the garbage collector teaches a lesson

Garbage collection is serious business in Tokyo. There are many measures that encourage people to produce less garbage, including charging absurdly high fees to collect large disposed items such as old furniture and electronic equipments (up to US$ 200.00 depending on the size).
There's a very strict garbage collection schedule, a specific day in the week for burnable items, another day for non-burnable items, another for cartons, and so on.
Recently I left my garbage bag out according to the instructions I read in the city leaflet. Later, I saw the garbage collector pick up the bag but, to my surprise, instead of immediately throwing it in the truck, he inspected it, patting it all over. Then he put it back in the same place and quickly went away!
Puzzled (not to say another word), I went out to retrieve my abandoned bag and saw that the collector had stuck the note below in it. Roughly translated, it says something like: This garbage is not properly sorted out. Please sort out your garbage properly!
Oops!

to buy local or not to buy local

I've been hearing more and more about 'buy local' and 'food miles' (or 'food kilometers'). At first I thought this preoccupation with the distance covered by the transported food, from farms to supermarket shelves, made a lot of sense.
Recently however, I read "Food miles. Green good sense, ill-considered hype, or naked protectionism?", by Ethan Zuckerman, in worldchanging, and learned that the environmental impact of the food we eat should not be measured only by the distance it travels.
And in case you're a New York Times Select subscriber, you can also read "Don't buy local", by Richard Conniff, for another balanced view on the subject.
This debate is far from over and will certainly shape the way we buy our food from now on.
PS: I have truly enjoyed reading Richard Conniff's blog in the New York Times (unfortunately for subscribers only, sorry). Apart from learning a couple of German words - schadenfreude (pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune) and gluckschmerz (luck-pain, or sorrow at someone else's luck or happiness) - his writings offered an insightful look at human nature that were a delight to read.

black cloud

This is a WWF campaign in China against air pollution. That's quite a way to make your point across.(via infoesthetics and frederiksamuel)

burn calories and save energy

How nobody thought of that before!
Hong Kong's branch of California Fitness, a fitness chain with many gyms across Asia (including Singapore) is testing an innovative concept: their cardio machines, such as stationary bikes, steps, and cross-training, have been equipped so that energy burned off by people doing exercise is transformed into electricity.
The brainchild of inventor Lucien Gambarota, the project is appropriately called "Powered by You". The goal is to make California Fitness more energy efficient, with the capability to produce and store energy. See video on YouTube here. (via inhabitat)