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.
In Islamic tradition, there is a point where creation ends — a boundary that marks the limit of what any created being can reach. That boundary is called Sidrat al-Muntahā, often translated as “the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary.”
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.
In Islamic tradition, there is a point where creation ends — a boundary that marks the limit of what any created being can reach. That boundary is called Sidrat al-Muntahā, often translated as “the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary.”
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.
In Islamic tradition, there is a point where creation ends — a boundary that marks the limit of what any created being can reach. That boundary is called Sidrat al-Muntahā, often translated as “the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary.”
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.
In Islamic tradition, there is a point where creation ends — a boundary that marks the limit of what any created being can reach. That boundary is called Sidrat al-Muntahā, often translated as “the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary.”
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.
In Islamic tradition, there is a point where creation ends — a boundary that marks the limit of what any created being can reach. That boundary is called Sidrat al-Muntahā, often translated as “the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary.”
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.
In Islamic tradition, there is a point where creation ends — a boundary that marks the limit of what any created being can reach. That boundary is called Sidrat al-Muntahā, often translated as “the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary.”
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.
In Islamic tradition, there is a point where creation ends — a boundary that marks the limit of what any created being can reach. That boundary is called Sidrat al-Muntahā, often translated as “the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary.”
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.
In Islamic tradition, there is a point where creation ends — a boundary that marks the limit of what any created being can reach. That boundary is called Sidrat al-Muntahā, often translated as “the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary.”
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.
Imagine if air conditioning came without the hefty price tag of electric bills—if it was, in fact, entirely free. Tel Aviv University Professor Avi Kribus, best known now for his discovery of electricity-creating bacteria, has invented a solar energy device that would power air conditioning and heating. Additionally, Kribus’s device is smaller and therefore cheaper to manufacture than conventional solar units, fitting easily on the consumer’s roof.
Kribus’s solar project is a top priority for the European Union, who are subsidizing its development for the next three years. Demonstration units are currently being built in Italy and Spain.
Baladi, a word that Israelis adopted from Arabic, means “national” or “of the country”. It is also the name that French-born Israeli designer, Brigitte Cartier, decided to give her design studio. Her Baladi Company for Ecological Progress takes our national garbage and transforms it into beautiful designs that we can all be proud of.
After studying art, design, and film in Paris, Cartier moved to Tel Aviv where she became a recycling force to be reckoned with. Armed with Israeli waste materials and a certain French je ne sais pas, she recycles without sacrificing style.
A clean KumKum (electric water urn) is an efficient one. Keep your KumKum clean by periodically boiling equal parts water and lemon juice inside. This will extent your urn’s life and keeping it boiling happy.
Now that we’ve eco-toured Israel and Jordan, let’s move right along to another green tourism spot in the Middle East. Lebanon.
And it’s no surprise that a country that places a regional cedar tree in the center of its flag (colored in green) has lots and lots of eco tourism options.
Here are some of our favorite ways to enjoy Lebanon in an environmentally-friendly way:
1. TLB Destinations: TLB is a tour company that offers sustainable tourism trips all over the Middle East. The small company is local and multilingual (they speak English, French, Arabic, and German), and promotes responsible tourism. This means that their tour guides inform travelers about local concerns regarding the conservation of natural areas, support local communities, and that the company itself tries to raise awareness about biodiversity and heritage. TLB offers a diverse range of trips in Lebanon, including adventure, biking, cultural, gastronomical, discovery, trekking, and hiking tours.
Last week, I visited the town of Umm El Fahem with staff members from Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME). FoEME is a trilateral Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian environmental organization that brings environmentalists together to work on issues of shared regional concern. As the Summer 2008 FoEME intern, I am assisting with the Pro-Aquifer project. Israelis and Palestinians share the Mountain Aquifer, which has become very polluted. We are working with communities in both Israel and Palestine to protect the shared water resource.
In Israel, we are working with Umm El Fahem, a Palestinian town inside Israel, (roughly 20% of Israel’s citizens are Palestinian. They are also referred to as Israeli-Arabs or Arab-Israelis). During my visit last week, I was sad to learn of one more example where social and environmental justice intersect. (Quick background note: There are huge civil rights issues within the Palestinian sector in Israel. Palestinian citizens face both legal and socioeconomic discrimination in many aspects. Obviously more complicated than that, but that’s the 30 second version).
Essentially, I learned that because of discrimination in planning, the environment – which of course includes the society in the environment – suffers greatly.
While Israel has some of the world’s most promising clean technology companies in producing renewable energy — consider the geothermal power company Ormat [ORA (TLV)]and its geothermal power station in Nevada or Solel’s solar energy plant in the Mohave Desert – proving viability on Israeli turf has been a sore spot for inventors and would-be international and local investors.
