorer nations who cannot afford the technology, Aynul Hasan, head of macroeconomic policy and development, told a news conference.

“That technology should be shared,” Hasan told reporters.

“This is where regional cooperation as well as the support of developed countries will be very, very important.”

China invested 34.6 billion dollars in clean energy in 2009, up more than 50 percent on the previous year — making it the world’s biggest investor in energy-efficient technology, it said.

South Korea plans to inject 84 billion dollars in environmentally friendly industries over the next five years, the report said.

“China is playing an important role … in terms of promoting green technology dealing with the environmental issues,” said Hasan.

While China was expected to continue leading the Asian recovery from the financial crisis, much depended on Japan, the world’s number two economy, where domestic demand and business investment remained weak, the UN said.

Another major threat to the recovery was growing inflationary pressures and asset price bubbles as “excessive liquidity from developed economies finds its way to emerging economies in Asia”, Hasan warned.

“It’s a major challenge for these countries to control inflation without hurting the growth momentum,” he said.

The UN also called on regional leaders to strengthen their social safety nets and give more people access to basic financial services to generate jobs, fuel domestic spending and ensure sustained economic growth.

A revolutionary roadtrain system that would allow cars to “drive themselves” as part of a convoy of vehicles on the motorway is set to undergo testing next year.

The EU project, known as Safe Road Trains for the Environment (Sartre), has been co-ordinated with the help of a UK company to develop technology that will allow a “lead” vehicle, such as a bus or taxi, to assume “normal” driving practice, which the pursuing vehicles will then follow. Once formed, the roadtrains will allow drivers to relax behind the wheel in a similar fashion to current cruise control systems, with a navigation system and a transmitter/receiver taking over driving duties until the driver is ready to leave the motorway.

The system has been designed to increase safety and reduce the environmental impact of motorway driving by exploiting the slipstream that is generated by a convoy of vehicles moving at speed. This passageway of “clean” air reduces the overall drag placed on the car, cutting the amount of fuel used over the course of a long journey.

BMW already is preparing for that launch. Its yearlong trial with the Mini E electric car has opened the auto marketer’s eyes to the maze of regulations facing plug-in electric cars.

“We are learning a heck of a lot just about the sheer infrastructure,” says Jim O’Donnell, CEO of BMW of North America. “When we bring out another electric car, we will be in a great position because we know all the wrinkles.”

BMW has 450 Mini E electric cars running in a yearlong trial in metropolitan New York, New Jersey and Los Angeles. There should be more cars on the roads. But after more than six months of addressing regulatory hurdles, Mini has yet to get approval to install more than 30 additional fast-charge boxes in New Jersey. With a 240-volt box, the Mini E can be recharged in three hours rather than the 21 hours needed using 110-volt power.

“If you are in a house with a normal supply and you want to bring a 240-volt [charger], you have to have an agreement from the power utility,” O’Donnell says. “New Jersey is the most difficult because there are so many local authorities.”

An inspector from each municipality has to approve the installation to make sure it complies with local codes. The cost of the box ranges from $1,500 to $1,800. The box had to be approved by Underwriters Laboratories Inc.

What O’Donnell calls “the New Jersey problem” is compounded because “all the components are certified, but they say the system isn’t certified,” he says. A BMW spokesman says the Mini E experience is a prelude to a more widespread launch of electric vehicles. I just gotta get me one of these beauties, maybe when I retire.

The Don Quixote-inspired windmill was sold at the “Dreams Happen” auction, the primary fundraiser for the charity that provides free home repair services to those in need. Recipients of these services are senior citizens, single parents, grandparents raising grand-kids, the disabled, low-income families with children, veterans, children caring for ailing parents, and the sick or poor in health.  I have always had an affinity towards windmills, if find watching them relaxing.

It’s important to remember that swine flu is just an influenza virus, similar to the one that circulates every winter. “The same basic rules apply to stop the spread of infection,” Imus writes. “Stay home if you think you are sick, wash your hands frequently (use a healthy hand sanitizer when soap and water are unavailable), and cover your coughs and sneezes.” By “healthy hand sanitizers,” Imus means those that use essential oils, rather than synthetic pesticides, to fight bacteria; antibacterial soaps and hand sanitizers often contribute to the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria and other environmental problems, and are blamed for thousands of poisonings every year.

