Published on July 2nd, 2008
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What started out as a innovative, new program to keep old medications out of the waste stream in LaCrosse County, Wisconsin, has grown to become an award-winning initiative now used by more than 30 counties in three states.
Special waste manager Jeff Gloyd created the program in which LaCrosse County began collecting old over-the-counter drugs and prescription medications to keep them out of the regular waste stream. Pharmaceuticals thrown out that way have increasingly seeped into natural waterways and, eventually, human drinking water supplies, raising concerns about environmental and health dangers.
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Published on June 5th, 2008
This summer, a group of students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to travel to New Orleans to help restore an urban wetland in the Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood decimated by flooding after the post-Katrina levee failures.
The group of nine students expect to study Bayou Bienvenue, testing water, surveying vegetation and researching whether the area could be restored with a diversion dam that would help bring in fresh water and sediment. They also plan to talk with neighborhood residents about their concerns and will even host a crab boil to involve the community.
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Published on May 15th, 2008
A Great Lakes compact that would prevent the region’s water from being siphoned off into the thirsty Southwest and other dry parts of the country is a little closer to taking effect, now that lawmakers in Michigan have OK’d the deal.
The Great Lakes Water Resources Compact aims to protect the water rights of the eight states bordering the lakes: Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Michigan’s approval of the agreement brings the number of states signed on so far to five: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and New York.
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Published on April 30th, 2008
The always-progressive Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, has once again offered a worthy — and green — lesson to its print media counterparts across the U.S.
That’s because, as of this week, the daily newspaper is being distributed exclusively online. The Capital Times’ last daily print edition went out on Saturday, April 26.
A Monday article in The Washington Post notes the Madison newspaper, like almost every traditional print paper across the country, has seen a steep drop in circulation over past decades. The switch to an exclusively online edition (outside of a free weekly insert in The Wisconsin State Journal) also comes with a deep cut in employees — from about 60 to 40, but the paper promises to continue delivering local and breaking news seven days a week.
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Published on April 25th, 2008
Back in 1983, when the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) held its first-ever Human Powered Vehicle Challenge, gas was about 81 cents a gallon, peak oil theorists were considered mostly crazy Chicken-Little types and global warming was but a vague and distant threat.
How times have changed.
Today’s circumstances make human powered vehicles sound more appealing than they probably did 25 years ago. Sweat-fueled technology doesn’t consign us to traveling at 20 mph or less, either, or to living our lives within a 10-mile radius of home. At least, that’s what competitors in the 25th annual Human Powered Vehicle Challenge, or HPVC, aim to prove when they meet this weekend at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Published on April 15th, 2008
Starting this Saturday (April 19), localvores in southern Wisconsin will have a new tool to help them find regionally grown and produced fresh foods.
The Southern Wisconsin Farm Fresh Atlas is a free, 40-page guide to farmers’ markets, farms, CSAs (community-supported agriculture), u-pick farms and other sources of everything from locally grown fruits and vegetables to regional eggs, meat, cheeses and even fabrics and crafts supplies. Every farmer or seller in the guide has taken a pledge to protect natural resources, treat animals humanely and provide a safe workplace for their employees.
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Published on February 19th, 2008
Ripon College is offering a free Trek mountain bike to new students who come to campus this fall and sign a pledge to leave their cars at home.
Campus officials say their “Ripon Velorution Program” is the first such initiative in the U.S.
A four-year liberal arts college founded in 1851, Ripon College is located in Ripon, Wisconsin. The state is also home to two Trek Bike factories, one in Waterloo and one in Whitewater.
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