Sofia Joffe, 9, left, and Amaya Baccellieri, 10, pull weeds in a garden area of Foothills Community Park on Tuesday afternoon. | John Weller

On Tuesday, the Earth Guardians joined with Bike-America to pull weeds at Foothills Community Park in north Boulder as a show of support for natural alternatives to herbicide use. The group hopes Boulder will become pesticide-free in the future.

Tamara Roske, co-founder of the Earth Guardian Community Resource Center, said pesticide-free towns are popping up all over the country. In May, all New York City school fields and playgrounds became pesticide-free when the Safe Child Playing Field Act was signed into law.

Sarah Huntley, Boulder spokeswoman, said the city uses an approach called integrated pest management, taking into account mechanical, biological and other controls before considering the use of synthetic chemicals.

“We try to use these kinds of alternatives whenever possible,” Huntley said. “When it’s not possible, the chemical goes through a review with a subcommittee that takes a careful look at the information and decides what pesticides go on the approved list.”

The Integrated Pest Management Subcommittee has approved Tenacity and Barricade for use in Boulder parks and recreational areas. The Colorado Daily offers more information on the Boulder pesticide and herbicide list and how the process works.

Learn more about weeds, pests and plant diseases and get the facts on specific pesticides.

-Hannah Gentry

Super Bowl XLIV | From Flickr user RMTip21

This Sunday, millions of people will sit down to watch the Colts and the Saints battle it out at Super Bowl XLIV. However,  all the Boulderites out there are probably looking for a way to make their Super bowl parties a little lighter and a little greener.

From watching the game on a more environmentally friendly TV, to cooking with sustainable ingredients, to eating vegetarian, greening your Super bowl can be simple.

Here are a some guilt-free, game-appropriate recipes that will please any football enthusiast, whether they care about sustainability or not.

Recipes:

Holistic Super Bowl Vegetarian Chili

Holistic Super Bowl Jambalaya

Holistic Super Bowl Baked Potato Skins

Holistic Super Bowl Veggie Calzones

Holistic Super Bowl Nachos

Watch the game on a smaller, LCD flat-screen if you wanna be green | from flickr user Rick

Thinking of getting a new tube to enhance your Super Bowl-watching pleasure?

If you do, remember that big isn’t always better, at least in terms of finding a green TV. Try to stay small — about 25 inches — and go with an LCD instead of a plasma. Energy Star rated products are good, too, but buying a 72-inch Energy Star TV still isn’t exactly what you could call environmentally friendly.

So it’s safe to say that generally the smaller the TV the less energy it will use.

Read more about green TVs or check out more sustainable Super Bowl tips.

Installing a low-flow showerhead is an easy way to cut water use in 2010.

It’s that time of year — when we think about what we wish we could change.

Some things are easier New Year’s Eve resolutions than others.

Losing weight. Hard. Quitting smoking. Hard. Training for a marathon. Hard.

But going green(er) can be (relatively) simple.

Installing low-flow showerhead. Easy. Shopping with resusable grocery bags. Easy.

Check out an entire list of attainable green resolutions at Daily Camera.com.

CU wants students to use reusable water bottles like this one | DailyCamera.com

The University of Colorado is considering a ban on disposable plastic bottles as part of an effort to become a greener campus.

Students would be encouarged to fill up their reusable water bottles at “hydration stations” around campus.

But there’s a hitch to the plan.

From the Daily Camera:

One problem, though, is the university doesn’t want to take money away from a fund — supported with vending machine revenue — that awards scholarship money to the children of faculty and staff members.

At first, CU leaders were looking at ridding the campus of just plastic water bottles, said Deb Coffin, associate vice chancellor and dean of students. But, she said, they worried about unintended consequences — such as students opting instead for more bottled sodas.

“We’d like to not have plastic bottles at all,” Coffin said. …

The campus brings in about $280,000 a year from the money that people spend on snacks and soda sold at campus vending machines, officials said last fall. Part of that revenue goes to a scholarship program in which full-time CU employees can receive $750 for their dependents one semester every year.

