This first event, the American Democracy Institute's Empower Change Summit, is a biggie. To be held this Saturday, November 3rd at UCLA's Royce Hall, the event features Bill Clinton and centers on empowering yourself, your friends and your community to affect change in your everyday lives and thus, the world.

Sponsored by the American Youth Summit, the focus of the discussions has a decidedly environmental tilt. Additional panelists and speakers include Jonathan Greenblatt, Founder of Ethos Water, and Blake Mykoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes.

Entrance is free, but you must register in advance. I’d do it quickly…with this lineup, tickets are sure to go fast.

Creating Healthy Environments for Children features Private Practice's Amy Brenneman as host with Ben Harper providing music. Pediatricians Dr. Philip Landrigan and Dr. Alan Greene provide their expertise, as well. Their five major tips include:

• Avoid using pesticides
• Clean safely
• Help children breathe easier
• Provide healthy food
• Use plastic products wisely.

Pop the DVD in your computers, and you'll find three tool kits, one each for home, child care centers, and schools, that provide resources for making each environment safer for children. The tool kits also give advice for community outreach and activism on safer environments for children.

King Corn focuses on co-producers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis as they move to Iowa, rent an plot of farmland, and attempt to grow an acre of corn using typical industrial methods: genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, powerful herbicides, and government subsidies. They show us exactly how industrial corn production works today, from seed to table, in the convoluted journey of a commodity. From Ian and Curt's one acre, they harvest enough corn to make 57,348 sodas, 3,894 burgers, or 6,726 boxes of cornflakes. And yes, corn is a major ingredient in all of those foods.

In McKibben and the Step It Up Team's new book, Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community (Henry Holt, $13.00), the authors show how normal, everyday people, without any community organizing background, were able to create successful events to rally support for addressing climate change. Reflecting on the success of Step It Up allows the authors to repeat what worked--and discard what didn't. Their seven tips (make it credible, snappy, collaborative, meaningful, creative, wired and seductive) are a framework for understanding how community organizing works in the 21st century.

• Daily Tip: Halloween with Less Waste,
• Green Style How-To: Supermarket and No-Sew Halloween Costumes,
• Five Super-Simple Steps to Green Trick-or-Treating,
• Daily Tip: Wholesome Sweets

By now you may be groaning, "Oh no, not another green Halloween post about making your own costume and giving out pencils," yet this green idea flips the holiday over on the concept of Fair Trade.

Think about Fair Trade in the simplest terms, as a young child may define it. If I give you something, in exchange you will give me something of equal value, whether monetary or not. For example, children trading marbles will exclaim, "That is not fair," if they do not view the marble exchange as equitable. In a child's mind, Halloween is not an equitable trade... they make out like bandits while trick-or-treating! All they have to do is sport a costume and knock on their neighbors' doors to receive lots and lots of candy! It is definitely not a Fair Trade! Global Exchange proposes a change to this custom by promoting "reverse" trick-or-treating.

Makena Brown, grade 8, has a plan to help keep the planet healthy and make money, too. Makena collects all of her family's recyclables and stores them in the back yard. About once a month, she and her family load up the car with the many bags of bottles and cans and take them to the local recycling center. Because it's her project, Makena gets to keep the money paid by the recycling center for the aluminum, plastic and glass. "Makena is the chief of our recycling plant," says Mr. Brown proudly. "She's the recycling queen."

"The money is the number one thing that’s in my mind," says Makena. "I'm like, that's great! And in the back of my mind I know that this is helping the environment, [reducing] pollution, and helping the earth to get better step by step." With her recycling money, Makena is helping to pay her mom back for her new computer.

Ask a little more about Makena's interest in protecting the environment, and you'll find that she's a fountain of knowledge. For example, she explains that more water is used to make plastic water bottles than can be contained by the bottles after they’re made. She's also especially interested in renewable energy. Her eyes light up when she talks about San Francisco's proposal to get electricity from tidal power generators.

It's been about a year now that the Brown family has been saving their recyclables for Makena's recycling project. Makena's grandparents have also started to save their recyclables to contribute to the Brown family's recycling program. "We end up with a big pile of bottles and cans on the side of the house," everyone chuckles. "We can't walk past until we clean it up."

Kudos to Edutopia; this issue ain't no puff piece. Every teacher looking to go green, or those already greening their classroom, can find something of use to them in this jam-packed issue. The editor's note in the issue is penned by guest editor Bill McKibben of Step It Up fame, who skillfully explains why all teachers should and can incorporate sustainability into their curriculum.

