The stage was set with a single podium, and beside it were two flags. The first flag was colored red white and blue, no stars and stripes, but three bands of red white and blue. The second flag was blue, and in its center was a circle of yellow stars. The keynote speaker stepped up to the mike. He was there to present a revolution. "A revolution in our way of thinking and in our decision making methods," he said, "a revolution in our behavior, in our politics, and in our goals." A green revolution.
The stage was in the presidential palace in the heart of Paris. The speaker was the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. And he couldn't have chosen more illustrious guests for the occasion: José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and, the winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Mr Al Gore himself. After Sarkozy outlined the results of four months of negotiations on the environment, Al Gore spoke. "I want to offer my congratulations to the French people. This is the beginning of an historic process," he said. "We need a 'Grenelle mondial,' a Worldwide Grenelle."
In May 1968, a time of great social upheaval in France, members of opposing camps met to discuss possible solutions to the crisis. Government representatives, employers and union leaders gathered to negotiate on labor terms and conditions. The agreements signed at the outcome were later called the "Grenelle accords" after the place where the meeting was held, in the Ministry of Labor building on Grenelle street in Paris. Sarkozy launched the environmental Grenelle last Spring, using the name of the labor agreements to emphasize the multilateral democratic nature of the process.
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Before hitting the print button on your e-mail, ask yourself why you are printing at all. By printing less you'll save on paper and save ink, which is not only good for the environment, but good on your wallet.Forward it. Instead of printing the page to give to someone to read, click the forward button. You can also include a line in your e-mail signature to remind others to not print, such as, "Consider the environment before printing this e-mail."
Archive it. Need it for your records? Consider saving the file as a pdf, that way you’ll have the information but won’t need to print the page.
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If your office is anything like mine, you have a TON of outdated/broken/obsolete tech stuff lying around, with nowhere to go. Now, in my office, we try not to throw this stuff out, because we are aware of the fact that it probably is not safe to go into the garbage dump. So we have what is lovingly referred to as the “tech graveyard”. It is a large box in a closet where we place all the gadgets and such that we have no idea what to do with.
Very recently my boss came to me and said. “Jessica, we need to do something about the graveyard, it is getting seriously out of control”. She was right. The box had turned into three boxes, nearly spilling out into the hallway whenever someone opened the door. So, now I had a mission. I had to figure out someway to deal with the tech stuff that was more sustainable than keeping it a closet (out of sight, out of mind- right?). Well, little did I know, the answer would be waiting for me in my inbox the next day. A friend of mine sent me an article that she thought I might find interesting. And interesting it was! Here is what I found out…
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The Apple iPhone — the geeks very own messiah — has been the hot topic of conversation the world over. Geeks and lay men and women have all been gathering around the proverbial water-cooler with one thing on their mind (two if you include Britney Spears). But the water-cooler at Greenpeace has not been yielding the same happy vibes as Apple would have hoped.
September of 2006 saw Greenpeace launch the Green My Apple website. Rather than asking for green iPods, they were asking for "green" iPods. The question they asked was this: why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of their product range contain hazardous substances that other companies have agreed to abandon?
May of this year saw Steve Jobs — the Apple god, if you will — announce to the world that "Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors" on environmental issues. But with the release of the iPhone in June in America, Greenpeace was left alone in the cold. Apple seemingly had just talked the talk, and sat at home on their couch.
So Greenpeace set out to see just what the iPhone was made of, literally. Purchasing an iPhone, and sending it to their UK labs, they found that the iPhone contained "toxic brominated compounds (indicating the prescence of brominated flame retardants (BFRs)) and hazardous PVC."
"Steve Jobs has missed the call on making the iPhone his first step towards greening Apple's products," said Zeina Alhajj, Greenpeace International toxics campaigner. "It seems that Apple is far from leading the way for a green electronics industry as competitors, like Nokia, already sell mobile phones free of PVC."
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In August, Lighter Footstep's Chris Baskind pointed us to Blog Action Day, a single day on which
...participating bloggers will post an article which deals in some way with green issues. A financial blog might address eco-friendly investing. An automotive site could choose to focus on hybrids or plug-in vehicles. It's all about the Earth — and diversity of opinion.
Well, Blog Action Day is here, and we're proud to be among the nearly 16,000 blogs taking part in this day of action.
