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Employers in the U.K. have just learned that there’s a word for discrimination against a person based on their earth-conscious, tofu-eating ways: “greenism.” And firing someone for their environmental views is just as illegal as firing someone for their religious or philosophical beliefs, according to a court ruling.

Tim Nicholson, former head of sustainability at property firm Grainger Plc, claims he was laid off because of his views on climate change and the environment. A judge said Nicholson could take Grainger to the Employment Appeals Tribunal over the layoff, but Grainger challenged the ruling on the grounds that climate change is a scientific and not philosophical viewpoint. However, that challenge was overturned, according to the Telegraph:

In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.”

The ruling could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles, such as providing recycling facilities or offering low-carbon travel.

Nicholson said during previous hearings that due to his strong convictions he refused to travel by air and renovated his house to be environmentally friendly. He also said Grainger’s chief executive, who allegedly once flew a staff member from Ireland to London to deliver a forgotten Blackberry, was hostile toward his beliefs. The company said it will now argue that there was no link between Nicholson’s views and his layoff.

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Image: flickr / hpeguk

Kindles, iPhones, laptops, and maybe an Apple Tablet make avoiding the printer a cinch. However, should someone actually need to read off dead trees, a new method to remove ink from white paper could make office paper far easier to reuse. All it takes is a solution of 60 percent dimethylsulphoxide and 40 percent chloroform and a little agitation to shake off the ink, and used paper will be almost as good as new, according to a new study.

From Physorg.com:

[Researchers] found that a combination of solvents can remove toner print from paper without harming the paper to make it reusable, although the resulting paper is not quite as white as new paper.

Physorg.com also has a an image of the comparisons between printing on paper treated with chemical solutions versus printing on a fresh sheet.

It’s hard to imaging any office keeping a wet lab and actually doing this, and sloshing through all that solvent can’t be very safe or economical. So here’s an alternative idea: Just stop printing altogether and read things digitally like everyone else.

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Image: flickr / michaelkpate

Things looked pretty bleak in Iceland a year or so ago. Declaring national bankruptcy is never high on a country’s list of priorities. But BBC News reports that the beleaguered country is attempting to make a comeback—as the nexus of all the world’s computer servers. In a way, it’s the perfect place to keep a ton of servers that require huge amounts of energy to be kept running, and cool. From the report:

In Iceland, with its year round cool climate and chilly fresh water, just a fraction of this energy for cooling [the servers] is needed. It means big savings.

Just outside Reykjavik, work is well advanced on the first site which its owners hope will spark a server cold rush.

In around a year – if all goes according to plan – the first companies will start leasing space in this data centre.

And if this proves successful more sites are planned.

And with its wealth of geothermal (and therefor carbon-footprint-free) power, the country stands to make a substantial global impact, particularly since all those servers mean a constant increase in CO2 production. As one expert put it:

“[I]f a large internet media company operating thousands and thousands of servers relocated its servers to Iceland, that company would save greater than half a million metric tons of carbon annually.”

Granted, now all they have to do is lay all that fiber optic cable. No getting around the series of tubes!

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Revealed this week at Ceatec (Japan’s version of CES): The omniscient washing machine. Well, maybe it’s not omniscient, but it can detect precisely how dirty your sweaters and jeans are, and target any sweat stains. The Eco-Navi, made by Panasonic, uses a light-activated sensor to detect levels of dirtiness, while sweat stains are recognized by “another sensor that sends tiny electrical impulses through the wash as it spins,” according to Greentechmedia.

So how much water and energy are we saving? A lot:

Electricity consumption drops from 79 watt hours to 72 watt hours and water consumption trickles down to 67 liters from 72 liters per load.

Now for the downside: It’s currently retailing at $3,000. Which, for a washing machine, is a bit hefty. But as with all fancy electronic devices, the price will be dropping any day now.

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Image: Courtesy of Ceatec

A giant cylinder will splash into the water off the coast of Scotland next Spring, all in the hopes of harnessing the energy of waves and converting it to electricity.

Engineers are still tweaking the marine power converter, according to Reuters:

Dwarfed by 180 meters of tubing, scores of engineers clamber over the device, which is designed to dip and ride the swelling sea with each move being converted into power to be channeled through subsea cables.

The sea snake, as it’s called, is being developed for the German power company E. ON and represents a serious investment in marine power, which is considerably more costly than offshore wind power. A push by regulatory agencies to slash emissions has companies taking a closer look at marine power these days—and apparently these so-called snakes have the potential to capture a decent share of the energy market:

The World Energy Council has estimated the market potential for wave energy at more than 2,000 terawatt hours a year—or about 10 percent of world electricity consumption—representing capital expenditure of more than 500 billion pounds ($790 billion).

E. On is hoping the current project in Scotland will fare better than their fist foray into marine power—a commercial wave project in Portugal that flopped after one of the partners ran out of cash.

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Image: flickr / Wonderlane

We’re all for sustainable toys. After all, having children is the single most carbon-intensive action human beings can take, so the least we can do is give our kids a recycled rubber ball or eco-friendly duckie to play with.

