Sustainablog

Still have bottled water as a regular item on the grocery list? Or just pick up the occasional bottle when you’re out? It’s so convenient…

As you probably know, that convenience comes at an environmental and social price: documentaries such as FLOW and Thirst, organizations such as the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund, and even a few of us lowly bloggers, have reported on the costs created by water’s transformation from a freely-available resource to a multi-billion dollar commodity. That bottle of water you buy now contributes to the world’s third-largest industry.

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GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily talks with green blogger and eco-entrepreneur Shea Gunther, previously of EarthFirst.com and now with MNN.

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Jiangqiao Bamboo and Wood hails from China’s Jiangxi province, where bamboo resources are plentiful. Though the company began as a flooring company, they are now diversifying their production to include the latest in green design: bamboo keyboards.

In recent years, bamboo - a rapidly regenerating material - has gained popularity as a sturdy, sustainable alternative to wood flooring. Currently, China produces 200,000 cubic meters annually of bamboo plywood.

However, the history of bamboo’s use as an interior and even exterior material goes back way before sustainable buildings became trendy. Native to much of South and Southwest China, bamboo was first used to make paper, calligraphy brushes, and musical instruments thousands of years ago. For well over a century, it has been crafted into a range of household articles including chairs, baskets, mats, cutlery, and cabinets.

Bamboo - which is actually a grass - can be harvested after only four to six years of growth, much shorter than the 30-60 years required for comparable wood species. Replanting is not necessary, as bamboo regenerates on its own; and the speed at which it does so means it offers excellent erosion control.

Jiangqiao, which began manufacturing the green keyboards last October, has already received orders for 40,000 finished units, and is China’s sole producer of bamboo keyboards.

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Earth Day provides us with an opportunity to both reflect and act on our desire to use the planet’s resources in a sustainable manner. As we’ve noted in numerous posts, water may be the one resource we should focus on more, individually and collectively. No doubt, many of you have water-saving activities planned; a few of you may already be at work installing low-flow shower heads, faucet aerators, or even rain barrels.

Rainwater harvesting makes a lot of sense: the initial investment can be quite low (especially if you do it yourself), and your plants love rain water.  Unfortunately, as Rachelle Carson Begley once noted, an awful lot of commercially-available rain barrels are, well, ugly.

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I’ve gotten a little leery about product posts lately (”seen on TV” products notwithstanding). Ultimately, with the number of new “green” products out there, such posts could easily become the sole focus of our work here… and I don’t think that’s the kind of content sustainablog readers want or expect. But, I do make exceptions, and was happy to do just that when Ecopreneurist’s Paul Smith approached me about writing a post on Ode magazine.

Why make an exception for Ode? It’s quickly become my favorite magazine… the first (and, so far, only) one I’ve subscribed to on Zinio. Ode’s not only focused on issues that matter to me — social, environmental, and economic change — but also on stories about people making a difference in these areas.

In short, there’s a lot of good news in Ode… and, more and more, we need that.

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Think back to the last direct-marketed product you saw on television. You probably remember the hyped-up pitch person, the “special offer” for buying now, the price that ends .95.  You may also remember thinking “Why would anyone want that?”

Yes… most of the products marketed on television border on useless crap.  They’re symbols of conspicuous consumption.  The sales pitch feels cheesy. And, yet, as I mentioned in Five Greenish Products You’ve Seen on TV, a small handful of them appeal to values we promote here at sustainablog: conservation, re-use, and efficiency.

I’ve come across a few more that strike me not only as appealing to these values (and perhaps a few others that are positive), but also as a great way to spread sustainable practices… even if they’re not necessarily labeled that way.  Again, I don’t know the lifecycles of these products.  I assume most of them are made in China. I wouldn’t call any of them “green,” or endorse them outright (or try to sell them through affiliate links here).  But they’re definitely “greenish”… and if direct marketers are selling products by appealing to some of the values mentioned above, that’s an ever-so-small step forward. Here we go…

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Alaskan frontiersman Bernie Karl keeps his ice hotel frozen all summer long with the energy of hot springs. For a hundred years, Chena Hot Springs has attracted tourists who come to soak in its healing waters. But Karl — bearded and bursting with can-do spirit — saw the springs as a natural source of untapped energy. “I always knew that the value was in the hot water; I knew I would make electricity,” says Karl, in an original one-hour Discovery Channel TV special premiering Wednesday, March 11 at 10 pm (ET - check your local listings).  Though not your typical energy guru, today Karl is considered a pioneer of geothermal energy.

