With drought looming in California, but in many regions of the world include Yemen, Green Prophet honors Earth Day by digging into the archives so you can share 10 ways to collect and save fresh, potable water.

1. Seawater cone evaporation

This low-tech method of collecting fresh water in involves placing an inverted plastic “water cone” over a pan of salt water and catching the evaporating fresh water droplets in the rimmed cone edges.

A cone measuring about 1/2 meter in diameter and are about 35 to 40 cm high can produce as much a one liter a day of fresh water. This idea is being tried in water starved countries like Yemen; which are now literally running on empty. The idea is also being used at a large scale to grow organic food in Abu Dhabi in seawater greenhouses.

2. Purifying contaminated water supplies in SODIS plastic bottles

Another “low tech” way of creating potable water supplies involves purifying water in large plastic water bottles, which are normally thrown away after use. Discovered by a Swiss research institute, The Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology the SODIS method takes stagnant or waste water first made clear by filtering through sand.

The filtered water is then put into the plastic bottles, one side of which has been painted a dark color to help absorb sunlight. The filled bottles are arranged in rows on rooftops to allow the sun’s heat to heat up the water in the bottles to kill harmful bacteria.

This acts like a miniature sun boiler and not only provides safe drinking water but also allows more light into the dwelling. The SODIS method is now being used in countries like India where local freshwater supplies are often contaminated.

3. Water from air conditioning units

This water collecting idea has been around for years and is now being used by US and other armed forces units in desert countries.  Water from air conditioning condensation is purified and used for drinking by troops in the field. Water obtained by this method can have a variety of uses; including agriculture and industrial use as well as for drinking.

4. Wastewater treatment

Treatment of wastewater, from sewage as well as “grey water” from households is now being done in countries like Israel, which reclaims as much as 70% of its waste water.

Israel’s success  in reclaiming waste water has been so great that its national water company, Mekorot, received UN recognition for its Shafdan water reclamation facility. Much of this treated water is used for agriculture and public parks, which do not need purified fresh water.

5. Defying nature in Wadi Rum

Bedouin farmers in Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert region (photo) are now using permaculture design systems, which date back to the ancient Nabateans who once inhabited the region.

These systems help conserve available water supplies to successfully grow organic vegtables and other crops. Permaculture irrigation involves digging small canals and drip irrigation methods. The systems used have already been in use extensively in the Jordan Valley. Mulching around trees such as pomegranates involves using what is known as a “chopndrop” method that helps conserve water.

6. Fog harvesting

Fog harvesting involves collecting water droplets created in locations where dense fog often blankets areas during certain times of the year. Also known as fog drip, this method of collecting water is now being used in Middle East countries like Yemen, Oman and Saudi Arabia, where annual monsoons create dense fog, known as “Khareefs” which blanket southern coastal  regions.

In this method, fog created water droplets are captured on special plastic mesh, which then drips down into a special reservoir located below the mesh. A collector of four 20-m-wide, 3-m-tall nets is placed at opposite ends of a reservoir that is capable of holding 400 cubic meters of water.

7. Bamboo Warkawater Towers

Another low-tech invention for harvesting water from the air is an Italian designed “Warkawater Tower”  that is designed to collect water in countries like Ethiopia during cooler evening hours when the air becomes cooler.

Named after the warka tree, native to Ethiopia, special plastic mesh in bamboo frameworks collect dew, which then drips down to a collecting pan. This method requires no external energy and is well suited for arid countries like Ethiopia  where nighttime temperatures are often very cool, allowing due to form.

8. Dome collectors

Also suited for arid countries like Ethiopia, or even California or Arizona in the US, futuristic dome collectors also collect dew in early morning hours. This device involves a dome shaped mini-greenhouse of special plastic sheeting that collects dew which then drips into an inverted funnel shaped cone.

The collector requires no external energy source and is easy to assemble and disassemble. In addition, they can also be used to grow crops, which are located under the plastic “greenhouse”.

9. Underground water reservoirs

Whether natural, like Israel’s Sea of Galilee or man-made, water collecting reservoirs have been prime water storage sources since ancient times. More recently, these sources have become increasingly polluted, as well as severely depleted by periods of less than normal rainfall, or severe drought.

This is especially so in Middle East region countries like Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Cyprus.

As more and more water is removed, for drinking or agriculture, the remaining water is  more subject to saline pollution and other contamination.

