Obama At The White House Correspondence Dinner
So good.
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The Hunt For The Higgs Boson Explained
Add To Reddit Harnessing The African Sun
The most recent instalment of our iq2 Shorts series, ‘Solar Farming in Africa: Green Electricity Powered by the Sun‘. It is adapted from our Professor Michael Düren’s talk at our Switched On event ‘Energy Game Changers‘, which took place on March 28, 2012.
Add To Reddit Making Green Choices – Benefits of Handmade Clothing
As general public is becoming acutely aware of many severe environmental issues associated with commercial production of clothing, more people are starting to look for Eco-friendly fashion options. As a result of this rising demand, handmade clothing is leading the way as a green alternative to commercial clothing. Handmade clothing can now be found in many local clothing boutiques, as well as online. Many fiber and textile artists, fashion designers, and small clothing labels are offering a wide variety of handmade clothing for women, men and children. While you may find that some handmade clothing is still more expensive than the kind of bargains you can get at Target or the Gap, it is a price worth paying, considering that you can look fabulous while making a positive contribution towards preserving our Earth.
Benefits to the Environment
The number one reason to switch to handmade clothing is that it helps reduce global warming, and does not waste and pollute precious natural resources like water. Different handmade clothing labels will use different types of environmentally friendly practices for their green clothing products.
Manufacturing Process
Since commercial clothing is mass produced in factories, it wastes enormous amounts of energy and produces a lot of green house gas emissions and toxic wastes, all of which are dumped into the air, ground and water. Handmade clothing companies avoid this process all together, by hand making the piece from start to finish.
Coloring
To achieve all the bright colors that are so attractive, commercial clothing production involves the use of highly toxic industrial dyes. These dyes are made of one of the most polluting, harmful chemicals, which are dumped into the rivers, lakes and other bodies of water during the manufacturing process. This renders the water undrinkable and harmful to health. On the contrary, handmade clothing is made either with natural dyes produced from plant extracts, or a different type of commercial grade dyes that are not as toxic and harmful to the environment.
Fabrics
Many handmade clothing companies will use fabrics that have been produced in Eco-friendly ways, such as cotton and silk that has been hand-loomed. The processing of natural fibers such as cotton into fabric is one of the most polluting industrial processes that wastes a lot of water, requires a lot of energy, and utilizes highly toxic chemicals. Production of synthetic fibers such as polyester is even more harmful to the environment. Many designers make their contribution to the environment by avoiding this process all together, and making upcycled handmade clothing. This means that they recycle old clothing and give it a brand new life, helping reduce both the amount of new clothing that is being produced as well as the amount of waste from its disposal.
Limited Quantities
No matter how you slice it, production of any type of clothing takes a toll on the environment. Handmade clothing companies mitigate this effect by producing clothing in very small quantities. Handmade clothing is intended to be worn for a long period of time, instead of prompting consumers to constantly buy more clothing, thus fueling the demand for mass production.
Labels and Packaging
Many handmade clothing companies ensure that their clothing is green all the way. The clothing tags, labels and packaging materials are often also handmade from recycled fabrics and papers, helping reduce waste and pollution.
Personal Benefits
Exclusive style and design
If you have, or would like to develop a distinct personal style, handmade clothing allows you a wide range of opportunities to do just that. Many handmade pieces are either one-of a kind, or produced in small, limited edition quantities. Long gone are the days when handmade clothing was the equivalent of hippie clothing. While hippie style is one of the trends in handmade fashion, there are plenty of other modern and classical styles that would satisfy a wide variety of tastes. Handmade clothing also does not have to look like it was made by your grandmother, unless that is something you like. Many handmade clothing brands offer high quality of craftsmanship that is indistinguishable from commercial manufacturing.
Durable and long lasting
Handmade clothing is made out of high quality materials, with a high level of personal attention, and quality control from the maker. It is made to last for years, rather than to be discarded after one or two seasons.
Health Benefits
A lot of handmade clothing is made out of premium textiles such organic cotton, Eco-friendly modal fabrics and silk. These fabrics will not only feel amazing to your skin, but will also be none-toxic and none-allergenic. Unlike commercial synthetic fabrics, these natural fabrics are also more breathable, and do not trap heat and moisture. This means that you will feel comfortable both in hot and cool temperatures, and sweat less.
