Arwa explores why the shift away from home slaughtering during Eid al-Adha is damaging the way people see meat. In around one month’s time Muslims from across the world will celebrate Eid al-Adha by sacrificing a sheep or a goat. Eid al-Adha, the ‘Festival of Sacrifice’, commemorates the occasion when god asked Prophet Ibrahim to […]
Abu Dhabi’s government plans to pump desalinated water underground to prepare for event that its desalination plants are threatened. Relying almost entirely on desalination plants for drinking water, and with approximately 90% of its groundwater unfit for drinking, Abu Dhabi’s water security is deeply uncertain. A major oil spill or a serious case of sea […]
Paula Leven is an avid spinner, in the archaic use of the term. Etsy, the popular handmade craft shopping site, touts itself as being green for a few reasons: all the items on the site are either handmade or vintage, and there is a feature to help shoppers buy local. And yes, these are green […]
Global Architecture Development circumvents heat and building codes with this house in Southwest Turkey. There’s all kinds of things you can do with roofs: in the Middle East, we like to party on the roof – that’s for sure, and you can lease it to farmers and electricity generators if you have enough space. You […]
The United Arab Emirates has one of the largest carbon footprints in the world. Not surprising considering the small country has an indoor ski hill in the middle of the desert and a number of other Las Vegas-esque attractions (like the IceLand waterpark), but the government has said enough. A new high-tech plan was announced on […]
An ecological disaster in their own right, Dubai’s Jumeirah Islands’ environmental record is sinking deeper with this algae-choked lake. Tourists are charged $200 a night to stay in this Jumeirah Islands apartment. Residents similarly pay a handsome sum to live at one of Dubai’s much-touted artificial palm islands. Within the last few years, despite warnings […]
Twenty families own most of the “free” economy in Israel: a recent report points to disturbing trends concerning class and society. Dr. Gotlieb sees fault in the free market policies that injure people and the environment. In his comments on Israel’s invitation join to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) last May, Prime Minister […]
We’ve heard about peak oil. Ilana asks about “peak Jerusalem stone” – and if it will ever be under threat. My earliest memory of arriving in Jerusalem in 1993 is permeated with a sense of bewilderment. Coming from Queens, New York, everything was strange to me as I stared out the window of a car […]
GE’s handsome designer car charging post the Watt Station even “talks” to drivers! Entrepreneur Shai Agassi’s Better Place electric car battery exchange infrastructure projects will probably get a new “power boost” vi an announced partnership with the American General Electric Company (GE) to develop electric car infrastructures in the USA and other locations, according to the NY […]
Pizza Hut or Pizza “Hot” – Iranians are getting fatter. Maybe because they are ignoring public transport. The statistics show that obesity is growing among Iranian families. According to Dr. Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, Minister of Health, only 20 percent of the Iranians do regular sport activities and about 60% of them are overweight. She also has […]
Will the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan fare better than Copenhagen? It’s easy to bandy about the term biodiversity, but much less easy to pin down its meaning. Harder still is to enumerate just how important biodiversity is to human life. The rate at which species are going extinct is 100-1000 times […]
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah adds environmental stewardship to its political platform. In order to reach the populace in the Middle East, where environmental awareness has not yet reached the pinnacle necessary to combat problems such as pollution and waste, Islamic leaders have met several times to suss out religious mandates to maintain ecological integrity. […]
Will a simple morning truck ban solve Tel Aviv’s traffic problems, or is the problem much more complicated? Anyone driving into Tel Aviv on a Sunday morning (the first day of the Israeli work week) knows that it’s a traffic nightmare. As the main hub of central Israel, many people need to get to work […]
Better Place taxicab debut in Tokyo. A rollout of exchange spots is planned for Denmark. Better Place’s battery exchange network will be launched soon in Denmark; but at a much slower pace than originally planned, according to an article in the Danish Ingenoren transport website, and Martin Thomson, host of the electric car news web […]
Try a new twist on traditional tabbouleh, with quinoa instead of bulgur. Tabbouleh or tabouleh is a standard part of mezze – the array of small, piquant dishes set down on the table before a serious meal in the Middle East. Traditionally made with bulgur wheat, tabbouleh is really a cold salad packed with herbs […]