Sustainablog

Think the barrels normally used for rainwater harvesting are ugly? You’re not alone: that’s the response University of Akron art education professor Elisa Gargarella heard from friends in response to her own home rain barrel. Rather than put the barrel away, though, Gargarella found inspiration in her friends’ distaste: if people find them ugly, why not make them beautiful?

Sounds like the approach an artist would take, right? Gargarella went a step further, though: as the director of Arts LIFT, an arts apprenticeship program for urban youth, she made beautifying rain barrels the centerpiece of this summer’s program. She also added an environmental education component: the ten teenage apprentices spent time learning about water-use issues, listening to lectures on water conservation, and even taking a tour of the local sewage treatment plant.

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The Mother Nature Network has just published their list of the ten greenest cities in the United States.

There is as yet no official criteria set by the EPA for determining a city’s “greeness,” MNN considered key areas to measure the effectiveness of a municipality’s efforts at carbon footprint reduction, including air and water quality, efficient recylcling and management of waste, percentage of LEED certified buildings, acres of land devoted to green space, use of renewable energy, and easy access to green products and services.

And the MNN winners are:

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Editor’s note: Brenna Dardolph is a student at the University of Kansas who recently finished Prof. Simran Sethi’s course Media & the Environment.

When we were seven, my good friend Julia’s parents finally quit smoking. The cause? Their little first grader’s nagging. As part of her elementary school curriculum, Julia was learning about the perils of smoking. It was her concern that finally convinced her parents to kick the habit.

As much as we believe parents shape their children, rarely do we consider that the opposite may be true. But the British government apparently does. Recently, seventeen local councils called on citizens, including children as young as seven to become the nation’s environmental watchdogs– to be on guard for littering, noise pollution and other environmental infractions. Participants in programs like “Eyes for Islington” in Islington or the “Junior Street Champions” in Luton receive information about collecting evidence and reporting environmental crimes. As a writer in the Independent pointed out, it is a chance for Britain’s youngsters to leave their computer games, get out their notebooks and commit themselves to a better community.

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Talk about a recipe for potential disaster.  Combine a down economy, changing agriculture practices, rising unemployment and the end result looks grim.  But here’s the secret ingredient  revitalizing and greening our countryside:  young people under 35.

Profiled in the new book, Renewing the Countryside: Youth, this new generation is making their mark on rural areas, from starting new farms to putting out their own entrepreneurial shingle in small towns. Renewing the Countryside: Youth showcases fifty case study stories, one from each state in the United States, cooking up a super-size serving of inspiration for what can be done in similar communities throughout rural America.

Renewing the Country (RTC), a Minnesota-based non-profit organization, specializes in championing such stories, telling the story of the small-scale but big impact individuals and organizations that are creatively crafting livelihoods that positively impact their rural communities. While other RTC books focus on stories within specific states such as Wisconsin, this latest book project, published in partnership with the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), uniquely celebrates rural youth.

In addition to the case study stories themselves, the engaging writing and photography also came from a team young artists across the nation. But beyond the inspiring read, this book serves as a starter blueprint for others looking to either return to or plant new roots in rural America, no matter one’s age.  Looking at these case study stories collectively, five themes emerge that identify why this particular group of young people are succeeding in the countryside: Read the rest of this entry »

In just seven years the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival has emerged as the premier music festival in the United States, if not the world. With the biggest names in music from genres across the musical spectrum taking to thirteen stages and providing festival-goers with four days of good music, danceable beats and pleasing melodies, this year’s Bonnaroo, from June 11-14 in Manchester, Tennessee will be no different from the last seven.

But in addition to the mountains of music and non-musical activities, the festival, which last year was named one of eighteen music festivals worldwide to receive the Greener Festival award, added several new green dimensions to its already impressive greening efforts.

Like the much newer Rothbury Festival up in Michigan, festival organizers at Bonnaroo have been hard at work finding new ways to green the festival scene and engage fans in discussions, seminars and educational programs about important sustainability topics and the pressing environmental issues of today. In addition to incorporating an environmental mission statement into every vendor contract, festival organizers have built upon past successful sustainability efforts and mixed in some new ones to give festival attendees a greener music festival experience.

