Walk in a car-free Tripoli this Sunday.
Be prepared for some carbon monoxide withdrawal in Tripoli: Air pollution is Lebanon is getting bad. Local youths have appealed to the Environment Ministry to close the city to cars this coming Sunday. While it is documented that car-less cities and suburbs like Vauban in Germany may bring other problems for the elderly who need to lug around groceries, over all the sound of a car-less Middle East is music to my ears.
A do-gooder designer in Beirut launches poster campaign to give respect to street cleaners.
I aspire to see the day when we no longer need street cleaners. Citizens in the Middle East will have a moment of enlightenment and from that day forward stuff candy bar wrappers in their pocket, or place in appropriate waste disposal bins. Until that happens, we need to better appreciate our street cleaners – the Sukleen contracted street cleaners –Â argues an activist in Beirut, Lebanon.
Zaufishan explains what zabiha entails exactly and whether it really is an organic alternative to banning slaughter altogether.
Islam’s Zabiha method of slaughter came in the line of fire this year when Holland banned ritual slaughter. When one hears counter arguments from animal rights activists and even Muslims who live vegetarian lifestyles, the idea of killing another creature can seem unnecessary, cruel and inorganic, especially in a religious context. Yet, the Islamic faith recognises these concerns and answers them. Traditionally, Muslims carry out a meat Qurbaan (sacrifice) every year for the Eid-ul-Adha festival and slaughter animals for food using the zabiha method any other time.
According to recent research, an increase in wintertime droughts in the Mediterranean is partly down to human-caused climate change
Over the last 20 years, 10 of the driest winters have taken place in the Mediterranean region that stretches from Gibraltar to the Middle East. As the region accumulates most of its precipitation during the wintertime, an increased dryness during this season is particularly worrying. According to scientist, this emerging trend may have a significant impact on water resources and food security in the future.
You may be eating a dead person’s hair in your commercially-baked bread. Watch out for L-cysteine if you’re queasy.
It’s name is inconspicuous enough, not something that would make the average consumer squirm as they read the ingredients label on a loaf of bread. The problem isn’t what L-cysteine does – it’s a non-essential amino acid used by many commercial bakers to condition the dough – but where it comes from: human hair. According to NaturalNews.com, much of it is from China, a country with a less than glowing track record for food contaminants.
If you live in a crazy polluted Middle East city, carbon monoxide pollution is the opiate of the masses, according to new study.
I dream about living in a car-less city like Vauban. But my love affair with the Middle East keeps me dreaming. Rampant with air pollution, every fall cities like Cairo get covered in a black cloud from burning rice paddies. Tehran’s air kills some 27 people a day. Amman’s air had my eyes watering, my nostrils inflamed. But there may be a silver lining to city pollution, after all. According to new research from Tel Aviv University inhaling low levels of carbon monoxide can reduce the impact of environmental stress. Wah?
A specialty of the Middle East, stuffed zukes are favorites with young and old.
In a Tel Aviv supermarket, I watched a mother soothing her tired, hungry little boy. “Just another few minutes, and then we’ll go to Grandmother’s house for lunch!” The little boy sniffled, looked up, and asked, “Are there going to be memoula’im (stuffed vegetables)?”
You can bet that Grandmother had an array of stuffed zucchini, eggplants, and maybe artichoke hearts for her family. Although you can sometimes pick up the vegetables all ready for stuffing in Arabic grocery stores, countless Middle Eastern cooks still pride themselves on their skill at hollowing them out. I myself bought a special peeler with a long, curved blade for this in Nazereth. The video below taught me how to use it. And if you have freekah around, you might enjoy using it instead of rice in this recipe. Treat it exactly the same as the rice.
The City of the Dead in Cairo isn’t known for its fertile soil, but Liveinslums is working to change that with an awesome mini urban farming initiative.
Although everybody seems to understand that population growth is exploding, and that space – particularly in cities – comes at a premium, the extent of our vulnerability to soil erosion is less understood. Liveinslums addresses all of these problems with one inspiring program being developed in several countries around the world – including Egypt.
Cairo’s City of the Dead is both a cemetery and slum area in the country’s most densely populated city. And it’s not the most fertile part of town either. A Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Liveinslums has worked with local architects and designers to help residents here grow microjardins – mini, soilless, and transportable subsistence gardens that also fertilize the sand.
Eating only whites or buying Eggbeaters? Read more on the nutrients and benefits of whole eggs. (Above is Green Prophet’s editor Karin Kloosterman a few years back in her family’s chicken coop.)
