Sustainablog

As our friends over at Feelgood Style have noted, EDUN Apparel, the company founded by Ali Hewson (wife of U2 frontman Bono), isn’t just in the business of making stylish green clothing.  The company’s vision includes using trade (rather than aid) to support sustainable community development in the developing world, and encouraging the fashion industry to work with Africa.

The company’s t-shirt division, EDUN LIVE, in partnership with Spike Jonze’s VBS.tv and VICE magazine have created a series of videos presenting the cultural and natural environments around Kampala, Uganda, where a local textile company makes some of the organic cotton t-shirts sold by EDUN.

A visitor to the “Made in Africa” section of EDUN LIVE’s web site could have a hard time choosing where to start. While the company does use some of the videos to reinforce its green and socially responsible cred with a three-part series on Japanese native Yuichi Kashiwada’s organic cotton textile mill, “Made in Africa” goes well beyond company promotion. Videos on the Breakdance Project Uganda at the Sharing Youth Center, and the Uganda Skateboard Union provide glimpses into youth culture in the city. Another features the KCC (Kampala City Cleaners) Football Club, a social welfare program that eventually produced a national championship soccer team. And the three-part “Gorillas in the Midst” takes viewers on a trek through the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, with guide Levi and the WWF’s Dr. Richard Carroll, to see the magnificent, and endangered, mountain gorillas.

Read the rest of this entry »

Next to bathroom breaks and brushing teeth, eating may be one of the most routine, daily activities we engage in. Yet perhaps because food is so engrained in our everyday existence, we forget that it can readily be a strong means for us to activate some activism, no committee sign-ups required.

Instead blend your own creativity and contribution and come up with your own vision and project for promoting sustainable agriculture and local food. Come up with your own project to work towards a secure, healthy food system. Think out of the box and beyond just the dollars you spend at your farmers’ market. How can you contribute your skills, interests and enthusiasm toward bigger-picture change?

Melinda and Dan Hemmelgarn provide super-sized inspiration in such self-initiated, purposeful volunteering. Long-time supporters of their local farmers’ market in Columbia, Missouri, this creative couple blended their talents and passions into creating a calendar featuring area farmers: Farm Hands – a Tribute to the hands that feed us. Read the rest of this entry »

From our friends at ZapRoot: Farmers take it to the extreme to protect their crops. The Auto Alliance has jump on the green bandwagon. These Guys are Full of **it returns.

Links for this week’s edition:

sustainablog - Killing for Crops
Gas 2.0 - Ecodriving with the AAM
EcoScraps - McDonalds Green Billboard
Shell and the Alberta Oil Sands
Sad Hippies

Blogging, social news, peer-to-peer philanthropy, microblogging, social networking, wikis, video sharing, and more. These are the new agents of change.

Back in May, we penned the original 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media. Though most of those first 10 are still relevant, the pace of innovation and advancement on the social web means many more have emerged in the past five months that deserve attention. These are the tools and resources that individuals, corporations, and nonprofits alike can use to communicate, create, and connect on the social web…for social change.

1. Blog It Out: When the die is cast on social media and final judgments are made, blogging will reign supreme as the single greatest force in Web 2.0. Whereas social networking is broad and shallow, blogging is deep and focused. That’s the power behind Blog Action Day, which takes place this Wednesday, October 15th, 2008. It’s a day when bloggers the world over draw attention to a single issue and (hopefully) inspire action. This year’s topic is poverty. And given the current financial crisis, it would seem many bloggers have gotten a head start.

2. Twitter Green Events: In the first 10 Ways, we wrote about the Twitter greenstream, a tagging mechanism that organizes and aggregates Twitter messages (Tweets) about doing green things. What’s evolved since then is the widespread use of unique Twitter tags at events. Most recently, we covered West Coast Green by tagging our Tweets with #wcg08. This helps people at the event to find and meet up with fellow Twitter folk. It also enables those who aren’t attending the event to follow what’s going on and what’s being said in real time. There are a couple ways to do this. One is to follow through Twitter Search (formerly Summize), where you can track keywords and tags. Another is to send a Tweet as follows: “track word: [insert keyword]“. And then you’ll start receiving all Tweets with that tag or keyword directly into your feed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday our leader here at Sustainablog, Jeff, let us all know about an interview he did on the Green Talk Podcast. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I encourage you to download it now. It’s informative and entertaining.