Below are a few of the pre-festival green highlights, but stay tuned to Green Options for green updates, photos, interviews and reports from the ground at this year’s Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Read the rest of this entry »

With spring bringing out the gardener in many of us — veteran, rookie and in between — my household has been expanding our growing. Last year, we had a couple of small vegetable plots that maybe totalled 15-20 square feet. Plus, we created a wildflower and native grass section that stretches to a slim 40 square feet.

This year, we have turned nearly half of our backyard — tiny as it is — into a vegetable garden, adding 125 square feet, or so. I built a wooden-pallet compost bin. And our front yard — yes, tiny front yard — is quickly becoming garden space, too (more flowers, native grasses and such). We’ll soon have a rain barrel. I’ve torn up a 50-foot stretch of sidewalk, and will replace it with a more drainage-friendly, more attractive solution. My wife also has started dozens of vegetable seedlings, which she is giving away for others’ gardens.

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Editor’s note: We’ve done quite a bit of republishing lately here at sustainablog.  I’m grateful to all of those who have agreed to let us use their content, and wanted to add one more to the mix: Simran Sethi’s “post-Earth Day manifesto” from last week’s Huffington Post.

“We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” Gwendolyn Brooks

Dave Lowenstein and Gwendolyn Brooks hooked me. Just over two years ago, I was contemplating my stay in Lawrence, Kansas and sorting out future plans. The circumstances that brought me there weren’t going to keep me there. All my work was in New York and Los Angeles. I had no compelling reason to stay. Then I walked by a mural.

The mural, replete with brilliant images of incredible African-American artists connected to Kansas, is the backdrop for Lawrence’s Saturday Farmers’ Market. But that particular Sunday was scorching hot and downtown was a ghost town. The one car parked in front of the colorful wall at 9th and New Hampshire featured a bumper sticker demanding a living wage for Lawrence. I got up close to the words. I took a photo of the bumper sticker. In that sticky, solitary, epiphanic moment, everything became clear. I wanted to stay in this small town in a flat state, because of our magnitude and bond.

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The EPA’s going beyond the normal tips about recycling and saving water this year for Earth Day: they’ve launched a partnership with Boys and Girls Clubs of America to get young people involved in environmentally-themed community service projects. EPA’s ENERGY STAR program will also be offering “Go Green Nights” to Parent-Teacher Organizations across the country. Check out EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s discussion with members of the media above.

Looking for information on solar panels, organic vegetables, or endangered species? You go to one of your favorite green blogs, right? But if you’re looking for a film review, or a preview of an art exhibit, or information on pending education legislation, you head to a different blogosphere… unless it’s eco-focused, you won’t find those things on sustainablog or other environmentally-focused sites.

On Tuesday, the Sundance Channel quietly rolled out an effort to change that. Billed as “film, art, music, design and more as we see it - filtered through that space between the underground and the mainstream,” the new SUNfiltered blog provides an eclectic range of content… and, as with the company’s television programming, green is a part of the mix.

As a company with a sensitive finger on the cultural pulse, it’s no surprise that Sundance has made eco-consciousness a part of the new blog. Of course, you’d also expect them to hire a smart, savvy blogger with an eye for cutting-edge green developments to cover this beat, right?

You’d expect that. What you’ll get, however: me.

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The Atlanta metro area is one of the fastest growing urban centers in the country and, according to the Forbes magazine 2008 ranking, enjoys some of the worst traffic in the U.S. 13% of Atlanta-bound commuters spend over an hour commuting to work, with the average commuter spending more than 60 hours every year hassling their way to work on ever more crowded roadways. Atlanta ranks in the top ten cities for air pollution.

Clearly Atlanta is a perfect opportunity to employ all efforts available to reduce traffic. Heather Pastrick, from Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s Atlanta operation, recently explained how one important component of those efforts consists of the 110 vanpools (and growing) provided by the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Rideshare program throughout the greater Atlanta metropolitan area.

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