Lack of policy and infrastructure in the Israeli government stalls the rapid implementation of new clean technologies. This harms not only Israelis who need cleaner, alternative fuel sources, but it is a disservice to the environment and people around the world, who would readily adopt this tiny nation’s innovative solutions if proven they could work.
Thanks to a little green vision in the form of algae, Isaac Berzin, the founder of GreenFuel Technologies in Cambridge MA, has returned to Israel to help turn Israeli ingenuity into action. Now a senior fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Berzin has plans to build a new Institute for Alternative Energy Policy in Israel under the IDC.
Berzin looks to collect the best-fit alternative energy solutions from across academia and the industry in Israel – about 10 different technology platforms – to build a center of excellence, “10 times bigger and stronger than GreenFuel,” Berzin tells Green Prophet.
Recently voted as a Time Magazine most influential person for 2008, if anyone could build a biofuel powerhouse in Israel it would be Berzin, who has a kind of rock star popularity in the US for his work with GreenFuel. Continuing on as an advisor in the company, he says, “GreenFuel is doing great, the baby is walking now.”
The father of three, who now lives in Jerusalem, sees the importance of creating a real solution to end the world’s dependence on oil within the next few years. If it’s not found, in 10 years he says, the planet will have “reached the point of no return.”
Taking advantage of Israeli technology and research, Berzin is planning to have a serious biofuel solution ready within five years. While there is no one silver bullet solution, he admits, Israel has all the tools to start making a renewable fuel alternative.
Israel’s toolbox includes decades-long research into water technologies and grey-water irrigation, and the know-how for taking advantage of low-quality land and growing crops on brackish water. “Algae can grow in salt water, with sewage and on any type of land quality,” says Berzin. “The world is moving to a ‘grow your own solution’ for energy crops, and there is no reason why Israel shouldn’t be a leading country in this field,” he says.
The new institute he is currently setting up, will develop sustainable and strategic global alternative energy policies and will collaborate with the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) based in Washington, where Berzin is also a senior fellow.
A representative from the IAGS wrote me, “[We] congratulate senior fellow Dr. Isaac Berzin for his inclusion in TIME Magazine’s 2008 list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Berzin received this honor for his important scientific contribution to the development of alternative fuels and for his leadership role in the global movement to end the world’s oil dependence.”
Earlier this month, Berzin signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the US Department of Energy as an “honest broker” for helping his new institute choose what technologies and research to implement. The institute, after all, is expected to be a money-making endeavor as well.
According to Berzin, investing in the clean fuel solutions of oil-rich algae is a “zero-risk exercise. The solution is attractive, because I am not punishing the industry. The world is moving to producing its own energy crops. Algae for biofuel is (finally) an economically viable solution. It is also a moral solution – not competing with food crops on valuable resources such as fertile land and potable water.”
Isaac Berzin update 2020:
Berzin is currently the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Algaennovation LTD. that produces ultra-high Omega-3 algae for feed and food application. The microalgae are sustainably cultivated in an integrated process within one of the world’s largest geothermal power plants, located in Hellisheiði, Iceland.
He is a co-author, together with Nobel Prize Laureate, WilliamMoomaw, of the Industrial Biotechnology cover paper “Cutting out the Middle Fish”, positioning sustainably cultivated microalgae as next generation superfood.
Seventy-six thousand tonnes of waste pour out of Dubai’s construction sites every single day. Just one side effect of the massive building boom there/here. But the Emirate is now running out of space to put it as existing landfill sites reach capacity.
So it’s building new plants to recycle more of that waste, and as Ben Thompson now reports, that could help business, as well as the environment. Watch the video for the whole story.
Said Leemor Chandally, who sent us these photos, “I was passing by Rabin Square, when I noticed this situation and had to laugh. A bunch of people were waiting for a bus, but nobody was waiting inside the bus stop, which was obviously brand new. Instead, everyone was crouching behind it, trying to stay in the shade.”
I was so anxious on Monday as I awaited word of delivery of my very first Israeli community supported agriculture (CSA) delivery to its drop spot in Tel Aviv. I was nervous, not because I thought the vegetables wouldn’t be good or because I was unsure if I was getting a good deal (the veggies are great and it’s very cost-effective), but because I was relying on this week’s box of straight-from-the-farm vegetables to convince my Israeli flatmates that CSAs are a worthwhile investment.
I picked up the box right near the corner of Dizengoff and Gordon in Tel Aviv. I walked home with vegetables in hand for ten minutes, smelling the basil and thinking about making pesto, which I probably won’t have time to make this week.
