H2Oil - Alberta Oil Sands Industry

The Canadian animation company La Moustache has created these 3 animated sequences for the new documentary H2oil. The documentary, produced by Loaded pictures exposes the Alberta Oil sands industry was made entirely under AfterEffects. Art Direction and animation by Dale Hayward and Sylvie Trouvˆ©. Illustrations by James Braithwaite. Narrated by Catherine Kidd.

Extracting bitumen from tar sands (Oil sands) is a very high energy intensive process, requiring industrial scale heating (using natural gas) and 4 barrels of fresh water to produce one barrel of oil. So clean water resources shrink very quickly, along with the burning of natural gas to create another carbon emitting fuel, and it goes on. For more details about this environmental disaster, check out the animation.

For a fairly neutral overview of tar-sand mining check this link.

Waterlife

This is the Story of the last great supply of fresh drinking water on Earth : Waterlife. A documentary about the Great Lakes that has won the National Film Board Award.

Jam3 has created an interactive companion for this documentary and used all the major themes from the documentary to create this amazing online experience about the distress the Great Lakes are in.

Full credits and a Q&A with Jam3 on the site are here.

Linkage: From Kafka Pest Kontrol to B'eau Pal Water

Yikes, where does the time go?! After heading down to Austin to talk at the How Design Conference and then opening After Life my art show at Quirk Gallery and finally a business trip to NYC, I've finally caught up with things enough in the office to return to my non-skull related blogging. First up, a bunch of links that have been sitting on my shelf that haven't quite hit their expiration date yet...


Literary reference trucks deliver books and a message about reading. (image shown, more HERE) via

SpecWatch keeps you updated on the insidious world of design competitions/crowdsourcing. Thanks @PrixMadonna

Captcha graffiti to tell if you're human or not. (image shown) via

A public bicycle counter shows that you are not the only one on two-wheels in Copenhagen.

Get a free brochure on how not to greenwash from Roughstock Studios.

You know you want a USB-powered chainsaw! via

Traitor Joe's gives you the dirt on a well-known (and similarly named) grocery chain's seafood sources. via

Bizarre attempt for a multi-national corporation to "localwash" (the local movement's equivalent of greenwashing). via

Boring flyers get free makeovers from Cardon Copy! (image shown) via

Reincarnated McMansion is going to take 1 wasteful house and turn it into 2 green homes! Thanks Stephanie!

The 3/50 Project wants to save local brick & mortar stores with your help. Thanks Mim!

Eco-Mag, a magazine about art, design & sustainability, is available as a free downloadable PDF via

B'eau Pal Water is the Yes Men's response to Dow Chemical's toxic waste in Bhopal. via

What happens when you put pianos on the street for anyone to use?

No Longer Empty turns vacant storefronts into art venues. via

Artist Favianna Rodriguez explains why is graffiti a good thing.

Eco-friendly cardboard coffins, come with the image of your choice printed directly on them. Thanks Amy!

Jamba Juice rips off Get Your War On! Thanks Kate!

Grand is turning their junk mail into self promotion. (image shown)

A newspaper in China goes from printing press to recyling bin with no stops in between.

SafeLink provides free cellphones and airtime for lower income Americans.

A Drink To Die For

The L'Desh Fresh campaign for bottled water is not what it initially appears to be...



More info from the creators of this campaign for Water Partners can be found HERE.

via

1,500 bottles = 1 second

Watershed is an installation for the upcoming Figment Art Festival on Governors Island in NYC made out of 1,500 plastic water bottles, representing one second of consumption in the US...

Watershed Assembly at MSLK 5/24/09 from MSLK on Vimeo.

Linkage: Cooking with Blockbuster and Pimping the Homeless

Growing your own food and have too much, why not trade with fellow gardeners? Thanks Scott!

PimpThisBum.com written on homeless man's sign makes a real difference. (image shown) via Thanks Russ!

New label to look out for in the coming years: Water Stewardship. via

E-waste recycling done right, in pictures (image shown). Thanks Mim!

Improv Everywhere's April Fool's video ends fooling newscasters who don't do their research.

DIY stove made from Blockbuster drop box. (image shown)

Target Women's hilarious take on Carl's Jr. ads is not to be missed.

Linkage: Illegal Rain Barrels & Literally Invisible Homeless People

When times are really tough, rent your empty rooms for storage space! via thanks John!

