Sustainablog

So, I got the inevitable question from my wife this morning: “What do you want for Christmas?” My inevitable answer: “I don’t know.” As this game plays out over the next few weeks, my answers will change: “nothing” is next, something completey unsexy but totally useful will follow (she hates those), and, finally, I’ll say “Why not just make a donation in my name.”

But, I might mix it up this year: “How about a TisBest gift card?”

I heard about these cards just over a week ago, and love the concept: a gift card for charitable donations. According to their press materials, TisBest is

…a Seattle-based company that offers tax-deductible charity gift cards online in amounts from $10 to $5,000. Charity gift card recipients then choose to donate the funds on their gift card to one of 250 carefully selected charities organized into categories as diverse as: the environment, health, children, education, arts and culture and women’s issues.

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Are you surviving the financial crisis?

While the mainstream media seem more interested in spinning stories of foreclosures, bankruptcies and the like, millions of Americans who have gone green in either their homes, lifestyles or businesses have discovered a degree of sustained prosperity, security and stability, despite the tough times both nationally and globally. That’s not to say they’re living high on the land. But that’s the whole point for many who have chosen to live lean, green, and with the health of their community in mind, focusing on what they value, not on what they can consume next.

There’s Tazza D’oro, the fair trade and community-focused coffee house I just visited in Pittsburgh, where sales are up by double digits; this, despite the restaurant industry as a whole seeing sales plummet by about 43 percent last I checked with the National Restaurant Association. New Society Publishers, the publisher of my latest books ECOpreneuring and Rural Renaissance, both printed on 100 percent post consumer waste recycled paper, continues to prosper, perhaps even more so with books that provide positive solutions for people hungry to make a difference. For people who took their early summer 2008 Economic Stimulus Package check and invested it in energy efficiency and conservation, paid off a credit card balance, or like my wife and I, added a photovoltaic system to power our all-electric CitiCar, we realized both a return on our investment and return on environment while needing less money to pay the bankers or utility companies.

Here’s what I’ve learned from both personal experience over the past twelve years and in talking with many others about how to survive a financial crisis:

(1) Invest in the future and in your community

In a time when 401ks are quickly turning into 101ks, many Americans are exiting the debt-based economy, paying off credit cards, canceling car loans, paying down mortgages. Suddenly, when we don’t need to earn money to pay the banks, we rediscover what freedom means. We don’t save for the future, we invest in the one we want to live in, filled with green building materials, fairly traded products, and crafted as a part of the restoration and reuse, place-based economy, sometimes costing us only pennies on the dollar. From an old building turned we into a strawbale greenhouse heated by solar thermal system and biodiesel (we make with a neighbor) to various renewable energy systems, we are pleased — happy — that what we invest in does, in fact, make the world just a little better.

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With Santa’s e.t.a. drawing ever nearer, little boys and girls are trying extra hard to be nice rather than naughty in order to get their holiday wishes filled. And many of them are not having visions of sugarplums. No, a great many children of all ages around the world are dreaming of new super-techno-gadgets from iPhones to Blackberries to MP3 players to everything else in between.

While their individual wants may vary (probably depending on which commercial they have seen or which friend bought which gadget most recently), one common feature of the things they may want is a battery. Or multiple batteries.

Nowadays, just about everything requires one or more batteries to operate, some rechargeable by design and others using traditional, disposable alkaline versions. An estimated 15 billion alkaline batteries alone get made and then chucked every year. Unfortunately for the planet and its inhabitants, all of those batteries contain toxic components, such as mercury, cadmium, lead, and other metals. Equally unfortunately, only a tiny percentage of the rechargeable and disposable batteries used to power modernity’s techno-trinkets ever get recycled or disposed of in safe ways. As a result, those toxins combine with all the energy and pollutants emitted during the manufacture, transport, and storage of batteries that end up in the trash after a single use.

Recognizing the seriously hazardous trend in battery production and usage, UK-based company Moixa Energy has launched its Alkaline Awareness Campaign to help educate consumers. In addition, Moixa Energy is offering a special “Carbon Footprint” version of its USBCELL rechargeable battery–so that consumers will recognize how they are acting as “CO2 Savers” by using the USBCELL instead of alkaline batteries. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, I admit it: I’m a book whore (hardly a shocking confession for a former English professor). I’m most vulnerable to impulse buying in a book store. When a publishing PR rep contacts me about a book for review, I jump on it like an addict desperate for that next fix.

But, of course, I also know that book publishing takes a fairly heavy environmental toll: as our friends at EcoLibris have pointed out, “more than 30 million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone.” The WorldWatch Institute notes that the average American uses over 300 kilograms (or over 660 pounds) of paper annually. And Erika Engelhaupt, in Environmental Science & Technology, observes:

Reducing paper use does more than save trees. Pulp and paper mills are also a major source of pollution. They release into the air CO2, nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), carbon monoxide, and particulates, which contribute to global warming, smog, acid rain, and respiratory problems. In addition, bleaching paper with chlorine can produce dioxin, which is known to cause cancer. Paper mills also produce large amounts of solid waste and require a lot of water. The industry is trying to clean up, but anyone who’s driven past a paper mill has smelled the challenge.

Yep, that book addiction has quite the footprint. There are numerous approaches to dealing with this impact: “cradle to cradle” book design, Ecolibris-style offsets, used of recycled and non-toxic materials, and, of course, ebooks.