As I approached my apartment I saw that nobody was home. Damn. I wanted my flatmates to see me walk in with it and “ooh” and “ahh” at the produce. I left the box prominently displayed in the kitchen and gently rearranged the chard and arugula to look a bit more presentable. Within twenty minutes one flatmate returned home. She was visibly excited about our new abundance so we started unpacking the box together when we noticed that one of the tomatoes was squished.
She looked disappointed and I panicked. “We’ll use it for sauce,” I think I muttered in Hebrew, trying a bit too hard to stay positive. “Lo Nora,” she said, it’s not a big deal.
Amit Brilliant chooses Hebrew brands to feature on the outside of her plastic wrapped wallets
According to that old expression, beggars can’t be choosers. But Israeli designer Amit Brilliant proves that saying wrong with her line of recycled wallets, bags, notebook covers, and hats – Beggars.
She chooses not to dump what would normally end up in the trash and turn it into something useful and aesthetic instead.
In other words, she begs to differ.
Brilliant’s brilliant creations are made out of old maps, paper shopping bags, Bamba bags, laundry detergent wrappers, and whatever else she can get her hands on. She usually uses the wrappers of classic Israeli products, so these make a great souvenir or gift from Israel. (Pair these up with some of Yoav Kotik‘s Israeli beer cap earrings and you’ve got quite the environmental and patriotic gift.)
Amit Brilliant transforms old bags of waste
In transforming packaging – something that was supposed to be disposable – into something that can be used over and over again, Brilliant makes an optimistic statement about how we can transform and hopefully change the negative effects of mass consumerism.
You can find these great wallets in the Nachalat Binyamin crafts market (open every Tuesday and Friday afternoon in Tel Aviv).
Being green is about being clean. In order to remove dust effectively from furniture use a slightly damp cloth – dusters only move the dust around. For a green polish try beeswax, it’s great for unpolished wood; or use a drop of olive oil, then buff with a dry cloth. This way you can cut down the circulation of nasty chemicals normally used when cleaning around the house.
“We face the most almighty hangover, as the toxins unleashed by our century-long binge work their way through the earth’s system. We have to detoxify. We have to sober up. We have to come to grips….”
from ‘Confessions of an Eco-Sinner’ by Fred Pearce.
Pearce has written a book for the ecologically and socially minded. He has travelled some 180,000 km to over 20 countries to research it; investigating the origins of products, and crucially the human conditions surrounding them – actually walking the walk and finding the answers to his own curiosity about things.
He describes the research, which took him a full year, and the resulting book, as “an odyssey to track his personal footprint”.
Shavuot is best known as the holiday which commemorates the bestowal of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. It is also the celebration of the harvest of the Bikkurim, the first fruits of the year. Pomegranates and figs may come most easily to mind, but wheat is another of the Shiv’at Haminim, the seven species, and probably the one that we eat most often. And so at the end of Shavuot this year I found myself inspired, and decided to try my hand at celebrating the harvest with a bit of baking.
Now, bread-making can be a rather scary prospect, even for the experienced baker. I’ve knocked out meringues and madeleines fearlessly, brûléed crème without breaking a sweat and rolled tart crusts galore. On one memorable occasion I even made a wedding cake. But yeast? Yeast has always sent me running for the proverbial hills. However, several recent spikes in the cost of bread, a growing desire to understand exactly what goes into producing the food I often take for granted, and the aforementioned harvest festival proved to be an irresistible combination – a baker of bread I would become.
First, a bit of research seemed in order. The literature on the craft of baking bread is extensive, almost overwhelmingly so. I decided to start with the basics… Flour.
Between all of the eco guesthouses popping up and the Israeli Tourism Ministry trying to go green by 2009, there’s no absence of environmentally friendly vacation options in Israel (hint hint, to all those out-of-towners planning their summer vacations in Israel).
But what’s a green tourist in the Middle East to do outside of Israel? Well, he or she she doesn’t have to look much further than right next door (so to speak). In Jordan.
There are lots of great eco-tourism options available in Jordan – ranging from tour companies that specialize in green adventures to environmentally friendly housing options.
Who wants an inefficient refrigerator? Wipe off the coils regularly, dusty coils can reduce the efficiency by 30%. Also let your dishes cool properly before you put dinner away. A healthy fridge will last longer, save energy and work better… What more could you want?
Baladi, a word that Israelis adopted from Arabic, means “national” or “of the country”. It is also the name that French-born Israeli designer, Brigitte Cartier, decided to give her design studio. Her 
Now that we’ve eco-toured 