10. Desalination technologies

A last resort :Although more in use today, desalination of sea water by reverse osmosis and other methods is one of the most environmentally damaging as it involves use of oil and other fossil fuels to run the desalination plants.

In addition, the heavy saline brine residue is usually allowed to flow back into the sea, making the seawater nearby more saline. Various ME and Mediterranean countries are now heavily dependent on desalination, including Cyprus which is receiving Israeli assistance to build desalination plants, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

As fresh water supplies grow even more scarce worldwide, fresh water related issues will undoubtedly receive more attention on future Earth Day events.

More on water collection and conservation:

Futuristic dome collectors collect dew for drinking water and crops

Cyprus gets new desalination plant with Mekorot Israel’s knowhow

Bamboo Warkawater Tower Harvests Potable Water From Air

Wadi Rum Bedouins Defy Nature by Growing Organic Veggies

The post 10 Inventions to Save Earth’s Water appeared first on Green Prophet.

It was Saint Ambrose (340 – 397 AD), bishop of Milan Italy who came up with the meme, When in Rome, do as the Romans do. For more than 1600 years this advice has seemed sound. You’ll find variations of it in travel books, tourism websites and travelogues of every sort. But sometimes the advice is wrong.

Sometimes it is impossible or wrong to completely follow local customs. I learned this from a tearful old Native American Indian named Iron Eyes Cody.

The medieval Latin si fueris Rōmae, Rōmānō vīvitō mōre; si fueris alibī, vīvitō sicut ibi translates more correctly as, “If you should be in Rome, live in the Roman manner; if you should be elsewhere, live as they do there.”

Consider this: The Keep America Beautiful public service advertisement made its debut on Earth Day in the spring of 1971. With braided hair and buckskin clothes, a man known as Iron Eyes Cody paddled a birch bark canoe past factory smokestacks onto a filthy shore.

The narrator explains that “Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country. And some people don’t.”

At that, someone throws a handful of rubbish out of their car and it lands on his moccasins. A single teardrop rolls down his cheek and 400 years of guilt over the treatment of Native Americans is dredged up and channeled into the hearts of everyone from aging hippies to members of the Nixon administration. Suddenly it seemed a sensible idea to clean up a once-beautiful country.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OHG7tHrNM[/youtube]

It didn’t matter that old Iron Eyes Cody was actually an Italian-American actor named Espera Oscar de Corti. And it didn’t matter that early environmental cleanups were mostly cosmetic.

We were inspired when my father drove us out to the local coal power plant to watch the black smoke turn to white steam as scrubbers were installed. The Cuyahoga River stopped catching on fire and even Lake Erie was becoming habitable for species of fish that were incapable of breathing PCBs and mercury.

Signs along long stretches of empty highway in the plains states warned that littering would result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. The threat of that made it impossible for us kids to even consider throwing a candy wrapper out of the car window so we tucked them into ashtrays and sticky seat cushions until we passed the next trash can, possibly a day’s drive away

“Keep America Beautiful” may have been the most effective television advertisement in history and until the shocking success of Ireland’s 15 cent plastic bag tax, was probably the most effective environmental campaign of all time.

So imagine my surprise when I saw someone throw rubbish out of their car onto a Florida road in an action that almost precisely mirrored the litterbugs in the Keep America Beautiful advertisement decades earlier.

I read the words Quebec – je me souviens from their license plate as the car sped off. Wait a minute, Quebec — do you mean Canada?

But everyone knows that all Canadians are nice people. How can this be? It was like finding out that Santa Claus was having a drunken affair with the tooth fairy. It just didn’t make sense. I felt like crying.

Most countries don’t have their own version of the Keep America Beautiful advertisement. Perhaps they don’t have enough displaced guilt over destroying proud indigenous cultures or maybe they don’t have enough Italian actors with overactive tear glands.

So if you were in charge of the Keep the Middle East Beautiful campaign, how would you make people feel guilty about peeing in their own water bowl?

I don’t have the answer. But when my family went swimming at one of the public beaches at Aqaba, Jordan we made an effort to not offend the local sensibilities.

My wife and daughter entered the water fully clothed and I wore a black T-shirt. But there was no mistaking the sun-starved skin of Irish-blooded tourists. We made a spectacle of ourselves just by being there, but we enjoyed seeing the fish and coral reef until a breast stroke caught a discarded plastic bag.

