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Tags: Animals / Nature Travel / Zoos / Green Travel / England / Britain Travel / → All Tags
How You Can Visit a Zoo's New Baby Pink Aardvark
Mere days ago our knowledge of aardvarks was limited to "they're the first entry in the encyclopaedia" and "they live in Africa." After coming across this photo collage of the Colchester Zoo's new baby aardvark, though, we've now added "wow that's an ugly animal" and "aww it's so pathetic and awkward and cute" to our catalog of highly precise scientific knowledge. Because that's really what we are. Scientists.
Born at the end of last month, the two-week old is still off display for his own safety. Soon he'll be let out to rejoin the rest of the aardvark herd, and until then visitors to the park can view him on CCTV. The rest of the zoo, located up in Essex, England, certainly offers more than enough sights and sounds to keep children and adults occupied. There are even plenty other baby things, including a baby white rhino, a baby pygmy hippo, a baby gelada, and so on. Details for planning a trip after the jump.
Tags: Google Maps / Google / Colorado / Colorado Travel / Active Travel / Green Travel / Biking / → All Tags
Google Maps Expands Street View To Boulder's 360 Miles of Bike Routes
The Google GPS trike!
In January we told you about how Google used their new specially designed GPS trike to go where no Google Maps had gone before, mapping the inside of the San Diego Zoo. Now the search giant is taking their toy off-road, promising to add Boulder, Colorado's 360 miles of bike routes to Street View. The city officially won a contest after 1 in 5 residents voted online, asking to be the test site for a new kind of Google Maps biking feature.
Google Maps can already create point-to-point driving routes, bus routes, and walking routes for many major cities. This new project seems geared toward giving a fourth kind of route option, one that would take commuters and travelers along biking trails. If bikes are going to become a stable mode of transportation—and they already are in some American cities, to say nothing about certain European capitals—then this just makes good sense.
Tags: Animals / Nature Travel / Zoos / Green Travel / Washington DC / → All Tags
The Smithsonian Has a New Baby Giant Octopus and You Can Watch It Online
Octopuses being natural and sometimes mischievous explorers, they're a whole lot of fun to watch and a whole lot of work to research. Visitors and keepers at Washington DC's National Zoo will now have the opportunity to do both on a huge scale, as the park welcomes a giant Pacific octopus to its collection of animals. The baby enteroctopus dofleini has already joined a bevy of other species at the park's Invertebrate Exhibit, and can be seen daily.
The two and a half year old is still thoroughly tiny, weighing in at a petite three pounds. Over the next few years, it will grow to up to 13 times its current size, until it maxes out at around 400 pounds. Females, which grow larger than males, can reach arm spans of more than 14 feet. Each individual arm has 280 suckers and can get up to six feet long. At full size, the giant octopus switches from its conventional diet - crabs, small fish, and so on - and begins to feast on pirate ships and the black souls of eternally damned sailors. That's a fact. You can look it up.
Tags: Biofuels / British Airways / Airlines / Airline News / Green Travel / → All Tags
British Airways Wants to Burn Garbage Juice for Fuel by 2014
British Airways has been in the news quite a bit lately, but not for anything positive. There were those racy flight attendant pictures, and then most recently that whole prostitution ring thing got our attention. Some might think that this news makes the airline look a little trashy, but it’s their new fuel strategy that is coming from the garbage—ha!
Beginning in 2014, the airline will partner with Solena to bring some biofuel to their fleet of jets. Solena is set to open a plant in London, and once it’s complete, British Airways is expected to buy as much garbage gas as they can. They’re claiming that 16 million gallons of this fancy fuel will be produced at the plant. Sounds good to us, but 2014 is a few years away and numerous delays wouldn’t be too surprising.
Tags: Green Travel / Thai Airways / Airlines / Airline News / In-Flight Meals / → All Tags
Carbon Footprints Coming to the In-Flight Menu on Thai Airways
Thai Airways is revamping their in-flight menu, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the food. The airline is actually adding carbon footprint information to their menus, so that travelers will know exactly what comes with that Chicken Mussaman Curry. There’s nothing like a side of guilt to go along with the vegetables.
The airline is participating in the Carbon Footprint Technical Cooperation Project for Thai Products. Here, Thai companies are sharing carbon footprint information in hopes of lowering energy usage while letting the world know that they mean business when it comes to green goods. Just so you're aware, if you decide to go with the Green Curry with steamed Thai Hom Mali Rice on your next flight it will set you back 13.9 kg CO2 e per 250g serving.
Tags: Airline News / Airlines / Green Travel / Brazil Travel / Gol Airlines / → All Tags
Brazil's Gol Might Have The Cleanest Airline Garbage In The World
Until a viable biofuel option really takes off it’s kind of difficult to bring a little green to air travel. However, Brazilian airline Gol is not letting this stop them. Even though their planes run on regular old jet fuel, they are looking to eliminate the waste from their, uh, waste.
The airline has set up special facilities at many of their bases, and they have a pretty good rate of successfully cleaning things up in an earth friendly way. Their maintenance centers follow some pretty strict environmental standards to ensure that all oil and other chemical garbage is treated prior to being sent elsewhere. When it comes to the inside of the planes, Gol is using some kind of special industrial towels to get things spiffy for passengers. They even wash the towels in some sort of fancy way to cut down on waste.
