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Israel Lacks National Plan to Address Climate Change

Daniel Pedersen
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Israel Lacks National Plan to Address Climate Change

plants drought climate change global warming Israel Mediterranean

The chief scientist of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Yishayahu Bar-Or, released a statement yesterday Aug. 4, (and here [in Hebrew]) warning of the well known consequences of global warming that are expected in Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean. 

These include a rise in average temperature of 1.8 degrees Celsius already by 2020, a rise of 10 cm in the Mediterranean Sea above the 8 cm rise in the last 15 years, a drop of 10% – 20% in precipitation, and extreme weather events.  These will cause the degradation of fresh water resources and the spread of pests and diseases, leading to severe public health problems.

Dr. Bar-Or called on the Government to establish a national program to deal with these potential disasters, and identified the opportunity for Israel to leverage its vast experience in water innovations and solar technologies to position itself as a leader in dealing with the problems caused by global warming.

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Green Your Car – Tires

Jack Reichert
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Green Your Car – Tires
Wheels, Hala Smadi, recycled tires, kuwait tire fire, scrap tires, recycled tires for sale, recycled tire interior design, Jordan interior design, Jordan recycled design
Upcycling tires into Arabian stools

Make sure you have good tires. Different tires affect you MPG in different ways. When you’re in the market for new tires, look for the ones that help give you the best mileage.

Once you have the right tire don’t forget about proper inflation! Too much or too little can significantly effect your MPG as well.

Electric cars are another way to go green.

Green Prophets In Focus: James Murray-White

Green Prophet
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3
Green Prophets In Focus: James Murray-White

James Murray White composting environment UK Scotland water recycling Israel

Last week we talked with Jesse Fox, urban planning expert and Treehugger veteran.

This week’s Prophet in Focus is James Murray-White, a composting environmentalist with the eye of a filmmaker and the soul of a poet. 

James grew up in a green village outside Cambridge, UK, and has donned the roles of both actor and anthropologist in addition to his filmmaking pursuits.

James tells of childhood in a green village, adventures in the UK, his green passions–and of course, composting–after the jump.  

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Our Climate's Tipping Point: Only 100 Months Left

James Murray-White
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6
Our Climate's Tipping Point: Only 100 Months Left

one 100 hundred months website climate change israel global warming carbon emissionsOkay, first the bad news.

Well, perhaps we’d had better warn you that there is no good news in this piece: A new campaign has been launched in the UK by the NEF (new economics foundation) warning the world that according to their analysis, the world is just 100 months away from reaching the tipping point for the start of irreversible Climate Change.

This figure of 100 months, said by Andrew Simm, policy director of the NEF to be a “conservative estimate”, is the length of time remaining before the concentration of CO2 (carbon dioxide) reaches such a high level that the planet simply cannot process it anymore.

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Skins Footware is Skinny on the Resources

Karen Chernick
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2
Skins Footware is Skinny on the Resources

eco-chic shoes Skins Footware Gucci Stella McCartney Israeli designerImagine being able to buy ten pairs of shoes and only spend the resources (both natural and financial) necessary for half that many.  Sounds like every eco chic woman‘s dream, right?  Eco chic or not, every woman knows that you need those perfect going out shoes for evenings, elegant ballet flats for the office, sneakers for the gym, trendy sneakers for walking around the city…. and the list goes on.  But having that many pairs of shoes isn’t exactly easy on the environment, and therein lies the rub.

The solution?  Transform one pair of shoes into endless pairs of shoes.

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Is Red-Dead Canal or Med-Dead Canal Better for Israel?

Maurice Picow
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5
Is Red-Dead Canal or Med-Dead Canal Better for Israel?

Dead Sea Red Sea Mediterranean environment Israel Middle East Jordan
Paint it Dead or Red?

The alarmingly fast decline of water levels in the Dead Sea have resulted in numerous plans to bring sea water from either the Mediterranean or Red Sea to replenish the water in what has often been referred as the world’s lowest level body of water. It’s the lowest place on earth.

The Dead Sea’s main water source, the Jordan River, has reached the point that the biblical river’s flow into the Dead Sea has been reduced to a mere trickle as a result of the Jordan’s flow being diverted to both Israel and Jordan for both country’s water needs.

Even the Jordan’s flow into the the Sea of Galilee (the Kinneret), Israel’s main fresh water source, has been reduced considerably over the years by lack of adequate rainfall and diversion of water from the Jordan’s sources in Lebanon by Israel’s hostile neighbors.

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Networking In Israel's Growing Cleantech Industry

Green Prophet Guest
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2
Networking In Israel's Growing Cleantech Industry

cleantech Israel water energy Red-Dead Sea Canal environment

Introducing Chava Shaked, who shares her adventures in Israel’s blossoming cleantech scene.

What started off for me as a business, became a vibrant hobby and fascinating exploration into the world we live in.

This is the case with many of the people I’ve met at the Cleantech Israel meetup.  

Founded by Gene Dolgin and Jonathan Shapira (a green prophet writer), with a growth rate of almost 500 members since February 2008 and RSVP-space only at filled to capacity meetings, it is obvious that most feel this way.  What is the draw to dry science that brings so many?

Brilliant innovation.

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Junktion designs at intersection of waste and whimsy

Karen Chernick
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juntion barrel seat drum seat
Green Prophet’s Karin Kloosterman finds a seat in Jaffa with her baby

Junktion: Tel Aviv design studio founded in 2008.  Lovers and joiners of what the city dwellers classify as junk.

