Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.
Air Tea is a new technology. Instead of drinking tea, you inhale herbal vapor through warm air extraction. There is no water and no combustion. The warm air releases essential oils that are often lost in hot water and digestion.
Health emerges from a continuous energy and material flow from water through food to human physiology. Technical energy systems support this cycle through water treatment, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Israel Environmental Protection Minister Gideon Ezra and his Korean counterpart Environment Minister Lee Maanee signed a memorandum of understanding on bilateral environmental cooperation on November 12, 2008.
Under the agreement, the two countries will enhance cooperation on air pollution, climate change, biological diversity and sewage disposal and will promote exchanges between environmental experts.
Among the subjects discussed by the two ministries during Minister Lee Maanee’s visit to Israel were renewable energies and efficient use of water resources. The ministers called on professionals in their respective ministries to review possibilities for joint projects and continue coordination in international environmental forums.
No. 3 on Mayor-elect Nir Barkat’s winning list, Naomi Tsur is going to be spearheading any changes the city makes to beautify the city in the near future. Formal head of SPNI’s Jerusalem office and founder of the Sustainable Jerusalem, a coalition of 60 environmental groups is now going to tackle those same issues but this time from the inside.
Tzur wants to get the community caring and involved: “What is really lacking is public participation in planning processes. We need a process to get wisdom from neighborhood residents, so we can solve problems, but in a way that makes sense [for local residents]. There hasn’t been enough done in the last two decades.”
Use the winter cold to your advantage!
We all know by now that thermal mass in the fridge is a good idea… so we have those plastic bottles filled with water and taking up space not occupied by food, right?! Well, when temps dip below freezing, put a couple outside. When they freeze, swap them out for unfrozen ones in the fridge. it’s a manual heat pump!
Thanks Phillip for the tip! Looking to green your life? Find out more! Have a green-living tip to SHARE?
It’s no surprise that real estate development and preservation of the environment usually don’t go hand in hand. We’ve already featured some stories here on Green Prophet about how this conflict expresses itself in Israel, with posts about the need for intelligent urban design, how the Knesset Environment Committee recently started to fight to protect urban trees during urban development, and about a new eco-conscious town (Nurit) being built in Gilboa. But what’s happening now on Nahal Betzet Beach is quite different.
The Nahal Betzet Beach, located in the western Galilee south of Rosh Hanikra, is home to diverse plant life and is an important egg-laying site for sea turtles. It has been, until now, a beautiful and natural public beach – undisturbed by human construction. That is, until the Israel Lands Administration recently opened up the beach for private development.
How do you really know that the beef you bought is organic, kosher, halal, or raised with loving kindness? The Israeli company Bactochem has the solution.
The idea started in Israel, where animal theft has become a major concern. Hundreds of beef cows worth $2,000 a head are being stolen a year, and in most cases smuggled across the green line to the Palestinian Authority. Slaughtered immediately, with no visible trace in sight, Bactochem was asked to find a way to track and trace these animals using the “CSI” style methods the company specializes in.
Bactochem, which operates in Israel in the area of environmental quality and food health and safety (and has an interesting dog poop DNA project underway in Tel Aviv to catch scooping offenders), decided to create some innovation of its own. It developed a novel method using cow DNA and software, which can determine and track with a small genetic sample, such as a hair from the back of the animal, where a cow was born, bred and – if it comes to it – slaughtered.
While animal theft is less of a concern in Western countries such as America, the company is now in discussions with a German firm on how to use its testing methods and software solution, to track and trace cows for health and safety issues.
An undisclosed Muslim state in Africa has signed a deal with Israel’s SDE Energy & Desalination for a 100 megawatt power station that will harness the power of waves as electricity.
SDE head Shmuel Ovadia says the $100 million facility is expected to bring in $1 billion worth of revenue over the contract’s 25-year term.
The company claims wave energy can supply 500 times global electricity needs. Ovadia says per square meter, sea waves have four times the power generation capacity of wind power. Further, SDE claims the technology doesn’t pollute and comes at a lower cost than wind turbines.
We’ve been following the recent green politics and parties in Israel (see our Re-evaluating Green Parties, Must They Be Liberal Left Wing?). And tomorrow the brand new environmental political party The Green Movement (HaTnuah Hayeruka) is holding a general meeting of members tomorrow morning, Friday, Nov. 14 at 9 a.m. at the Seminar Kibbutzim in Tel Aviv.
