All too often, people accuse McDonalds of being a huge corporation that's awful for the environment and your body. However, it's difficult to imagine them disappearing anytime soon.

 

In an act of truly creative recycling, cops in Manila are attempting to create police vehicles that will use old McDonalds cooking oil as a means of fueling their cars. The combination--60 percent cooking oil and 40 percent diesel--isn't ideal. But it does try to kill two birds with one stone, and it embraces McDonalds rather than hating them--a real "alternative" solution. Or at least a better alternative than the super size option.

In conjunction a post from the other day about green celebrities that aren't actually green, here's a clip--courtesy of Treehugger--about a celebrity who was green thirty years ago! In a clip from the CBC, Jack Nicholson drives a hydrogen car for the purpose of letting people witness firsthand the possibility of alternative fuel. The only question left is whether or not the car arrives with a pair of Jack's sunglasses.

There has been a recent bump in the number of blog entries highlighting which celebrities are green and which are not. But Treehugger ups the ante a bit: Instead of showing the different levels of environmental awareness among celebrities, they point out how widely-regarded "green" celebs aren't really as polluter-proof as they claim to be. So next time you see stars on TV speak out for the environment--or speaking against polluters--remember that even they aren't invincible to their own pollution.

An article by The Green Lantern at Slate points out that while the carbon footprint left by producing milk is greater than the one produced in making soy milk, it's not by that much. Though soy milk isn't produced by cows, the genetic engineering that goes into making soybeans isn't anything to brag about.

Clearly the only solution to this problem is to stop drinking milk, thereby reducing many kinds of pollution. By eliminating milk altogether, we don't need to waste so much energy on cows, soybeans, cars for transporting milk, and making people taller. Height pollution is just as much of a problem as the others.

Summer's still in full swing, but only about a month left and it's back to school time for some people. An even smaller group will be deciding on which colleges and universities should they attend--and in some cases, the school's carbon footprint and environmental education programs may be a deciding factor. Dorm Scout has a list of the top 20 greenest venues for higher education in the world, including EARTH University, which may set off green lights for people who make the environment their number one concern. It probably won't be their only one, though, considering that the school is in Costa Rica. Location might have something to do with wanting to go there, don't you think?

A hilarious article over at Earthfirst tries to point out the pro-environmental aspects of Star Wars in order to reinforce the film's brilliance. Among such observations as the fact that no one is ever seen eating meat and that the droids run on a seemingly infinite battery, they point out how "The Force" relates to the environmental movement. But they forgot to mention how The Force uses the energy of good and evil rather than any computer-related technology, and how beneficial that is to the environment. That got us to thinking that we should shift our attention from green energy to force technology, because this is clearly where the future is headed. May the force be with us, always.

In trends we’d like to see continued, a recent news announcement of the opening of O!Burger—an all-organic fast food chain opening in Los Angeles—proposes that fast food doesn’t need to be unhealthy. The burgers are made entirely from grass-fed cows, and the menu includes such health-conscious items as bananas and even live culture yogurt Now how about a drive-thru lane for bicycles?