Junktion, one of Tel Aviv’s newest and most fabulous reuse design studios, tries “to create a meeting point with what the city has already classified as junk.”  In taking everyday objects out of context (such as the suitcase-turned-medicine-cabinet on the left), they create funny, clever, and beautiful ways to take another look at things we so easily discard.

junktion telephone lamp

And when they take another look at that tossed out suitcase, or washing machine, or bicycle – that means one fewer item in the garbage dump.  Which is good news for everybody.

gas cannister upcycled junktion suitcase upcycled to stand tin drum upcycled to chair upcycled chairs jaffa studio junktion

Junktion believes that “there is enough stuff in the world already and [they] try to take from what there is.”  In their own words, they “often find [their] desires in what no longer interests others” and “are committed to go happily to work every day.”

Some of our favorite Junktion designs were the suitcase closet, bicycle chair, cooking pot seat, and, of course, the foosball soccer player hangers.  Check out their website to get ideas for reducing your carbon footprint by using the stuff you don’t need anymore to create things you do need (thus avoiding unnecessary waste and unnecessary use of new resources – voila!).

More Israeli Sustainable Design:

Israel and Milan Design Week

Merav Feiglin’s recycled lights out of trash

Waste Not, Want Not: Doron Sar-Shalom Recycles With Style

Beggars Can Be Choosers: Amit Brilliant’s Recycled Wallets

Beauty Increases Sustainability, According to Designer Gadi Amit

Ten Sustainable Israeli Designers Who Reduce, Reuse & Recycle

Good Ol' Home Cooking…

Jack Reichert
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1
Good Ol' Home Cooking…

Packaged food is becoming more and more predominant in our society. The busier we get the more we look for instant solutions. The problem is that pre-cooked/store bought foods are not only less healthy for you than home cookin’ but it’s bad for the whole planet as well. Eat one more meal in. Take the extra minutes to cool a wholesome meal. And you won’t only reap the benefits, but the whole planet will as well!

It's Possible to Harvest More Crop Per Drop, Find Israeli Cleantech Researchers

Green Prophet
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1
It's Possible to Harvest More Crop Per Drop, Find Israeli Cleantech Researchers

improved irrigation genetically modifying plant rootsA new solution addresses the problem of water loss and promises farmers “more crop per drop”

A part of the global food crisis is the inefficiency of current irrigation methods. More irrigated water evaporates than reaches the roots of crops, amounting to an enormous waste of water and energy.

Tel Aviv University researchers, however, are investigating a new solution that turns the problem upside-down, getting to the root of the issue. They are genetically modifying plants’ root systems to improve their ability to find the water essential to their survival.

The Root Cause of Wasting Water

When it comes to water, every drop counts. “Improving water uptake by irrigated crops is very important,” says Prof. Amram Eshel, the study’s co-researcher from Tel Aviv University’s Plant Sciences Department. His team, with that of Prof. Hillel Fromm, hope to engineer a plant that takes advantage of a newly discovered gene that controls hydrotropism, a plant’s ability to send its roots towards water.

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Green Tsunami Washes Over Knesset

Jesse Fox
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1
Green Tsunami Washes Over Knesset

green environmental legislation Israel Knesset

 

 

Maybe it was the teetering government or the water crisis, or maybe it was just the sticky and oppressive summer heat. Whatever the cause, the summer session of the Knesset closed last week with an unprecedented burst of environmental legislation.

Leading the charge was a trio of maverick lawmakers – Dov Hanin, Michael Melchior and Ofir Pines-Paz – who have devoted their time in the Knesset to pushing the environment to the top of the agenda. Green Prophet salutes these guys and their accomplishments.

Here’s a roundup of the laws that we hope will make Israel a cleaner and healthier place to live:

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"Chaschams" Water Saving Devices Go Door to Door

Daniella Cheslow
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"Chaschams" Water Saving Devices Go Door to Door

simple water saving devices from Israel image

Chascham, the water saving device that can reduce flow by as much as 42%.

In April, Green Prophet had a chance to go from door to door with Vered Hatab, a water savings advisor hired by the Milgam Municipal Services company to sell Israelis on using less water.

Hatab, 23, was lugging a case full of plumbing tools through apartment buildings in Herzliya. Dressed in a light blue button-down blouse, a brown skirt and black sneakers, she made her pitch to the residents.

“I want to talk to you about the water shortage in Israel,” she said, as an elderly woman in a housedress poked her head out the door. “Can I come in?”

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Have A Good Shabbat

Jack Reichert
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2
Have A Good Shabbat

The Shabbat is the Jewish day of rest. According to tradition God created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. Because of this religious Jews will not do any acts of creation on Saturday. Acts of creation includes cooking, using electricity, and even traveling long distances.

Take a page out of the religion’s book. One day a week desist from doing one destructive act. Whether it’s using your car, reading a book instead of watching television or using less electricity. Even if you are not Jewish, this act will help you take a step outside of your daily routine and rethink it. Even if it is just a little.

Have a good Shabbat!

Green Your Dog: the 4th Great Green Giveaway!

James Murray-White
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0
Green Your Dog: the 4th Great Green Giveaway!

hemp dog collar image poochAs its the head of the month, we here at Green Prophet are feeling even more extraordinarily generous, and thanks to an earlier post about fellow eco-site Lifegoggles, we are offering two 100 % hemp dog collars in our 4th Great Green Giveaway!

This is in addition to the 3rd Great Green Giveaway still running, which offers a reused paper Meishi (business card holder) from designer Anat Safran, to whichever reader can come up with the most creative way businesses can go green.

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Offset Yourself

Jack Reichert
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Offset Yourself

Offsetting alone won’t save our planet but it certainly isn’t anything to scoff at.

There are many ways to offset. But probably the best way to offset is to educate others. You wont only be cutting back on ways you are damaging our planet but you will be helping others take that first step.

Find out more about offsetting and our effect on the planet.

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