Green Options

Would you be so cavalier in throwing out a disposable razor if you knew how much it actually impacted your local environments? Would you think twice about purchasing a bottle of water if you knew how much it cost you to dispose of? That’s the question asked by the MIT SENSEable City lab these days. And they plan to see what effects one man’s trash actually has on the environment.

Inspired by the Green NYC Initiative which aims to increase the rate of waste recycling in New York to almost 100 percent by 2030 (currently, only about 30 percent of the city’s waste is diverted from landfills for recycling!), a group of MIT researchers have developed a program that uses special electronic tags in order to track different types of waste on their journey through the disposal systems of New York and Seattle. Its name? Trash Track. Trash Track will monitor the patterns and costs of urban disposal while raising public awareness about the impacts the garbage can under the sink has on the environment.

Editor’s note: This post was written by Jason Pelletier, and originally published at Low Impact Living on March 28, 2009.

If you’re one of those folks out there who is suffering from a bit of carbon fatigue, then a post in the NY Times’ Green Inc. blog this week could either provide additional motivation for green projects or increased fear of another jargon-laden debate. Green Inc highlighted the growing trend of striving for “water neutrality”, as highlighted at the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul last week.

The idea is gaining ground within a group of companies looking to understand and reduce their consumption of water, including Coca Cola, whose chairman has pledged to eventually balance out all of the water used in its products and manufacturing processes through conservation elsewhere (over 80 billion gallons worth!).

This got me to thinking: what would it take to be water-neutral in our own homes, meaning that we don’t import any net water? If we include all of the water that goes into our food and the products we consume, then it gets ugly real fast (see this post on the water content of food, for example). But what about our direct water use - showers, irrigation, toilets, etc?

Now, this would require some significant changes to a home and to local building/health/safety codes, since the only way to go water-neutral is to reuse graywater and harvest/store rainwater. Both of these options now face numerous permitting and legal obstacles around the country (including some pretty counterintuitive ones, like Utah and Colorado bans on capturing ANY rainwater at your home). Assuming we could, though, how much rain would it take to provide a family’s annual water needs?

Many eco-conscious families struggle with buying seafood that is both healthy for themselves and the environment.

“Choosing eco-friendly seafood is not only good for the oceans, it’s good for your family too,” says Katharine Burnham, spokesperson for the Environmental Defense Fund.

So what exactly is eco-friendly seafood? Anchovies are the Eco-Best Seafood, according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s research.  In its health facts, the fund says anchovies are high in heart-healthy omega-3s and have low contaminant levels.

Anchovies can be safely eaten by adults and children for more than four meals per month, research indicates.  They have “short life spans and reproduce quickly (and) are resilient to fishing pressure and remain plentiful.”

Toys!  Toys!  Toys!  If you have kids, chances are your house is overrun with them.

Cheap plastic garbage toys gifted from well-intentioned relatives; expensive high-quality wooden eco-friendly educational pieces that are almost more works of art than toys; noisy electronic toys; toys with a million pieces that always turn up in the darndest of places (but never when you’re actually looking for them)… We concoct ingenious storage solutions, we spend our hard-earned dollars on the very latest thing, and then we hear that inevitable lament:

Mo-o-om… We’re booooooooooooooored!!!

So there you find yourself, bewilderingly surrounded by this mountain of costly yet apparently useless paraphernalia on one side, and these adorable yet apparently helpless children on the other, thinking “there has GOT to be a better way!”

Well take heart, because there is.

Germany’s environmental issues advisory body issued a strong advisory for German people to lower their meat consumption, effectively asking the population to eat meat only on special occasions. The advisory board cited that 15% of Germany’s greenhouse gases come from agriculture. Dramatically reducing meat consumption will diminish Germany’s carbon footprint.

“We must rethink our high meat consumption,” said Andreas Troge, president of the government’s environmental issues advisory body.

Last Friday a California Superior Court judge quietly tossed out a lawsuit that had been filed by developers against the cities of Los Angeles and Santa Clarita for their opposition to a mini-city development of 5,500 homes between the two cities.

The two cities rejected the development due to its environmental impact in March, but the developers sued for $100 million soon after. The judge threw out all claims made by developer Los Lomas Land Company.

EcoBrain is a digital publishing business that provides sustainability content while reducing their impact on the environment.

According to a sweeping report released by the Center for American Progress and authored by researchers from the UMass Department of Economics, if the US government were to invest $100 billion dollars over two years in six key areas of green and sustainable development — including advanced biofuels — the result would be the creation of 2 million high-paying jobs across nearly all sectors of employment.

This represents four times the amount of jobs that would be created if that same $100 billion were invested in the oil industry for things like more offshore drilling. It also represents significantly more jobs of much higher diversity, pay, and longevity than were created by the $100 billion spent last April so that all us ‘mericans could all get our $600 tax rebates.

Okay. Let me get this one out of the way: gas hasn’t been all bad. In fact, gas has allowed us to accomplish some pretty amazing things. To be clear, when I say “gas,” I’m using the term as an easy way to loosely refer to all liquid fuel products made from buried and fossilized hydrocarbon deposits.

Ooooh… I can hear the flamers’ keys clicking away furiously already. But, before you type that horribly thought out gunslinging response, hear me out.

First in America Since 1976

Voters have said yes to a zoning ordinance that would result in construction of the nation’s newest oil refinery in over 30 years.

The highly contentious issue has pitted neighbor against neighbor in Union County, SD for months after Hyperion Energy first applied for a zoning permit to build the refinery.

Elk Point, SD city officials, quoted in the Sioux City Journal, were elated over the vote, saying it could bring thousands of new jobs and millions of dollars into the farming community.

A long time ago, 50 years or so, I was invited to a party that promised some unusual and tasty snacks, along with the usual supply of beer and other alcoholic libations.

Never one to pass up free food and booze, I showed up at my friends apartment , said hello to everyone, grabbed a cocktail and headed for the snacks. The table was filled with the usual cheese and crackers, veggies, liverwurst and other delights.

The center piece caught my eye, chocolate, lots of it, but not in any form I could immediately recognize. Upon questioning my host, I learned they were chocolate covered ants and grasshoppers.

“Here, try some,” said my host, “they’re delicious!”

I doubt he saw the green leaching into my face as I politely declined, saying I was on a diet.