Of course, we do green issues every day at Green Options, so this is hardly a stretch for us. In order to contribute to the event, we're going to highlight (and link to) posts throughout the day from "non-green" blogs. Here's the first batch — I'll update this post throughout the day to give you a glimpse of what's being said around the blogosphere.
Obviously, with the number of blogs participating, the team and I won't be able to read (or highlight) them all, so feel free to point to some of you favorites in the comments.
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Are you a green music pirate? (ARRR!) Free music downloading has generated a lot of debate, with some artists for and others against it. Well, here's a positive note for all you lyrical plunderers: downloading music is more environmentally friendly than buying it on CD. But you don't have to be scurvy about it either: these days, it's arguably much easier (and cheaper) to buy your music fair and square on iTunes than it is to buy CDs at the music shop. Besides, you're more likely to find new musicians you like in the gigantic online music archives than in the cramped aisles of a music store.
Here's the green beat: CDs contain aluminum, polycarbonate, lacquer, dyes, nickel, and chemical feedstock from oil, none of which are particularly groovy for the environment. And the jewel case and shrink-wrapping don't make CDs any healthier for the planet. Plus, with iPods and similar technologies abounding, how often do we buy the CD, upload the songs to our computers, listen to the tunes on our laptops and handheld devices, and never again touch the CD itself? These days, as this green blog puts it, CDs are nothing more than extra packaging for the music we buy. Spare the waste and the toxic materials by downloading your music directly.
By now, High Fidelity
Do you know a teen who wants to change the world? By Kids For Kids and their social networking site for teens, Idea Locker, launched a new contest for teens. The Going Green Challenge, a partnership with The Weather Channel, asks teens to create new products or services that could aid is solving global environmental problems, including climate change, drought, and famine.
The teen with the winning idea will not only win $10,000, but will win an "connection to reality" prize: an opportunity to blog on the "11th Hour Action" website, a tie-in to Leonardo DiCaprio's climate-change film, The 11th Hour. The winner will also get to shadow one of the experts from 11th Hour Action in their work environment. The challenge officially runs from now until December 31st, and all youth under the age of 19 are eligible to participate. Teens who want to enter must do so via BKFK's website.
"The connection-to-reality prize is especially exciting for us at BKFK, " said BKFK Founder and CEO Norman Goldstein. "As it empowers the winner to have their idea heard along with one of the most captivating movies of our time."
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It wasn't so long ago that the biggest concern for webmasters was simply keeping their sites online and running properly. But with the double-whammy of rapidly-accelerating web hosting demands and climate change, a growing number of site operators are looking for ways to not only stay online but to stay online sustainably.
If you've never given much thought to the amount of energy it takes to power the Internet and all its sites and services, consider this: so many new Web servers went into operation between 2000 and 2005 that global data center energy consumption doubled during that time period. (While the growing popularity of lower-end servers increased per-unit energy consumption, most of the increased power demand came from a sheer growth in numbers of servers — a study put the two growth rates at 5 to 8 percent and 90 percent, respectively.)
Fortunately, eco-minded webmasters are finding more hosting companies that are trying to do something to reduce their energy appetites, or at least offset the emissions their operations produce. VirtualHosting.com, an online resource for comparison-shopping virtual (shared-server) Web hosting providers, recently published a guide to hosts working to shrink their environmental footprints. "Green Hosting: 11 Carbon-Neutral Hosting Alternatives" provides a good overview to some green Web hosts in the U.S., U.K and Australia.
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Each year in recent memory, General Motors (GM) has invited the press and other key influencers out to the famous Milford Proving Grounds to spend a day testing out its upcoming model year line of vehicles on a closed course. The company has learned a lot from their last (hilarious) attempt to leverage social media, and for the first time ever, they decided to bestow the same access upon writers from around the blogosphere. Although they made sure that a smattering of green blogs were in attendance, tech blogs, trend blogs, and others were represented as well. Since by now, they have all covered major aspects of the event and GM's green and non-green offerings , I've decided to use the opportunity to take a look at how the proceedings reflect on GM's move toward sustainability, both in its marketing, and in reality.
