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Here we go again... a pipeline owned by Enbridge Energy Partners has leaked 800,000-840,000 gallons of oil into a creek flowing into the Kalamazoo River near Battle Creek, Michigan. On a more positive note, the Zephyr solar plane finally landed this week at the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona after 14 days and 24 minutes, setting a new record. In BP oil spill news, a new report by The Center for Public Integrity reveals that, in the hours after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught on fire, the US Coast Guard failed to follow its own internal firefighting procedures, potentially causing the rig to sin...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Bedbug. Image credit:wikipedia Bedbugs are are becoming quite the urban plague again, resurgent and causing much misery in US cities after decades of being a relatively rare problem. Some methods of being rid of bed bugs, these days, are pretty awful from an environmental standpoint: like cooking an entire apartment building to bake them out, repeatedly washing all cloths and linens in hot water, and paying for multiple (often ineffective) pesticide applications. It gets worse....Read the full story on TreeHugger

This week, the UN declared water and sanitation a human right, but since that is not going to improve water scarcity around the world tomorrow, here is a glimpse at what it will mean—with some generous insight from Ned Breslin of Water for People. Will governments be required to ensure access to clean water? Will it have to be free? Maybe—and no. Water is now officially a human right, but it remains to be seen what that will mean in practice. Governments may change how they manage and distribute water, but there are no set ru... Read the full story on Planet Green

Cleaning the supply chain is one of the challenges of Walmart's sustainability project. Image credit: williamcho/Flickr This guest post was written by Rand Waddoups, senior manager of sustainability at Walmart. Last July, we announced that we would lead in the creation of a Sustainable Product Index—a tool that will help manufacturers, merchants, customers and other retailers make more sustainable purchasing decisions. During the last 12 months, we have learned this process is g...Read the full story on TreeHugger

If you watched George Clooney in action in Up in the air, you saw a master at the art of packing the rolling carryon bag. Apartment Therapy has looked at this issue a number of times, noting that every pound of weight shed from a plane saves 14,000 gallons of fuel per year. They have some great tips in one post: Star with the right bag. If the bag is bigger you will fill it up. Wear your clothes a number of times. "it's entirely possible to bring lightweight, quick-drying clothes that can easily be washed in the sink at night and worn again the next day." They also recommend good ... Read the full story on Planet Green

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Photo via Free Extras According to some of the mainstream media, anyway After taking a look back to assess the media's coverage of the BP spill this week, I think only one internet-born acronym will suffice to convey my opinion. And that, of course, is WTF. It seems like we've been bombarded with headlines and stories that were cranked out directly by BP's PR machine -- only way rosier than BP would likely venture. Stories about how all that dern oil has just up and vanished! How BP must be doing an amazing job of skimming, and how all of us silly worrywarts were up in arms over nothin...Read the full story on TreeHugger

With global water supplies dwindling at an alarming rate, Planet 100 offers up a timely guide on everything you need to know about water desalination. WATCH VIDEO: Climate Change Deniers Get Desperate Why is it Important? Why are we even talking about water desalination? Quite frankly, because we’re on the brink of a global water crisis. As the global population rises so does demand for water which puts pressure on the planet’s finite supply. Add to scarcity, the fact that we’re polluting what little we have left, you can see why desalination is b... Read the full story on Planet Green

Visual Economics has an awesome graphic that breaks down how much of what food groups Americans eat every year. It involves a whole lot of dairy (bad news for the environment), but is surprisingly high in fruits and vegetables (and it's not all corn!). The 53 gallons of soda, 29 pounds of French fries, and 23 pounds of pizza are kind of scary, especially when you look at what they're doing to us over time, and as GOOD points out, the ch... Read the full story on Planet Green

photo: jurveston via flickr Algae biofuels are probably the most touted future hope to replace large amounts of petroleum-based liquid fuels with a renewable source. However, a new study in Energy and Fuels shows that when you grow that algae in bioreactors made up of clear tubes, so much energy is required that the carbon footprint of the biofuel is o...Read the full story on TreeHugger

