Green Prophet

Everyone knows how terrible plastic bags are. They take hundreds of years to biodegrade, pollute our landfills and waterways, and most plastic bags cannot be recycled (only 5% of plastic bags are actually recycled). To add insult to injury, it is cheaper to produce new plastic bags than to recycle existing ones.

The Council For A Beautiful Israel has something to say about that. They’ve come out with a campaign that asks us to reduce our consumption of plastic bags as much as possible or, at the very least, to use One Less Bag.

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Tags: biodegradable, consumption, Israel, plastic bags

We at Green Prophet have been charting the rising popularity of organic food in Israel for some time now.

One of the biggest suppliers of free-range organic eggs in Israel is Givot Olam, a Jewish farm located in the West Bank.

While you’d think that politics and food don’t mix, there are some who disagree.

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Tags: Israel, organic eggs, Palestine, West Bank

If you love the moving image as much as us here at Green Prophet, and believe in its power as an agent of change as well as information and entertainment, here’s advance notice of the 5th ‘Eco-Cinema Festival’, which opens tommorrow night at Jerusalem’s Cinematecque on Hebron Road. Opening with Israeli director Uri Rosenwaks new film, ‘Garbage Country’, previewed in a Green Prophet post here, the festival contains a wonderful variety of films all with an environmental message, ranging from angry polemics to the fun and the frivolous. Short films, longer documentaries and animations, from all over the world, feature across the 5 day festival; some selective highlights we have picked out below. Continue Reading »

Tags: cinematecque, eco-cinema, Israel, Jerusalem

They say hope floats. Israel’s premiere environmental architecture firm Geotectura has certainly taken this statement to heart. Joseph Cory a designer at Geotectura, has worked with an aerospace engineer, to develop floating solar balloons capable of collecting solar energy in crowded cityscapes and places where large solar panels are not a viable alternative. They hold potential for disaster-stricken areas as well.

Filled with helium and coated with a space-age fabric made from photovoltaic solar cells, this project called SunHope is a promising low-cost system that could collect solar energy with less environmental impact than other traditional solar energy solutions. Continue Reading »

Tags: Add new tag, Israel, israel cleantech, Israeli Design, solar, solar energy, solar technology, Technion Israel Institute of Technology

Nachalat Binyamin Street in Tel Aviv is famous for its weekly market of local, handmade arts and crafts - a market that is very environmentally friendly.  But it is also home to some of Tel Aviv’s hippest bars and restaurants.

For the sixth time, these restaurants and bars are getting together for the annual Nachalat Binyamin Food Festival which will take place from May 13-22 and offer gourmet dishes and special cocktails at discount prices.  Diners will be able to enjoy entrees for 35 NIS, boutique wines for 25 NIS, and refills and tapas galore.

They can also enjoy their guilt free conscience, because this year the festival is going green.

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Tags: Food, kids, organic, solar power, sustainable cities, Tel Aviv

(Image credit: Micah Vaadia, winemaker at Galil Mountain)

After reading and enjoying Green Prophet’s post on biking the Israeli wine scene, Green Prophet was kind enough to invite me to guest blog a short series of posts about the re-emerging Israeli wine phenomenon and about what’s new with organic winemaking in Israel.

I blog about wine from Israel and I own a specialty importer focused on introducing Americans to boutique wines and winemakers from Israel called Israeli Wine Direct.

First of all – who really cares about wine? There are a lot of other things we might drink, so what makes wine a food with a message for us?

And in a country where we can find hundreds and even thousands of wine brands in even a basic grocery store, who really cares about wine from Israel?

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Tags: Israel, wine

Not long ago Eli Cohen, the founder of Ayala Water and Ecology, was invited to New York City to propose solutions for cleaning the city’s sewage using plants in an environmentally friendly way. He’s already got a number of sites working in Israel and hopes to raise money to build a pilot plant in the US.

Searching around the globe high and low, Cohen seeks out water plants that have the natural ability to digest sewage. The plants he finds also clean air and soil in a natural way. Continue Reading »

Tags: Bio-Diesel, biodegradable, biological control, Israel, plants, save water, water, water security, water technology

Chemical burdens in our homes is an issue coming more and more to the forefront of news every day, yet more information comes to light about the threats posed by so many chemicals in our everyday products, from baby bottles to nursery furniture.

A while back I wrote about Nursery Madness and the huge amounts of money we put out on new furniture. As eco-minded parents and financially thoughtful, best to go with second hand furniture or even co-sleeping options.

This recently took on a new twist.

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Tags: babies, ecomum, furniture, Israel

This Green Prophet is a little skeptical about Shai Agassi’s electric car and bold claims, but she is impressed by the range of companies in the portfolio of Israel Cleantech Ventures (ICV).

Consider companies such as Aqwise for cleaning municipal sewage using bacteria, plastic beads and a special aeration system; or Metrolight, a company that has created a new breed of electronic ballasts that is saving money (and energy around the globe), including IKEA in Israel. There is Emefcy, an Aqwise founders’ spinoff, CellEra which is creating new fuel cells, and Citrine Renewable Energy in the area of landfill biogas treatment. Taking a breath ICV also funds solar company Pythagoras. Continue Reading »

The time is nearly here! The long awaited electric car will soon reach the masses: Project Better Place has presented its prototype electric car today. The smog may start clearing soon, we will see how quickly it catches on.

Project Better Place commissioned a survey, which claimed that one in every six Israelis said that they would buy an electric car. Continue Reading »

Tags: electric car, green tech israel, project better place