Green Options

[Sunflower. Creative Commons photo by cygnus921]

Pittsburgh-based nonprofit GTECH Strategies is transforming empty plots of land in New Orleans into sunflower gardens! GTECH’s partner in Project Sprout, Green Coast Enterprises, is a local New Orleans real estate company that’s focused on sustainable development in the Gulf Coast area. GTECH’s vision is to reclaim abandoned land, like these “blighted” lots in New Orleans, to produce biofuels and green jobs for the community.

Yesterday Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office annouced they will be promoting Sunday Streets again this year, the wildly successful citywide effort to get people to go outside that debuted last summer. The campaign closed a 4.5 mile stretch of roads between Bayview and Chinatown on several Sunday mornings to make more space for joggers, cyclists, walkers and even yoga practicioners. Former arterial roadway, transformed recreational asphalt.

[image via John Lambert Pearson]

This Friday is National PARK(ing) day! Across the U.S. volunteers will transform hundreds of parking spaces into tiny, temporary parks. The event is sponsored by The Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit organization launched by REBAR, an art collective, to raise awareness about the need for more green space.

The first PARK(ing) Day was held in September of last year, and there were over 200 spaces turned into guerrilla parks. This year, the plan is to double that number! With over 70 cities participating, National PARK(ing) Day is aiming to transform more than 400 parking spaces into green spaces. Check out a few of the events after the jump!

There are many sustainable options when it comes to putting food on the table, from eating organic to choosing locally grown foods to avoiding animal products. But there’s nothing quite as truly sustainable, satisfying, and tasty as growing your own organic food. What follows is my homegrown experience in community gardening.

After traveling around in a veggie oil and biodiesel powered “volksvegan” for most of last year, I was eager to have a garden again (not to mention an actual kitchen). It didn’t take long in our small town to find a wonderful non-profit organization teaching organic food production classes and get involved. Before long we were starting seeds in a greenhouse, not quite sure where we’d be planting them when they were sprouted. Luckily, the organization, Noyo Food Forest, was just breaking ground on a new community garden, and we jumped at the chance to get our hands dirty and grow some organic food.

Our gardening experience in coastal Northern California has been quite an experiment. After growing up in the hotter and dryer climate of Idaho, gardening on the coast took some getting used to. But we discovered that with some fertile soil, organic seeds, a few helpful people, and the labors of love, we could grow a bounty of fresh organic produce and community at the same time.

What’s the connection between dinner parties and polar bears? No, we’re not suggesting that you serve bear. Cooking one large meal with a small group of friends is more energy efficient than cooking several individual meals in different houses. This reduces the greenhouse gasses responsible for Global Warming, a threat to arctic ecosystems.

Interested? Great, let’s get cooking! First, choose your menu options: something delicious that’s easy to make, like spaghetti and (vegan?)

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Community activism—getting involved in your community to make positive change—is both thrilling and rewarding. But fighting against the current to do it can be hard work. To be effective at making change in your community, it’s a good idea to first learn what the community itself sees as its major issues. By learning about and responding to your community’s needs, you can generate popular support for your actions and more easily find

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Photo Credit: Ecocity Builders

What if your commute to work included an experience in the following:

• Plant and pedestrian-friendly plazas
• Pedestrian streets
• A bike ride
• Rooftop gardens
• Bridges between buildings
• Car-free streets
• And neighborhood waterways

How different would we feel if our cities were designed “for the long term health of human and natural systems?”

At Ecocity Builders, this question is asked every day with an urban re-design approach that treats each city as a giant living organism, with

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