Now McDonald's wants to go green as well. The American fast food chain announced that the cooking oil used to fry their food in their 1200 outlets across the United Kingdom will be recycled into fuel for its fleet of lorries.McDonald's has already switched its fleet in Austria to biodiesel derived from its cooking oil, claims the move will cut its carbon emissions by 75 per cent in this country, the equivalent of taking 2,400 cars off the road. If the cut is that high remains to be seen.

Chicken McNuggets are made in the cooking oil that will run McDonald's truck fleed in the future
This is the latest attempt by the fast-food giant to tackle its image, which has been hit by claims that it contributes to problems ranging from obesity to intensive farming. Its 155-strong fleet of lorries will be converted to biodiesel by the end of this year and will use 85pc used cooking oil, collected from the restaurants and filtered to remove traces of food. It will then be cut with 15 per cent pure rapeseed oil.

It is not clear at the moment if the costs for generating the fuel from the used oil is economy wise a smart step. Critics say it would help more if people simply would walk to get their burger.

Read at ecofriend about McDonalds ecofleed.

After visiting London two weeks ago for a Conference on Climate Change organized by the Guardian I found it interesting that a lot is talked about sustainabile lifestyle in the London, especially about urban environmentalism.We already met Sir Norman Foster in February in Munich where he gave a splendid speech about his vision of living in the cities in the 21st century. When I read the article of our Pioneer Bart on mingledingle I found the link to a text about a zero emissions home which I would like to share with you:The UK has unveiled its first zero emission home that will set the environmental standard for all new homes in the future.The two-bedroom house is insulated to lose 60% less heat than a normal home.It also features solar panels, a biomass boiler and water efficiency devices such as rainwater harvesting.The design, unveiled at the Offsite 2007 exhibition in Watford, meets rules to be applied in 2016 that aim to make UK homes more energy-efficient.The Kingspan Off-Site's Lighthouse design is the first to achieve level six of the Code for Sustainable Homes - which means the house is carbon neutral.About a quarter of UK carbon emissions come from homes. You find the whole story here

The ground-breaking BMW Hydrogen 7 has been presented to Deputy Mayor of London and London Hydrogen Partnership Chair, Nicky Gavron, at City Hall to raise awareness of hydrogen as an alternative energy source for tomorrow's consumers.

John Hollis and Nicky Gavron in LondonBMW UK's Head of Government and Industrial Affairs, John Hollis, handed over the BMW Hydrogen 7 for the use of the Deputy Mayor. Hydrogen is an efficient and clean form of power supply resulting in only water vapour exiting the exhaust. The car is part of BMW's initiative to encourage debate around the role of hydrogen in the economy. For the next two months, cars will be evaluated in the UK by business leaders and opinion formers.John Hollis said: "BMW is a pioneer in the development and use of hydrogen as a fuel source and shares the vision of the Mayor and Deputy Mayor that London should be one of the world centres for Hydrogen. In recognition of the work the Mayor's Office has done in this field, BMW would like it to be the first public organisation in the country to have the use of a Hydrogen 7 car.” Find the whole story

Climate change: Everyone talks about it, only a few people live with it (and its consequences) - so far. The ones feeling the effects of climate change, other environmental and social conditions normally don’t get the opportunity or have the ability to talk about it: rural, mostly poor and so called disadvantaged groups of people. The project PhotoVoice tries to fix this imbalance by giving them a voice – through pictures, not taken of them but by them. The concept is as simple as it is smart: the program acknowledges the power of visuals in nowadays world, understands and evaluates the knowledge and deep feeling of humans living in specific situations and environments. People in the target group get trained in photojournalism, in a next step the images produced by them are getting promoted through the web, newsletters, mainstream media, development media, events and exhibitions – providing an access channel to the decision makers affecting those people’s lives. Founded in 1998 the project already won several awards -among them the Wavemakers Award and the arts, culture and heritage category at the Charity Awards for Transparency. Since 1999 PhotoVoice, based in London, UK, has initiated over 15 projects working in 12 different countries pioneering the use of photography with refugee groups, rural groups, street children and special needs groups. Partnership projects included those with UNICEF and Amnesty International. One of the projects dealing with natural conservation and environmental awareness is called “The Kashmir Seasons Project”. Giving the cameras in 150 children’s hands, they got the chance to document the different seasons in earthquake affected Kashmir. The goal: to educate about how nature can absolute devastate if we don't take care of what we have. But PhotoVoice wants more than that: it aims to promote Self-Development through encouraging participants to gain confidence in their capabilities and their role in civil society.
It tries to promote Advocacy through enabling participants to become advocates for change.
And, last but not least, PhotoVoice projects may also result in a better standard of living by selling and marketing images produced by PhotoVoice participants on their behalf.Fotos: Website

