Waste

Mr. Great Lakes: Recyclemania, “Healthy” Asian carp and the best carp barrier

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Mr. Great Lakes (Jeff Kart) reports from Bay City, Michigan’s Delta College Q-90.1 FM.  
Feb. 7, 2014 – Mr. Great Lakes (Jeff Kart) – The Environment Report, Q 90.1 FM by jeffkart

This week, Kart discusses a collegiate recycling tournament, research on the consumption of Asian carp and an “almost foolproof” barrier for carp. Text at Mr. Great Lakes

Echo

Help Echo make a bucket list

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Echo is considering a redesign. I say that with some trepidation. I have found that technical and design questions regarding web projects can paralyze action. The delays frustrate getting quality content into your hands fast. And Echo works now.

Air

Upending the basin: drone count

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You’ve heard of the annual Audubon bird count. Now you can take part in a drone count. Not the bees – the unmanned aircraft. Here at Great Lakes Echo we’ve been running a series of stories about the use and potential of unmanned aerial vehicles. If nothing else, we’ve discovered that no one seems to have a clue of how many of these things are out there.

Echo

Green justice: Court impact on environment often overlooked

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You may have caught this weird judicial twist in a recent Great Lakes Echo story: A Wisconsin judge ruled that manure was not a waste but a valuable commodity. That’s no surprise. Anyone with a backyard garden knows that. But providing that legal stamp produced a counter-intuitive outcome. It meant that an insurer was on the hook for damages when a farm polluted nearby wells with that valuable manure.

Water

Clean, Green Breweries: Arbor Brewing Co.

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The abundant freshwater of the Great Lakes region is increasingly used for craft beer brewing. Breweries compete for customers with an eclectic array of beers and a raft of sustainable efforts. Some companies recycle used grain, others use recycled packaging. Some run delivery trucks on vegetable oil or harness wind and solar power. Some even donate proceeds to watershed projects.

Climate

How much snow does it take to close school?

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Great Lakes school administrators are among those who hold out the longest before closing schools for snow, according to this map of how many inches trigger such an action. Any snow – in fact, any prediction of snow – triggers closings in the south, according to mapmaker Alexandr Trubetskoy, who recently posted the map to Reddit. That doesn’t necessarily mean administrators in the south are wimps. Areas without much snow also don’t have much snow removal equipment. Trubetskoy identified himself as a high school student from Vienna, Va., in a Reddit message to Great Lakes Echo.