Following the disastrous earthquake that struck on Tuesday, millions of people in Haïti are trying to recover from the tremendous shock and damage. The situation in Haïti is especially critical, because the earthquake hit the capital, Port-au-Prince, crippling government institutions and local aid agencies. On Wednesday, members of the Challenge Your World team took part in the Ski4CARE fundraiser. The event, which was organized by our partner CARE Canada, raised $39,000 for Haïtian families and orphans. What's more, for every dollar raised, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is supporting the project by matching every donation 3 [...]

So you're already registered for Challenge Your World Rendez-Vous 09 but are looking for more ways to participate in Global Entrepreneurship Week? Here is a list of great events happening in Montreal and Toronto this week (November 16-22):    Monday, November 16:

Successful start - Brought to you by: McGill Graduate Enterpreneurship Society
4:30 pm - 6:00pm - 3rd floor lounge, 1001 Sherbrooke West, Montreal

 

Tuesday, November 17^th:

Successful Financing - Brought to you by: McGill Graduate Enterpreneurship Society
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm - 3rd floor lounge, 1001 Sherbrooke West, Montreal

  

Wednesday, [...]

Silicon-based solar panel are expansive. So expansive that they can't compete with the fossil fuels in terms of efficiency and cost of the installations. This could change, though, because researchers are making progress in the paintable solar cells area. This "ink" could be applied on any surface: roofs, walls and even windows, as the ink is semi transparent. Even if the project is not near completion, the scientists achieved a 1% turnout on the solar power, and according to them, achieving 10% would be sufficient for commercial use. This would be a cheaper and more efficient alternative to solid solar panels that are now available on the [...]

Google's web mail service could be the greenest one you can use for your business or personal emails. The computer and technology spheres aren't often seen as green because of their energy use and materials used in their fabrication. Google's servers have a very good Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating ( and most useless components (like graphical components on monitor-free servers) are stripped out for less power use. They have a 1.1 rating where the best possible rating is 1.0. For reference, Microsoft's PUE rating is 1.6, which is also considered quite good. Google also reuse their water in the vapor form in the server-cooling process. Since [...]

For the weekend, I'm going with something a little lighter, and I discovered a nice slideshow about the current situation around the health care reform in the U.S. I'm linking it here because it is very informative and easy to read through.

http://www.slideshare.net/danroam/healthcare-napkins-all

 

Sierra Magazine released their results for the 2009 Cool Schools survey, grading 135 U.S. Universities on a green scale. Grades were given in different areas, like Waste Management, Transportation, Energy, Academics, Administration, and more. The top 3 of this honor roll are University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Washington at Seattle and Middlebury College. This honor roll is accompanied, of course, by the full ranking consisting in 135 universities ranked. The bottom 3 of the class were Texas Tech University, University of Missouri and Kansas State University, getting respectively 11, 18 and 19 points out of a possible 80. Head over to [...]

A team of researchers at MIT are working on Project Trash Track. The project is exactly what its name implies. They use special electronic tags to track waste in New York and Seattle to find out where the trash ends up. Project Trash Track wants to create awareness of garbage-disposing facilities, to avoid the "take out and forget about it" aspect of garbage collecting. Following the garbage and finding out its final resting place creates a feeling of responsability for the people. The project should culminate in September and will be on display at the Architectural League in New York, and the Seattle Public Library. [...]

The Infrastructurist has simplified a document from guardian.co.uk, which listed 20 ideas to change the world. The ideas rank from downright crazy to somewhat doable. The list does not take itself too seriously, but there are some important ideas behind it. To change the world, we first have to change how we think. Here are some of the ideas I thought were the most interesting: 1. Dump Billions of Tons of Limestone Into The Ocean
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve probably heard that CO2 is making the oceans more acidic (or, strictly speaking, less alkaline). This threatens the viability of many of the creatures–including krill–that form [...]

GOOD.is have a piece on what they call “Fancy” bottled water. They argue the validity of selling natural source water versus the cheap trick big companies pulled by filtering tap water and selling it back to the consumer. They invite a water sommelier, Michael Mascha, to talk about the virtues of natural source water. According to him, the big companies (Coke and Pepsi, among others) jumped on the occasion to pass as legitimate water sellers, when they actually just confuse the customer by using real source water to sell their own product. Tap bottle water is a waste of money and resources to bottle the same water we can all get, whereas source [...]

 The recession has not stopped consumers from buying green, according to a Green Brands survey conducted by Cohn and Wolfe. Miller Zell, a retail consulting firm conducted another survey showing that all consumers are willing to pay a higher price for their green products, not only richer ones. To the question regarding how likely they would be to spend more for a green product, the 999 consumers, divided into 3 income groups: low, middle and high) had to answer whether or not they would pay a premium price, and if not, what would be the price difference that they would accept. While low-income consumers were less inclined to pay a higher price, [...]