How green is your tomorrow?

After a long sleep I am awake to the call of Blog Action Day ‘09, which is focused on Climate Change. So what am I gonna do....talk about some green technology news that I have been following so far.

In one of the very few posts I have made, I talked about the importance of jatropha and the fact that Ghana, and its government, and maybe Africa, is not

taking this seriously. Can you believe that even the airlines are taking this order?

In January this year, Continental Airlines, the fourth largest United States-based airline, used a fuel blend made from algae and the jatropha plant to power an unmodified, twin-engine Boeing 737-800 jet.

A statement from Continental Airlines said that the test flight, which took off without incident around 12:15 p.m. (Houston time) on January 7, 2009, at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, lasted about 90 minutes. And what is their mission? “To have member-carriers use 10% alternative fuels by 2017 to reduce global warming.” Sweeeeet ! Read more? Barely a year ago, Air New Zealand, the flag-carrier airline of New Zealand and the country’s biggest airline, flew a Boeing 747-400 plane that used a 50-50 blend of oil derived from the jatropha plant and conventional fuel in one of the jumbo jet’s four engines. How does that sound?

And what’s the good news for Africa? Jatropha is limited to warm climates only (according to a 2009 research by Boeing). I rest my case.

How about Ecocho.com? Imagine searching the web and saving the planet at the same time. Ecocho is a free service, and it's one of the easiest ways people can change everyday behaviour to make a positive impact on the environment.

When you search on ecocho.com, the company is able to raise enough money (through ads) to buy carbon offsets which are then used to plant trees to offset carbon pollution emissions.

Wondering how this works?. The company says that for every 1000 searches, monies that are raised from adverts on the returned pages are used to purchase carbon offsets capable of planting two trees. Within a year, two trees have the capacity to suck out 1 ton of CO₂ from the atmosphere. And you don’t have to worry about the quality of search because it is based on Yahoo!’s search technology. I think you could do something too........

To wrap up, and like I said earlier on, today is Blog Action Day, an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. This year was dedicated to climate change, and how awesome that was.

So there you go. This is the little piece I could do for mother earth today. What about you? How green is your tomorrow? What legacy are you leaving behind? The ball is in your court...take over.....