Although there are Israelis who hop between Eilat and Tel Aviv on a plane rather than brave the four-and-a-half hour Egged bus ride, for the most part Israel’s postage stamp size makes the country easy to tackle without taking to the skies. Not so for the USA. I decided last week that I will visit […]
Tuesday, September 23 was Public Transportation Day in Israel, the local answer to European Mobility Week and World Carfree Day, an attempt to “remind the world that we don’t have to accept our car-dominated society.” In Europe, they managed to keep the cars off the streets for a few hours. In Israel, we will have […]
With the Jewish new year coming up in next week, some of us are thinking about green new year’s resolutions and lifestyle changes that we’d like to make. Whether it’s recycling more items or starting a compost heap, there’s no such thing as a small difference. But what about greening your celebration of Rosh Hashanah? […]
It was bound to happen, sooner or later. After the kibbutz – the classic Israeli collective community where members shared everything – urban car sharing services were only a hop, skip, and a car engine purr away. Thanks to new Israeli company, Car2go, the concept of car sharing (which has already enjoyed great success all over […]
This prophet just made the flight from Tel Aviv to his childhood home of New Jersey. After a year of observing Israel and it’s eco-consciousness (and at times lack thereof), I was eager to see how the Garden State measured up to its nick name. I couldn’t help but compare my observations in New Jersey […]
UPDATE: DOV KHENIN’S NIGHT AT CITYTREE HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 at 9 pm. Dov Khenin, Tel Aviv’s greenest mayoral candidate, will be speaking this Monday in Hebrew at Etz BaIr (CityTree), which is on Bialik Street 23 in Tel Aviv. Khenin is currently a Knesset Member representing Hadash, a joint Jewish-Arab Communist […]
Sometimes it is necessary to confront our decision-makers with what has been called “the threat of a good example” – to bring them face to face with evidence that, despite their insistence to the contrary, it is possible to do things differently. That, in a nutshell, was the idea behind an event held last week […]
This Prophet recently got the chance to travel to New York City, and was a little bit apprehensive about the green-ness factor of the Big Apple. For a city so notorious for its chic blacks and greys, we figured that a fairly untrendy color like green wouldn’t be too popular. We were wrong. Apparently green […]
As part of its overall activities to improve service for tourists visiting the city this summer, the Association for Tourism Tel Aviv-Jaffa has introduced Segway mobile information points onto the city streets. The unique, colorful Segways can be found on the streets of Tel Aviv seven days a week from 13:00 – 19:00, particularly in […]
For the most part it’s usually better to buy local. This cuts out the emissions created as a result of shipping, getting the product to your door. This is an important question: Is it better to buy biodegradable garbage bags that are manufactured in China? Or go with the one’s made a block away, that […]
As the Green Prophet archives will tell you, Israel is no stranger to environmentally friendly tourism. Not only is there a variety of ecologically minded guesthouses all of the country (including a vegetarian paradise in the Galilee), but the Israeli Ministry of Tourism has announced that it is going green. Part of this initiative has […]
MK Dr. Dov Khenin announces his candidacy for the office of Mayor of Tel Aviv on Monday, flanked by members of the A City for All movement in Tel Aviv’s Gan Meir. (Photo by Yoav Lerman). What would happen if a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist were to take charge of a polluted and traffic-clogged city like Tel […]
Last month we wrote about City Tree, a green oasis in a historical building in central Tel Aviv. This urban environmental group focuses on restoring their 1920s apartment with ecological renovation methods (such as recycled paper construction and milk based paints), teaching urbanites how to compost, and cooperating with the Good Energy Initiative in order […]
My parents are not your typical candidates for owning a hybrid car. They’ve been loyal owners of gas-guzzling Volvos for at least 20 years, replacing one trusty, sensible Volvo with another about once a decade. So it was quite a pleasant surprise when they announced 8 months ago that they were going to turn in […]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNY_-1Fsd2k[/youtube] The Israel cleantech world is buzzing over BrightSource and its subsidiary Luz II. The companies recently invited the press to visit the world’s first operating solar thermal field in the Negev Desert, for creating clean and efficient solar energy. The 12,000 square meter test site will generate 1.5 MW of electricity. Cheaper heliostats, no […]