Green Prophet interviews Dieter Moor, the CEO of ertex – a building integrated photovoltaic company which recently completed a roof-based system for the the Sheik Zayad Learning Center at the Al Ain Zoo.
Thinking about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit: This is how Asaf Shaltiel, the CEO of SmarTap, came up with the idea for an electronic “smart” eco-showerhead that can talk with computers and smart home devices.
Over the millennia, the Mediterranean Sea has become much more than a transport hub for empires that control the region: It links nations, feeds countries, and its shores hold some of the world’s most expensive real estate and natural beauty.
Why should a Palestinian man care if an Israeli woman is taking birth control pills? A new Israeli peace project focusing on shared water resources answers this question.
When Noah was told by God to load two of all animals onto a special hand-built ark, there was no mention of the blind shrimp species found only in Israel. There probably was no need to protect the small crustacean living happily underwater – until now.
The Israeli EV company Better Place hasn’t been having an easy ride. Despite nearly a billion dollars in investment Better Place has failed to really convince the Israeli public that a swappable electric battery is the way to go. Its partner car and battery builder Renault have also lost the faith in Better Place
About half of Abu Dhabi’s trash will ‘burn’ into green electricity in new $850 million power plant. Maybe you saw the wonderful movie, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Or maybe you’d read stories on Green Prophet about Masdar, or Shams, the world’s largest CSP plant in Abu Dhabi. Arab nations and their economies are certainly [...]
Is the Red Sea shark spotted at Eilat beach, Israel escaping illegal hunters in Egypt? While it’s rare to find sharks in the Mediterranean Sea (they are almost extinct), they are not so uncommon in the Red Sea. Its warm waters and ample food source bait sharks who sometimes get personal with bathers and divers. [...]
I grew up eating horsemeat. It was considered a treat –– a Dutch delicacy. Maybe once every four or five months my dad would come home with half a pound of it wrapped in waxed paper from the Dutch store. It was sliced thin, like prosciutto. Salty and delicate it almost melted in my mouth. [...]
Liquid algae may taste like sushi which is unknown in poor parts of Africa, but it is easy to grow with basic equipment like old plastic bottles, and it is packed full of protein – a veritable superfood. Just ask the Japanese who consume algae and algae derivatives as a way of life. Now, kids [...]
Unleash your inner Thoreau, show the human side of sustainability and and win $10,000 for a creative nonfiction essay. Have you been lucky enough to Dance at the Dead Sea but then couldn’t help but notice its destruction? Or you’ve have had the rare chance to travel and surf through unknown parts of Iran. Perhaps you [...]
Besides the really terrible ew factor, the consequences for the environment are as equally yuck: the Egyptian army is looking to stall and stop Gazan smugglers from digging tunnels from the Gaza Strip to Egypt’s Sinai have found a new and dirty way to flush out smugglers: they are pouring raw sewage into the underground tunnels. Leaders [...]
Vernon Hugh Bowman, farmer vs Monsanto, billion dollar seed and biotech company. It sounds like something from a book about the perils of the future, a future that is strangely today reality: The seed-engineering company Monsanto genetically engineers seeds to have desirable traits that make them hearty or the plants resistant to the effects of herbicides [...]
When I lived on a roof in Tel Aviv with my boyfriend Elad more than a decade ago, I would spend some evenings watching the Cypress trees sway and pray in the wind, and above them flocks of starlings painting the sky with their moves like tea leaves in a cup. Without a television it [...]
Not long after firing its replacement CEO, the Israeli electric car company Better Place has alluded to Forbes that it will likely close its its North American and Australian operations. Evan Thornley was the CEO of Better Place in Australia and was hired to be the global CEO of Better Place soon after the company’s [...]
A new study has found that afternoon sun is five times riskier than than sun caught in the morning hours. Are you one of those people who slather sunscreen all over your face come high noon, but remove the T- shirt later in the day to catch those warming, vitamin D-making rays? Well if you [...]
While there are no winners from the Middle East this year, an important awards organization Katerva scours the globe for people and organizations that can make real immediate change for our planet. Now Katerva has announced its 10 winners for the Katerva Awards 2012. In 2011 we wrote about Katerva’s 8 finalist projects that will save [...]
The Israeli electric car company Better Place is seeing rough times (it just hired its third CEO in as many months after firing two others), but it has reduced its leasing plan to about $400 a month including charge and battery swaps to attract more customers. Thanks to the millions in marketing done by Better Place, [...]
For the two years I lived in Jerusalem, I tried to bike with my crappy communist throwback – a mini gearless green metallic wonder that I bought for the flat streets of Tel Aviv. The bike looked too pitiful to steal and that’s why it suited my tastes. Transplanted to Jerusalem, the labyrinth of hilly neighborhoods, [...]
It was about a decade in the making: without much fanfare the World Bank has released a report stating that the Dead Sea – Red Sea Canal project (also called the Red Dead Conduit) will work. The basic idea is to take salty water from the Red Sea, pump it up to a channel, desalinate it [...]
Is Better Place hiring a new CEO? In a surprising article in the Israeli business newspaper Globes today, Israel’s electric car network company Better Place seems to have lost its new CEO, Evan Thornley from Australia. This is after a short three months on the job. Thornley was put in place to start a recovery program [...]
