Green Options

When Flavia Cueva returned to her family home outside petite Copan, Honduras, she was inspired. After having spent most of her life in the American Midwest, Cueva felt compelled to return to restore the decayed farmstead. Overlooking the ruins of an ancient Mayan city, the ideally situated farm seemed the perfect spot to create a small inn.

Seeking to respect the natural world surrounding the farm, Cueva labored to create an eco-friendly inn, one that would be as comfortable and charming as earth-friendly. Hacienda San Lucas is now an eight-room, idyllic inn nestled in the bucolic, emerald green hills of the Honduran countryside. In addition to being 80% solar powered, the inn has been involved in reforestation efforts and recycles and composts. At night, candles light the large rooms and pathways—all of which are constructed of locally-obtained, natural materials.

Evenings are as charm-filled as mornings are mellow. Dinners at the inn are magical (think candlelight, a cricket serenade and twinkling stars). Set on a patio and illuminated by the warm glow of candles, the Mayan-inspired, multi-course meals offer a chance to chat up other guests or to simply savor the balmy night air.

The antithesis of bland chain hotels, San Lucas seems to have popped off the pages of a book by Isabell Allende or Graham Greene. With its wide verandas slung with hammocks, rock-hewn walls and tranquil, otherworldly air, the inn is an ideal spot to get off the grid—literally and figuratively.

We would like to thank all of the delicious recipes that we received for our Fair Trade Recipe Contest in honor of Fair Trade Month in October. Although we may be a little late announcing the winner, it is well worth the wait since all of you have the chance to view the fabulous entries. We have also had the chance to try the recipes and let me tell you, they were yummy! The winner will receive a gift certificate from Buy Well Coffee.

Our winner for the Fair Trade Recipe Contest is (drum roll please):

Candy McMenamin from Lexington, SC

Not only were both her recipes absolutely wonderful, but in addition to using fair trade and organic ingredients, she went above and beyond by submitting 2 entries both using our sponsoring product of Buy Well Coffee products. Nice touch Candy!

Thank You again to all the submissions for the contest. Please enjoy the recipes listed below to help make your holiday meal a little more special.

Growing up in the suburbs of Virginia, I didn’t even hear of Winter Solstice till 9th grade or so. I associated this mysterious Winter holiday with equally mysterious people…pale nerdy folks who liked to wear purple velvet clothing and buy dragon figurines and miniature crystal balls from New Age bookstores at the mall. They called themselves Pagans, and more specifically, Wiccans.
Though I wasn’t raised Christian, I still took on the same dismissive attitude as my local Bible-toting community, thinking of people who worshiped nature as eccentric, campy folks who should be left alone to perform their inconsequential hocus-pocus spells and rituals.

As I got older and became an environmentalist, the Winter Solstice did strike a bit more genuine interest within me; friends of mine- scientists, yogis, Christians, Jews, and treehuggers alike- were celebrating the Solstice in nightclubs, houseparties, and quiet gatherings in nature. I liked that Winter Solstice revelers were actually acknowledging some natural phenomena, something about planetary movement and time. I have been invited repeatedly to these soirees over the years, but never attended- the “hokiness” factor of my childhood kept me closed to the exploration.

Chanukah starts Sunday December 21 this year– just a week from today. Just as we encourage everyone to incorporate eco-smart ideas and green gifts into their Christmas plans, we also want to share some thoughts on how to have a Green Chanukah this year.
First, starting with the menorah, it’s always a great idea to use natural beeswax or soy candles. Traditional paraffin candles are made from petroleum. Or you can go the traditional route and use an olive-oil-burning menorah. Very natural indeed!

And using the menorah allows you to turn off the lights, save power, and cut your carbon footprint while you enjoy the light of the candles. Indeed the origin of the festival of lights in rooted in resource conservation— we can all learn a great deal by reflecting on the message of making one night’s oil last for eight days!

Should you need a new menorah, may we suggest this gorgeous one made of recycled glass? It is stunning and will surely become a family heirloom. This piece is hand crafted by artist Jacques Rivard. Or if this one is a bit much for your tastes, you can opt to make your own from logs, stones and more found objects… let creativity and reuse be your guides! Here’s a link to a blog with many excellent ideas for how to create special, eco-friendly Chanukah menorahs and other decorations.

Here’s one thing you may want to NOT add to your green holiday gift list: a video game console. Not only do they lead to hundreds of hours of glazed-over staring, but video game consoles are also pretty significant energy hogs.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and Eco Consulting published this month a very valuable report on the energy use of game consoles and we can use them more effectively to save energy (and thus reduce our contribution to global warming). You can see the full report here.

Many women discover the green lifestyle when they are expecting, or become moms. Wanting to do the best you can for your child includes considerations that you make before your baby is even born – after all, that’s why you’ve given up wine, right? Everyone knows that eating right and getting enough rest will help both mother and baby be healthy, but the green movement has opened our eyes to the effects that the world around us can have as well.

Back in 2005, a frightening study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found chemicals in the blood of the umbilical cords from 10 newborn babies. These chemicals were linked to cancer, birth defects, and hormone disruptions, and included lead, mercury and PCBs. Since then, moms-to-be have demanded more information about reducing the impact of the chemical soup that we all live in.

