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UniVerve Chooses Microalgae For Award-Winning Biofuel Business

Shifra Mincer
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2
UniVerve Chooses Microalgae For Award-Winning Biofuel Business

univerve biofuel algae israel
Late this February Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist, along with Israel Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, hosted a competition to honor Israel’s leading cleantech start-ups. Among the 12 competition finalists, was UniVerve, an Israeli biofuel company that specializes in using microalgae to create oil.

UniVerve has gained international recognition for its microalgae technology, including at an apperance this March at the World Biofuels Markets, which can succesfully produce bio-oil from third generation biomass. If any waste biomass is left from the refining process, UniVerve sells it to be used as animal or fish feed.

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Old Gas Stations Still Polluting Israel’s Soil and Water

Leigh Cuen
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0
Old Gas Stations Still Polluting Israel’s Soil and Water

gas station IsraelToxic gas leaks from gas stations contaminating water in Israel

Israel’s Ministry of the Environment is struggling to rectify the nationwide soil and groundwater pollution from gas stations discovered over a decade ago. Meanwhile new reports show that the leaks are still causing pollution today. The original reports revealed that almost half of Israeli gas stations were leaking fuel. According to more recent reports, only 38% of gas stations were clean of contamination. The reports said that around 200 gas stations across Israel, out of a total of around 1,500, are still leaking.

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Make This Painless Paper Cut With Sustainable Hand Drying

Faisal O'Keefe
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0

paper towels arab womenYou need half a box of flimsy tissues in Jordan to get the job done. Is there a greener way to dry your hands? 

Use more than a single sheet of paper towel per day – prefolded singles, the kitchen kind with perforated tear lines, or auto-cut by dispensers – and you’re a paper towel overconsumer. You know who you are. Bet you also grab more paper napkins than you need at take-out places.  But today we’re talking paper towels specifically used to dry our hands. Reduce usage by just one towel per person per day, and divert 571,230,000 pounds of waste from the yearly trash heap.  And that’s just in the USA.

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Israel To Help India Clean Up The Ganges River

Shifra Mincer
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5
Israel To Help India Clean Up The Ganges River

polluted ganges israel india
Young Israeli tourists are so common in India that in certain regions, restaurants hang signs and write menus in Hebrew. But Israel is now in the process of sending more than just tourists to the region. At the end of April, Israeli news site Ynet reported that Israel would be sending engineers, researchers and representatives from water technologies companies to help India clean up the notoriously-polluted Ganges River.

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Teenagers Use Abandoned Bus Lane for Safe Urban Cycling in Jordan

Tafline Laylin
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3
Teenagers Use Abandoned Bus Lane for Safe Urban Cycling in Jordan

urban, cycling, public transportation, architecture, Amman, Jordan

The bad news is that Jordan’s Bus Rapid Transit system (BRT) was suspended last year amid concerns about the associated cost and feasibility. Although the multimillion dollar project would have considerably reduced traffic and smog in capital Amman, details of the system conceived by the Greater Amman Municipality in 2009 are still being ironed out. So a couple of teenage boys who say that it’s impossible to find a safe place to ride their bikes in the city have turned one of the new but abandoned bus lanes into a bike lane instead.

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Mebiol’s Futuristic Hydrogel to Grow Food on Desert Sand

Susan Kraemer
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5
Mebiol’s Futuristic Hydrogel to Grow Food on Desert Sand


desert-agriculture-hydrogel
Mebiol’s hydrogel could make deserts flourish with crops grown on barren sand. 

Here’s another futuristic invention that could completely change the future of agriculture in a desertifying world. Substituting an industrially produced hydrogel for soil makes it possible to farm on sterile desert sand. Similarly to Pink LEDs Grow Future Food with 90% Less Water, this amazing sci fi technology allows the farming of the desert, with 80 percent less water than needed in traditional farming.

