Karin-Kloosterman (f): And our stories we know they're being read by journalists from news outlets like Al-Jazeera, from Reuters, from the Associated Press, from Bloomberg, from the New York Times; they're reading our stories. Journalists often come to me asking me for local contacts.

HOST: Halo, amiable viewers, and welcome to this week's edition of Good People, Good Works, featuring interviews with bloggers from Green Prophet, a website that reports on environmental news from the Middle East. Green Prophet's founder and editor, Karin Kloosterman, who writes about emerging green technologies, eco-friendly companies and the environmental movement in the Middle East and has blogged for renowned websites such as the Huffington Post and Treehugger.

Karin-Kloosterman (f): Green Prophet started about three years ago. I was writing for a very popular environment blog in America called “TreeHugger,” and at the time it was very important for me to show Americans mainly what kind of new environmental initiatives were happening in Israel. And I'd been writing for them for a couple of years.

And at the time when I started there wasn't so much news and I really wanted to expose what was happening to help show some of the projects in Israel, because some of the environment projects here in Israel also have a very strong social element.

But suddenly I found myself having so many news items to deal with that I understood the best way really for me to talk to an audience would be for me to create my own platform rather than having the little bits of news that I was writing being swallowed by an American, domestic market. Because I'd write things on TreeHugger and a few people here and there would read it, but I knew that if I put it all in one place and one address, it would make a bigger impact. So that's essentially why I started it.

HOST: Green Prophet publishes intriguing stories on the latest trends in sustainable energy technologies, eco-design, green fashion, environmental policy and related topics.

Karin-Kloosterman (f): We have about 15 to 20 writers writing, some more regularly, some less regularly. And many of them are based in the region here. We also have some who are in the UK or travelling in America. We often have guest authors. We encourage that and we, of course, welcome contributions. But we have to maintain the message. It has to be stories connected to the Middle East.

HOST: Ms. Kloosterman seeks to link the people of the Middle East with the rest of the world, and the name of her website reflects this important mission.

Karin-Kloosterman (f): This is the region where the major prophets were born and lived and where they worked. So we thought to quietly include a faith message through our work could help also connect the global village to what's happening in the Middle East, because very little is being written about this region. And we want to celebrate the fact that there were great prophets, some of the greatest prophets that history has ever known from the region. And we thought, “Okay, well, let's play with that.” And that's how “Green Prophet” became our title.

HOST: Green Prophet's design-and-culture editor is Karen Chernick. An environmentalist since childhood, Ms. Chernick has written a number of fascinating articles for the site. For example, in January 2011 she blogged about the top eco-cities in the Middle East, reported on the “collaborative consumption” movement whereby technology allows consumer goods to be bartered, swapped and shared among community members, and showed how fair trade and cooperatives are improving the lives of Palestinian vegetable farmers in the West Bank.

Karen Chernick (f): I've been involved with Green Prophet for the past three years. And I started writing for them because I was finding all these ways that I could be more eco-friendly in my day-to-day life and I wanted to share them with people who live here. And I thought that people would be interested. And we started up very small and we've grown more and more, which is a good sign. It shows that more people are interested in living green and reducing their negative impact on the environment and in all sorts of ways, including eating better and eating vegetarian or vegan.

Karen Chernick (f): I like to help share information about organizations that are doing good things, so the people can know to get involved with them or businesses that are being more environmentally responsible, a lot of vegetarian restaurants that are coming up and just the news that's happening, to show that changes are being made in the environment.

HOST: Ms. Chernick believes that humanity needs to become more aware of how its actions benefit or damage our ecosphere. What we choose to put on our plates each day is a perfect example of how we directly impact the environment.

Karen Chernick (f): Well the food that we eat, we're consuming resources. Food is a resource and it obviously has a big effect on the environment. So ways to reduce your impact on the environment in the food choices you make are first and foremost to eat vegan or vegetarian, because the amount of energy that goes into the meat industry is one of the most polluting elements currently. Another way to do that beyond going vegan and vegetarian is to eat as much local food as possible so that you save all the resources involved in importing the food.

HOST: Next we'll meet Miriam Kresh, another Green Prophet blogger.

Miriam Kresh (f): I'm the food and food-culture writer. Green Profit, as you may know, of course, is involved with environmental issues in the Middle East. I write mostly about Middle Eastern food and how through food we can influence our environment here in the Middle East through shepherding our water resources, and through careful location of our food, bringing it from local sources, and reducing our carbon footprint in this way by eating locally and reducing the packaging.

HOST: Organic produce is becoming more popular in the Middle East, a constructive trend as vegan organic farmers avoid the use of destructive pesticides and harsh chemical fertilizers when growing fruits and vegetables.

Miriam Kresh (f): Organic is something you can see everywhere now. If you want it, you can find it. (It is) not too difficult. Through Green Prophet, I have had some reactions to my articles about allowing weeds to grow in your window boxes. The birds that come and visit will drop, you know, little gifts [bird droppings] inside your window boxes, and the seeds will spring up, and a lot of them. A lot of these weeds are edible, and not only edible, but good for you; and not only good for you, but delicious for example.

HOST: Karin Kloosterman enjoys reporting on advances in energy-efficient technologies and sustainable power. For example, she's written articles about solar-powered, automatic teller machines in the United Arab Emirates and innovative solar tech companies in Israel. We asked her what steps the Israeli government is taking to increase the generation of green energy to meet the nation's power needs.

Karin-Kloosterman (f): The Israel government wants the Israeli citizens to use solar energy and they've guaranteed a certain feed-in; it's called the feed-in tariff. So if I invest in solar energy on the panels of this roof, let's say it's a 20-year investment, the government will guarantee that I make a certain amount of money each month for the electricity that I feed back to the (electrical) grid.

It's a very attractive feed-in tariff; it's something like 10 or 20% overall. So, a lot of citizens on the ground now are getting involved. And there are incentives also for companies, so there have been big investments by international banks and firms, buying into this attractive feed-in rate for mid-range, solar energy plants in Israel.

HOST: What are Ms. Kloosterman's dreams for Green Prophet's future?

Karin Kloosterman (f): I just would like more people to read our website and to get involved in all the beautiful projects being done by people on the ground, by young women in Saudi Arabia, or young men in Israel, whatever are their little dreams and to collect and to connect and to grow.

I'd like to grow the blog so that simply more people will know what's happening here, so that they can connect. We're a networker, we're a connector, we're a focal point of where different people from different countries can connect.

And even locally (they) are connected, people on the ground, different bloggers in Israel and Jordan meet. I helped organize a conference in Jordan, where we brought (together) Israelis and Palestinians and Jordanian bloggers, all (of them) concerned about the environment. There were Israelis who had never even met Palestinians before. I couldn't believe it. You know how close they are to one another? It's like unbelievable. So just to keep connecting, that's my dream.

HOST: We thank Karin Kloosterman, Miriam Kresh and Karen Chernick for speaking with us about Green Prophet and their wonderful ideas for enhancing our biosphere. May Green Prophet continue to report on the greening of the Middle East, and to unite people around the world in the cause of environmental protection.

For more details on Green Prophet, please visit www.GreenProphet.com Connect with Green Prophet on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/GreenProphet