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Green Office Building Takes Off In "Energy City Qatar"

Cities

Maurice Picow

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May 15, 2009

Green Office Building Takes Off In "Energy City Qatar"

Green building is becoming a fad in Arab countries. We’ve all probably heard of the world’s first carbon neutral city Masdar being built in Abu Dhabi. Now Qatar, another UAE state — this one wealthy from natural gas –– is planning its own eco-city project.

A new, specially designed “carbon neutral” office building is being planned for the “Energy City Qatar” project. The building, being designed and planned by the Lusail development is heralded as being truly unique as well as a model and example for future developments, reports the Gulf Times.

The all-green design of Energy City Qatar will incorporate unique solar paneling which will provide lighting and other electricity needs for the project, including a special district cooling system that will provide cooling for the entire project.

Senior project construction manager Ashraf Kahlaf noted that the concept of such a building will help other projects create similar projects which will utilize renewal resources including the recycling of water, and soil that will be removed during the construction process.

Tel Aviv Has a Farm, E-I-E-I-O

Lifestyle

Karen Chernick

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May 15, 2009

Tel Aviv Has a Farm, E-I-E-I-O

If the city folk won’t come to the farm, then the farmers will come to the city.

Unfortunately, though, many times when the farm comes to the city, it comes in a yuppie, elitist form such as the slow food farmer’s market in the Tel Aviv port. Or even the farmer’s market in Jaffa.

While the intention – to bring local, organic products to city residents in order to encourage more environmentally conscious eating – is admirable, sometimes the message gets a little lost in translation.

But this time it is not the farmers who have come to Tel Aviv in order to market their goods, it is the actual farm.

This month the Tel Aviv Municipality decided to open the agricultural farm in the Yarkon Park to the public. The farm is spread over a beautiful 70 dunam green area, and is located in the “Rosh Tsipor” area of the Yarkon Park.

True to its green form, it can be easily reached via public transportation (such as trains and buses).

Harvest Rainwater and Build Wind Turbines At Vertigo Dance Company’s Eco-Workshops

Lifestyle

Ayelet Dekel

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May 14, 2009

Harvest Rainwater and Build Wind Turbines At Vertigo Dance Company’s Eco-Workshops

Awareness of the environment has become a way of life for members of the Eco-Art Village established by the Vertigo Dance Company in the Ella Valley.

Now they are ready to share with others their message of environmentally aware, sustainable living.

“There aren’t places where you can learn how to do these things,” says Adi Sha’al, co-founder (with Noa Wertheim) of Vertigo, “We would like to be a center for teaching and learning – a sort of alternative building center.”

A workshop on harvesting rainwater and reuse of gray water will be offered this Friday, May 15th by Amir Yechieli and Dan Goldenberg at the Village.

Teaming up Yechieli’s expertise on water conservation with Goldenberg, a member of the eco-village who designed their water system reflects Vertigo’s approach to educating the public about sustainable living.

Saudi Arabia Opens World's Largest Desalination Plant

Tech

Maurice Picow

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May 14, 2009

Saudi Arabia Opens World's Largest Desalination Plant

Saudi Arabia has always had an acute fresh water shortage problem. The problem has been so severe that a proposal was once considered to literally tow an ice burg from Antarctica all to way to the Kingdom for use as fresh water.

The practicality of constructing desalination plants to extract salt and other minerals from sea water became a much more practical plan, and 27 have now been constructed in the Kingdom, supplying 70% of the country’s drinking water as well as more than 28 million megawatts of electricity.

A new desalination plant, hailed as being the world’s largest, has now been completed in the new Jubail II Industrial Zone in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province.

Kishorit Becomes Organic Utopia For the Mentally Disabled

Business

Karin Kloosterman

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May 13, 2009

Kishorit Becomes Organic Utopia For the Mentally Disabled

(Working on the organic goat farm at Kishorit, the largest organic goat farm in Israel that sells its “fair trade” milk to Harduf, the largest organic food supplier in Israel.)

People born with mental deficiencies, or those afflicted later in life, are usually handed the short end of the stick. Facilities to accommodate needs and to help one cope in society are improving, but they fail to give those in need the advantages that “normal” people just take for granted. But not at Kishorit, a new village built on the ruins of a decaying kibbutz, in Israel.

A new model for treating the mentally disabled based on the Israeli commune idea has emerged over the last decade from the ruins of a crumbling kibbutz.

Called Kishorit, the village in northern Israel has become a utopia for about 150 people with varying degrees of mental handicap, who have all found a home for life.

Some have autism, Asperger’s, or schizophrenia, but as much as they can, they are all steering their own careers, social time, family life, and destiny. They don’t focus on what disability they have, but on what they can do.

Members run and operate a TV station, and create films, they’ve built the largest organic goat farm in Israel, possibly the entire Middle East; they plant, tend to and eat food from their organic garden, and are developing lines of toys, which last year were sold to Baby Gap.

Activists in Lebanon Create Human Chain to Protect Iconic Cedars from Catastrophic Climate Change

Business

Rachel Bergstein

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May 13, 2009

Activists in Lebanon Create Human Chain to Protect Iconic Cedars from Catastrophic Climate Change

Earlier this year, we saw members of the Lebanese group IndyACT trek out into the snowy wilderness to protect Lebanon’s snow from catastrophic climate change.

This week IndyACT members, along with their friends in the Association for Forest Development and Conservation (AFDC) were back in action, putting the heat (so to speak) on decision-makers to protect another important natural resource.

Over 120 activists from both organizations gathered to draw a “human chain” in the Chouf Cedars Forest, Lebanon’s biggest cedar grove.

Lebanon’s iconic cedar trees are seriously threatened by climate change. Significant changes could turn Lebanon into an arid desert or replace forests with grassland, creating a new, inhospitable environment to which the cedars will not be able to adapt.

Vauban, the German Suburb without Cars

Cities

Daniella Cheslow

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May 12, 2009

Vauban, the German Suburb without Cars

Do you ever get the feeling that every time you close your eyes, someone in Europe is doing something brilliant for the environment? Well, the residents of Vauban, Germany live in a suburb where most streets are off-limits to cars and the shops are mixed in with housing. The town’s 5,500 people are packed into a square mile, where they walk and cycle their way through day-to-day life.

The New York Times reports that as a result of this planning, children are everywhere. Vauban, on the French-Swiss-German border, enjoys solid links to public transportation. Residents who want to keep their cars buy parking spaces for $40,000 in one of two town lots, but 70 percent of Vaubanites don’t have their own.

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