Custom Made
One of the most attractive benefits of handmade clothing is that it can be custom made. Depending on the type of clothing and the company that makes it, pieces can be tailored to your measurements, you can choose your own colors and patterns, add writing, and do a variety of other things to make a piece truly your own. Moreover, handmade clothing and accessories such as scarves make excellent gifts for people who would like something special and more personal.
Why does handmade clothing cost more than many commercial brands?
Handmade clothing is more expensive primarily due to the labor intensive nature of the process. Taking automated processes out of the equation of clothing production, means that everything from design, to coloring to sawing is made by human hands. Therefore this process becomes much more difficult and time consuming. Also, many handmade, eco-friendly clothing brands choose to use fabrics produced in environmentally safe ways, which also cost more than commercial fabrics. If they choose to outsource part of their production, they pay higher prices for labor to make sure that there are no environmental, or human rights violations in the process. Finally, some handmade clothing, such as wearable art pieces, may cost more because of its unique and exclusive design.
About the Author
Aleksandr Biyevetskiy is an avid proponent of green building technology for residential and commercial construction, and a big fan of sensible sustainability for business, government, and society. Some of the topics that Alex likes to write about include (among other things) residential metal roofing, social and competitive ballroom dance, Eco-friendly and energy efficient Green LED lights, residential and commercial ground source heating and cooling for homes and businesses, and environmentally friendly PVC roofing systems for residential and commercial flat and lower slope roofs. Alex also maintains a personal blog, in which he covers a variety of concurrent/relevant topics at www.tampile.com/blog/.
Add To Reddit Climate Change Boosts Then Quickly Stunts Plants, Decade-long Study Shows
Global warming may initially make the grass greener, but not for long, according to new research results.
The findings, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, show that plants may thrive in the early stages of a warming environment but then begin to deteriorate quickly.
“We were really surprised by the pattern, where the initial boost in growth just went away,” said scientist Zhuoting Wu of Northern Arizona University (NAU), a lead author of the study. “As ecosystems adjusted, the responses changed.”
Ecologists subjected four grassland ecosystems to simulated climate change during a decade-long study.
Plants grew more the first year in the global warming treatment, but this effect progressively diminished over the next nine years and finally disappeared.
The research shows the long-term effects of global warming on plant growth, on the plant species that make up a community, and on changes in how plants use or retain essential resources like nitrogen.
“The plants and animals around us repeatedly serve up surprises,” said Saran Twombly, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.
“These results show that we miss these surprises because we don’t study natural communities over the right time scales. For plant communities in Arizona, it took researchers 10 years to find that responses of native plant communities to warmer temperatures were the opposite of those predicted.”
The team transplanted four grassland ecosystems from a higher to lower elevation to simulate a future warmer environment, and coupled the warming with the range of predicted changes in precipitation–more, the same, or less.
The grasslands studied were typical of those found in northern Arizona along elevation gradients from the San Francisco Peaks down to the Great Basin Desert.
The researchers found that long-term warming resulted in loss of native species and encroachment of species typical of warmer environments, ultimately pushing the plant community toward less productive species.
The warmed grasslands also cycled nitrogen more rapidly. This should make more nitrogen available to plants, scientists believed, helping plants grow more. But instead much of the nitrogen was lost, converted to nitrogen gases in the atmosphere or leached out by rainfall washing through the soil.
Bruce Hungate, senior author of the paper and an ecologist at NAU, said the study challenges the expectation that warming will increase nitrogen availability and cause a sustained increase in plant productivity.
“Faster nitrogen turnover stimulated nitrogen losses, likely reducing the effect of warming on plant growth,” Hungate said. “More generally, changes in species, changes in element cycles–these really make a difference. It’s classic systems ecology: the initial responses elicit knock-on effects, which here came back to bite the plants. These ecosystem feedbacks are critical–you can’t figure this out with plants grown in a greenhouse.”
The findings caution against extrapolating from short-term results, or from experiments with plants grown under artificial conditions, where researchers can’t measure the feedbacks from changes in the plant community and from nutrient cycles.
“The long-term perspective is key,” said Hungate. “We were surprised, and I’m guessing there are more such surprises in store.”
Co-authors of the paper include George Koch and Paul Dijkstra, both at NAU.
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