News Forum Archives: October 2005
Is It Organic? Well, Maybe
By Jessica Merrill
The New York Times
October 20, 2005
Hundreds of soaps, shampoos and skin creams call themselves organic, but their labels have long been confusing, even misleading. A moisturizing cream might be made with organic kiwi, strawberries, jojoba oil and aloe vera, but then mixed with synthetic preservatives. No government agency checked whether the ingredients were truly organic.
But now the Agriculture Department is applying its strict organic food standards to personal care products too. Two months ago, after years of wavering, the agency’s National Organic Program declared that cosmetics can also be labeled with the familiar round, two-tone “U.S.D.A. Organic” seal.
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No Green Acres? Try Skyscrapers
By Sam Jaffe
Wired News
Sep. 28, 2005 PT
Tens of thousands of empty storage containers are stacked in towers along I-95 across from the harbor in Newark, New Jersey. They’re heaped there in perpetuity, too cheap to be shipped back to Asia but too expensive to melt down.
Where many might see a pile of garbage, Lior Hessel sees, of all things, an organic farm. Those storage containers would be ideal housing for miniature farms, he believes, stacked one upon another like an agricultural skyscraper, all growing fresh organic produce for millions of wealthy consumers. And since the crops would be grown with artificial lighting, servers, sensors and robots, the cost of labor would consist of a single computer technician’s salary.
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Green Berets Prefer Biodiesel
By Dan Orzech
Wired News
Sep. 28, 2005 PT
When Erwin Rommel’s Panzer tanks ran out of diesel fuel in North Africa in World War II, the German general poured cooking oil into their gas tanks to keep the vehicles fighting.
The U.S. military thinks Germany’s “Desert Fox” might have been onto something. At bases throughout the United States, soldiers are filling their gas tanks with biodiesel—diesel fuel made from soybean or other vegetable oil.
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Romance Made Electric
By Danny Hakim
The New York Times
September 29, 2005
DETROIT, Sept. 28 – Alexandra Paul, a former star of “Baywatch,” is not a satisfied General Motors customer – to put it mildly.
In 2002, G.M. sent a tow truck to her house to reclaim a car she had leased from the company. When it was done, she went inside and cried.
“I’ve never had any emotional feelings toward a car in my life,” Ms. Paul, 42, said in an interview recently. But this particular car was the EV1, a low-slung, battery-power car that zipped out from a standing start without releasing emissions from the tailpipe.
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