I already had the attention of the local beach crowd so I wondered how I should dispose of this without projecting some kind of ugly foreigner vibe?

What would Iron-Eyes Cody do? He would wear his traditional clothes, paddle his traditional canoe and cry his traditional tears even though that might make him a spectacle on the streets of an industrial neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio.

I felt many eyes watching me as I walked up to the trash can, deposited the plastic bag and marched back into the water. A few minutes later my snorkel ensnared another plastic bag. Bolder now after those first 15 seconds of fame, I marched up to the trash can and back into the water to find another and another and…

If defiling one of the world’s most beautiful transparent seas was a local custom, I had just broken it.

The same could be said of tourists who go for long walks in car-centric countries where such behavior might considered a cultural faux pas. Muslims and Orthodox Jews visiting Europe should be forgiven for breaking the local custom of leaving a trail of cigarette butts and broken alcohol bottles wherever they go.

Because when in Rome… you can still try to save the earth, even if the Romans don’t care about such things. And if your culture-defying actions happen to teach someone else to not behave like a bad Canadian, more power to you.

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Rasim Uyan was promoted as last week’s “Changemaker” – a Hacı Ömer Sabancı Foundation program in Turkey that recognizes 64 individuals who promote social development, community engagement and education – for turning his small shop in Kocaeli into a mini recycling center.

Recycling culture in Turkey not great

Although slightly better off than Egypt or Lebanon, where trash permeates almost every aspect of daily life, Turkey’s recycling culture is still in its infancy. Some facilities exist in major urban centers, but most people either aren’t aware of them, or they simply aren’t convenient to use.

This is slowly changing though. Zeki Terzioglu, head of waste management department at the environment ministry, said the ministry aims to follow EU legislation to bolster the country’s waste management system.

“We are merging 12 regulations under one to simplify the legal framework for the benefit of the private sector interested in recycling,” he told SE Times. “We instruct municipalities to inform the public about the benefit of recycling through conferences, publications.”

The Changemaker program isn’t specifically devoted to environmental issues, but it has shone the spotlight on several individuals whose mission is to protect Turkey’s natural resources. Uyan is one of them.

Every day is Earth Day

“I am environment-friendly not for one day but every day,” Uyan told Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News in a recent interview.

Referring to the now very popular annual Earth Day event designed to mobilize the world’s attention to natural crises and wonders, the barber says he has engaged in environmental stewardship every day for the last 25 years.

The Changemaker’s program started in 2009, but Uyan started rewarding his customers for earth-friendly gestures without prompting from any organization.

Anyone who shows up with five kilograms of wasted batteries gets a free cut and shave. Same goes for 50 glass or plastic bottles, 500 bottle caps or ten planted trees.

It’s like a loyalty program that comes with the additional benefit of cleaner streets and air.

As a result of his efforts, according to Hurriyet, the Environmental Protection and Packaging Waste Recovery and Recycling Trust (CEVKO) has installed  recycling bins in many schools in the region and the Izmit Waste and Residue Treatment, Incineration and Recycling Inc. (IZAYDAS) has begun to promote proper battery disposal as well.

It just goes to show that the actions of one man can make a significant difference.

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With my trusted camera by my side, I have explored many reaches of the earth – from the deserts of Egypt to the cobbled streets of Ghent in Belgium, from an island in Kenya to the rolling hills of Virginia, and though I’ve barely scraped the surface and there are many photographers more skilled than I, my travels have challenged me to simplify my life, eat healthy food, drive less, and be a more loving, grounded person.

It is my deepest hope that these 13 images will stir your soul so that you too will be inspired to protect our remaining resources – today and every other day of the year.

All images © Tafline Laylin

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As Earth Day 2013 approaches on April 22, issues of water options in arid countries like Saudi Arabia will be high on the agenda. Countries in the Middle East that face increasing water shortages, especially those situated on the Arabian Peninsula, have to rely more on energy intensive desalination and “importing” water from other locations, including the over-stressed Nile River. The current water crises in Saudi Arabia, for example, has pushed them to build the world’s largest desalination plant  to provide enough drinking water for its population. Desalination has not been the answer for the country’s agriculture efforts, however.

Scientific researchers investigating the effects of climate change in Saudi Arabia predict that by the year 2050 increasing temperatures and lack of adequate annual rainfall will have a serious affect on the country’s agricultural infrastructure.