Edutopia listens to McKibben's advice by provided several ideas for sustainability lesson plans and projects for all ages. Not only are there many useful ideas in the magazine, but there are more on the magazine's website. There are also tips for teachers, by teachers, about how to green up their own classroom practices: some helpful, some fairly obvious.

15. We spend as much effort packaging our food as finding and eating it. So much of our food these days comes pre-packaged that we don’t think twice about it. In order to package food in plastic, we spend billions of dollars and lots of time locating and drilling oil around the world; we then extract a chemical feedstock from the oil; we refine the chemical feedstock into plastic and mould the plastic into packaging; we take the shells off of things like peanuts and then put the peanuts in plastic packaging.

Squirrel says: “How backward! I spend all day getting rid of my food’s natural packaging: the shells. Plus, the shells biodegrade before next year’s nuts ripen. Be more like the rest of the animals by eating food in its original packaging.”

14. We drink the lactation of other animals. We farm animals of other species—like cows, goats, and sheep—to harvest and drink their lactation. We even sometimes ferment this lactation (cheese and yogurt, for example) and occasionally go as far as to let mold grow on it before eating it (blue cheese, for example).

Squirrel says: “EW! Be more like the rest of the rest of the animals by drinking water and eating juice-filled fruits and veggies.”

13. We’ll eat just about anything. Don’t believe me? Look here. Most animals have a pretty good idea of what foods they like and so they stick to eating one type of food. Sharks eat fish, cows and horses eat grass, most birds eat insects, fruit, or grain, and so on. We humans will eat fruit, grain, insects, birds, vegetation, horses, cows, fish, sharks, and more. Some people even eat cars! Our stomachs must truly be one of a kind on this planet. I can just see Mother Nature’s horrified expression, “what do you have in your mouth, child?!?”

Squirrel says: “That’s nuts! Or rather it would be nuts if I were eating it. Pick a diet, you crazy species. You can be more like your ancestors and relatives by eating more vegetables, nuts, and fruit and fewer weird things like octopus, oysters, and buffaloes.”

12. We travel without actually moving. Camels walk to find water, birds fly to find grub, and fish swim to get their food too. We say “I’m going to run to the store to get food,” but what we actually mean is “I’m going to sit down in my car and hardly move a muscle while decomposed dino-gas pushes me to the store.” Weird, huh?

Squirrel says: “Wouldn’t you get out of shape this way? Plus, who would want to avoid walking and running? I love to run and jump! I even have a cousin who flies. Be more like the rest of the rest of the animals and try actually walking or jogging to get food. You can even try wildcrafting, like me.”

What's unique about the vocabulary-building game at Freerice.com — and the reason we think you should give it a gander — is that as you play you’re donating rice to feed hungry people through international aid agencies. A sister site of Poverty.com, Freerice.com is a fun way to help humanity while you improve your language prowess.

It's the perfect scheme: hook students and aspiring socialites on a vocabulary-building game so captivating that advertisers will pay big bucks to market on the site, then use the marketing profits to feed hungry people around the world through international aid agencies. Excellent…

1. Handbag knit purse from plastic shopping bags.

You've probably seen similar projects to this one: maybe a rug braided from plastic grocery bags. This Instructables project takes a slightly different approach: spinning the bags into a "yarn" that you then knit using an incredibly simple pattern to make a durable bag. I think you could easily make cute stripes with blue and white bags.

2. Yoga mat bag made from old pants

This project from personal fave ReadyMade magazine reuses "grandpa pants" (sorry Max!), but you can use any old pants, including denim, to make a very cute tote for your yoga mat. Can't wait to try this one as soon as I "borrow" my mother-in-law's sewing machine.

3. Tote bag made from old t-shirt

If there's one thing I have a ton of, it's old t-shirts. My storied (ha!) athletic career (and teaching career) left me with more t-shirts than I know what to do with. Most have sentimental value and I hate to throw them out, but I never wear half of them, and I'm not a fan of those t-shirt quilts. This project from Instructables is super-simple and, with a little work, could be the easy way to make all those reusable grocery bags you've been meaning to buy.

Continued from Greening Your Groove.

The environmental movement has been rolling along fast this year, and rocking to boot. A green rhythm is beating in the heart of today's music scene and music lovers young and old have their fingers on its pulse.

This summer, the SOS Live Earth Concert brought together musicians to stages around the world for one glorious day of music and festivities. The message: take personal action to reduce our species' impact on the environment, and encourage governments and business leaders to follow. These round-the-world concerts were not an isolated, one-time event. Many of the artists who performed, as well as others, are making a concerted effort to help the environment, and grow concern for the well-being of the planet.