Ode magazine says there are lots of good reasons to fail.

There's something so satisfying about these wet paint sign anagrams (image shown). via

Folks in San Francisco still have a few days to find out "What the *#&! is Social Design"

Nice visual DIY rain barrel post from This Young House...

...however be careful you could get arrested for actually using your rain barrel (in Colorado at least). via

There's still time to vote in Credo's Bracket of Evil.

Orangutans are disappearing right before your eyes. via

Lovely icons for social change (image shown). via

Making the homeless invisible (literally) via

And don't forget Earth Hour is this Saturday!

Reef Art

An artist who creates underwater art installations that become an artificial reef...



Thanks Leah!

Watermarks Project

"Watermarks is a public art project that will use a series of large-scale projections at sites across the centre of the city of Bristol, U.K. to explore these questions.

Flood level marks will be projected on to the sides of buildings, showing how high water levels could potentially rise as the sea inundates the central, low lying areas of Bristol. By displaying these levels in real space, the project aims to help us to imagine the depth and extent of this potential future flooding - allowing us to measure them against ourselves in familiar environments.

Although the message is stark, the flood levels shown are as if the city is undefended and adaption measures have not been put in place. As the waters gradually rise over the coming century, there is much we can do to adapt and defend!

This project contends that the future of our cities and landscapes and our responses to rising sea levels are not just left to scientists, politicians, engineers and the built environment professions but emerge from as wide a base as possible with participation and involvement from all sections of the wider community. Ultimately the mitigation and adaptation measures will be social and cultural as much as scientific and technical."

Water in Africa

Good 50x70 had the great idea to invite designers to submit posters for good causes.

Artist, designer, and urban planner in New York City, Candy Chang, did this great poster in collaboration with James Reeves for the African Medical and Research Foundation (amref) to bring awareness about the scarcity of safe water access in Africa.













Source.

Take Back The Filter: Success!

A while back I posted about an attempt to get Brita (and other similar companies) to recycle their disposable water filters, that many people use as an alternative to bottled water, and I am very happy to learn that the campaign was a success!

The Take Back The Filter Campaign has just announced that at long last Brita will be implementing a recycling program for it's water filters by partnering with Recycline (makers of recycled toothbrushes and razors). They will be collecting filters starting in January 2009 at pick up locations in Whole Food stores and also via the mail.

Full details are HERE.

Congratulations to Beth Terry who started the campaign and whose efforts made this possible!

(Why the massive effort had to be made by an individual and not just be a matter of course of running a business in today's world is another matter to address later).

Blue Gold

Flow is a new documentary which tells the story of the increasing privatization of water AKA "blue gold" and the frightening future it is creating. It's in selected US theaters now, find out more HERE.

Tap Water Quality Database

While we're on the subject of water...
Find out how clean your tap water actually is (in the U.S.) on the Environmental Working Group's National Tap Water Quality Database.

Take Back The Tap

Food & Water Watch has released a report detailing the reasoning behind choosing tap over bottled water (as encouraged in the Think Outside The Bottle campaign) and why America's sewer and water system is in need of a major overhaul. From the report:

• Bottled water costs hundreds or thousands of times more than tap water. Compare $0.002 per gallon for most tap water to a range of $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon for bottled waters.
• The Food and Drug Administration regulates only the 30 to 40 percent of bottled water sold across state lines.
• The Environmental Protection Agency requires up to several hundred water tests per month by utility companies while the FDA requires only one water test per week by bottling companies.
• Nearly 40 percent of bottled water is simply filtered or treated tap water.
• U.S. plastic bottle production requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel 100,000 cars.
• About 86 percent of the empty plastic water bottles in the United States land in the garbage instead of being recycled.

Read/download the full report HERE.

Brita Filter Recycling Campaign

Beth Terry has started a grassroots campaign on her Fake Plastic Fish blog to encourage Brita, the popular water filter manufacturer (owned by Clorox), to take back and recycle their used filters. Get the details and find out how to get involved HERE.

Thanks Jessica!

Think Outside The Bottle

It's nice to see that America's obsession with bottled water is finally waning. Think Outside The Bottle is a pledge campaign which encourages the drinking of tap water. They've already nearly reached their 25,000 person goal, but hopefully they'll set the bar a bit higher once it's been met.

Thanks Cally!