The Chicago Tribune reports that when the USDA randomly tested a batch of cilantro for the first time in its 20 year program, it found 34 unapproved pesticides.

According to the story:

Azoxystrobin and captan are legal for use on potatoes but were found 16 times at levels that exceeded federal limits, the most such detections in this round of testing. Next on the list for excessive amounts of legal pesticides were imported asparagus and domestic spinach.

“We would not pooh-pooh these violations,” said Roy, of the FDA. “They all constitute adulterated food. But we are also talking about a relatively minor food. … We have to be risk-based and apply our main resources to foods consumed most often by infants and children — and those are your major fresh fruits and vegetables.”

I don’t consider cilantro a minor food at all. It’s used in tons of recipes, especially in the summer time. But at least medical experts are beginning to refer to the risk of pesticide residue.

Again, the Chicago Tribune:

Some medical experts, however, are increasingly concerned about even low-level exposure to pesticides, especially in utero.

“The story of pesticides in food is part of a larger story of our growing knowledge of the exquisite vulnerability of the developing human brain to pesticides and other toxic chemicals,” said Dr. Phillip Landrigan, director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Along with colleagues, he has been researching the effects of chlorpyrifros on humans.

Why calculate risks when you can simply buy it organically grown without dangerous levels of pesticide residue? Or better yet, grow it on your back porch or in your garden.

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More on Pesticide Residue
Avoid Pesticides in Fruit and Veggies
In Utero Pesticide Exposure Increases Risk of ADHD
Produce Industry Mounts Campaign to Entice Us Back to Conventional Pesticide-Loaded Fruits and Veggies

UPDATE: Fellow Treehugger Chris alerted me to Web Urbanist’s round up of cool and unusual ceiling fans. With the exception of Fanimation’s sophisticated looking fans, however, most of these look like the designer was on drugs. I’m still looking…

More on Ceiling Fans and Green Home Cooling
Sycamore Ceiling Fan: Works Smarter, Not Harder
Holy Ceiling Fan, Batman!
10 Overlooked Low-Tech Ways to Keep Your House Cool

Wind Turbine inefficient and Expensive?
According to Britain’s tabloid Daily Mail, the Green Park turbine is producing woefully inefficient electricity. It has, says the Mail, been working at “15 per cent of its capacity” last year, producing GB£100,000 worth of electricity, but using up GB£130,000 worth of Government subsidies to do so.

Is Wind Power “Efficiency” Relevant?
Unsurprisingly, the turbine owners Ecotricity say that this is a load of anti-wind-power, anti-green spin (pun intended). They claim the estimates of revenue generated are wrong (although they do not give a figure for the right amount), but more importantly when it comes to the wider wind-power debate, they claim that the incessant focus from wind critics on load factors, and efficiency measured by percentage of actual output versus maximum output, is a deceptive and pointless statistical trick.

This from Dale Vince’s response to The Daily Mail:

“Opponents of wind energy often refer to their load factor or the % of their maximum output that they produce in a year. It’s a statistical nonsense to use this figure as a measure of the value or merit of any device or machine. Take the average car – it runs at less than 1% of it’s maximum capacity in any given year. A mobile phone, even a heavy user will struggle to rack up more than low single figure percentages. Are these devices inefficient or worthless….?”

Yes, this is the same Dale Vince making headlines by banning red meat from an entire soccer stadium. Outspoken, no?

More on Wind Power and Opposition to Wind
Ecotricity: 20 More Urban Wind Projects Planned
Stunning Urban Wind Turbines Circumvent NIMBYs
Residents Demand More Wind Turbines
NIMBYs in Minority? Many Residents Welcome Wind Turbines
Cape Wind Faces Spiritual Opposition from Native Americans
Earth First! in Anti Wind-Power Protests

Rocket Stove Science
NPR has a great piece covering both the principles and the politics of the rocket stove. The article is a useful starting point for anyone wondering why rocket stoves are quite so efficient:

“The stove is made from a steel 55-gallon drum, but that belies the precision engineering of what’s inside. A well-insulated combustion chamber made out of a special steel alloy concentrates the fire of just a few sticks of wood. The combustion is more complete than what you’d get in an open fire, burning the particles that usually become smoke. The hot gases are directed around the cookpot. As the water boils, the stove’s metal skin and stovepipe barely get warm, an indication of how little heat is wasted.”

