Noise can actually be a form of pollution that characterizes urban and industrial areas. It affects not only the human hearing, but all our functions. The unit for measuring how loud a sound is, is called decibel. One decibel describes the minimum difference between two sounds, so that they are audible by humans. Whispering has an intensity of 20 decibel, while the sound produced by an aeroplane taking off, intensity of 150 decibel.

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A currently running advertising campaign from Brita, a German company that specializes in water filtration products, says in its ad slogan that “last year 16 million gallons of oil were consumed to make plastic water bottles.”

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This graphic clearly shows the scarcity of water, especially drinkable freshwater, and what increasing global temperatures can result in.

The graphic comes from UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme.

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Greenpeace hired the design firm BBDO from Moscow to tell consumers about genetically-modified organisms. The text in the ad says:

Do you know what you eat? The DNA of genetically modified plants may contain the genes of insects, animals or even viruses. These products may potentially cause harm to your health. Look for GMD free sign on the package.

The above image is cropped. More and full images after the jump:

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The European Union has introduced a new logo for organic food. The new logo will be obligatory in 2009 for all organic products sold within the European Union member states. But you can already see the new labelling on organic products.

It’s up to individual EU countries to decide if the new logo will be accompanied by national organic logos, such as the Swedish organic labelling KRAV.

Mariann Fischer Boel, EU Agriculture Commissioner, said that “this is an excellent agreement which will help consumers to recognize organic products throughout the EU more easily and give them assurances of precisely what they are buying.”

Well, that’s a maybe. The Australian government is hoping that a new proposal from them will be able to cover up a loophole that let’s Japan conduct whaling for “scientific reasons”.

The Australian environmental minister Peter Garett said today that Australia will present their proposal next week in London during an International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting.

If Australia’s proposal gets accepted whaling for “scientific reasons” must be conducted according to the commission’s rules.

But this will not be an end to whaling. Several countries like Norway, Iceland and Greenland will still continue to brutally slaughter whales for “commercial” and “cultural” purposes.

We all know that the meat industry is a dangerous threat to our climate and overall a questionable industry. The cattle release CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases. They also use a lot of land areas, around 25% of the earths total land area. And about one third of all farm areas are used to grow food for the cattle.

According to studies the meat industry is responsible for about one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, in the world. That means they currently pollutes more than the whole transport sector. And by year 2050 the meat production is expected to increase with 50%.

And then I haven’t even mentioned the rather obvious animal suffering.

But maybe, if some “environmentally concerned scientists” get their way, the meat you’ll eat in the future will be produced inside a lab. Scientists from the In Vitro Meat Consortium are currently trying to produce meat from muscle tissue for human consumption.

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With the Australian government, Greenpeace and Sea Shephard watching and tracking the two Japanese whaling vessels it seems all the whales are gone. But when the Japanese whalers can’t harpoon any whales they take hostages and make illegal fuel stops instead.

Now an article has appeared in Shukan Toyo Keizai, one of Japan’s leading newspapers, were they encourage Japan to “re-examine the whaling issue”.

Being one of the few issues on which Japan has made a stand against the United States and European countries, the stance of whaling hardliners could also be a vent for narrow-minded nationalism. In the end, that could easily be detrimental to national interests. Perhaps the Japanese people need to take this opportunity to re-examine the whaling issue for themselves.

Making Waves has the full translation here.