The Chevy Volt will soon be launched commercially, and so GM is intensifying its campaign to convince potential buyers. Here are only some of the recent Volt news items to hit the wire: a Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: AP Photo/NOAA The Sapphire Princess, a cruise ship operated by Princess Cruises, struck a 43 foot long female humpback whale on Wednesday, causing it to become lodged in an undersea protuberance of the bow. The ship, en route to Juneau, Alaska, was forced to make a detour to Douglas Island, where the whale was removed from the bow and taken into the custody of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A necropsy will be performed to determine the cause of death....Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo: Franco Folini via flickr Even though it often seems that even mentioning climate change or pricing carbon on a national basis is an utter nonstarter, here's another example of how states aren't waiting for the Feds to get their act together: The Sacramento Bee reports on progress with the Western Climate Initiative. Specifically, California and 10 ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

In case you haven't heard: As of next June, Whole Foods Market will require all health and beauty products making organic claims to be certified according to USDA's organic standards or by NSF International. This is big news because right now, the term "organic" means diddly when you see it on a bottle of shampoo or tube of lip gloss. We caught up with Jeremiah McElwee, Senior Whole Body Coordinator for Whole Foods Market, to get the back story on the label lingo change. PG: What inspired Whole Foods to require beauty products making organic claims to be certified by USDA or NSF International? JM: Whole Foods Market created our organic labeling guidelines to support the integrity of the term “organic” by giving it a strong meaning and to ensure that pr... Read the full story on Planet Green

We've discussed the environmental perils of food waste before, but here's an interesting twist: all that waste means more energy is lost in the form of food than is stored in all of the nation's offshore oil and gas reserves. New Scientist reports on this interesting calculation: Recent estimates suggest that 16 per cent of the energy consumed in the US is used to produce food. Yet at least 25 per cent of food is wasted each year. Michael Webber and Amanda Cuellar ... Read the full story on Planet Green

They may seem like two disparate topics: climate change and an archaic Senate procedural rule. But they have more in common than you might think. Thanks to the Senate filibuster rule, essentially any piece of legislation needs 60 votes, a super-majority, if it hopes to pass. This is one of the reasons that the climate bill was killed in the Senate -- it could only muster a normal majority, like 55 votes. In a true democracy, that should be enough to fly. But in our political culture, it's still miles away, and reason enough to sound a deat...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Tourists meet Tortoise. Credit Brian Merchant Yesterday Brian wrote Galapagos Islands Moved Off Endangered Sites List, concluding: If anything, the problems have only grown more complex and fundamental -- there's now a growing island population that must learn to live sustainably with severely limited resources, and a bevy of threats from other invasive species remain at large. Three TreeHuggers, Brian Merchant, myself and founder Graham Hill have been to the Galapagos in three consecutive years, and w...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Making a slow boat look fast... photo: Neal McQ via flickr. Having assessed the overall picture of how our patterns of global shipping and global aviation use tons of fuel, leave a high environmental footprint, and how technological changes can help but perhaps not fully solve the problem, let's move on to how we can change ourselves and our habits. Remember, we want to keep as much of the benefits of gl...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Michael Graham Richard The Little Car that Could The Toyota Prius hybrid has been sold in the U.S. for 10 years (even longer in Japan, where it was first introduced in 1997), and during that decade this car went from a small niche player considered 'weird' by most people (I remember back when the #1 question was "do you have to plug it in?") to a best-seller halo car whose technology has found its way in many other models, including vehicles made by Toyota's competitors. During that decade in the U.S., Toyota has sold about 900,000 Prius hybrids there, and about 1.8 million w...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Container ship photo: Daniel Ramirez; airliner photo: Bob MacInnes Two things which I think are worth keeping front and center when discussing how we wean ourselves off our petroleum addiction: Travel between nations is good; trade between nations is good. It's easy to point out specific incidences where less-than-savory outcomes r...Read the full story on TreeHugger