Rocket Stove Politics
Besides the mechanics of the stove though, there is also a philosophical debate underway. On the one hand we find traditionalist NGOs like Aprovecho which have championed open-source, locally-built cook stoves, with the idea that by seeding micro-entrepreneurs around the Globe you can both hone the efficiency of stoves, and also create economic development in the process.

On the other hand, however, are people who argue that the need is too urgent, and progress too slow, not to opt for a more commercial solution:

“There have been thousands of stoves programs; I’m familiar with hundreds of them,” says Bryan Willson, a professor of mechanical engineering at Colorado State University. “And it’s hard to identify programs that have been successful.” Willson says it’s time to bring 21st century capitalism to bear. “There’s a global need for 500 or 600 million cookstoves,” he says. “And nobody is willing to write a big enough check to donate our way to that solution. So we really need to be able to develop products that people will want to buy.”

Willson and his team started a company called Envirofit which manufactures clean-burning cookstoves for the developing world—and even Aprovecho has developed a stove-manufacturing arm.

False Choice?
Ultimately, as with so many things, it seems to be a false choice between the open-source, grass-roots approach of teaching people to build their own stove, versus the centralized, commercial yet efficient approach. Most likely both will serve their purpose in different communities, and with over half the world still cooking with solid fuels, the main thing is to get moving.

More on Efficient Cook Stoves
Envirofit & Shell Create Efficient Cook Stoves for India
Rocket Stoives: Build Your Own Ultra-Efficient Cook Stove (Video)
Rocket Stoves Aid Relief Effort in Haiti
The New Yorker on Efforts to Hone Efficient Cook Stove Design

Biodiversity in the Garden
Much like Seedy Sunday’s massive seed swap, the idea behind Potato Day is not just to celebrate the diversity of varieties available, but to actively promote their use—keeping this diversity as a living, evolving collective treasure. After all, potatoes are a highly nutritious staple in much of the world—with some experts even claiming that an increased consumption of potatoes could help us feed the world.

Food Security in Challenging Times
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its focus on food security and resilience, the Transition Movement—a community-led response to peak oil and climate change—has embraced the Potato Day and helped it to spread. Below is a video of Potato Day activists in action as part of Transition Stroud’s efforts to increase food growing in the community.

It must be my British blood, but even the sight of seed potatoes makes me crave malt vinegar…

More on Potatoes, Potato Day, and Biodiversity in the Garden
Can the Potato Feed the World?
It’s Potato Day in England
Potato Day
Massive Seed Swap Keeps Biodiversity Growing

Using little more than some leaves, some coffee grounds, some dirt and some water, Praxxtube shows us how to make smell-free, almost mess-free compost in a plastic bucket.

Anyone tried this at home?

More on Composting at Home
Build Your Own Worm Bin (Video)
Compost Conundrum: Backyard Bin, Can-O-Worms or Indoor Composter?
How to Make Compost Tea & Why You Should

The company built a wind turbine at its Coevorden plant in the Netherlands and installed solar panels at its Beauty & Grooming plant in Cologne, Germany. The video above shows the construction of the wind turbine, saying that P&G “long term vision” is to go “100% renewable energy”.

Switch “Long-Term” for “Short-Term”
How about making that a short-term plan? Instead of making enough wind power capacity to produce 17% of a plant’s needs, how about 100% for that plant, and then moving on to the next one, and so on. How about making fewer disposable products and using greener chemicals in your soaps, implementing zero-waste policies in your factories, etc..? Now that’s a powerful vision that would position P&G for the next 200 years. They certainly have the cash to do it, and it would mostly be a one-time investment (the wind and sun are free, after all).

You have to aim higher than this, P&G.

Via P&G

More on Wind Power
Wind Turbines Might Help Crops Absorb More CO2, Fight Fungal Infections, Etc
Base Jumping Off Wind Turbines Is Insane (Video)
Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Orders 258 Wind Turbines for Iowa Wind Farm
Driving Through a Huge Wind Farm in Indiana (Video)
We Could Have 10 MW Wind Turbines by 2011 and 15 MW Turbines by 2020