Courtesy of Ecogeek, some facts about toilet paper:

• sales of high-end brands have increased by 40% in some markets;
• toilet paper use in North America is more damaging to the environment than Hummers;
• an average American uses 23.6 rolls per year; and,
• 40% of toilet paper sold in Latin America is derived from recycled products.

Wendy Holden whines about wind turbines in her back garden (well, technically, somewhere close to her back garden) - without a hint of the considerations (she literally writes a couple of thousand words without once making an actual assessment of their wider validtity - she does remember the cyclists though).

And elsewhere on the Tims Online site, Jonathan Leake summarises the current (dire) progress of carbon emissions trading. A bleak outlook when considered against the original objectives - fine if you're big business and have clever lawyers though. Buy your way out of any environmental, or moral for that matter, obligations.

Excellent post over at Inhabitat about IKEA and how green it is. A few interesting bits:

• 71% of all IKEA products are recyclable
• More than 1,000 supplier audits are done every year
• China provides 22% of IKEA's raw materials
• Only a small number of IKEA's wood suppliers are FSC certified
• Some stores offer free bike trailer rentals
• CO2 emissions currently add up to about 27 million tonnes per year

Science publishes data on tree mortality rates. Emily Chang writes about robot density.

I decide, somewhat foolishly, that I want to correlate data on trees-per-capita with robots-per-capita. Fail miserably. And not through my lack of effort - I just can't find data that breaks down the trees by geography.

The closest I can get is that we have more trees per capita (61) than robots per capita (less than 61). Makes sense I guess.

If somebody can point me in the direction of the appropriate data, I'll do the hard work and credit you graciously.

I don't have a problem with them, and I hope you don't either. It's hard to make them look bad, but the examples below show just how good they can look - enjoy.

http://mellybaldin.deviantart.com/art/Wind-Turbine-83654521

http://phragmites.deviantart.com/art/Wind-Turbine-1-84984740

 

James Page on The Ecologist writes "Let's call a truce on billboards". Whatever your feelings on billboard use - especially the legaslative and policy issues James writes about - at least there are a few that make a nod toward their environment, if not ours.

According to treehugger.com, we're talking "green" more. Well, it's far from scientific, but according to Google, we're just not:

"green" is blue
"carbon footprint" is orange
"environment" is red 

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%22green%22%2C%22carbon%20footprint%22%2Cenvironment&cmpt=q

As environmental policy is potentially re-shaped in 2009 by Obama and his team, it'll be interesting to see if this changes much.

Six great environmentally-friendly lightning wallpapers from around the web...

Something of never-ending marvel, the snowflake. Enjoy...