Green adventure-seeker Andy Pag used to wake up in the cozy confines of the vegetable oil powered bus that he has been attempting to drive around the world. Now the eco-activist, who is being held in India under ‘suspicion of terrorism’ charges because he carried an unlicensed satellite telephone, wakes up every morning on the cold stone floor of Ajmer prison.

Pag, whose full name is Andrea Pagnacco, was arrested in Pushkar in January for carrying a satellite telephone without the proper permission and documentation.

While no official charges have been filed, the 36-year-old has been deemed a threat to national security and as such, denied bail. He is still in prison awaiting trial.

Infuriatingly, Pag is being held on the grounds that he failed to procure a permit to carry a satellite telephone, however his lawyer has since discovered there appears to be no government department in all of India that actually issues permits to use satellite phones in the country.

Pag’s sister Francesca Pagnacco told the Telegraph that the family was concerned because if the case went to trial, Mr Pag could be held in a remand center for up to a year.

“He is not a terrorist,” said Miss Pagnacco. “He wanted to raise awareness about biofuels and just had no idea about the permits required for the sat phone. I think they are concerned because some of the Mumbai bombers used the same phone.”

Pag designed his Bio Truck Expedition project to raise awareness about global warming. His goal was to show the world that he could emit less than two tons of carbon while driving around the world by doing it in a 20-year-old school bus that he had rigged out to run off bio-diesel and energy generated from solar panels. He had already covered over 9,000 miles, and two continents before being imprisoned in India.

This isn’t Pag’s first attempt at going on a green road trip in order to raise awareness about environmental issues. Two years ago, he drove a chocolate powered truck through the African desert to Timbuktu.

Prag’s eco adventure has taken a frightening turn. He has a issued digital plea to the world for help:

I’m launching this email petition and hoping that everyone that’s been so supportive already, will help by sending the email below to the Indian High Commissioners in London and in Rome, as well as to the only email address I could find for the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Please add your name and home town at the bottom of the email and of course you can edit the contents as you see fit. Tell your friends about it (facebook it, tweet it, talk about it at work…) and invite them to send emails too. Hopefully if enough people send it, it will have an impact.

This is my last resort and I hope it will motivate the officer to complete his investigation. There is no legal time limit. It’s already been 6 weeks, and until they do I am trapped in India.

Thanks for your help.

Andy

[Via: Telegraph, Explorer'sWeb]

Follow me on Twitter @Kyle_Cassidy

When U.K. engineers were challenged with designing the Lotus Eco Elise, arguably the first green high-performance sports car, they knew just where to turn for sustainable materials: their backyards.

The English countryside, like the North American Midwest, is a veritable petri dish for growing hemp, a multi-purpose industrial crop that requires little-to-no chemicals to grow.

The body parts and rear spoiler of the Eco Elise are made using hemp instead of fiberglass. Hemp was even used in the manufacture of the seats. But engineers didn’t simply choose the material for its strength and durability. They also chose it because part of being sustainable is sourcing materials locally.

Lee Preston, Lotus engineering:

What we’ve done with the Eco Elise is look at the production stage; look at all the materials that go into the build of the car, which normally get forgotten about really. And obviously the car is built locally – it’s built in the countryside. We wanted to use local materials…

In industries all over the world–from construction to clothing–hemp is revolutionizing the materials game. And it’s not just engineers who are excited about it. In countries where it’s legal to grow industrial hemp, farmers have found a new way to turn profits.

Dan Squire, U.K. farmer:

[Hemp] is a lot better gross margin than peas and beans; very comparable with really good-rate crops and will even stand on its two feet next to cereals

The (above) video clip isn’t just about the new Lotus. It’s a great all-around report on hemp as an industrial material.

Welcome to this week’s Sex and the Woods: Lifestyle Advice for the Modern Adventurer.  Remember, we’re here to give fresh perspective on age old questions and solutions to new quandaries which means we will take questions on sex and relationships in addition to everything from eco-etiquette to adventure tips. Just email advice@wendmag.com. We answer every Thursday!

This week we tackle the issue of helping a coworker lead a more conscious lifestyle.

Dear Sex and the Woods,

I’ve got this pretty cool co-worker. He’s fun around the office, ultra reliable and competent (unlike pretty much everyone else I work with). However he just doesn’t get the whole I-should-care-about-the-environment thing. Well he cares, he just doesn’t DO anything about the fact that he cares. Like he brings bottled water to work everyday. How can I get him to start manning up and ditch the wastefulness?