The Kishon River where it enters the Haifa Bay Unlike pastoral rivers in Europe where bathers can jump in without alarm, Israeli rivers are all too toxic to swim in. Most toxic of all is the Kishon River. The Kishon was once a notorious dumping ground for seven chemical plants, with the result that the entire [...]
A few short decades ago, the ladies of Lakiya had a very different life. Their traditional Bedouin clans lived in encampments throughout the Israeli Negev Desert, herding animals. When their families were relocated to government-built towns, the women became aware of how their illiteracy, and their society’s rule against mingling with men who are not [...]
An absurd situation where one ministry approves the marine reserve and and another gives a license for oil drilling. Nothing new for Israel. If Greenpeace has won the battle against Zara and its use of toxic chemicals, this new potential environmental threat should have the Greenpeace Mediterranean headquarters on full alert: the Israeli government eager [...]
Bedouin hospitality is considered the best in the world. And that hospitality is found among Israeli Bedouins who have roamed the Holy Land and Levant region for centuries. Now a unique tour company Bedouin Experience –– run by an Israeli Jew and her Bedouin partner –– offers a unique window into Bedouin culture and what [...]
The year in retrospect has been a positive one. Despite civil unrest, dangerous regimes, and appalling environmental crimes and neglect, there are good green things afoot for the Middle East. Today we recap some of our green leaders of 2012, the people of the Middle East and for the Middle East who have made 2012, [...]
While they might not completely satisfy the Middle East vegetarian, Iraq’s Kurds have found a lucrative new way to cash in on year-round crops, which require no chemicals or pesticides: they have turned to mushroom farming, reports the local paper rudaw. In the Kurdistan region of Iraq vegetarians could only get natural mushrooms in the [...]
I interview one of Israel’s main solar energy entrepreneurs and researchers, Jacob Karni. Israeli solar energy pioneer Prof. Jacob Karni was born just two years after Israel became a state, in 1950. Already back then, the country’s leaders were tangibly aware that Israel needed to develop its human resources in order to build a country [...]
A new seed treatment could stop the use and need for GMOs. Even though organic agriculture and sustainable farming practices are on the rise, feeding a hungry world demands that commercial farmers rely on genetically engineered (GMO) seeds to boost production and fend off diseases. But environmentalists fear that GMO crops are a sort of [...]
Israel’s electric car concept company Better Place has assured media that the company is able to secure investment to continue its mission of pushing the electric car market forward in Israel and other countries such as Australia and Denmark. Two months after firing its iconic CEO Shai Agassi, the company’s new CEO announced that the [...]
I had a great meeting yesterday with culture advisors to an American Embassy yesterday in a Middle East location. I won’t say where as the meeting was off the record, but the two were very much following environmental issues in the Middle East. One asked me as the editor of Green Prophet how us “environmentalists” [...]
Sketch of the map of the Red Dead Canal commissioned by Jordan. While we don’t celebrate the energy crisis and financial woes in Jordan, it is poor finances that’s reportedly putting the highly controversial Red-Dead Canal on hold, Israel’s Maariv newspaper reported on Wednesday. The original plan which called for a canal between the Red [...]
Consequences of climate change especially acute in the Arab world, and traditional methods for coping with climate are severely stressed finds new World Bank assessment. All eyes are on Qatar now as the country hosts the UN-sponsored climate change event COP18. We’ve been reporting on COP18 before it began and during, and recently posted about [...]
Young Arabs in Doha are telling the Arab world it’s time to take a lead on climate change during the first climate change talks to be held in the Middle East. With more than a billion Muslims in the world, Arab activists claim that Muslim leaders are pretty much silent about global warming and environmental [...]
Online and remote controls for smart energy solutions for heating, cooling and office space lighting. About 20 percent of the operational expenses in office buildings, schools and hospitals goes toward energy — HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) and electricity. Usually a default temperature is set for all year round, and the HVAC system and [...]
Thanks to a network of Israeli divers, and the Health Ministry, Israeli non-profit environmental association Zalul is now keeping the public up to date on the condition of the country’s waterways. By commissioning road-navigation app developer Waze to add a water-pollution application to its popular smart phone service, the founders of Zalul (which means clear [...]
I had the pleasure of meeting this enterprising Bedouin woman, Miriam Aborkeek while on a Bedouin home stay and personal tour with Yeela Raanan of Bedouin Experience in Israel. Here’s Aborkeek’s story about her natural cosmetics company Desert Daughter: Once, Bedouin women roamed with the seasons, foraging for plants and helping graze animals where the rains [...]
Better days for Better Place EV car company. Moshe Kaplinsky at the company’s first battery charge station in 2008. It seems things at Israel’s Better Place electric car company are going from bad to worse. Israeli news outlets are reporting that the company’s CEO Moshe Kaplinsky has quit, over disagreements with the company’s main shareholder [...]
Investors still have faith in the Israeli-led Better Place electric car company. After the board fired its visionary founder and CEO Shai Agassi, and laying off half its staff in Israel last month the company has secured a $100 million investment. The company aims to reduce range anxiety of the use of electric cars by providing [...]
Seaweed is prolific in Israel’s Mediterranean Sea. It makes sense, then, that Middle Eastern ancients used it to help alleviate a host of ailments from peptic ulcers to fungal infections and wounds. Based on past and present literature, archeology, history, biology, linguistics and botany, the Natural Medicine Research Unit for the Study of Complementary, Alternative [...]