First, credit where credit's due: GM is one of the few major public corporations (and the first I've seen in the auto industry) to realize that social media, and the blogosphere in particular, doesn't take kindly to being treated like any old marketing mechanism. On-message spin doesn't work online because bloggers are people who take pride in peering through the fog, and distilling information for their readers. Conversations on the web are not one-way, and information can't be controlled in the ways executives are used to. They are learning that the blogosphere is never afraid to call "bullshit" when it sees it, and the possibility of instant feedback ensures that all viewpoints can be heard, immediately.
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Sun Microsystems (the people behind the popular program language JAVA) have launched a new community-based website where companies and organizations can calculate, compare, and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. OpenEco.org is free and open to all organizations. The only cost of admission is sharing data, transparently or anonymously, with other community participants.
It is an interesting idea. It will allow companies to calculate how much GHG they are producing from things like buildings, and car fleets, and then compare them with other companies. Sort of like confessing your carbon sins, and then asking for help in order to rectify them.
Having free and open GHG calculators that are useful to big companies and organizations has the potential to save these companies a lot of money. Increasingly, GHG analysis is done with home-grown or proprietary tools, and often requires significant internal resources or expensive consulting services. With OpenEco.org, carbon accounting data that might ordinarily remain in a company's spreadsheet can be easily shared using the site's calculators. The tool enables organizations of all kinds to benchmark against one another, set realistic reduction goals and share best practices to meet them.
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85 year old Liz Moore is nobody's fool. The minute she laid eyes on Syncrude's Canadian Oil Sands operation in Alberta, Canada, she knew some terrible things were happening to the ecology of that area. While touring the company's site, she took pictures of land not reclaimed, a few snapshots in the visitors center, and came home to Colorado bound to tell a story. She set up a website, The Oil (Tar) Sands of Alberta The Canada/U.S. Connection, and published her pictures along with some interesting facts about the operation.
Almost immediately, Syncrude's legal staff wrote her and demanded she remove the pictures she had taken. Shortly thereafter, the company's publishing firm did the same, as did the Alberta provincial government concerning pictures of the Oil Sands Discovery Center which they helped fund.
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When Amy wrote about green magazines, she mentioned GOOD
The latest issue (Sept/Oct 07) is no exception. The issue, which commemorates their one-year anniversary, focuses on design solutions. A topic I covered a while back, green schools, gets a feature nod from Eva Steele-Saccio. Steele-Saccio highlights different schools' efforts to reduce their footprint and become more energy efficient, and acknowledges that there are benefits beyond energy savings: "Green schools create a healthy atmosphere for learning that has measurable results. The combination of natural light, fresh air, open plans, and multi-use facilities that encourage community involvement has helped student test scores rise by 20% and reduced asthma rates by 39%."
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Each of us who are hoping for a greener future often take a particular interest in our own career path's move towards a greener future. Automotive engineers push for greener workplaces and cleaner cars (both inside and out), politicians for… oh, bad example, and nerds like myself hope for our industry giants to take further steps towards that green, clean future.
Thankfully, I’ve picked the right team, as two of the giants of the technology world that are making great green steps in to the future.
First off is my personal favorite, Google, who seems to have a backroom that is just chock-full of hundred dollar bills. They’re dishing them our left, right and center to pay for lawsuits, acquisitions, and, as this latest story explains, green initiatives.
The nonprofit arm of the internet giant, Google.org, announced on Wednesday a $10 million request for proposal (RFP) from companies involved in commercial plug-in hybrid electric cars, as well as other sustainable forms of transportation (can you imagine how many bikes that would buy?).
The RFP process, which will take place entirely on the internet, hopes to accelerate the development of cleaner forms of transportation on a very large scale. According to Google.org, it is all in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by investing anywhere between $500,000 and $2 million in such companies.
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Can your search engine offset your carbon footprint? How about funding breast cancer research, environmental conservation, or pubic schools? Calling all web surfers: don’t miss these easy opportunities for everyday activism.
How it works
In 2006, an estimated $24.4 billion was spent on Internet advertising. (CBS, ZenithMedia) Some of this advertising money is spent placing ads on Internet search engines like Google and Yahoo. Each time we search the web, we see ads that fund the search engines. Advertisers benefit from marketing, search engines earn money, and we get to surf the web. Certain search engines donate their advertising earnings to charity, sometimes to the charity of your choice. All you have to do is to know where to search.
