Food and drink

Want to green your life in honor of Earth Day on Tuesday? Good luck. There's seemingly no limit to the potential catch-22s of trying to do the right thing by the environment.

For example, could so-called green fuel destroy rainforests and drive up food prices? Are organic vegetables shipped from South America really better than those grown conventionally yet closer to home? What if the making of solar panels would pollute a city in China?

Consumers are far removed from the design, mining, manufacture, packaging, and transportation involved in making goods available for daily life, while a complex global … Read more

What's causing the global rise in food prices? Everything.

Growing demand for food in emerging nations, wheat crop failures, currency fluctuation, speculation in the commodities market, hastily conceived government policies, and the growing demand for biofuels have all--among other factors--converged to drive up the price of food, experts say.

"Those who say it's all the fault of biofuels are wrong and those that say that none of the fault belongs to biofuels are wrong," said Walter Falcon, a professor emeritus of international agricultural policy at Stanford University and co-director of Stanford's Center for Environmental Sciences … Read more

Whether marking printers or produce, the increasing number of "green" claims on products can make it hard to separate sincere efforts at sustainability from marketing fluff.

Environmental watchdogs warn that corporate "greenwashing" will lead jaded consumers to abandon efforts to shop responsibly.

However, individuals can counteract the confusion and police the marketplace using online tools, according to Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com.

"In this age of the Web, the blogosphere, and social media, I don't think greenwashers are going to get very far or that fraudulent, hugely misleading companies are going to … Read more

We all know already that climate change will affect everything from food prices to cute baby polar bears.

But now it's really hitting home, folks. A report from a researcher at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand suggests that rising temperatures may threaten beer.

An Associated Press report details the findings from climate scientist Jim Salinger, who presented his research at the Institute of Brewing and Distilling's annual convention in Wellington, New Zealand. The grim results? Climate change may affect the production of malting barley, an ingredient crucial to the tasty beers we … Read more

AqWise, which builds condominiums for bacteria, has raised an additional $3.6 million in funding. The founder, though, is toiling in a new venture.

The company, with which we spoke during a swing through Israel in 2006 (just in time for the outbreak of border hostilities), has created an intricate polymer cylinder that, when placed in wastewater treatment ponds, clusters microbes that consume contaminants. The water can then be safely discarded or used to irrigate fields.

The trick is that the honeycombed cylinder sports a huge amount of surface area for microbes to grow. The greater amount of surface area … Read more

San Francisco may have shaken some flowers from its hair since hosting the first Earth Day 38 years ago, but the city continues to be named one of America's greenest. Satirists mock its politically correct "smug cloud" of eco-hipness, but many other regions tend to follow the city's environmental lead. For instance, more than a handful of U.S. cities are now mulling a ban on plastic grocery bags, first passed in San Francisco last March.

Fresh into his second term, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newson in January set goals for the city to become carbon-neutral … Read more

IBM and Saudi Arabia's national research and development organization have created a joint nanotechnology lab to develop new technologies in solar power, seawater desalination, and recyclable materials.

An agreement to create the Nanotechnology Centre of Excellence, established by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology and IBM Research, was signed last week in a ceremony in Riyadh.

The lab is one of several indicators that oil-rich Middle East nations are moving rapidly into clean tech.

The oil minister of Saudi Arabia, Ali al-Nuaimi, told the French oil newsletter Petrostrategies that "one of the most important sources of … Read more

The Gray Lady may someday arrive at your doorstep inside a "green" plastic bag.

A company that makes delivery bags for The New York Times and other major newspapers has designed a plastic bag to biodegrade within three months.

GP Plastics' PolyGreen bags are made with fossil fuels, as are their traditional polyethylene counterparts.

However, a chemical added during manufacturing enables the plastic to be digested by microorganisms. The bags are supposed to disintegrate within a few months outdoors or three years in a landfill when exposed to oxygen and ultraviolet light, leaving behind little but water, carbon … Read more

Making champagne is by no means carbon neutral, as tree-hugging teetotalers might like to note. Carbon dioxide causes the bubbles, after all.

To be exact, champagne makers have determined that making each bottle of bubbly causes the release of 200 grams of carbon dioxide.

Some champagne makers want to shrink emissions by 25 percent within 12 years and up to 75 percent by 2050. They announced the goals Tuesday at the Bordeaux Carbon Initiative, one of many recent events by vintners seeking to green their craft.

The figures do not include all sparkling wine, such as Spanish cava, made outside … Read more