There are a lot of environmental podcasts out there. Grist has one. Treehugger has one. NPR has one. Even the EPA put out a few podcasts around Earth Day (don’t bother). And while these more prominent ones can give a lot of good information, sometimes they leave me feeling flat. When I’m listening, I prefer a podcast with personality.

If you’re like me, and demand to be entertained as well as informed before you’ll download a podcast, try one of these green, fun options.

More Hip Than Hippie - This is my all time favorite podcast. The hosts, Val and Dori, have a blast while they discuss the environment, beer, chocolate and how to determine your porn star name. This is not your run of the mill green podcast. They make every green action they discuss sound appealing. A few weeks ago, they interviewed a guest about canning, and now I’m looking forward to planting even more tomatoes next summer because I’m excited about canning. And did I mention the beer and chocolate?

The Little Green People Show - This podcast is hosted by Laurene von Klan and Jill Riddell and is dubbed “sound advice on green living in the big city.” Their big city is Chicago, and they answer listener questions and give lively commentary about environmental issues in their city and beyond. They tackle a variety of issues from foraging for food to solar cookers to green fashion. Good stuff.

Read the rest of this entry »

As the world continues to be shaken up by horror stories on Wall Street, it might be worth taking a few steps back to consider your immediate quality of life.

SustainLane, a San Francisco based green media company has just announced its brand new U.S. city rankings today. Starting in 2005, SustainLane went through an exorbitant examination of sustainability initiatives in U.S. cities looking at a variety of factors: average traffic commutes, affordable housing, waste diversion, green space, energy usage, green buildings, natural disaster risk, air quality, water quality, public transportation, local food sources, and government innovations. James Elsen, the founder of SustainLane explains it in his article What’s A Sustainable City, Anyway ? Read the rest of this entry »

So, where are my manners? The good folks at Green Living Ideas posted the podcast interview I gave with Sean Daily just over a week ago, and I have yet to publicly thank Sean and partner Stephanie for a wonderful discussion.  We covered the gamut: from the green blogosphere to the next steps for the environmental movement. I had a great time, and am grateful for being included in their Green Blogger Series.

I did get the chance to thank Sean and Stephanie last week in person while in San Francisco… they’re good folks, and I highly recommend tuning in regularly for their program.

You can listen to my interview (or any of their shows) directly on their site, download the MP3, or even subscribe via iTunes.

Do I have you attention? Okay, good. Now, get your mind out of the gutter and instead turn your thoughts to the sex life of insects and other creatures. Isabella Rossellini has created an eight-part short film series titled “Green Porno” in conjunction with Robert Redford’s Sundance Channel.

These eight film shorts premiered back in May on sundancechannel.com, and they have been shown on the Sandance Channel. Starting today they will be made available worldwide through sundancechannel.com/greenporno. Two of the short films, Snail and Worm, are also available on YouTube starting today.

In addition to making these unique and irreverent film shorts more widely available, the Sundance Channel website is launching an interactive quiz, “What Kind of GREEN PORNO Star are You?” Turns out, I’m a dragonfly. According to the quiz:

Free and clean is how you run your life. Free–You’re the founding member of the Mile High Club. You know nothing about the sky being the limit.

True about me? I’m not telling.

Read the rest of this entry »

Seemingly unrelated to — and uncognizant of — recent news and outcry about the destruction of rain forest and beach in the Republic of Panama, as sustainablogger Alex Felsinger wrote about earlier this week, MTV Networks International is issuing 10 public service announcements to rally youth for the environment.

In a Sept. 15 article published by AdWeek, the new “MTV Switch” initiative will roll out as five PSAs and five short films, potentially reaching, MTV says, 560 million 15- to 25-year-old viewers in 162 countries. Read the rest of this entry »

Billboard, television and magazine advertising has been touting green this and green that for a while. I find the ones by companies such as BP and Chevron to be the most questionable, if not outright ridiculous.

In the October 2008 Atlantic magazine, as no doubt in many others, BP runs a full-page ad that says, “Investing in America’s most diverse energy portfolio.” It includes little clip art silhouettes for an oil drop, a gas flame, a wind turbine, the sun and a green plant, triggering our cutesy awwww factor. Then it says:

“Oil in the Gulf. Natural gas in the Rockies. Solar in Maryland. Wind in Texas. Biofuels research in California and Illinois. Diversity starts right here. BP is the largest investor in new U.S. energy development. In fact, over the last five years we’ve invested more than $28 billion in U.S. energy supplies.”

They are providing some concrete details for sure. Now is it true? (And, cynicism aside for a moment, if it is, will it do any good?) Read the rest of this entry »