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Underwater Hotel Plans Revived in Dubai

Arwa Aburawa
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4
Underwater Hotel Plans Revived in Dubai

underwater-hotel-dubai-environmentIs it back to bonkers ideas in Dubai? Plans to build an underwater hotel hailed as a positive sign of Dubai’s property sector recovery

Whilst I wasn’t happy that Dubai’s property bubble burst back in 2009, it did stop some awfully stupid building projects from going ahead. One of which was the underwater hotel idea. Dubai has more gimmicks and tacky accolades than a Las Vegas souvenir store so the last thing it needs is more plastic tat. It’s just not good and most of these outlandish projects pay very little attention to the environmental impact of their development.

Remember the marine destruction caused by the palm islands development? Well I think we can probably expect more of those ill-thought projects. According to an article in the FT, plans to build this underwater hotel are a “sign that the emirate is shaking off its financial crisis and returning to the grandiose projects of its boom-time heyday.”

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Killing Birds for Pickled Dish is a Disgrace, Says Cypriot Minister

Tafline Laylin
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1
Killing Birds for Pickled Dish is a Disgrace, Says Cypriot Minister

wildlife conservation, Cyprus, poaching, ambelopoulia, nature, migratory birdsLast year in Cyprus a total of 2.8 million migrating birds were trapped and killed to make a pickled dish called ambelopoulia.

It’s a serious crime and offenders face fines of up to €17,000 and three years in jail if caught, but Agriculture Minister Sophocles Aletaris told an EU delegation concerned about environmental issues that even though “this practice is a disgrace for his country,” it is also deeply rooted in the Cypriot mentality and will be very difficult to eradicate.

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Strange Chlorine Gas Smell Takes Over Tel Aviv

Maurice Picow
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0

smog cairoTel Aviv’s mysterious gas smell is nothing compared to Cairo’s annual “black cloud”.

Tel Aviv is Israel’s largest city, and at times has been so saturated by car exhaust air pollution environmentalists have sometimes said that people run a serious risk of brain damage if they ride their bicycles there during heavy air pollution days. While perhaps not as polluted as other regional cities such as Teheran, Iran  and during “black cloud” days in Cairo Egypt, Tel Aviv certainly does has its share of air pollution.

A pollution of a different kind occurred on Thursday, May 3, when local residents began to complain of a sharp, burning odor that irritated their eyes and lungs. Some called in saying they were afraid to light their cigarettes for fear of blowing up. 

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Ungreen Facts about e-Reading Devices

Faisal O'Keefe
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9
Ungreen Facts about e-Reading Devices

e waste e-readers, kindle, iPad, booksIt’s estimated that the environmental impact of a single “eReader” (Kindle, iPad…) equals that of 100 books. 

Whether the motivation is to truly improve environmental performance, or simply garner positive press, seems every business is jumping on the low carbon bandwagon. Nowhere is exempt from the pressure to green up, not even the beleaguered (and beloved) book industry.

Three years ago, a group called the Book Industry Environmental Council (BIEC) set environmental targets for the American book business, aiming to reduce its baseline carbon footprint by 20 percent in 2020 and by 80% in 2050. The plan was hatched during the infancy of eBooks: Kindle had been around just over a year.

BIEC goals seem attainable. Technological advances slashed the volume of in-house printing.  Editors move towards a paperless workflow. Publishers began to reassess traditional processes of creating, transporting, and storing books. The resultant enviro-friendly efficiencies could be replicated worldwide.

Problem is no one foresaw the popularity of eBooks. Last year, Amazon was selling one million Kindles a week. Apple hawked 40 million iPads. And those are just two brands in the digital readers aisle in the world’s virtual tech store.

