With at least 660 million people around the globe relying on the ocean for their livelihoods, and many living on the poverty line, Miriam Turner, Interface's Assistant VP, Co-Innovation, saw an opportunity. Inspired by Aquafil's recycling strides, she asked "Could we take this down to the community level and benefit some of the poorest people in the world? What if we could build a truly inclusive business model - buying discarded nets from local fishermen - giving them extra income - and cleaning up the beaches and oceans at the same time?" Published on Sep 3, 2013 Interface Europe on Facebook.

This is an overview of the solution for reducing the pollution, water wasting, unattractive properties of surface parking lots in Portland, Oregon

It builds on a January 22, 2015 story on NPR's Morning Edition entitled, Building Sponge City: Redesigning LA for Long Term Drought. Published on Jan 23, 2015. Curated and annotated by Ruth Ann Barrett of EarthSayers.tv. Updated June, 2015.

Print Proposal is here.  Summary website is www.spongyparkinglots.com.

Websites of team members: Mary Vogel of PlanGreen:Regenerating Communities

Kelli A. Grover, Firwood Design Group (FDG): Surveying, Engineering, Planning

Maria Cahill, Green Girl Land Development Solutions: Cost Effective Storm Water Infrastructure

Suenn Ho, Resolve Architecture: Architectural and Urban Design

Marianne Zarkin: Landscape Architects

Ruth Ann Barrett, EarthSayers.tv: Voices of Sustainability 

Before you throw away your old devices, consider recycling the valuable materials inside them. It’s an easy way to reduce your environmental footprint and maybe make some cash, too.

Produced by: Molly Wood and Rebekah Fergusson Read the New York Times story here.

An ultra-high-resolution NASA computer model has given scientists a stunning new look at how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere travels around the globe. Very interesting.

Plumes of carbon dioxide in the simulation swirl and shift as winds disperse the greenhouse gas away from its sources. The simulation also illustrates differences in carbon dioxide levels in the northern and southern hemispheres and distinct swings in global carbon dioxide concentrations as the growth cycle of plants and trees changes with the seasons.

The carbon dioxide visualization was produced by a computer model called GEOS-5, created by scientists at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office.

The visualization is a product of a simulation called a “Nature Run.” The Nature Run ingests real data on atmospheric conditions and the emission of greenhouse gases and both natural and man-made particulates. The model is then left to run on its own and simulate the natural behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere. This Nature Run simulates January 2006 through December 2006.

While Goddard scientists worked with a “beta” version of the Nature Run internally for several years, they released this updated, improved version to the scientific community for the first time in the fall of 2014.  

This video is public domain and can be downloaded here. 

Producers: Ben Depp
Location: Bayou Corne, USA
Executive Producer: Storyhunter

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