The post Saudi Agriculture To Be Hit Hard by Climate Change appeared first on Green Prophet.

About a decade ago Israelis were much better at green washing and consumerism than caring for our planet through social green action. That’s all changed. The country has leaped into putting environmental awareness at the top of people’s concerns. This year there are dozens of events going on around the country to celebrate April 22, as Earth Day. Jerusalem boasts the world’s first Green Pilgrim’s conference, and our Miriam will be there reporting. The festivities kick off tonight April 21 with a gala event.

Other events worth noting in Jerusalem is the Cool Globes public art exhibit on the Mamilla Esplanade which portrays large globe structures and new solutions for climate change (see in photo above). The globes will stay on display throughout the summer, unless of course they melt in the hot Israeli sun.

Meanwhile there will be free concerts linked to the pilgrim’s event which is bringing faith leaders from around the world to unite for the green cause. Jerusalem’s deputy mayor Naomi Tsur reasons that if 80 percent of the world identifies with some version of faith, the faith message should be a big part of sustainable tourism to Jerusalem, Israel and other holy land countries.

Naomi Tsur

Also in Jerusalem at the Mamilla esplanade (which Jesse is not fond of as a shopping destination!) will be the Israeli version of the Green Passport project, teaching travellers and tourists to be more respectful to the environment they are in.

The Old City walls will be lit by solar power in a shade of green, and thanks to ecocinema a movie on Israel’s plants and animals will be projected on the walls.

And generally speaking, just a regular walk inside the Old City where life has gone as usual for millennia is a sustainable green act.

Tourists unbeknown to Earth Day are in for a serious educational experience this year from Israel!

The post Earth Day Events in Jerusalem appeared first on Green Prophet.

The hugely popular DC-based Muslim hip hop group Native Deen have over 110,000 Facebook followers alone. And one of them, Aisha Ali, says she can’t go to sleep without listening to their songs. So when they release a new music video for a song called “Our Earth,” the diaspora is bound to listen.

Taken from the album “The Remedy,” this gentle environmental tribute diverges widely from many hip hop songs by referencing the importance of recycling and making smarter consumer choices. “What have we done to our earth,” the band asks in the song’s chorus, “When will we open our eyes and change the way we live our lives?”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5axaigfMgu8[/youtube]

A greener way of life

Deen is Arabic for “Way of Life” or “religion” and the band was started by Joshua Salaam, Naeem Muhammad, and Abdul-Malik Ahmad – all Muslim men born and raised in the District of Columbia. They adhere to traditional way of dress and incorporate Islamic teachings into their music while still maintaining something of a young appeal.

Their fans live as far afield as Detroit and Jeddah and have been eagerly awaiting the release of this epic music video, which features the young men in space suits, questioning the impact that humanity has had on our one and only planet, and what we can do to heal it.

Native Deen believes that every human being on Earth should feel responsible for taking care of the Earth, according to their official release. “We are all here to enjoy the fruits that it bears and take shelter under the shades that trees provide us and breathe the oxygen released into our atmosphere…Every man, woman, and child has something to be thankful for.”

The children

Children play an important role in the hard-hitting music video, which reflects the burden we and our parents have left for them, a burden that is well illustrated in the video.

“I see her shivering shaking; cause of all of the mess we are making; But I’m feeling my people awaken; And were headed in a new direction.” But this is a feel-good song that is designed to inspire fans, not to alienate them even further, so the group’s hard messages are followed up with tools for action.

“I’ve started to change the things I buy, I’m making adjustments to my place; I know that change it starts inside, recycling, watching what I waste; And now my voice I use to shout, when these companies try wheel and deal; Every atom’s weight of good will count, to ease pain that she feels.”

Although Native Deen’s music is not earth-shattering, not that I’m an expert, it is compelling and the band has great intentions.

It seems healthier to have kids listening to this group than some of the thugs that call themselves hip hop artists. But more importantly, it is extraordinary, historically speaking, that there can be a Muslim hip hop band in the first place. And that they have taken it upon themselves to spread messages of environmental stewardship that apply to people from all walks of life.

The post Native Deen: Muslim Hip Hop Group Releases Epic Earth Day Video appeared first on Green Prophet.