One of the founders of the party, Dr. Alon Tal, sent out the following email:
There will be some rather critical decisions made there and it is important that you come. Otherwise, please log on – and join us! It is simple, security proof and very important that we grow to become a mass movement with thousands of members.
What could be a more thoughtful gift than a gift that’s organic? Giving someone an organic gift shows not only that you care about their personal health and well-being, but that you care about the future of their environment and world. Overall, an organic gift is a gift of love.
Unfortunately, unique organic gifts aren’t always that easy to find. You may be able to find the odd organic risotto rice or bottle of wine in your local health food store, but what about a basket packed with gourmet organic onion jam, homemade organic pomegranate syrup, or organic goat’s milk pecorino cheese with anise seed?Â
And how about non food items? Where could you find organic aftershave lotion, organic body butter, or a candle that turns into organic massage oil when it melts?
Tom Friedman: [. . .] A world where . . . energy technology – clean water, clean power – is going to be the next great global industry. Â And I believe the country that owns ET (Energy Technology) will have . . . the most energy security, national security, competitive industries, and global respect. That country has to be the United States of America. Â Because that’s going to be the next big thing.
Energy security? Â National security? Industries? Â and get this: GLOBAL Â R. E. S. P. E. C. T.! Â Why leave all those things for the US of A? Â These are things that Israel could desperately use. Â And we already have a head start: decades of leadership in clean water technology, renewable energy & efficiency technologies, solar power, water reclamation, efficient agriculture, and more – much of them covered by our prophets.
After a major fire in the Sano Plastic Factory in Hod Hasharon (makers of many of the cleaning products and supplies you can find in Israeli supermarkets), the effluent from their chemical operations and the residue from fighting the fire was discharged into the Yarkon River after causing the local sewage treatment factory to break down from the quantity and concentration of chemicals.
Zalul Environmental Association sent staff member Tzvika Forer to photograph the incident on Monday, but by the time he arrived at the scene much of the visible pollution had disappeared (though the strong, stinky odor was still very much present and filling the air around the river and in the surrounding neighborhoods).
Today Zalul’s Deputy Director, Sagit Rogenstein, took a bike ride from the Zalul office in Ramat Gan along the Ayalon and Yarkon Rivers and photographed the latest side effect of the pollution:Â Thousands of dead fish.
Andreas Weil, founder of Ecoocean. Environmental leader & champion for Oceans, Andreas Weil. (Boaz Arad)
Green Prophet interviews Andreas Weil, director of EcoOcean.
Tell us a little about who you are and what you do.
My name is Andreas Weil and I am the co-founder and acting director of the Israeli marine environmental nonprofit organization EcoOcean. I live for environmental issues and education. The sea is my passion and EcoOcean was a dream of mine since a very young age.
How did you find yourself underwater filming whales?
As a known nature lover, I was approached by the Israeli underwater cameraman and nature photographer Gil Arbel. Gil told me about his project to make a film for Israeli television about the humpback whales in Tonga that he has been working on for almost ten years. Gil was looking for money for another trip to Tonga. I was very impressed by his work and asked if I could join him on his next trip to work as his assistant.
I ended up swimming so close to the whales that I could clearly see their eyes and that they were looking at me. It was as though they followed my movements and were trying to understand me. It was a euphoric feeling.
The experience was life-changing for you. Can you explain why?
It was not exactly life changing such that I can describe the difference in my life before and after swimming with the whales, but I was greatly affected by the tranquility of these great animals. I was also taken by how the whales don’t see people as a threat even to their young, because they cannot understand why someone would want to hurt or kill them. This affected me because it made me much stronger in my belief that the whales can not be allowed to be slaughtered by humans, even if the people killing them claim it’s within their tradition to hunt and eat whale meat.
The whales are much too intelligent to be seen as a source of food. Killing them is like killing and eating your own pet. Swimming so close to the whales and being in the same medium as them made the whole experience very powerful. Swimming with a mother whale and her calf and the mother allowing us to be so close to the calf was very emotional. The whole trip to the whales in Tonga has made me understand how much I love wild animals and wildlife encounters.
I now know that I find that the most beautiful thing on this earth is its great wildlife.
It has made me see that there are so many wonderful things in nature that I want to see and experience in my lifetime.
Has this experience affected your goals to protect marine life? How so?
This experience has definitely made me understand how important nature protection and education is. These whales are being hunted for their meat, and their future existence is dependent on that us all understanding that the whale population is very small and can easily disappear completely if whaling is allowed to continue. I now feel even more strongly about my goal to make people aware of the problems facing the world’s oceans and seas, and getting people to understand that we must protect these fragile ecosystems.
