Green Options » Radio

Going Green with Community Radio

Masimba Biriwasha — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:08:13 +0000

Community radio is a low cost method that can be employed to reach many poor and marginalized parts of Africa and the developing world with a message of how to protect the environment.

Radio, as a means of communication, is very personal, and can deliver messages right to the hearts of listeners.

Community radio can be very empowering to communities because it can inspire people to look at their needs, discuss their problems and look for solutions in a conversational manner.

Because of its conversational quality, community radio can make people become intimately involved with their own individual reality. Oral communication is deeply rooted in many African societies, and community radio can easily tap into this aspect of lived reality, and influence it to propagate environmentally friendly solutions.

Red, Green, and Blue on XM Radio

Timothy B. Hurst — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:09:17 +0000

You know that old saying about having a ‘face for radio’? As mean as the old saying is, it essentially implies that a person on television is not particularly good looking and that they would be better off applying their talents, journalistic or otherwise, to the radio-waves. Got it? Okay, put it this way, I think I have a ‘voice for television’.

Whenever I hear a recording of my voice I always think it sounds really weird. And although it seems like I’m implying that I have a ‘face for television’, I’m not (my twice-broken nose, gave me a nice nasally-twang, and a mighty proboscis that may be unfit for television).

What I’m saying is that XM Radio listeners were “treated” to eight minutes of yours truly today on Channel 130, “POTUS ‘08” (Politics Of The US), XM’s politics talk channel.

Only Hours Left to Bid on a Tom Hanks Autographed Solar Radio

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:03:24 +0000

This story contains additional media. Click here to view the media.

Head over to eBay to bid on a solar-powered Lifeline radio autographed by Tom Hanks. Proceeds from the auctions will benefit the Freeplay Foundation, which provides these radios to African communities that would otherwise be without reliable access to information.

Thanks to Ecorazzi for the heads up!

Gas 2.0 Featured On ‘Timber Talk’ Radio

Clayton B. Cornell — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:00:51 +0000

Last week I was interviewed by Timber Talk, a forestry radio station in Arkansas, which coincidentally took place at the North American International Auto show in Detroit, Michigan. Timber Talk approached me last fall after reading a post on VegTruck.com that dealt with using straight vegetable oil as a fuel source.

Fun fact: Timber Talk radio covers a population of 2,400,000 in three states.

We spoke for about 30 minutes on a range of topics, including the new renewable fuel standard, cellulosic ethanol and GM’s announcement, algae biodiesel, vegetable oil as a fuel, and so on.

Listen to the show here.

Photo Credit

KQED: Makes Green History in Public Broadcasting

Sara Holt — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 13:07:36 +0000

Calling all green NPR listeners:
Have you ever wondered what it would take to green-up your local public broadcasting station (or any media organization for that matter)?

Well wonder no more! This past month, our country witnessed another first in the world of green when Northern California’s KQED became the first ever carbon neutral public broadcasting station. For those of you new to the world of carbon offsets, this simply means that KQED is taking significant steps to reduce its climate footprint by neutralizing its net amount of carbon emissions through purchasing carbon credits and increasing a company-wide participation in green production practices.

But this is no easy feat! As KQED recently announced in a public statement, going carbon neutral included "establishing a baseline reading of carbon emissions and determining the amount of energy used in daily operations, from production vans, to transmitter towers, to the electricity used in the building. Carbon credits of the same amount were then purchased from the Chicago Climate Exchange, to promote energy efficiencies in other companies, or to be used towards renewable energy sources like wind power and bio-gas.”

On April 21, KQED will conduct a green pledge day to help support the effort in neutralizing the net total of this year's carbon emissions(!) Tune in from April 15 to Sunday April 22 for a weeklong Earthday celebration with KQED’s latest in noncommercial green tv and radio programming. Visit www.kqed.org/earthweek for an advance schedule. Also, if you’re interested in reducing or offsetting your own (or your company’s) carbon emissions, visit www.driveneutral.org/ for more info.

Finally, for anyone outside the Bay Area who’s interested in hearing more from KQED, a live webstream is always available at www.KQED.org.

Organic Coffee Company Sponsors Guatemalan Radio Show to Promote Fair-Trade

Amy Stodghill — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 13:51:45 +0000

Dean’s Beans, a Massachusettes-based organic coffee company, has partnered with non-profit, indigenous rights organization, Cultural Survival, to present a weekly radio program for Guatemalan coffee farmers.

"Coffee Talk" will include information on global market prices, growing and processing techniques, and the benefits of organic crop certification. Dean’s Beans founder, Dean Cycon, wanted to reach out to rural, farming co-operatives with limited access to television, print media and internet and give them information and tools they can use to improve their livelihoods through knowledge of the international coffee market.

The program is in association with Cultural Survival’s newly launched the Guatemala Radio Project as part of their efforts to protect Maya peoples access to media. Cultural Survival is working with seven Guatemalan based organizations and 150 community radio stations to improve quality and effectiveness of the programming, to upgrade broadcasting equipment, and to help make these stations financially viable.

Helping farmers understand the fairtrade process (and their rights within that process) is important, but the information isn’t always readily available or disseminated, even by fair trade organizations like the Fairtrade Labelling Organization (FLO), TransFair, and Fair Trade Federation (FTF). According to a Cultural Survival publication:

To many small growers, however, “fair trade” means nothing more than that they receive a “fair price”—or more than the price they would get from the coyotes who buy the ceresa (the unprocessed fruit that contains the coffee beans) from them on the street. Many growers do not recognize the term “fair trade” or understand how the system works. Even farmers who belong to a cooperative sometimes don’t fully understand the system—something that hits home when the world market price for coffee rises above the fair trade price, and growers’ coops struggle to deliver the quantities they have promised to their buyers.

To succeed in fair trade, coffee farmers need to know as much about the production and supply chain as the brokers, roasters, and labeling organizations. TransFair and FLO are heading in this direction. These organizations held workshops this year in Guatemala to help cooperative members better understand contracts, market fluctuation, and internal marketing so managers can better communicate with farmers. This education is essential to the success of the system; without it, the educational and resource disparities that marginalize indigenous peoples and small coffee farmers will be reinforced by fair trade.

"Coffee Talk" is another avenue of getting this information to farmers.

Via CSRwire.com; Dean’s Beans; Cultural Survival