Tags: Green Travel / Rental Cars / Cars / Hertz / → All Tags
Hertz Is Getting Ready To Do The Electric Slide
Rental car companies need some more green vehicles now that the Toyota Prius has been pulled from the lots. Hertz is thus wasting no time in bringing a fancy new car to the rental market, and we can't wait to pay an exorbitant fee just for the opportunity to drive to and from the airport in it.
Hertz is adding the new Nissan Leaf to its lineup, and in case you haven’t been following this new eco-auto, it’s all electric all the time. The new car will debut sometime next year in both the United States and Europe, and we’re thinking it will be an especially big hit where petrol by the liter doesn’t come too cheaply.
Tags: Green Travel / New England Travel / Eco Travel / → All Tags
Watch Eagles Land in New England (While You Still Can)
It's that time of year again, and we're not talking about NY Fashion Week or Awards Season. For Southern New Englanders, February mean the return of bald eagles who come back to hunt for herring and other fish in their native rivers. The greatest concentration of eagles is on the lower reaches of the Connecticut River, near Essex, Connecticut, thanks to a 1972 anti-pollution law that brought back a variety of fish.
The Connecticut River Museum is now offering 90 minute Eagle Tours aboard Project Oceanology's Envirolab III through March 14th. The mission of Project Oceanology is to nurture interest and enthusiasm for the planet's marine life. The tour includes educational information from one of the museum's naturalists and is appropriate for all ages. Cruises leave the museum dock Fridays at 1 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. The cost is $35 for museum members and $40 for nonmembers. Call (860) 767-8269 to make a reservation.
Tags: Luxury Travel / Technology / Green Travel / Balloons / Hot Air Balloons / → All Tags
We've Seen The Future, And It's A Floating Luxury Hotel Airship
Would you spend 37 hours on a trans-Atlantic flight between New York and London? What if it was on a space-age balloon designed to gently float above the ocean at almost 12,000ft and glide through the air at a leisurely 90mph, dipping lower if there was anything interesting and then rising back into the atmosphere to continue on its path? That's the vision provided by UK design company Seymourpowell, which has invented a 265m kite-shaped airship and dubbed it the Aircruise. The ship boasts a cutting-edge ecofriendly design, is powered by solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells, and has virtually no environmentally damaging emissions. And it looks mindblowingly awesome.
The predictable downside of course, is that a trip on the Aircruise isn't going to come cheap. If it was easy to use heated gas to lift things off the ground we would do it more often. But as we all know from looking at hot air balloons, you need a lot of space to carry just a little bit of weight. In this case, you need 330,000 cubic metres of hydrogen gas to hoist just 396 total tonnes, meaning that the Aircruise won't have much leftover room for people. Since a high cost per passenger was inevitable, the designers just went ahead and transformed the entire ship into a luxury travel "hotel in the sky."
Tags: Music Festivals / Music Travel / Coachella / California Travel / Green Travel / → All Tags
How You Can Actually DJ at Coachella This Year
We’ve already told you how to get tickets to Coachella, but what if you want to perform at this year’s fest?
If you want to DJ at Coachella this year, all you have to do is get together a dozen friends who are willing to run on a hamster wheel in the scorching heat for 30 minutes. The eco-educational nonprofit organization Global Inheritance, that combines art, fun, and play to promote environmental issues, is sponsoring the Sweat Shop, an initiative that gives DJs a chance to spin while their friends ride bikes, turn hand cranks, and run on hamster wheels to power their equipment.
If you think you (and your friends) have what it takes to spin at Coachella, email sweatshopMIXER@globalinheritance.org with your website for consideration. If you’re chosen, you’ll need to send them a $50 deposit that you will get back if your friends can manage to keep your turntables spinning for 30 minutes.
Tags: San Diego Zoo / Zoos / San Diego Travel / California Travel / Green Travel / → All Tags
The San Diego Zoo Brings a Porcupine to New York to Talk Polar Bears
The famous San Diego Zoo is all over the news lately, what their baby panda and being the first zoo to get added to Google Map's streetview, but the good stuff just keeps on coming with the spring opening of their new Polar Bear Plunge exhibit.
Yesterday in New York, we swung by a hotel penthouse to say hi to a few of the San Diego Zoo's animal handlers and staff, who had brought some of the zoo's most portable critters to town (even though they had to take a cargo plane) for appearances on morning shows and the like. There were two endangered tortoises, as you can see above, but also a prehensile-tailed porcupine, who is just about the cutest thing ever and the subject of more photos after the jump.
Tags: Green Travel / Skiing / Resort Travel / Ski Travel / → All Tags
Take a Snow Day: Head to the Greenest Ski Resort In All the Land
The Grand Targhee Resort, outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, just received another eco-honor. Skiing magazine has just named Targhee The Greenest Ski Resort as part of their Skiing's Green All Stars report. The honor was bestowed on Targhee for their efforts to reduce its emissions. The resort is retrofitting buildings, upgrading transportation and recycling programs, and constructing a greenhouse to grow fresh vegetables to help reduce the 2,958 metric tons of CO2 they use each year.
Targhee was also awarded Clif Bar’s 2009 Golden Eagle Award for Environmental Excellence by the National Ski Areas Association. “We got that award for our work on our greenhouse gas inventory,” Christina Thomure, Targhee’s director of sustainable operations said. “You have to report every source of emissions you have. Even when our employees go off site and travel, we report the mileage and estimate the amount of gasoline that’s used.”
