Green Options

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Wait, wasn’t there supposed to be a rabbi in there somewhere?

Tonight was the Time 100 Gala, where Time Magazine celebrates 100 of the most influential people in the world today. This year, three religious leaders are included.

What Richard Cizik, Patriarch Bartholomew I, and the Dalai Lama have in common is that they’ve all made headlines from leading green movements within their respective faith traditions.

Richard Cizik

Cizik, an ordained Evangelical Presbyterian miniser and head of the Office of Governmental Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals fights global warming by quoting the Bible and calling on congregations to practice “creation care.” Cizik challenges conservative evangelicals to recognize climate change as a serious threat to the health of the planet.

Cizik also makes friends with scientists such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Eric Chivian, ignoring a once perceived barrier between the religious and scientific communities.

After previewing tonight’s episode of the Sundance Channel’s Big Ideas for a Small Planet, I couldn’t help but think that this week’s topic — fashion — tied in very closely with last week’s show on food. After all, we all eat, and we all dress. Our clothes, like our food, generally start off as crops in fields, and the process of transforming those crops into garments typically involves heavy chemical inputs and many miles traveled (especially in this era of globalization). The fashion industry has a heavy environmental footprint, but a number of designers and manufacturers are challenging those norms, and creating clothing that’s both fashionable and sustainable. Take a sneak peak at one of these companies featured in tonight’s episode: Del Forte Denim

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Regardless of how “green” we consider ourselves, we’re all concerned about the quality of the food we put on our own plates and serve to our families. Tonight, the Sundance Channel’s The Green explores the world of food, from farm to plate. It’s award-winning series Big Ideas for a Small Planet profiles a large food processor, a wine-maker, and a New Mexico high school student who are all doing their part to reject industrial-scale agriculture, and the bland, homogeneous food it produces. Following that, Sundance presents the documentary All In This Tea from directors Les Blank (Burden of Dreams) and Gina Leibrecht.

In the last-minute rush of Earth Day press solicitations yesterday, it was easy to get a bit bogged down, and even let some things slip through the cracks. One email that did catch my eye, however, was web browser Flock’s release of its “Eco-Edition.” I’ve used Flock on and off for over a year now (it was fantastic for uploading a massive collection of stock photos for our writers last year), and was pleased to see that the browser had created a version that allowed for seamless “green” browsing, and tools optimized for green blogging.

I’ve always liked Flock for its focus on integration of social media functions into the browser itself: right now I’ve got one-click access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. The Eco-Edition adds a one-stop shop for green news and blog hounds: the “Green” page that loads when the browser starts features feeds from most of the web’s top destinations for information and opinion on sustainability and environmentalism (including sustainablog — thanks, Flock!). The refresh button even features the ubiquitous recycling symbol — a nice touch! As our friend Michael d’Estries at Ecorazzi noted, this creates a seamless experience: the best of the green web is right at my fingertips. Combined with Flock’s integrated social media and blogging tools, the Eco-Edition provides an efficient interface for all of the steps we green bloggers go through in writing, publishing and promoting our work.

I am a harsh critic of children’s music. I don’t like most of the crap that is out there, and I don’t understand why children should be subjected to poor musical compositions just because they are children.  Based on my strong musical opinions, it was with hesitancy that I listened to Hayes Greenfield’s Music for a Green Planet. I was pleasantly surprised by the jazzy melodies and amused by the lyrics of this cd, although I have to admit, I am a sucker for the upright bass.

Music for a Green Planet takes many traditional children’s songs, as well as other popular classics, and changes the lyrics to reflect a green message. I have probably listened to this cd a dozen times in one day, as my children absolutely adore it, and I do too.  The first track is a version of  “She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain” only she’s driving a hybrid and using biodiesel.

We’ll be driving biodiesel when she comes
We’ll be getting cleaner mileage when she comes
We’ll be a part of the solution
Cause we’re making less pollution
We’ll be driving biodiesel when she comes

How do you get your kids to care more about and take action on improving the environment, when the world they’re focused on is on their iPod, their Wii, their phone, and online? If you’re SustainLane, you meet them where they are, and create a web based animation series and also show it on TV, on Earth Day Television.