Once upon a time, before the advent of synthetic weed killers for the lawn in the late 1940s, most American lawns contained white clover. Because no formulation of weed control could be developed that left both grass and clover, but killed everything else, clover was then lumped in with the weeds in subsequent marketing campaigns.

The scientist who developed 2,4-D, the most common synthetic herbicide, was publicly apologetic because his new product had the unfortunate side effect of eliminating clover. “The thought of white Dutch clover as a lawn weed will come as a distinct shock to old-time gardeners,” wrote Dr. R. Milton Carleton in his book, A New Way to Kill Weeds in 1957. “I can remember the day when lawn mixtures were judged for quality by the percentage of clover seed they contained. The higher this figure, the better the mixture.”

Today’s newfound emphasis on natural lawn care has folks taking a second look at clover as a primary lawn plant. The benefits are numerous:

Six Good Reasons White Clover Is Not a Weed

1. It’s low growing and needs little mowing.
2. It’s evergreen even in the coldest climates.
3. It’s drought tolerant, requiring little if any supplemental water once established.
4. It’s a fertilizer factory for grass and other plants since clover has the ability to store atmospheric nitrogen in its root systems.
5. It masks the presence of other weeds in the lawn.
6. It resists insects and diseases, especially the white grubs that can be a major lawn nemesis.

Paul Tukey is the founder of Safelawns.org. See all his Organic Lawn Care Tips.

Women exposed to air pollution from freeways and congested roads are much more likely to give birth to premature babies and suffer from preeclampsia, according to a study by University of California scientists published Wednesday.

The findings, based on pregnant women in the Long Beach/Orange County region of Southern California, add to the growing evidence that car and truck exhaust can jeopardize the health of babies while they are in the womb.

Reviewing the birth records of more than 81,000 infants, researchers found that the risk of having a baby born before 30 weeks of gestation increased 128 percent for women who live near the worst traffic-generated air pollution.

In addition, preeclampsia increased 42 percent for women who lived in those areas, according to the study, published online in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Preclampsia, a serious illness that involves high blood pressure, can endanger the baby and the mother.

The team of scientists from UCLA and University of California, Irvine studied babies born in Long Beach, near the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and in adjacent Orange County. Those areas are traversed by several major freeways used by commuters as well as heavy-duty trucks delivering goods to and from the ports.

The infants’ birth records were matched with their addresses and then compared with traffic patterns and estimates of two pollutants — particulates and nitrogen oxides — from vehicles near the mothers’ homes.

The study was unique in that the researchers constructed a database estimating what the pregnant women breathed in their own neighborhoods — within three kilometers, or less than two miles, of their homes. Previous studies have used general air pollution measurements, which is a less accurate estimate of what people are exposed to.

Only traffic-generated emissions were included in the study, not pollutants from factories and other sources.

Fetuses “are in a very sensitive stage of development” that could be vulnerable to the toxic substances inhaled by their mothers, said Jun Wu, an assistant professor of epidemiology at UC Irvine and the study’s lead author.

Other recent studies have linked air pollutants to preterm births and low birth weights. But until now, “no study has associated air pollution with preeclampsia. This is the first one,” Wu said.

Tracey Woodruff, director of University of California, San Francisco’s Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, said the research offers a relatively “new twist on air pollution,” since most scientists have focused on respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

“This is just one more piece of the scientific evidence that air pollution can have effects on adverse pregnancy outcomes,” said Woodruff, who was not involved in the research.

The babies in the study were born between 1997 and 2006 at four hospitals: Long Beach Memorial and three in Orange County — Anaheim Memorial, Orange Coast Memorial in Fountain Valley and Saddleback Memorial in Laguna Hills.

Maria Gugerty, a Long Beach resident, said she always has wondered what might have caused her son, Will, to be born premature, at 31 weeks. Her son was likely one of the preemies reviewed in the study since he was born at Long Beach Memorial in 1997.

“My pregnancy was completely fine, but all of a sudden my water broke. It seemed completely random and the doctors were never able to determine any physical reason for it,” she said. “I was so careful during my pregnancy. No alcohol, no smoking and a good diet. So I’ve always wondered if it was something in the environment, not necessarily air pollution but the environment in general.”

Another Long Beach mother, Susan Taylor, said her doctor thought a gum infection most likely was the cause of her daughter, Maddy, being born early, also at 31 weeks. But, she said, “we did live near a very busy, noisy intersection.”

Like most women, Gugerty and Taylor didn’t know there was a connection between air pollution and pregnancies. But Gugerty said that she “absolutely” worries about the potential health effects of the pollution around her home in Long Beach. Her son, now 12, has asthma.

