As our good friend Max Gladwell has pointed out repeatedly, the social web provides a wealth of opportunities to change the world through social media. Finnish start-up One Did It is shooting for a spot on Max’s list: this small company, which shared its story with us on the Finnfacts Clean Tech Bloggers Tour, aims to promote European approaches to thinking about sustainability through a decidedly Silicon Valley model. Their platform, which combines lifestyle assessment, action tips, and opportunities for friendly competition among its community, provides users with the means to measure the impact of their lifestyle choices, and to see the effects of behavioral changes on their environmental footprints.
What gets measured gets managed: the Ecological Backpack
It turns out that my use of the term “footprint” illustrates my American perspective on environmental impact; One Did It relies on the metaphor of the “ecological backpack,” which originated in Europe, and has really taken off in Germany. While similar to the footprint concept, the backpack approach provides a bit more comprehensive evaluation of the burden your choices place on natural systems.
By Steve Savage •
November 22, 2009
A team of American and French scientists have just documented the fact that there are a lot of bacteria in cigarettes and that the bacterial population includes some human pathogens. They don’t actually know if this leads to human disease- after all, these things are BURNED!. Still it raises interesting issues. But at least the tobacco is not GMO!
OK, I am indulging in some irony here. If you have shared my experience of having a wonderful dinner in Paris compromised by smoking neighbors at the closely-spaced tables you can relate. European colonizers might have devastated native American peoples through disease and guns 500 years ago, but the original “Americans” got a little pay-back by introducing the Europeans to an addictive and carcinogenic product they had never known.
I have always found it fascinating that Europeans have mainly avoided GMO crops based on fears of theoretical problems that have not materialized over more than a decade of GMO commercialization, all the while allowing an extremely well-documented source of health problems to be widely used and imposed on non-smokers. The “precautionary principle” that prevails in Europe does not seem to protect them from “documented risks”, only from “imagined risks”. This new data on cigarettes should trigger precautionary responses that would say that all tobacco products should be banned until this bacterial risk can be assessed. I’m guessing that won’t happen.
Picture a bowling alley, and you likely come up with images of tacky shoes, greasy food, and lots and lots of beer bottles. Energy efficiency, reuse and recycling, and local food probably don’t come to mind at all — we’re talking about The Big Lebowski, not Garbage Warrior. Brooklyn Bowl, which opened in July in New York City’s Williamsburg neighborhood, is out to change those associations, though. On Tuesday, the bowling center, music venue, and restaurant got a boost in those efforts from the U.S. Green Building Council, which awarded Brooklyn Bowl LEED certification.
So, what’s does it take to get a bowling alley certified as a green building?
Bamboo lanes? Organic cotton bowling shirts? Low-VOC antiseptic spray for the rented shoes? Nope… Brooklyn Bowl took practical steps to create a chic entertainment venue with a low impact.
Buying your first home is both nerve-wracking and exhilarating. Imagine the heightening of both of those emotions if you choose to 1) buy an older house full of character, and 2) jump right into green updates and
renovations upon purchase. You’ll then have a good sense of what journalist, professor, and good friend of sustainablog Simran Sethi is going through right now… she recently purchased an 84-year-old home in her adopted home town of Lawrence, KS. Unlike the rest of us, though, Simran’s inviting the world in to watch the process of greening her new house: on Monday, she posted the first entry on a
new blog at Oprah.com.
Home renovation isn’t a task for the feint of heart, and Simran readily admits that her own hands-on experience is limited:
By Keith Rockmael •
October 18, 2009
It’s getting to be almost a cliché here in San Francisco with large music festivals that have either a green backbone or a heck of lot of social justice behind it. Both Outside Lands and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass sit only slightly in the rear view mirror but this weekend we hit the Treasure Island Music Festival to check out the music, happenings and the overall Green flavor.
Considering that several thousand people crammed into the festival space on Treasure Island we think that overall they handled the transportation issue in a pretty Green way. We made our way to the festival via zero-emission Bauer buses that picked most of the masses up at AT&T Park. The only real griping we heard came from East Bay attendees who said that they had to drive or take BART to SF instead of having shuttle buses come to the East Bay as well.
Upon entering the festival we couldn’t help but noticing the Ferris wheel but then after that we spied a pair of decent size solar panels that sat near the entrance. Unfortunately, we couldn’t determine or find anyone who knew what the solar power generated. We’re sure it the energy went toward something beneficial.
By Sean Daily •
October 15, 2009
GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily speaks with Tom Schey, President of Minimal Productions. Schey is now leading green home building in Southern California and is the author of an upcoming book on fun ways to green up your life. 737conserve is an incredibly advanced, beautiful intellectual home. One of the most advanced smart homes ever built. The structure [...]
October 7, 2009
Our Global Ponzi Economy
Lester R. Brown
Our mismanaged world economy today has many of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme takes payments from a broad base of investors and uses these to pay off returns. It creates the illusion that it is providing a highly attractive rate of return on investment as a result of savvy investment decisions when in fact these irresistibly high earnings are in part the result of consuming the asset base itself. A Ponzi scheme investment fund can last only as long as the flow of new investments is sufficient to sustain the high rates of return paid out to previous investors. When this is no longer possible, the scheme collapses-just as Bernard Madoff’s $65-billion investment fund did in December 2008.
Although the functioning of the global economy and a Ponzi investment scheme are not entirely analogous, there are some disturbing parallels. As recently as 1950 or so, the world economy was living more or less within its means, consuming only the sustainable yield, the interest of the natural systems that support it. But then as the economy doubled, and doubled again, and yet again, multiplying eightfold, it began to outrun sustainable yields and to consume the asset base itself.
By Sean Daily •
September 22, 2009
Sean Daily, Green Living Ideas’ Editor-In-Chief, discusses the topics of non-toxic household cleaning products and green bathroom remodeling with the “Queen of Green,” author and blogger Debra Lynn Dadd.
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Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]
Click [...]
By Zachary Shahan •
September 17, 2009
Environmental care is a practical, worldly thing. But it is also a step in one’s personal evolution. On the one hand, it is a practical response to the environmental problems we are facing. It is also a foresighted response to the issues (economic and environmental) that we might be facing if we don’t think more about the environment we live in and rely on. But, on the other hand, it is much more than that.
By Simran Sethi •
September 7, 2009
I waited to write this post until after I had the opportunity to speak with SIGG CEO Steve Wasik. I am still disappointed.
Over this last week we have learned that SIGG bottles manufactured before August 2008 (not 2009, as I mistakenly mentioned earlier) contained Bisphenol-A (BPA) in their liners. BPA is a chemical used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins and is part of a group of molecules known as endocrine disruptors.
Endocrine disruptors are defined by the National Institute of Health as
naturally occurring compounds or man-made chemicals that may interfere with the production or activity of hormones of the endocrine system leading to adverse health effects. Many of these chemicals have been linked with developmental, reproductive, neural, immune, and other problems in wildlife and laboratory animals. Some scientists think these chemicals also are adversely affecting human health in similar ways resulting in declined fertility and increased incidences or progression of some diseases including endometriosis and cancers.
By Daniel Hohler •
September 5, 2009
Hi, you might recognize that beautiful smiling face before you. That is my face, well it was my face over the last couple of years. I am not here to talk about my face or my smile, which some have called “winning.” I am not even here to talk about myself, although I could do that all day, and I will relate to you my personal experience because that is the only experience I have. The real reason I am writing you today is to point out my hair.
These pictures happen to be in chronological order, so as you may see, my hair has grown a tad longer in the last couple of years. I would like to say that my reasons were always altruistic, but the fact is I just happen to like my hair a little longer.