And so we applaud the efforts of green-minded design group [re]design in putting together an exhibition of sustainable toys from around the world. But there is a line to all of this. And that line is the Placenta Teddy Bear. If you want to eat it, that’s your business—but forcing your placenta on the world in the name of sustainability is another matter. Here’s a description, courtesy of Inhabitots:

A crafty alternative for those who don’t necessarily want to eat their baby’s placenta, but want to pay their respects to the life sustaining organ by turning it into a one-of-a-kind teddy bear. Green’s ‘Twin Teddy Kit’ ‘celebrates the unity of the infant, the mother and the placenta,’ and enables preparation of the placenta so it may be transformed into a teddy bear. The placenta must be cut in half and rubbed with sea salt to cure it. After it is dried out, it is treated with an emulsifying mixture of tannin and egg yolk to make it soft and pliable. Then, you craft it into a teddy bear.

Then, you wait for the apocalypse. Which can’t come too soon.

(Hat tip to Maia Weinstock.)

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Image: Inhabitots

Atlanta was hit hard with heavy rains and severe flooding last week. But for a part of the country that was in such a deep drought the governor resorted to praying for rain, it makes sense that the good citizens of the ATL aren’t letting this newfound water go to waste. In fact, the conservationists at 5 Seasons Brewing Company in Atlanta are using their collected rainwater to make beer.

From The Huffington Post:

The local brewery uses 100% filtered rainwater that’s captured on-site to create their “green beer” (not to be confused with the St. Patrick’s Day type). The brewers believe that rainwater is cleaner and softer than city water, which makes their beer even better.

And here’s the video, from CNN:

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Image: flickr / brendan.wood

Let it not be said that no one is using eye-catching stunts to raise awareness about global warming. The activist group the Yes Men is distributing 85,000 free copies of a “special climate edition” of the New York Post throughout New York City today, with the goal of, well, terrifying people into action against climate change.

The full paper is available online here, and each article is also online. Here’s an excerpt from the front-page story:

It’s official. It’s getting hot down here. And if we don’t stop burning oil and coal, the Big Apple will be cooked.

According to a high tech study commissioned by a concerned Mayor Bloomberg and generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, climate change caused by human-created greenhouse gases is threatening the health, livelihood and security of New Yorkers—especially those who take the subway to work…

According to the panel’s report, if all nations don’t drastically cut their carbon emissions, then Gotham will suffer in the following ways:

• Deadly heat waves will become more frequent, more intense and longer. Because cities are a lot hotter than their surrounding areas, we’ll see more of the sorts of heat events that killed 600 people in 5 days in Chicago in 1995…

• With coastal flooding, our water supply will be in trouble…

• Along with coastal flooding, droughts will also increase…

• The strain on our power grid will be drastically increased during the summer months.

Granted, there is some light at the end of the pitch black tunnel:

So what can we do about it? Plenty. And it’s not even that hard.

On the City level, NASA scientists have the answers, and they’re simple: plant lots more trees (to cool the air through “evapotranspiration” and shade), and paint the roofs white to reflect the sun’s heating rays (See “New York’s all white with me”).

But MOST IMPORTANTLY, we need to put pressure on government—local, state and federal—to convert our entire energy systems to sustainable sources like solar and wind.

Well, lets hope all those stimulus checks can kick that process into gear.

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Image: Courtesy of The Yes Men

Fashion has been beefing up its  environmental conscience (if not its models) over the past few years—and with good reason. The production, transport, and disposal of clothing is a serious source of pollution, with the textile industry holding steady as the third largest consumer of water, and the source of up to 20 percent of industrial pollution.

This year, it’s fabric dye that’s getting the Green treatment. Coloring a pound of fabric can take up to 75 gallons of water, and a single dress or pair of pants can use up to 25 gallons.

So what if we could dye all our clothes without water? That was the idea tackled by Colorep, a California-based technology development company that created a new way to color fabric using air rather than H2O. Called AirDye, the process applies non-plastisol-based inks within garment fibers, rather than as a layer on top (which is how it’s done with water).

This Fashion Week (yup, it’s going on now—you can tell by all the hungry-looking Eastern European waifs roaming the streets) the AirDye system made its debut at the Costello Tagliapietra show, in which the clothes (see photo) were dyed almost entirely without water.

Granted, until this new dyeing method hits jeans and T-shirts, your DISCOVER staff likely won’t be testing it out ourselves.

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Image: Courtesy of LLR Consulting

We here at Discover rarely look out the window, so enthralled are we with the daily goings on of the science-related interwebs. But a tipster (the tech guy, who actually does go outside) informed us that a strange, unexplained phenomenon was occurring outside our office: Foam is falling from the sky.

It looks like snow, only it’s not anything that nature could drum up. Where it’s coming from and why remain a mystery. Exploded dry cleaners? Cargo plane dropping mattresses?

Our crack research team (aka Brett the Intern) is out collecting samples for analysis. Pictorial evidence here:

and:

If you have any insider info on the strange foam assault, email us at mlafsky@discovermagazine.com.

UPDATE: We will have video shortly.

UPDATE 2: The Forbes.com people are also concerned about the foam tempest. (Yes, Forbes, we r in ur buildingz, watching u make galereez.)

UPDATE 3: The foam appears to be soap that’s being shot from the building ventilation system or water pipes. The soap was created by men who felt the need to wash the roof of 90 Fifth Avenue. In the pouring rain.

Thanks to all the tipsters who have written in, offering theories from rampant laundry room emergencies to September 11th pranks.