Israel

Middle East Illusions Change Reality

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUI_Lq4qhcI[/youtube] Following violent protests in February, Cairo police stacked 10-feet-tall masonry walls around the Ministry of the Interior to cut access to that hated symbol of Egypt’s ousted regime. New barriers appeared after subsequent riots, turning nearby communities into a labyrinth of roadblocks and checkpoints. Recently, artists “removed” them, overpainting concrete with images of the streetscapes they blocked. In a […]

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Northern Israel Monitors Sewage Trucks By GPS

Is Big Brother watching your sewage? Israeli polluters can no longer dump raw sewage, lest they get caught. Drivers often dump collected waste into open areas to save on fuel and avoid paying authorized landfills. One incident occurred in 2009 in which drivers dumped the contents of 50 trucks worth of sewage food waste near the […]

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Can Shared Water Be The Key To Peace?

Green Prophet goes on another water trip with Friends of the Earth and guests from Sri Lanka. “Even sewage has a national flag,” said Gidon Bromberg, co-director and co-founder of Eco-Peace/Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME). Israel Director of the organization for 18 years, Bromberg says he’s seen how natural resources, like water, and even […]

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Israel’s Beach Season Opens With Litterbugs

Despite periodic volunteer clean up efforts, much of Israel’s beach front suffers from public littering Lawyer Amit Bracha, director of Israel’s Union for Environmental Defense,  was a recent guest on Israel’s Channel 10 morning TV show, speaking on the official opening of beach season for 2012. Bracha told the program moderators that despite greater efforts […]

Rosetta Green’s Cotton Goes Global

Often dubbed the “start-up nation,” Israel has repeatedly proven to be fertile soil for cleantech innovators that succeed and are then bought up by international companies. Israel-based Agro-tech company Rosetta Green has been chosen by international seed manufacturer Bayer CropScience AG for collaboration on a project that will help improve cotton crop for farmers. Rosetta […]

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Israel’s BrightSource Still Private After IPO Withdrawal

Concentrated solar power company BrightSource doesn’t wear its Israeli identity on its sleeve. “We’re a U.S. company with Israeli engineering, not an Israeli company. It’s a nuance but important to get right,” Keely Wachs, senior director of corporate communications for BrightSource, wrote in an email message. And with an American President and CEO named John […]

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Carpet Made From Pebbles Gives Great Foot Massage

An Israeli designer creates a rug that incorporates real pebbles. Walking on them is like a foot massage! It’s pretty common these days to see pottery and household objects that are designed to resemble nature. And carpets too. While you may see pathways made of pebbles, it’s not likely you’ll find them inside your carpets. […]

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Consumerism, Ecology, and the Sabbath

Ben-Gurion researchers claim that Israel’s urge to shop will eventually force Shabbat laws to change.   This is a typical side street in the Yaffa flea market, Israel. From left to right, notice a charming second-hand shop that sells amusing things like the full-sized statue of a Roman gladiator. Blond tourists with cameras hanging from their […]

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Middle East Water Woes Beg for Environmental Sewage Solutions

The environment is politics and in the Middle East this is ever so stark, ravaged by internal socio-religio-political conflicts and international wars. Wars internally and externally are based on oppression, division, exclusion, land theft, and expropriation of the Middle East’s oil reserves. The Middle East is the globe’s oil capital. Those who want to own it […]

Israeli EV Company Better Place Reports Millions In Losses

Better Place is not doing as well as everyone expected, with financial losses running in the millions. The idea seemed flawless: battery-powered cars that could run on 100% electricity and could be recharged almost instantly by swapping batteries at special charging stations. But despite all the optimistic predictions, Better Place, the Israeli company that has […]

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How To Make Paper from Potty

I catch up with Applied Clean Tech to know more about their recycled toilet paper project Above: recycled poo pellets that serve as raw material for recycled paper It will probably take a certain market approach and finesse to get people to accept, let alone truly appreciate, recycled toilet paper. But Refael Aharon, the CEO […]