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Foam peanuts are the Devil. Evil incarnate. Darkness made visible. Senseless brutal waste embodied in a horde of impish, malevolent, noxious, toxic minions spilling out of boxes, bags, closets, basements, attics, trashcans, landfills. A wicked wind is blowing, and those infernal foam peanuts are riding it across the land, across the sea, across the Earth. They cannot die; they may be eternal.

Okay, so maybe foam peanuts and the other demons in the legion of packaging materials are not the creations of some sinister mad hatter, some oily oligarch, some short-sighted sorcerer’s apprentice, some wizard hiding in a city that is decidedly not emerald green. Nevertheless, the foam peanuts are steadily spreading with every package sent by air, sea, or ground. And this fact begs the question: Can they be stopped???

Take heart, my fellow Earthlings, for we do have an easy and eco-friendly way to say “YES!” to this question: Bubbla.

Although it may not have the name of a saving knight in shining green armor, Bubbla offers just about anyone–from large businesses shipping countless packages per day to the lone house dweller sending birthday gifts to family–a way to put a stop to the rampaging horde of foam peanuts. (Besides, how silly does “foam peanuts” sound?!)

Bubbla is an “on-demand” air-inflated packaging system produced for over 12 years now by Bubbla, Inc., a company in Canoga Park, California. (Believe it or not, the owner of Bubbla actually invented air-pillow packaging material, and the company owns four patents in this area. Obviously they know their stuff!)

Whenever you need some packaging material, you just make it using either the tabletop or freestanding Bubbla machine, both of which are easy to operate (with touch-screen controls), small (about 25” tall by 15” deep), and can be plugged in to a good old electric wall outlet. The machine quickly cranks out a supply of air-inflated packaging in one design or another (e.g., diamond wrap or long cells) to meet your demand. Make as much as you need, when you need. No fuss, no muss. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m seeing a lot out there about greening your Halloween this year. One way to do that is to send your kids off trick-or-treating with a bag that they can use again and again and again. ChicoBag is selling these great little reusable Halloween shopping bags that would also make great bags for kids to collect their treats in.

I know there are a lot of green products out there to choose from, so why am I telling you about this one particular product. For two reasons.

First of all, I’m a big fan of the ChicoBag. Last April, I was contacted by the company and asked if I would like a couple of bags to check out and review. They sent me two bags, and I’ve been a ChicoBag user ever since.

I think my ChicoBag is fabulous. Why? Read the rest of this entry »

Greg Frenette, a lead engineer at Ford Motors, said last week that it may take at least 20 years before hydrogen-powered cars become widely available because obtaining the fuel is so costly and difficult. However the latest news from the Reuters Global Environment Summit is that these zero emissions cars could become a reality in California very soon. The state plans to build out “Hydrogen Cities” to support the hydrogen car industry.

How Does the Hydrogen Car Work?

Fuel cells create electricity in a chemical process that combines hydrogen and oxygen, emitting water vapor as a by-product. instead of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Since the conversion of the fuel to energy takes place via an electrochemical process rather than combustion, the process is clean and highly efficient. The hydrogen car reduces greenhouse gas emissions while also reducing dependency on crude oil. Read the rest of this entry »

James Lovelock’s Gaia theory, that the Earth is a single living organism, has been invoked countless times by environmentalists. In their uses (and abuses) of it, the theory becomes evidence for humanity’s connection with nature and so our responsibility to treat nature with care.

In fact, Lovelock is anything but an “environmentalist” in the traditional sense. Nor is he a staunch advocate for rigorous conservation and “dehumanization” of the planet, at least in his first book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979). He quite often criticizes as fatuous and downright silly many environmentalists’ claims, using evidence gathered from his work in the sciences.

One passage in Gaia struck me as extremely provocative despite being written nearly thirty years ago. Discussing the atmospheric gases, specifically those produced by human industry, Lovelock writes,

In our persistent self-imposed alienation from nature, we tend to think that our industrial products are not ‘natural’. In fact, they are just as natural as all the other chemicals of the Earth, for they have been made by us, who surely are living creatures. They may of course be aggressive and dangerous, like nerve gases, but no more so than the toxin manufactured by the botulinus bacillus.1

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Buying second-hand products is always green, but it’s easy to be discouraged by the stories of broken laptops from eBay or Craigslist. To quell these fears, here is a 10-step checklist on how to find a used laptop that isn’t just a high-tech lemon.

Most wouldn’t flinch at the idea of buying a used car, but the thought of a used computer sends them squirming. The tech industry tries their hardest to keep it that way: they advertise new products in such a way to render the previous models perceptually obsolete; they block even the simplest hardware upgrades; and they sell bottom-of-the-line models that simply break within a couple years.

This shouldn’t scare you away from a used computer purchase, but know that they are imperfect machines; some research, determination, and basic knowledge is required. To make this list, I used both my own experience along with some tips from Peter Montesano of Peter’s PC Repair, one of the most highly regarded repair shops in San Francisco.

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Some people build houses. Others, go abroad and help build or rebuild communities. Still others build… mobile kitchens! Earlier this year, students from the University of Toronto’s master’s program at the faculty of architecture designed and built a mobile kitchen. So what you say? What’s so big about a kitchen table on wheels? Well, some people pimp their cars, these UofT students pimped their kitchen! This kitchen comes with a barbeque, seats about 50, and has garbage, recycling and composting bins available.
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