Another Earth Day is upon us, and for those of us living the Middle East the very origins of this ecological event have much to do a lot with fossil fuel based energy so prevalent in this region. Aside from the frequently discussed issues surrounding the affects of oil and other fossil fuels on the world’ environment, much has been written and talked about the effects of plastic products on the world’s seas and oceans like “islands” of floating plastic material.

While of environmental effects of plastics in the oceans has become more than obvious, more attention needs to be given to common day-to-day plastic containers and other items, including so-called one time use or “throwaway” plastic dishes and silverware.

David de Rothschild’s Plastiki  Catamaran was made with recycled plastic drink bottles

Uses for recycled plastic items have been written a lot by Green Prophet, and range anywhere from upscale fashion clothing items  to even bridges for cars made out of certain types of recycled plastics.

Aside from the usually mentioned plastic beverage bottles, of which environmentalist David De Rothschild had made into a catamaran sailing craft, most modern households purchase numerous items packaged or enclosed in plastic bottles or containers.

To emphasize this, I took a photograph of some items that came out of my own home (above); these are containers that many people usually throw away afterwards. Some of these common plastic items include yogurt containers, tomato paste and sauce packages, containers for salads and other food items, and even packages for spices and fresh vegetables. A great many such items are thrown into the garbage can daily wind up in a land fill along with other non-organic trash. To say that these items can stay in the ground for hundreds of years is just putting it lightly, as the polymer and Bisphenol A or BPA plastic material that can cause a number of health problems, including gene alterations that can lead to breast and prostate cancers.

Of my plastic packaging samples, the newly shaped yogurt containers are really quite cute and can be “recycled” in one’s home for a variety of uses; including fruit cups and drinking glasses, or used to hold ice cream. The food containers can be used over an over as well and therefore serve other purposes in the home. But if you insist in throwing these items out, at least separate them and dispose them in an outside plastic material recycling container; if one is readily available.

In my area, people bought a lot of disposable plastic dishes and tableware for use during the recent Passover holiday; of which a great deal of it has probably already wound up  being  thrown into landfills. Much of these disposable plastic items could have been separated and disposed of in plastic material recycle bins, just like plastic food packaging items.

At least in this way, one of the true meanings of going green in your home can be at least partially observed.

More articles about recycling plastic products:

The Origin of Earth Day and the Greening of the Arab Spring
Throwaway Passover Dishes to Fill Landfills
D Grade’s Hipster Trash Clothing is Made Cheap in China
Will Bridges of Recycled Plastic Work in the Middle East?
David De Rothschild Bravely Sails Away to Pacific’s Plastic Island

The post Recycling for Earth Day appeared first on Green Prophet.

It is worth remembering that a few decades ago, there were no environmentalists in the United States. There were no rules that prohibited polluters from spewing toxic fumes into the atmosphere. Nobody was watching the agriculture industry to ensure that their pesticides weren’t contaminating water ways. Americans were asleep.

Then Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring hit the NY Times bestseller list in 1962 and woke them up. Suddenly the relationship between environmental degradation and public health became clear and angered people. But even then it wasn’t until a US senator channeled energy from anti-war protests into the first Earth Day in 1970 that the US green movement was born. Enter the Arab Spring.

MENA is Awake!

More than any time in recent history, people living in the Levant, the Gulf, and the Magreb regions are awake. Ordinary citizens have found strength in social media and one another to resist brutal regimes; at last, they are using their collective voice to fight back against unemployment and food insecurity.

And with that courage, to varying degrees of success, they have ousted unfit leaders and continue to struggle for a new era of accountability and justice, dignity and a decent standard of living. So how can we channel this energy into demanding environmental justice?

For clues, let’s step back a few decades.

Human history is saturated with war and violence, but in the 1970s, new media and technology brought the horrors of Vietnam to living rooms across the United States, making it more real and imminent than it had ever been before. More than 58,000 Americans forced to defend someone else’s war died in the tropics, while as many as 2 million Vietnamese suffered the same grisly fate.

Finally, ordinary people put fear of authority aside and rose up, protesting all across the country. And once they found their feet, they became unstoppable, leaving politicians no choice but to listen. It wasn’t rosy, there were many pitfalls, and this isn’t even half the story, but eventually democracy won a small battle and the United States withdrew their forces.

Vietnam and the green movement

What does this have to do with the green movement?

