Green Options

More and more people are taking the plunge into backyard gardening. Some are even planting fruits and veggies in their front yard and adopting the “no-mow” approach. Last year one website, Freedom Gardens, used its social networking platform to coordinate the “100 Foot Diet Challenge.” Hundreds of gardeners throughout the country accepted the invitation by getting out their hoes and spades.
The “Freedom Garden” borrows its name from the Victory Garden movement (but dropped its the militaristic overtones). Victory Gardens were popular during World War II, during which many Americans ramped up local food production as a means to bolster the economy and support the war effort. (Hard to believe anyone ever considered gardening to be patriotic.)

There’s been a lot of noise in recent years about the widespread construction of Wal-Marts and other big box stores. A new development is the rise in vacated megastores. Recently, resourceful communities and individuals are re-imagining better uses for these behemoth structures.
A body of data and stories has been collected by Julia Christensen, author of the recently published Big Box Reuse. Her book, published by MIT Press, offers a detailed overview of ten communities that have transformed vacated Wal-Marts and Kmarts into civic structures.

Responding to a blog I posted earlier about governmental preparations for peak oil, one self-labeled “alarmist” commented with a plug for his own resource, a networking web site called Bright Neighbor. I thought the site was worth checking out.
According to the peak oil experts, we need better personal and collective plans for fossil fuel depletion. Randy White, an early member of Portland, Oregon’s Peak Oil Task Force, agrees. His Bright Neighbor is taking on the practical functions that he believes should be executed by the powers that be—were they up for the job.

In the international marketplace of ideas, Lyle Estill is not a widely known expert on human-scale, local economies. He may never attain that status, if only be because he’s too busy making economic theory a sustainable reality in his little corner of North Carolina.
In Small Is Possible: Life in a Local Economy, Estill chronicles the failures and victories of an ongoing movement for sustainability and local resiliency in Chatham County, [...]

The debate over the global energy crisis continues to inch its away into the public arena. While federal governments still have not taken specific actions regarding peak oil, a number of sub-federal agencies have acted.
As experts wrestle over the question of when global oil demand will outpace supply, a number of municipalities, regional agencies, and even state governments in the U.S. and Canada have commissioned studies and drawn up plans to anticipate the decline of our oil reserves, according to an online report by Post Carbon Cities. The original study was compiled by Daniel Lerch, the organization’s program director and author of Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty.

Grassroots citizen groups that have begun planning for a post-peak oil future—or, at least a future without cheap oil—are clearly more numerous than local governments with such a focus, as indicated by the nearly 150 awareness groups that make up the The Relocalization Network. However, that official peak-oil resolutions been passed at all is a sign that various awareness campaigns around this issue have worked. City and state officials have heard the alarm and responded—at least in a handful of communities.

The local food movement is gathering steam. To keep locavores informed about best farming practices, one organization spreads the word about what sustainable farmers are achieving under the radar.
Formed as a coalition of schools, Mid-Atlantic-based nonprofit organizations, and the USDA, the Small Farm Success Project is “dedicated to helping small and emerging farmers improve their financial success.” Project researchers keep raising that million-dollar question:  How does a small farmer committed to sustainability find success?

A growing segment of eco-conscious citizens are recognizing how both living green and supporting the local economy are integral to a more sustainable world.
Here are five strategies adapted from a complete action item list at small-mart.org, a web site inspired by The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition by Michael Shuman:

1. Buy Fresh. An age-old tradition of supporting local agriculture is experiencing a resurgence. More people are shopping at farmers markets, joining co-ops, and buying shares at community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs. Many such businesses are listed in directories provided by sustainability business networks.

It doesn’t need to stop with buying local produce. Supporting other food operations like the neighborhood baker, cheese maker, or caterer also helps bolster the local economy. All of these local food practices help communities lessen their carbon footprint by forsaking a broader distribution network and the environmental costs of long-distance shipping.

As some people in sustainability circles know, Philadelphia is not just the birthplace of America, but also a vanguard city of what is often referred the Living Economy movement, or the local ECOnomy.
Under the direction of Philly’s White Dog Cafe, its proprietor Judy Wicks, and other local pioneers, a sustainable business network has served as a prototype for a local Living Economy that advances the triple bottom line (”People, Places, Profit”).  This group has proven that business owners and entrepreneurs can be green and socially conscious and still be prosperous.

Wicks founded the White Dog Cafe in 1983. It subsequently grew from a coffee-and-muffin shop to a full-service restaurant serving organic and locally produced food. Committed to supporting humane farming practices, Wicks continued to search out the right food vendors until she could say for sure that the White Dog featured a cruelty-free menu. Her restaurant continued to reap profits, but she wasn’t content with simply staking out a market niche. She also wanted to share the knowledge she had acquired with other businesses, even if that meant helping out the competition.