Eggs have been slandered, persecuted, and vilified for the last 50 years. However, in spite of their bad rap, eggs are a highly nourishing, inexpensive, and easily digested food with dozens of uses in the kitchen. Additionally, they’re an important source of protein for vegetarians. Since most of the nutrients (and flavor) is found in the yolk, the idea of an egg-white omelette has always struck us as absurd. The idea seems even more misguided when you compare the vitamin content of a raw egg white to a raw egg yolk to 100 gm. of egg substitute (100 gm. is more than one serving).
Polio, a crippling virus which lingers in polluted water sources is not a dead virus, says an Israeli researcher. It is in Israel, Gaza and Egypt. But some current vaccines may be deadly.
I know women in Israel who were unsure about vaccinating their kids against polio. The nurse practitioners there said that polio is still “alive” in northern Israel. Getting a vaccine is very recommended. But new research by Tel Aviv University which warns about avoiding the “live” version of the vaccine, questions what kind of vaccine should be given to prevent the crippling disease which 60 years ago affected one of my husband’s family members.
An eco caravan is bringing green education directly to the people of Lebanon this month.
A solar powered taxi is traveling the globe at the moment, and now an eco-education caravan has taken to the roads of Lebanon (which, unfortunately, have seen a 538% increase in car use over the past 24 years). The caravan will be bringing the Lebanese people an opportunity to receive an “e-ecoeducation” (eee) and learn about electronic waste management, collection and recycling. The caravan, which is sponsored both by the Lebanese Minister of Environment Nazem al-Khoury and Fondation Saradar, hopes to “promote and develop understanding, skills and values that will enable people to participate in the achievement of an ecologically sustainable society.”
163,000 Moroccans who previously had no access to electricity are going solar, thanks to Tenesol.
The world’s poorest two billion people have no access to any kind of electricity at all. Among them are people living in rural Morocco. These households are among the two billion that will greatly add to the world’s environmental problems over the next fifty years if they get on the dirty energy treadmill.
One solar company focused on the problem is the solar manufacturer and project developer Tenesol, headquartered in Lyon in the South of France, with its principal markets in the French Overseas Territories. The French company is helping rural Moroccans go straight to solar by installing 26,000 household solar systems far from the grid.
The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel commissioned a very green addition to the Jerusalem Bird Observatory, and let’s just say the birds and the bees are making themselves at home!
Many buildings tend to create hazardous environments for fauna and flora, or else wipe them out altogether, but the Gutman Visitor Center at the Jersulem Bird Observatory is designed to do the exact opposite. Not only does the building designed by Weinstein Vaadia Architects have a turf roof covered in wildflowers and weeds that invites insects and crawlers to go wild, but the walls have been designed specifically to encourage all kinds of birds to nest in them! Step in to learn more about this super green design and to see a few more images of this inspiring project finished last year!
We speak to Greenpeace campaigner Raefah Makki about nuclear power, the Arab Spring and what she would do if she were president for the day
Greenpeace is one of the most recognizable green organisations in the world and the fact that it has branches scattered across the globe is part of the reason why. Greenpeace first came to the Middle East in 1986 with a wider agenda aimed at the Mediterranean and has since become an influential figure in the environmental movement in the region. As well as a presence in Turkey, Israel and Lebanon, Greenpeace campaigners have also sprung up in Jordan to fight the country’s nuclear plans. I caught up with Raefah Makki, Greenpeace’s Arab world communications officer to talk about the organisation, its anti-nuclear stance and the impact politics has on the environmental agenda.
Renewable Energy professionals from Europe and Egypt (and Green Prophet!) took a field trip to Egypt’s first solar-thermal plant 90km south of Cairo!
Brimming with the kind of energy that infuses a school field trip, roughly 80 professionals from the renewable energy industry packed into two large buses outside the Semiramis International Hotel in Cairo last Friday. This was the 3rd and final day of the Desertec conference that addressed many of the concerns related to funding, legislating, and monitoring the push to harness North Africa’s endless renewable energy sources (experts say solar is the future) and eventually ship part of that energy to Europe. The buses were headed for Kuraymat, Egypt’s very first solar-thermal plant located 90km south of Cairo, and Green Prophet was on the scene. Step in for exclusive photographs of this 150 MW Integrated Solar Combined Cycle (ISCC) power plant, which has been feeding energy into the grid since July, 2011.Â
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