-Eco-concious co-worker

Well ECC, bottled water is a huge pet peeve here at Wend’s stylish new offices. Not only do single use plastic bottles quickly find their way to landfills, they’re also harmful to both our and the environment’s health. We’re also huge supporters of Ban the Bag, a campaign to end the use of single-use plastic bags here in Portland. Simply put: plastics got issues yo. Here are some hints to move your co-worker in the right (green) direction:

1. Hack that shit. Nothing’s better than changing someone’s homepage to something they don’t expect. We’re not talking anything vulgar (we know what you did to your roommate’s computer back in your college days). You want eco-changes and to remain employed, so throw up a site with great info they can read, digest, and create positive influence in their lives. Maybe Huffpo’s green section or Wend’s very own Greenery? Want some more sass? Try our personal favorite, Ecorazzi.

2. Educate them. Send them some great, easy to read green living information. Avoid those dire, the-earth-is-dying-and-so-are-we diatribes and empower them to make positive changes in their own lives. Being eco friendly can in fact be fun. For example, you can make messenger bags from plastic bags. Pretty sure that will up your coworkers cool factor. Which in turn will make him more liked by eco hawties, which we fully support here at SATW.

3. Take it slow and make it easy. Your co-worker is going to be much more amenable to little baby steps in the right direction, rather than huge giant leaps towards Al Gore’s ideal citizen. If you really want them to stop using plastic bottles, help them out: invest in a reusable water bottle. But don’t go flaunting your eco friendly ways in their faces by forcing a BPA-free stainless steel bottle upon them. Buy one, wrap it up in some recycled paper, put it in your desk and save it for when they need a little surprise to make their day better. Or surprise them with a nice reusable bag placed on their desk while they’re out at lunch. Everyone loves a green gift every now and then.

4. Lead by example. Here at Wend we believe in the ideal of “people who live in solar powered houses shouldn’t throw stainless steel water bottles“… or something like that. Seriously though, if you want your co-worker to take more environmentally friendly steps, you better make sure you’re doing the same thing, and just drinking your coffee out of a reusable mug isn’t enough. Make this is a great opportunity for you to improve your own green behaviors.

5. Make it worth it. You want someone to compost or buy locally grown veggies? Bring them fresh tomatoes or a seasonal fruit salad. Bribery works every single time. By showing your co-worker the benefits of these new changes you want to inspire, you’ll help them get through the little bit of work it’ll take to get started. Plus you’ll probably make a new friend, or at least someone who will head out on a fair trade coffee run for you.

Good luck!

Anna + Dave

Looks like South Carolina is starting to listen.

Meeting to plan the urban growth of the next two decades, leaders in Greenville used LEGOs to visualize how they were going to accommodate 234,000 residents in the next 22 years.

There is huge opportunity improve the livability of new communities and cut environmental impact and traffic headaches through urban planning, and it’s good to see South Carolina on the forefront of LEGO’s potential for plotting out communities.

I mean, have you seen these Legoland models? They’re incredible. You could plan  every detail down to the color of the bus stop signs if you wanted to.

Unfortunately, the folks at this meeting limited their play to placing bricks on the map like placeholders, but still, Upstate Today reported, at the end of the day, all of the LEGO models had to be documented, recorded and cleaned up before the city planners were allowed any dessert.

Electrolyzed water, a powerful green cleaning agent already in use in Russia and Japan, is coming to America. The environmentally-friendly sanitizer, which is so powerful that scientists use it to kill anthrax spores, poultry processors use it to kill salmonella on chicken carcasses and Doctors use it to treat foot fungus and bedsores, also makes for a great nontoxic household cleaning agent that’s safe enough to drink straight from the bottle.

Thanks to Marla Dickerson and her great feature about electrolyzed water in yesterday’s LA Times for clueing us into this one. Apparently the “miracle liquid” (that’s what hotel workers at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica, CA are calling electrolyzed water) is simply a mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been zapped with an electric current.

According to proponents, the solution makes for a great degreaser and all-round sanitizer that is hardy enough for both home and industrial use. Jailers at a Michigan prison even use it to clean floors in order to keep potentially lethal chemicals such as bleach and ammonia out of the hands of prisoners.

The hotel’s kitchen staff in Dickerson’s article even claims to disinfect produce with electrolyzed water.

They say the lettuce lasts longer. They’re hoping to replace detergent in the dishwasher. Management figures the payback time for the $10,000 electrolysis machine will be less than a year.