After a 1969 oil spill spoiled the coast of beautiful Santa Barbara in California, Gaylord Nelson – a senator from Wisconsin – decided it was time to encourage Americans to fight for environmental justice too, and his timing couldn’t have been better. In fact, one might argue that it was then or never. He had to catch the people while they were awake and mobilized, before apathy caught them in its grip once more, so he did. This is how the first Earth Day came about.

On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans took to streets and parks demanding an end to oil spills, toxic dumps, and the destruction of wild places. Egypt’s black cloud? The same used to exist in America’s industrial areas. Trash-filled wadis? Those existed too. Red Sea oil spills and illegal fishing of endangered species? These are all issues that Americans have been fighting against for the past three decades.

Channeling anger for good

It took a combination of government leadership, grassroots vision, and a strong sense of injustice to get the momentum started, and the green movement has been gathering steam ever since. There have been peaks and valleys, times of inertia and times of too much aggression, but most people will agree that informed Americans are among the most enlightened environmentalists on the planet.

Of course, we still have tar sands and antarctic drilling, Monsanto, and the damn Koch Brothers, because corporations are motivated by greed and will do whatever they can get away with. But activists make it a lot harder to commit eco-crimes than it was a few decades ago.

We need to direct the revolutionary spirit of the Arab Spring towards environmental stewardship. It is time to hold companies that do business in our beautiful places accountable. We have a right to eat food that is free of carcinogens, to drink clean water, and to breathe fresh air. And there is no better time to demand these things than now — while our eyes are wide open.

Happy Earth Day!

Image credit: Earth and Technology, Shutterstock

More on Environmental Issues and the Arab Spring: 

The Arab Spring was Hibernating in Egypt’s Green Party

#Occupy Climate Change

Jordan Joins Food Protests as Tunisian President Steps Down

The post The Origin of Earth Day and Greening the Arab Spring appeared first on Green Prophet.

During the past few years Iranian environmental activists have been worried about the great volume of trash which is polluting the environment around the cities and on far away mountains. With fast urbanization and population growth in Iran, the number of visitors to green spaces around the cities has increased, putting a strain on the environment with increased littering.

The mountains north of Tehran, like Touchal and Darband, as well as along the inner-city roads, are popular weekend destinations for many of Tehran’s residents.  So are Sabalan in East-Azarbaijan Province, Damavand, and Alam Kooh, the first and second highest mountains of Iran. Their popularity has also contributed to their deminse, so mountaineers and activists in Iran are helping people clean up their acts.

Efforts for Cleaning the Mountains

It has been two decades since the first cleaning events in the mountains were initiated by Iranian mountaineers and environmental activists. Abbas Mohammadi is the head of a group called Mountain Watch that is also connected to the Alpine Club of Iran on Facebook but not active since 2013.

According to  interviews in the press (in Farsi), one of the aims of groups like the Mountain Watch is to lead visitors and hikers to have a more environment-friendly culture. Mohammadi says that some members of the group are tired of picking up the trash from the ground and putting it in a bag and that unaware hikers litter more rapidly.

But he believes that these attempts have had good results up to now and the similar groups will be more successful by informing and teaching people more.

The method that the group uses is to talk face to face to the hikers who are careless about keeping the mountains clean. Maybe this is a good way of promoting the level of participation of people in cleaning the natural environment around the cities in long term.

In one of the cleaning events, which took place on Earth Day the members of the Alpine Club of Iran used the following tactics to influence hikers:

• Cleaned the mountaineering route for at least one or two hours;
• Talked to other mountaineers about cooperating in the program;
• Talked to the local residents of the region about the importance of preserving the natural environment;
• Explained the concept of sustainable development;
• Contacted city councils, environmental preservation offices, and natural resources offices and encouraged them to arrange similar programs;
• Contacted radio and television channels and websites and informed about the Earth Day and the mountain cleaning programs;
• Collected information about the urbanization, road and dam construction, and mining projects and their environmental impacts and gave the result of your observations to the authorities;
• Identified the people who are responsible for destruction of the environment to the responsible organizations.

Similar events took place in Yemen and Lebanon, demonstrating that while awareness is building slowly, it is possible to clean up our beautiful places with active participation from ordinary people and activists not only in Iran, but throughout the Middle East.

Above image in Alborz Mountains via Hamed

More green news from Iran:
Eco Tourism in the Middle East: Iran
Iran Looks to Create Biofuel
Iran Inaugurates Its First Solar CSP Plant
Celebrate Spring and Iranian New Year

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