Karl is just one of the many entrepreneurs and inventors profiled in the Discovery special who are creating new ways to power our planet — tapping sunlight, wind and water, and heat embedded in the Earth. Based on the companion book, The New York Times bestseller Earth: The Sequel, the show details the tremendous strides being made across the nation to solve the energy crisis and curb carbon emissions through new technologies.  From start-ups harnessing hydro-power from New York’s East River to solar power in New Mexico’s high desert, the show chronicles dazzling ingenuity and possibility.

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I considered myself a seasoned coffee junkie.  I jump-start every morning with a cup of Sumatra, with Fair Trade, organic and shade grown stamps of approval.  A fair – and delicious — start, but after meeting the folks running Peace Coffee, my coffee awareness, appreciation and activism was jolted.  Issues I never thought about – cooperative buying, aromas, local roasting – now percolate and affect my next buying decision.

Engaging customers to become activists.  Don’t think that’s in the McDonald’s “Premium Roast” marketing plan.  But Peace Coffee doesn’t play by anybody’s business rulebook. As a successful, Minneapolis-based coffee company with an ecopreneurial zest for leaving this world a better place, Peace Coffee uses their java beans to do more than brew coffee.

Their coffee serves as a change agent, positively changing and greening the lives of everyone involved in the process.  From the farmer in Guatemala now supporting his family thanks to a fair living wage to me direct to me, drinking my morning cup on my Wisconsin farm, this innovative business changes people through their purchases ever since they started as a fledgling brainchild of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in 1995.

“We’re not out to be the biggest coffee company in the universe,” explains Melanee Meegan, marketing manager at Peace Coffee.  “When people choose our coffees, their purchases go directly toward improving the quality of life for farmers across the globe.”

Here are three innovative approaches Peace Coffee uses to engage and inspire their customers:

1.  Keep Local Priorities
Peace Coffee doesn’t want to sell me coffee.  Trust me, I asked.  Read the rest of this entry »

As part of the 2009 Greener Gadgets Conference in New York on February 27th (read about the 2008 conference here), the design magazine Core 77 is presenting a green design competition. There are 50 green gadget finalists and by voting before February 20th, you can help determine which will be the top 10 that make it to live judging from the stage during the conference.

Right now, Hernando Barragan’s environmental traffic light called Social-environmental Station is leading with 1182 votes.  These gadgets look like traffic lights and are meant to be placed in public areas. They will measure things like CO2 and visually display them so that environmental phenomena become more immediately visible to the public and less of an abstraction. Essentially, they will be “environmental signals that support decision making on environmental issues”.

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Todd Woody reported last week that the wind energy industry now employs more people than coal mining. That is 85,000 jobs in wind - a 70% increase from 2007 - to coal mining’s 81,000 jobs.

Not bad for an industry that is expected to continue to grow, even if not at the levels of the last year when wind accounted for 42% of new energy and experienced a 50% increase in capacity. Plus, workers in the wind industry don’t get trapped in mines, contract black lung, or devastate entire communities by blowing up mountains.

While the coal industry overall provides double the number of jobs as wind, it is important to note, as A. Siegel does at Get Energy Smart NOW!, that coal accounts for about 50% of our energy output and wind currently makes up 2% of our energy output. As a result, it only makes sense in terms of the environment and the economy to invest in wind while making coal-fired power plants jump through more regulatory hoops. Just do the numbers and it is clear that increasing wind energy output while decreasing coal energy output results in a net gain in jobs - clean, green jobs.

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