Green Options

San Francisco Bike Coalition member Rick Baraff produced this short video documenting how the grassroots advocacy work of thousands of SFBC members led to last Friday’s historic victory at the SFMTA hearing.

In a paper published recently in the journal Conservation Biology, two scientists attempt to summarize all the available arguments both for and against scientists-as-advocates. Their conclusion, arrived at because of the determination that scientists are citizens first and scientists second, is that the scientific community should indeed be more involved in advocacy than it is. Climate change, to me, seems to be the ideal spot for this to take place.

The Senate is working on the economic recovery package passed by the House. This is a pivotal opportunity to invest in green projects like public transit and energy efficiency, which will jump-start our economy lay the foundations of a new, clean energy America. 1sky made it easy for you to call Washington–at no cost to you!

Today people representing our interests—but who do not necessarily have paid lobbyists like big oil and the auto manufacturers—get to lobby in Washington, to make a difference. And, ecopreneurs stand to be huge recipients of green jobs policies and legislation. Many of the issues lobbied for today would mean more incentives, funding and support for you.

This morning I found myself thinking about inaugurations past. In particular, John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Inaugural Address. That, along with meeting Auden Schendler Executive Director of Sustainability at Aspen Ski Company a few weeks ago, got me thinking about my ideas of greening small businesses.

What would happen if we reframed the issue: ask not what the country can do to green you; ask what you can do to green the country?

We all know that in order to be a green business we have to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk.  And, walking the walk needs to be more than greening your individual business. Changing your business practices is only one piece of the greening puzzle. Just because you can’t afford to install solar panels right now, doesn’t mean you can’t make a big difference. In fact, the time you invest in making a difference may be as valuable to environmental progress as installing CFLs. What if every small business owner in America got involved?  Joined a green business organization? Strengthened their green requirements for suppliers? Provided customers with greener alternatives?

Christopher and Kerri are a couple and social justice teachers out on a mission. Since the beginning of September 2008, they have been on a unique 30-day experiment on food choices, consumerism, waste, poverty and social psychology - trying to live on a one dollar a day diet.

But this insightful challenge - in their own words - to help us better understand and teach about a variety of concerns, could have been more interesting if it was broader in perspective.

Instead of trying to spend just a dollar on food daily from their comfort in Encinitas, California, where a tub of toothpaste costs $4.99, they should have enlisted a family in, say, Chittagong, Bangladesh or Turkana, Kenya, and asked them to survive on a dollar a day.

Don’t forget! The next Carnival of Green Crafts will be August 9th at BlogHer.  Send in your submissions now.

As much as I love to bring you pretty things, today I have something weightier to share. Grab a cup of coffee or something, pull up a chair, and when it’s done, please let me know what you think. My thoughts on this topic are definitely a work in progress, and I welcome your thoughts. (Thanks to Yoel Knits for inspiration for the first section’s title, by the way.)

Greening The Craft World

As far as I can tell, there are four main “green” strategies currently circulating in the crafting world.

The first strategy is being thrifty with materials.  Very few crafters are made of money, so we cut fabric carefully, re-use materials, and give away or swap supplies we don’t need.  This would fall into the Reduce part of the reduce-reuse-recycle waste hierarchy, and would also encompass stashbusting and “use what you have” type projects that decrease or postpone additional consumption.   Nicely for us, this is also better for the environment than being wasteful.

The environmental movement is one that has, lately, received a rather large amount of attention. This is not solely because of the contention about whether the global warming is as a result of man-made greenhouse gases, but because of its subsequent timing with a revolution on the internet.

New research from Mediamark Research and Intelligence has released the results of a study, based on interviews conducted with approximately 26,000 US adults, that suggests those 2% of people who are self-described “Green Advocates” are also among the most tech savvy.

Over the past few years, as the environmental movement has grown online, so has a new wave of “journalism”. I quote that word because there are some journalists out there who will resent the opinion that they are lobbed in a group with, say, me. However there are, at the moment, three groups of people that are, sadly, often misrepresented as only two; and this is where the problem occurs.