Although electrolyzed water, which requires the relatively pricey initial purchase of an ionizing machine, is geared more for industrial use, it shouldn’t be long before someone finds a way to make it available for home use.

[Via: LA Times]

Those who want to go ice skating at the new Eco Rink in Toyama, Japan will notice one important element missing – the ice.

Instead of jumping and spinning across ice, skaters at the temporary Eco Rink will instead find themselves gliding over the eighty snugly-fit pieces of plastic Resin that comprise its 300 square meter floor.

So what makes a temporary, plastic Eco Rink so environmentally friendly?

Owners claim that

1. Since it doesn’t use ice, the rink does not need ice-generating (or cleaning) equipment.

2. It does not have to be kept cool all the time.

Owners of the Eco Rink also claim that it operates at half the cost of a traditional ice skating rink. It also likely produces less than half the fun.

According to the Japan Times Online, “a skater can move around just like on ice, only at slower speeds, because the friction is stronger.”

If you go to the Eco Rink, just be careful when attempting to hockey-stop ice chips into your friend’s face or the last laugh may be on you.

[Via: Greenpacks]

Not long ago, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Central Asia. I spent several years living in a small, mountain village on the Kyrgyz side of the border between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. I experienced a lot of new things while living in the village: there was bride kidnapping, Mike Tyson brand vodka and Ulak – a violent game played on horseback where competitors score points by throwing a sheep’s carcass into a tractor tire.

By the time I left Kyrgyzstan, I was comfortable with all sorts of things that I would have thought gross in America. I was only bathing once or twice a month; I was adept at carving the eyeballs out of a boiled sheep’s head; and I not only became comfortable with the idea of women washing and reusing their sanitary cloths, I realized that not doing so was a needlessly wasteful practice that (to my knowledge) had never been addressed by the environmental community back home.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not on a personal crusade against the Maxi Pad or anything. It would take a stronger man than I — a man like Barak Obama — to win that war. I just think the time has come to consider another option.

Enter Japan’s Reusable Maxi Pads, which include detergent so they can be washed. The pads are sanitary and eco-friendly and (for those who care about style on all levels) come in multiple designs, including Alice in Wonderland.

Are Americans ready for the reusable maxi pad?

You can blame our friends at Greenpacks for cluing me into this product.

[Via: Rinkya]

Green companies, green clothes, green travel… the colorful word that has come to synonymous with the environment is everywhere. And that’s not always a good thing.

As consumers become more eco-concious more and more companies strive to tout their environmentally friendly ways. And with more and more green labels popping up on everything from clothes to cars, we as consumers have to be aware of what exactly companies are selling. To help us out in wading through the green sea of advertising, the Guardian launched today a new weekly column called Greenwash, in the attempt to report on the sinister trend and help us pick out what is really green and what isn’t.

Don’t just call yourself green; get educated and make informed decisions. That’s how to really help out the environment.

When it came time to study the frozen innards of Greenland’s fastest-moving glacier, NASA scientists didn’t go to the drawing board. They went to the bathtub.

In order to better understand why glaciers speed up as they move out to sea a U.S. rocket scientist unleashed 90 rubber ducks into the Jakobshavn Glacier, hoping they will be discovered when they emerge in Baffin Bay.

Scientists believe that the experiment (which also includes a football-sized data collection probe) will provide a glimpse into the inner workings of glaciers as well as track water flow from them.

The rubber ducks are each labeled with the words “science experiment” and “reward” in three languages, along with an e-mail address. The hope is that someday one of the ducks will be found and reveal information about where the glacial water ends up.

It‘s not understood why glaciers surge each summer. One theory is that after surface ice melts it flows through the glacier via holes (moulins) until it reaches the bottom, where it serves as a lubricant that speeds the movement of the ice towards the coast.

[Via Environmental News Network]

What’s cooler and more eco-friendly than riding a bike? Riding a cardboard bike. It doesn’t exist yet, but Phil Bridge, a Sheffield Hallam student, designed the cardboard set of two wheels that went on display this week. OK, so the whole thing isn’t made of cardboard, but the wheels and chain are the only elements that aren’t constructed of the light and bio-degradable material. Bridge calculates that it would cost about 15 pounds (that’s around $30) to construct the bike, making it not only a green mode of transportation, but a cheap one as well. But living in notoriously overcast Portland makes me wonder: what happens when it rains???

Watch the BBC’s video on it here.