How can people get involved?
People can get involved by learning more about the problems facing the Mediterranean. One of EcoOcean’s main goals is to raise awareness of these problems. EcoOcean offers many ways to learn about it. We run a marine ecological educational center for children, we offer free lectures and run many awareness-raising projects.
What are the biggest threats to bodies of water in the Middle East region?
The two main threats are chemical and solid waste pollution, and over-fishing. Still today in 2008, in many countries around the Mediterranean, large amounts of sewage are released into the sea, including chemical effluents. Over-fishing not only threatens the ecological balance of the seas but also affects the people living around the Mediterranean.
Andreas was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been living in Israel since 2000. Andreas has studied environmental education and Marine Sciences at the Arava institute in Israel and in the U.S.
In the leadup to this week’s municipal elections in Israel, Tzafrir Rinat, the respected environmental correspondent of the daily newspaper Haaretz, discussed the local environmental political parties in his article “The Green Party – mostly bluster“. Since the other player in the field, “the Israel Green Movement” is brand new, Rinat evaluated the 10 year old “Green Party“:
But in Israel, experience shows that the green parties’ environmentalism is sheer pretension, especially if compared to the green parties in Europe, which have become significant social and political factors with broad worldviews on many issues. [. . .]
The two main characteristics, in recent years, of the green parties in Europe are their democratic institutionalism and their broad political platforms. However, the local Green Party is totally different.
Go to the park! Sounds cliched? Think again it’s totally the new mauve (which is the new white, which was the new pink which was the new black)!
With the Middle Eastern winters you don’t need a sweater, but even when it’s colder there’s nothing like a warm drink when bundled up. Bring a thermos along and enjoy the pink cheeks!
Westerners don’t breath enough. Rushing 24/7 we don’t take the time to enjoy the littler green our cities have to offer. And what a better way then with someone you care about! Once there, take a deep breath and enjoy the birds.
Looking to green your life? Find out more! Have a green-living tip to SHARE?
Green Prophet loves to find potential everywhere – so how about desert seawater greenhouse construction in Qatar? They are also doing this in Abu Dhabi.
What exactly is a desert seawater greenhouse, you might ask?
According to the Seawater Greenhouse website: “Seawater Greenhouse is a unique concept which combines natural processes, simple construction techniques and mathematical computer modeling to provide a low-cost solution to one of the world’s greatest needs – fresh water.
“The Seawater Greenhouse is a new development that offers sustainable solutions to the problem of providing water for agriculture in arid, coastal regions.”
How the seawater greenhouse works.
In layman’s terms, the seawater greenhouses use seawater to humidify the air in the greenhouse while sunlight distills the fresh water out of the seawater. This is a unique solution for desert areas where fresh water is scarce. It is especially great for Middle Eastern countries, many of which have access to saltwater and have large areas of desert land. But it sort of also feels like a country in the west is borrowing ideas long ago practiced in the Middle East and calling it “new.”
Seawater greenhouse Powered by the Sun
But beyond being practical, the use of desert seawater greenhouses is greener than the alternatives for a couple of reasons. Firstly, traditional desalination projects are energy intensive and consume lots of fossil fuels.
Once constructed, desert seawater greenhouses are solar powered. Secondly, in enabling more desert areas to be used for agriculture, local agriculture is encouraged and fewer food products may be imported from far away (thus reducing a nation’s food carbon footprint).
View of the Abu Dhabi seawater greenhouse
According to Charlie Paton, the inventor of Seawater Greenhouse technology, “UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait are other countries in the region which are planning to turn its vast areas of arid lands into arable through the unique method.”
Charlie Paton, inventor of the seawater greenhouse
On Tuesday, many Israeli cities will be holding Municipal Elections. In the run up to the Beit Shemesh elections, Sviva Israel was asked by Life & Environment, running the national Green Now campaign, to place the environment high on the agenda of all the Mayoral candidates.
Working together with local environmental groups Shemesh Yehuda and Be’er Hatikva, Sviva Israel organized an Environmental Watch Group which prepared an environmental policy paper for the city and invited all three mayoral candidates – Shalom Lerner (B’yachad), Moshe Aboutbul (Shas) and Daniel Vaknin (Likud) – to respond to it in a public forum.
It’s no surprise that real estate development and preservation of the environment usually don’t go hand in hand. We’ve already featured some stories here on Green Prophet about how this conflict expresses itself in Israel, with posts about the need for 
What could be a more thoughtful gift than a gift that’s 