RE: Help911!Kim, regarding the txt message you sent me from the JetBlue departure lounge at JFK.
I don't know whether JB has a carbon offset program or not. Google txt it or use the free WiFi to look it up. What I do know is that when even Tyler Brule starts to worry about the effect his air miles are having on the Greenland Glaciers its becoming a celebrity cause and not a cause celebre. That nfo's not on perezhilton, try globalgreen.com, they're the sustainable transportation managers to the Stars and I don't know if Edward Norton uses them or not. I think he's involved somehow in a supporting role. No, Kim, extinction for the human race is not imminent, we're like cockroaches, very hard to get us all. Don't believe everything Wolf Blitzer says. And yes offsetting your 'CO2 Footprint' by planting trees might help some too but then so would replacing that Escalade of yours. $50 to offset your flight? Thats half your ticket price. No I don't know about 'Thinkgreenoffsets.com'. What I do know is that while there may be some semi respectable offsetters out there, this is also the land of the Snake Oil Salesman so there are plenty of companies that will pocket your buck and do nothing with it. A couple of programs like etree and terrapass that can be actually trusted to put something in the ground for your money. IMNHO you're better off doing it yourself in your yard. The science coming in seems to indicate that the large scale planting of extra tropical trees for supposed carbon offset purposes might actually do more harm than good. It could speed up warming in the Northern Hemisphere where you and I both live. One or two trees in the yard can't hurt. You don't have a yard? Try a green roof. Urban heat island reduction. Co-op Board would never allow it...okay well how about buying a hectare or two of teak trees in Costa Rica or something. It would be like your own mini tree farm, you could even use it as an excuse to go visit the trees while they are growing up and you can count 'em and make sure they are there. As they say in that business auditing and verification are everything! Costa Rica is a pretty place too, stable government, nice beaches. A hectare? Thats like a big European acre, talk to you when you get back Kim, no worries. Lol. ;-)

David Cameron is the front-runner of the Conservatives in the race to succeed Tony Blair. Cameron knows that his party needs to perform well after years in the opposition, and above all, they need a hot topic. Cameron has found that topic – climate protection. For instance Cameron likes to talk in pre-election campaigns in London about the “green economy for a green future”.

David Cameron on an adventure-, ecologist expedition in Norway.“Climate change is our burden of debt to future generations,” he states on such occasions. He speaks of the approximate 15,000 species that are in danger of extinction due to climate change. Threatened with extinction because of “the ruthless human exploitation of resources in our common home or fraternity.” Journalists in the United Kingdom are picking up the term “fraternity” and commenting on it. It is a term that normally does not appear in the vocabulary of traditional conservative politicians.As in Germany, where for a long time the conservative Christian Democrats had considered environmental policies to be poison to the economy, so the conservatives in England are now advancing in the direction of sustainable ecological and economic policies. Since the chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern calculated for Blair’s government how much climate change would cost the economy, if it does not undertake any solutions, both political camps in that country – socialists and conservatives - have announced their political shift at least verbally. Competition livens up business, and therefore both political parties have climbed into the ring and are disputing with one another about the severity of environmental and sustainable policies. The Brits, however, who experienced no “green movement” in the 80’s as the Germans did, are approaching this new complex of topics little by little. Objective observers in that land have already spotted a winner in the political trend toward ecology – Nature itself. They cannot assess, however, whether the topic of climate protection and sustainability will help the conservative candidate David Cameron to an election victory.