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Egypt: Conservationists Concerned About Impact of Large Solar Projects

Arwa Aburawa
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4
Egypt: Conservationists Concerned About Impact of Large Solar Projects

egypt-solar-conservationists-natureConservationists in Egypt are worried about the environmental impact of large-scale solar projects in the desert

It seems renewables are taking a little bit of a bashing at the moment. First research emerges that wind turbines may be contributing to a temperature rise in the area, and now environmental campaigners in Egypt are calling for more careful deployment of solar panels in deserts. Speaking to Egypt Independent, Mindy Baha El Din (a conservationist who we profiled here) says that “There’s a misconception that the desert is a wasteland. It’s got an ecosystem of lifeforms, unique geological landscapes with fossils as well as cultural heritage sites.” And of all of this needs to be protected from various development schemes which includes large solar projects.

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3 Minute Video Shows How Humans Devoured Earth in 250 Years

Tafline Laylin
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1
3 Minute Video Shows How Humans Devoured Earth in 250 Years

globalization, consumption, industrial revolution, Anthropocene, Planet Under Pressure

Recently Arwa posted NASA images that depict how we have drastically altered countries in the Middle East and North Africa – a jarring post that was read by hundreds of people around the world. Today we bring you a staggering video by Globaïa, which globalizes local issues and demonstrates how efficiently human beings have conquered the entire planet in the 250 years since the industrial revolution first started.

As a result of our “success,” we have entered a new geological epoch that has been dubbed “The Anthropocene.” Hit the jump for a link to this extraordinary three minute video that puts consumption and globalization into perspective like you’ve never seen before.

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Wild Grains And Our Daily Bread Threatened by Global Warming

Miriam Kresh
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1
Wild Grains And Our Daily Bread Threatened by Global Warming

wild grains global warmingSturdy wild wheat and barley are essential for humanity’s survival. New study shows we are losing  genetic diversity

Israel’s wild wheat and barley are known to be the ancestors of our modern grains.  When Man  cultivated them, their genetic resistance to drought and disease carried over to cultivated varieties. This aided mankind’s struggle to grow predictable harvests and put fresh bread on the shelf every day.  Great, but all that’s history, right? One would think that with the modern world’s stores of cultivated grain, and seed banks to back up those supplies, our future food sources are safe. At least in regard to that essential staple, bread.

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Junk Food for Kids Against the Law in the United Arab Emirates

Tafline Laylin
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0
Junk Food for Kids Against the Law in the United Arab Emirates

food, health, obesity, Gulf, food pyramid

Wouldn’t it be great if we could tell parents living in Gulf countries that their kids are getting fat because they’re being fed too many McDonald’s burgers, and have them respond by adding some greens to their diet? But this isn’t what happens. Even though a 2010 national school health survey in the United Arab Emirates revealed that  40% of school-aged children are obese because their parents feed them poorly, no effort has been made to change these behaviors.

So, the Ministry of Health has resorted to making feeding children junk food a violation of federal law, which the Ministry of Education will be required to monitor in public and private schools across all seven emirates. 

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Why BrightSource Did not Need that IPO

Susan Kraemer
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1
Why BrightSource Did not Need that IPO

brightsource IPOWhen BrightSource withdrew its IPO this month, the death knell for solar was sounded, as always. The truth is more mundane.

According to the always inquisitive   over at GigaOm who managed to snag a Q&A with the company, BrightSource just doesn’t necessarily need the extra money right now. Its Ivanpah solar thermal project is already fully funded with project financing from NRG Energy and Google.

(Related: Israel’s BrightSource Still Private After IPO Withdrawal.)

Any additional funds from an IPO at this point would just have gone toward things like continued research and development, project development (other ongoing permitting work) and international expansion. And with market conditions as they are a quick cost/benefit analysis in the last days found an IPO not needed.

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Renewables hit 5,149 GW in 2025 as the world edges away from oil shocks and fossil-fueled conflict

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“In the midst of uncertain time, renewable energy remains consistent and steadfast in its expansion,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s Director-General. “A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient.”

What Is Liberty HealthShare, and Should I Learn More?

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Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.

Zentera drops “ethical wool” claim after peta exposé into zq-certified farms

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The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet.

Fresh Fava Bean Soup, A Vegan Springtime Recipe

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Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.

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