Read the full story at DailyCamera.com.

Realtor Matt Podskoch walks through the dining area of the SpringLeaf model home. Eventually, the SpringLeaf neighborhood, which sits across the street from Lucky s Market in north Boulder, will have 12 homes, all of which will be zero-energy. Photo by Cliff Grassmick.

Zero-energy homes have been popping up in Boulder for years. Often they’re built by die-hard greenies or, more recently, those with large pocketbooks and an eco-conscience.

But now, Boulder’s getting it’s firs net-zero neighborhood, where all 12 houses will produce as much energy as they use.

The SpringLeaf "eco-community" across from Lucky's Market.

From the Daily Camera:

Local developer Ron Monahan stood outside the first of 12 homes he and his business partner plan to build in a new north Boulder subdivision and talked about his vision: “We’re bringing this to the masses.”

“This” is a zero-energy home. It’s a house built with less lumber and more insulation; with recycled countertops and bamboo cabinets; with a geothermal system and a 10-kilowatt solar array. And it’s built in what will become the first zero-energy neighborhood in Boulder, and likely, one of the first in the country.

Monahan and co-developer Terry Britton worked with architect George Watt and Silver Lining builders to construct the model home for the planned SpringLeaf “eco-community,” which will sit across Broadway form Lucky’s Market.

The systems installed in the nearly 4,000-square-foot house are designed to create more energy than the average homeowner will use over a year — but it’s also designed to be easily replicated at SpringLeaf and on other lots in Boulder, which the developers say will bring down the cost of building zero-energy homes.

“We’re bringing this to the marketplace, and we can deliver it at a good price point,” Monahan said.

Monahan and Britton expect to sell the model home for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 million, which would break down to just more than $300 a square foot. But they believe they can drive the cost down to below $200 a square foot for the other zero-energy homes, five of which will be single-family houses and six of which will be smaller, attached townhouses.

Read the full story at DailyCamera.com.

Student ambassador Tim Mullin, left, helps parent Cheryl Mandler, as does Ryan Brown with Sean Carey, with directions around the CU campus in April

The University of Colorado is the No. 1 “cool school,” according to Sierra Magazine’s “comprehensive guide to the most eco-enlightened U.S. colleges.”

The list, which came out today, noted the top 10 green schools, including some of the usual suspects: UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, Evergreen State College …

“This ranking is not a surprise, but it is a wonderful tribute to the hard work of our students, faculty, staff and administrators,” said Phil DiStefano, CU’s chancellor, in a news release. “Over the course of the last nearly six decades they have made sustainability a campus priority, and have done the hard work to make it a reality.”

But CU didn’t fare so well on Princeton Review’s list, which came out in late July. The school was no where to be found on the green honor roll, which listed the 15 schools that got top scores of 99. (Also including the usual suspects: UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, Evergreen State College … )

When the Princeton Review debuted its list last summer, CU scored an 88, and in response, school officials questioned the rating’s methodology.

But officials at CU are skeptical about the way the Princeton Review collects information for its rankings, saying the company relies too heavily on anecdotes.

CU’s Boulder campus has a long-standing commitment to sustainability, said Dave Newport, director of CU’s Environmental Center.

CU students in 1974 founded the nation’s first campus recycling program, and in 2000 the school became the first in the country to raise student fees to buy wind-energy credits for campus buildings. Chancellor Bud Peterson is also recognized as a carbon neutrality leader, sitting on a national steering committee.

“CU has been a climate and sustainability leader for nearly 40 years and is so far ahead of other schools I think we get taken for granted by some of these ad-hoc ratings systems,” Newport said.

A final green-school rating system, the College Sustainability Report Card, gave CU its highest rating, an A-, in 2009. The school earned an A in every category except “shareholder engagement,” which it failed.

Read more about CU’s sustainability initiatives, or check out a post about ranking schools on their relative greeness on today’s Green Inc. blog.