Gorilla  in the Greenhouse, an episodic show premiering today, doesn’t preach at kids, but instead engages them on their terms and empowers them to take action. Animated by the people behind such web classics as The Meatrix, it features four smart kids and a wise green gorilla, facing the big green challenges of our day, with inventiveness, action, and most importantly, a rockin’ song.

Not many people could pull off making a catchy tune about a garbage island in the Pacific Ocean, but in the first episode, “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” they show otherwise. With people such as Ralph Guggenheim, one of Pixar’s founders producing, this moves beyond merely being entertainment to being a bridge to further conversation with your children about things happening in the real world, and what can be done about them.

Editor’s note: We’re excited to hear that King Corn is coming to the small screen, and that its creators have a new film coming out. Thanks to our friends at Eco-Libris for sharing this post with us; it was originally published on Saturday, April 5, 2008.

Two weeks ago Eylon Israely conducted an interview with King Corn’s Director and Producer, Aaron Woolf . Today we’ve got interesting updates on the film and its creators.

Firstly, If you haven’t seen this documentary yet, here’s your chance - King Corn airs on PBS on April 15! So mark it down in your calender.

And there’s also a new film from the creators of King Corn - The Greening of Southie. The film will have its world premiere on the Sundance Channel on Earth Day, April 22 at 9:40PM. This time, the filmmakers explore green building, and they’re focusing on the first green residential project in one of the favorite neighborhoods: South Boston, or Southie as everyone calls it. Here’s a little bit more about it:

Unfortunately, my preview mailer on this week’s The Green episodes didn’t make it me, so I can’t review tonight’s features. As last week’s were just stellar, though, I wanted to make sure to give you all a “heads up” in time for tonight.

At 9 pm EDT, Big Ideas for a Small Planet will focus on the theme “Decorate.” The press materials from Sundance note that “it IS possible to have stylish furnishings without messing up the planet,” and will feature some of the designers that are working within this context. sustainablog and GO readers know this, of course, but I have no doubt we’ll all learn new things from this show.

At 9:35 pm, the aesthetic focus will continue with the documentary Manufactured Landscapes. The film profiles photographer Edward Burtynsky, and his work documenting China’s transition to an urbanized society (and the environmental costs associated with it). Ansel Adams he ain’t: think mines, factories and lava flows vs. stunning natural vistas.

It looks like Hillary Clinton has another “3 a.m.” political ad out. This time it’s about the economy.

I’m not sure what it is about these ads that have captured the nation’s imagination; John McCain has his own version of it, and, of course, it inspired scores of parodies on YouTube and among late-night talk show comedians.

Still, I wonder if the candidates will get around to making one of these ads about the environment.

It’d be really easy to do, actually. All you need is a ringing phone…and no one to answer it.

That’s because the environment has somehow become a non-issue during this campaign season. All three candidates have fairly progressive views when it comes to addressing climate change, and they all tout the benefits of weening ourselves off foreign oil, so we’ve basically been told by the media that there’s nothing more to discuss on the topic.

The only problem is that voters WANT to discuss it.

In my quest to live a greener life, my Achilles’ heel is my obsession with print media. We subscribe to our city’s daily newspaper, we get the Sunday Times delivered, and I get approximately eight monthly or bimonthly magazines right in my mailbox. There are also three or four magazines I buy off the newsstand on a fairly regular basis. I love the varying lengths of stories, which perfectly cater to my dynamic attention span. I love letters to the editor and dog-earing pages with things I want to explore further. I love finding a new issue in my mailbox after a particularly long day. I even love the ads.

While cleaning my home recently, I realized just how much paper this leads to each month, and my green guilt set in. Unfortunately, I really, really love both magazines and the daily newspaper. It’s something I am reluctant to give up. Fortunately, there may be a solution that seems almost plausible to a printaholic like me. ReadyMade, a design/home solutions magazine for the DIY set with a sustainable sensibility, is now providing readers with a digital version of its print form. You can see every page, just as it appears in print, in its entirety, starting with the current issue #34, their green design issue.