About half of the babies included in the study were born in Long Beach. Air pollution experts have said that people living in that area faced a variety of increased health risks, including cancer and reduced lung function, due to heavy traffic and other sources of air pollution related to the ports and freeways.

Every year, more than half a million infants are born prematurely in the United States. In the study, 8 percent of the 81,186 babies were preterm, including 1 percent that were “very preterm,” or under 30 weeks of gestation.

The link to air pollution was strongest for the “very preterm” babies, who often weigh less than three pounds and have the greatest risk of serious health problems. The researchers compared women who lived in areas with the most traffic-related pollution with women who lived in areas with the least traffic pollution. Those in the polluted areas were 128 percent more likely to deliver “very preterm” babies.

The risk of less severe preterm babies — those born between 30 and 37 weeks — was about 30 percent higher for women living in the areas with a lot of traffic emissions.

About 3 percent of the study’s pregnant women had preeclampsia, which can result in premature babies. Its causes are unknown, although doctors think it is related to abnormal growth of the placenta.

The new study focused on “an important area of research, since there are a lot of reasons to believe that there is something happening with environmental chemicals and preeclampsia,” Woodruff said. “Women with preeclampsia have high blood pressure, and some air pollutants can increase blood pressure. This is a serious condition, and these women are at risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes.”

Scientists are uncertain how air pollutants might trigger premature babies. The chemicals may interfere with placental development, which would impair the nutrients and oxygen delivered to the fetus. Or they could trigger oxidative stress — when cells are overwhelmed and DNA is damaged by reactive compounds in the environment called free radicals.

Wu said it is likely that other pollutants are to blame, not the fine particles and nitrogen oxides. Instead, those two pollutants could be an indicator of other toxic compounds in vehicle exhaust, such as polycyclic aromatic compounds. A recent study of babies in New York City linked those compounds, called PAHs, to preterm and low-weight babies.

Wu said doctors should warn pregnant women about air pollution because “they should be aware of these issues.” While most can’t move to avoid traffic emissions, Wu said they might be able to take precautions, such as reducing their commutes or closing their windows in cars and homes.

But avoiding air pollution is virtually impossible, Woodruff said, so “pregnant women should be aware of the risks and advocate for the kinds of [government] actions that reduce overall exposure to air pollution.”

The authors said a major limitation of their research is that it only looked at where the women lived when their babies were born, not where they lived or worked during their pregnancies, or whether they had long commutes in heavily polluted areas. Still, they said by using neighborhood data, they were probably more accurate in estimating the women’s exposures than past researchers have been.

Beate Ritz, an epidemiology professor at UCLA’s School of Public Health, was the study’s senior author. Her research has focused on using geographic information to map people’s exposure to pollutants and chemicals and search for links to chronic diseases such as Parkinson’s and cancer.

Woodruff said many researchers are starting to use such data, which only has been available in recent years, because it can provide “reasonable estimates of what people are exposed to.”

Consumer Reports chooses the best cars, trucks and SUVs of the year.

By the Editors of Consumer Reports

Of the more than 300 vehicles we’ve recently tested, our Top Picks are the best all-around choices in their categories. This year’s list includes two new models: The Toyota Highlander is our new pick for midsized SUVs, unseating the Hyundai Santa Fe. And thanks to improved reliability, the Chevrolet Avalanche replaced the Chevrolet Silverado as our choice for pickups.

See more details on all Top Picks below. To see who makes the best cars, best new-car car values, and how to save hundreds on maintenance, go to our annual auto issue hub.

How we choose
Top Picks must meet our criteria in three areas:

• Road tests: Vehicles must rank at or near the top of their categories in our overall road-testscore, which includes more than 50 individual tests and evaluations.
• Reliability: Each must have an average or better predicted-reliability rating, which is based on the problems Consumer Reports subscribers reported for more than 1.4 million vehicles in our latest Annual Auto Survey.
• Safety: Top Picks must perform adequately in overall safety if tested by the government or the insurance industry. (For some models, we do not have enough crash-test data to assign an overall safety rating.) In addition, each must offer electronic stability control (ESC), a proven lifesaving safety feature, as standard equipment or as a readily available option.

Each model’s report card shows its rating in each area, if available. Multiple ratings apply to different versions of a model.

I am a big fan of Consumer Reports and usually check them before making any major purchases.