Some environmentally in-tune musicians hold benefit concerts; some even tour by bicycle or biofueled bus. Most incorporate environmental messages into their lyrics. When you buy music from the following artists or go to their concerts, you'll be supporting the work they do for the environment. Whether you're looking for green concerts or music festivals, discovering new bands, wondering what issues musicians care about, or looking for music with a message about the Earth for your children, you'll find it in the list and links below.

Divine, a delicious Fair Trade chocolate company, has a tasty deal for all the top chefs out there. They're looking for recipes that have "heaps of creativity, Divine appeal, and powerful statements about why contestants are hungry to change the world through Fair Trade." The sweetest entry wins a trip to Washington D.C. and some chocolate. The entries are due December 15th, and with the holidays coming, there's a perfect opportunity to test out your creation on family and friends while introducing them to Fair Trade. If you need a snack to get your creative juices flowing, try out some of Divine's or Equal Exchange's recipes.

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 fans everywhere are groaning. Forgo the experience of music shops? But consider this a fresh spin: with a music library on your computer and not all over your house, it's much easier to arrange your music — not alphabetically — but chronologically in the order that you discovered the musician, or however you like.

Now you may be shocked by this question. I was. I mean, if you can’t see the fun in trying to save the world from global warming and mass species extinction you, er… and then I started to see her point.

You may notice that not a lot of people consider environmental issues a laughing matter. Crack a joke too close to hot environmental issues and you’ll receive stern glances from all corners of the room, as Jon Stewart can attest. In an interview with Bill Moyers, he laments hearing back from viewers, "your show is so funny, until you made a joke about global warming, which is a serious issue, and I can't believe you did that!"

Xeko doesn't just talk the eco-talk, though: it walks the eco-walk. All of the playing cards are made of recycled stock and printed with soy inks. In addition, players are encouraged to return their card wrappers to the company and earn Green Star points, which can be traded for free downloads. Furthermore, four percent of profits are donated to Conservation International for work to save the hotspots. What are hotspots? Hotspots provide the setting for Xeko missions, and are "the most threatened and species-rich places on Earth."

Currently numbered at 34, the hotspots contain 75 percent of the planet's most threatened mammals, birds and amphibians while covering just 2.3 percent of the Earth's surface. An estimated 50 percent of all vascular plants and 42 percent of land vertebrates exist only in these hotspots.

GO and ENN news articles have reported on Ecuador's high-minded decision to leave its largest oil reserve untapped. The unexploited oil fields lie in Yasuni National Park, home to at least two indigenous tribes. Drilling them would add a pretty penny to the country's purse. However, under the YasunÌ-ITT Initiative, President Rafael Correa has vowed to leave the oil in the ground. The initiative also sets the lofty goals of developing greater renewable energy, building greater mass transit, and stimulating eco-tourism.

How can the average person reading this article encourage Ecuador to do the right thing by the Earth and its indigenous people? Is it enough to say "good job, well done?" With the rest of the world fumbling to look busy over addressing climate change, it is our opportunity and perhaps our obligation to stand up and support Ecuador for its brave move.

Ecuador hopes to receive some compensation from other governments for the unexploited oil due to the benign effect on the global climate of leaving it in the ground. But for the average person in a country that exports 420,600 barrels of oil a day, President Correa's decision may seem like a risky one. Ecuador's official unemployment is 10.6% and an estimated 47% are underemployed, estimates the CIA World Factbook.

As you’re scrolling down the list, you’ll notice that some suggestions involve a lifestyle change, like becoming a vegetarian (#13) or using cars less (#21). Others involve very little change, like making sure your fridge door closes properly (#96) or swapping outfits with your friends instead of buying new ones (#69). (Note: for this last suggestion, wardrobe changes with friends of the same gender are recommended, but hey, who are we to judge?) You’ll also see a number of items mentioned in the list that you encounter every day: flowers, milk (soy or cow), toothpaste, junk mail… it seems that nearly everything in our life has the chance to get a little greener. From turning your bathtub into a sofa to using the library more often, there are opportunities everywhere for good, clean, environmentally friendly fun.

“But wait,” you say, “I already do a lot of the things on this list. Recycling? Duh. Buying organic? Naturally.” Chances are, there are a number of things on the list that you do already. You may not even think twice about some of them, like buying your music online instead of on CD. As you spot more and more environmentally friendly practices that are already a part of your daily life, feel free to feel proud. Feel great about what you do that helps to make our society an environmentally sustainable one. Give yourself a pat on the back, a hug, and a chocolate cookie. You deserve it.