We Are What We Eat

According to most studies, it’s not clear whether organic food has higher nutritional value than its non-organic counterparts. Regardless, one thing is for sure: organic food contains fewer chemicals. Organic food is grown without artificial fertilizers, conventional pesticides, or sewage sludge, and processed without ionizing radiation and food additives. That stuff is gross, whether you’re pregnant or not. To label a food product organic, it must be certified by the National Organic Program, which is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). A USDA Organic seal indicates that the product contains at least 95% organic ingredients, so look for this label.

If you listen to the McCain campaign, nuclear power is a key solution to our energy dependence and global warming woes. Remove a few regulations here, provide some tax credits there, and poof! — energy independence, clean power and new jobs flow forth like oil through a pipeline.

Some diehard environmentalists consider eco-mansions an oxymoron at best, with militant types even setting fire to greenwashed mega-homes! But eco-mansion haters sometimes ignore an inconvenient truth: Huge homes are constantly getting built, and most of these are anything but green.

That’s the impetus behind “Playa” (above), a case study green home being built in Westchester, Calif., by Go Green Construction. The house, admittedly, will be huge — 4,300 square feet huge, to be exact — and located in a neighborhood that’s not particularly public transit-friendly. On the other hand, Playa’s also pre-rated for LEED platinum, serving as a self-described “living laboratory of green design” in a neighborhood full of ungreen McMansions.

The rooftop view from Playa (left) alone shows the need for green building in this neighborhood, where smoggy haze floats above multi-story single family homes. In contrast to the massive footprints of its neighbors, Playa will boast a full solar array, graywater recycling system, living walls, and smart house automation which allows residents to control the power of the house remotely.

I happened to live in France back in 2002, and during my year there I noticed a pretty significant gap between sustainability as practiced in Europe in the US. In Europe, I was working with large public companies who were already integrating the implications of global warming and sustainbility into their businesses. In the US (and sadly still today), many companies were still arguing whether global warming even existed!

This difference was also evident in houshold products - from luxury hotels in Italy fully outfitted with CFLs to low-flow water fixtures and dual-flush toilets in many homes to small upright washers in even the most basic apartments, the kinds of products associated with our burgeoning US green movement today were already the norm in many parts of Europe back then.

On a recent trip overseas I happened to pick up a French architecture magazine for the flight home. I was pleasantly surprised to see that we had really caught up in the past six years - outside of being written in French, you would have been hard-pressed to distinguish this magazine from any of the leading US architecture magazines.

One article caught my eye, though, for it did point out a slight difference that needs to move across the pond. It was on a beautiful and practical prefab home, called the EvolutiV house by Olgga Architectes of Paris. The house itself is striking, made from two rectangular prefrabicated sections that can be rearranged to develop different floorplans and having exterior walls made from sections of wooden logs. The homes also come with the latest and greatest in eco-design: natural ventilation, rainwater collection, solar panels (both PV and thermal), green roof, radiant heating with an option for geothermal heating/cooling, and the typical eco-friendly materials throughout.

The most interesting piece of the story, though, is that the literature for the house and the articles written about it all refer to the home’s target energy usage: less than 48 kWh / m2 / year, which translates to about 4.4 kWh / ft2 / year. This is 70% less energy usage than the typical US home in similar climates.

It’s not the level of performance that makes this interesting, for many prefab options in the US can do as well. It’s that the media in France AND the architecture firm who designed the house feel compelled to advertise efficiency in terms of a single number that is easy to understand and can be used to compare this home to others one might choose. I’ve rarely if ever seen that in discussion of US prefab options (or other green homes) - outside of a LEED rating, we’re often left to guess exactly how eco-friendly that home is. We’d love to see this become more widespread in the US - information is power, and simple, objective numbers like this can help us separate the truly eco-friendly from innovative designs that are green in name (or advertising) only.

To see more photos of the Evolutiv house, click here to view the balance of this posting. (FYI, the EvolutiV house is about 800 square feet and is available in France for about $150,000.)

And click here to find great green prefab homes available in the US.

It seems these days that you can’t get away from reading about carbon anywhere. From supermarket shelves to rental car counters, carbon labels and carbon offset offers are showing up everywhere. Part of this is because of the importance of and growing concern about global warming. But there’s another good reason: it’s a great single currency with which to compare the energy use and environmental impacts of very different kinds of activities and products. Pre-carbon, you had to use units like British thermal units (BTUs) or joules to compare the relative impacts of using gasoline to electricity or natural gas to fuel oil. Even then the calculations could be difficult and the results not very tangible to those of us who aren’t chemists. Carbon content makes it much easier. We can all envision carbon dioxide gas coming out of our tailpipes and smokestacks, so it’s tangible. And a carbon estimate allows you to quickly compare the relative environmental impacts of different product choices.

There is a price with this growing success, though: if you can’t measure the impact of something with carbon, then it can lose out in the court of public opinion. The environmental impacts of some items that are low (or unmeasurable) in carbon but high on other dimensions (water use, stormwater runoff production, etc) are often minimized. An increase in biofuels, for instance, might reduce the carbon content of motor fuels. But what if the biofuels are grown with intense nitrogen fertilizers that double the size of the summer dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico? Of what if we build 50 new nuclear power plants only to find that they exhaust regional supplies of fresh water for their cooling towers?