For example, to offset carbon emissions while you search, you can enter "carbon fund" (a carbon offset organization) into the bar on Goodsearch that reads "What do you Goodsearch for?" Now while you search the web, you will be fighting climate change. It's that simple. I do about 35 searches a day, which adds up to over 22,600 kg (50,000 pounds) of CO2 that I can offset each year by using this search engine combination. Try this in your office or school to make an even bigger impact!
Here are 15 of the top charity search engines.
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We've been working hard lately to reach out through some of the web's most popular social media sites, but, until now, we were MIA from 800 lb. gorrilla in this space: Myspace. We've fixed that, though, and are pleased to unveil the GO Myspace page.
If you're a member at Myspace, please add us as a friend, and ask your other friends to do so. We'll be highlighting chosen content there, as well as keeping users in the loop about devlopments at GO.
As always, let us know if you have suggestions. We'll see you there!
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The Gaiam Community site is a great resource for information on not only green living, but also health and wellness, mind-body fitness, and even spirituality. The site contains articles, discussion forums, and videos, but no blog... at least, no blog yet.
In October, Gaiam Community will launch it's blog, and, judging from their plans, it will quickly attain the status of a "must-read." They've already lined up yoga guru Rodney Yee, and Gaiam Real Goods founder John Schaeffer to write for it. In fact, the only thing they don't have is a name. Rather than hand that task over to the marketing department, they've decided to hold a contest.
The "Name Our Blog" contest will end on September 16th, so start thinking quickly. They're looking for a name that "will encompass the spirit of all the subjects we cover here in the Gaiam Community -- and be clever and unique too!" The winning entrant will receive a $250 Gaiam.com gift certificate; five runners up will receive $50 gift certificates.
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That's right: we're finally jumping on board the Twitter bandwagon. If you're scratching your head right now, Twitter is an instant notification, "micro-blogging" system that allows users to broadcast short messages to other users that have chosen to receive them. By signing on to "follow" GO's Twitter posts, you'll find out about new articles and features as they're released. We'll also throw in some of the fun and interesting items we come across every day.
Twitter is a free service, and it's easy to sign up. Let your friends now what you're doing right now... and be among the first to know what's new at GO.
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Editor's note: This week, Lighter Footstep editor Chris Baskind shifts gears a bit to give attention to a big event next month: Blog Action Day. Of course, we'll be participating, too (though it's not much of stretch here!) This post was originally published on August 19, 2007.
On October 15th, many of your favorite blogs will go green.
We're talking about sites which aren't usually focused on environmental issues, including many of our faves here at Lighter Footstep: Lifehacker, Copyblogger, Web Worker Daily, ChrisG, Problogger, ZenHabits, and GigaOM.
It's all part of Blog Action Day, an event organized by a trio of power bloggers which aims to unite thousands of sites for a day of articles and fundraining on behalf of the environment.
The idea behind Blog Action Day is simple: on October 15th, participating bloggers will post an article which deals in some way with green issues. A financial blog might address eco-friendly investing. An automotive site could choose to focus on hybrids or plug-in vehicles. It's all about the Earth -- and diversity of opinion.
As well-known blogger Brian Clark points out, the initiative is certainly a "call to action worthy of response." And while we don't really think of Lighter Footstep as a blog in the strictest sense, we'll be joining Blog Action Day here and at our sister publication, ecoTumble.
In addition to our online participation with Blog Action Day, Lighter Footstep will donate an amount equal to our one-day advertising revenues on October 15th to The Nature Conservancy, one of Blog action day's designated environmental charities.
Don't have a blog? Feeling left out?
In honor of Blog Action Day, we're going to take the wraps off an initiative we've been kicking around for a while. We call it the Green Blog Incubator.
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Dear EcoGeek,
My parents are always bugging me about computer usage and how the computers are sucking up energy. I want to know what I can do so that my computer doesn't waste so much energy? I totally wanna go green and save the Earth from Global Warming!
- Lukas
Hey Lukas,
You probably won't be surprised to discover that I spend quite a bit of time thinking about this very question. First, you should let your parents to know that your computer, with all of it's amazing opportunities for educational, economic and social advancement, likely uses less power than the light bulbs that share the room with it.
Most desktop computers use between 100 to 150 watts. Now, this goes way up if you've got some kind of monster high-end gaming system, but 100 watts is a pretty good energy investment for what these glorious machines give us...in my opinion anyhow.
But that doesn't mean that they're aren't steps you can take to decrease your computer's power usage.
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