Green Options

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It seems like the price of everything is going up lately, and so is the cost of doing business. One of the best pieces of business advice I’ve heard so far is to keep your overhead costs as low as possible. This can be tricky for a green business, since we often spend a little bit more on sustainable and organic materials and office supplies. But with a little green thinking it’s possible to lower your costs while making eco-conscious decisions. Here’s where our old friends reduce, reuse, and recycle come in.

The key to lowering your overhead while greening your business is simplicity. Keep your operations as simple as possible, and cut out the fluff you don’t need. For some this may mean working from home rather than renting office space. For others it may mean scaling your business down and working smarter with what you already have. Every choice you make has the potential to save (or cost) you money, as well as help (or harm) the environment.

I’ve been reading the Little House on the Prairie book series aloud to our six-year old son, Liam. The cover just fell off “The Long Winter,” perhaps due to the irony that we’re reading it as the summer mercury swelters outside here in southwestern Wisconsin, but more likely because the paperback hasn’t been opened since I last read it in 1978.

For those of us who grew up reading the Little House on the Prairie books, those images of independent Laura, the vast beauty of the prairie and butter churning prompted a generation of ten year old girls who wanted to hitch up the covered wagon and homestead. What would Laura think if she knew some of us actually did? As I re-read the books as a forty- something adult - surrounded by my five acre farmstead Inn Serendipity, my abundant gardens, pile of wood for the woodstove and starry open skies above - I realize what an impact those books had on me decades ago. Laura Ingalls went beyond my third grade Halloween costume; her words inspired me, in my own way, to become Laura Ingalls (minus the butter churning. I’ll let Organic Valley handle that).

Books also inspired my fellow farmer friend, Kriss Marion, who traded the Chicago scene in 2005 to launch Circle M Farm in Blanchardville, Wisconsin, running a CSA (community supported agriculture) and a fiber business. “People often ask me how it happened that we uprooted our city family and came to be market farming in southwest Wisconsin,” explains Marion. “The answer, plain and simple, is books.”

According to a recent article in USA Today, Costly College Prerequisite: Decorate Dorm, 17.6 billion dollars is expected to be spent on back to school shopping for students in kindergarten through college this year. That’s $527.08 per family - an 18% rise from last year. Back to school shopping falls right behind holiday shopping for retailer’s most profitable season.

Why?

Sure, there are some necessities that need to be bought when going back to school. My sons both have a page long list of items that they are required to have on the first day of school - pencils, composition notebooks, scissors, a box of tissues, etc. When I was a kid, schools supplied those things, but budgets are ever tightening and now families are required to buy them. I certainly won’t be buying $527.08 worth of necessary supplies, though. I don’t think anyone will be buying $527.08 of necessary supplies, unless their definition of necessary is different from mine.

I was in Target last night, and there was an entire section dedicated to the necessities for a college dorm room. This was separate from the traditional back to school section with school supplies. This section had coordinated dorm bedding, rugs, lamps, wall hangings and desk top accessories. Other items that many college kids consider necessities are computers (okay, I’ll give them that), microwaves, TV’s, DVD players, gaming consoles, mp3 players, hand held gaming systems, and stereos.

Sarah Smarsh and Simran Sethi are writing a series on the impacts of everyday things. They will be posting previews on Green Options before launching the posts on Huffington Post.

Who doesn’t feel better after a yoga class? Yoga is the union of the body, mind and spirit.It stabilizes the nervous system, decreases blood pressure, increases flexibility and endurance, and opens you up in ways that you may not have imagined.

Simran used to be a yoga teacher. She loves the practice even though she hasn’t spent much time on her mat lately. (“Yoga on the inside, baby!”) Sarah gets her yoga on every week and knows it does her body good.

But, as any student knows, the real practice starts when you walk out the door. That’s also where the rubber hits the road and your practice takes its toll on the environment.

Oh brother, that again? Yes, my dear yogin, that.

Now that the proverbial dust has begun to settle from my recent discussion with Caroline Savery on defining “sustainability,” I have been reflecting on it all with great appreciation and pleasure.

The main realization I have come to is that Caroline and I seem to be focusing on different audiences in most of our posts. (Caroline, if you are reading this, please feel free to correct me if you disagree with what I say here!) That is, most of my posts feel more appropriate for and geared towards “beginners” in sustainable living…those folks who are taking their first steps on the path of Green. Having done a lot with various methods of sustainable living and environmentalism (as an “-ism”) so far, I have felt called to use my experiences along the path to help others with little or no experience.

At the same time, and by doing so, I have been most dedicated to celebrating all the things in nature that I believe are sacred…and that so often get overlooked, even by us environmentalists! It is easy to forget about the sacred things in nature that are all around us, wherever we happen to be, and it has been a joy for me to sing their praises with all my heart and voice.

Caroline seems to be focused a bit more on speaking directly to the more experienced members of the sustainability crowd. Her Sust Enable experience/experiment of living off the grid, in my mind at least, is largely something that people would look to in order to take the next step in adapting to a more completely sustainable lifestyle. These sorts of folks would be more acclimated to that lifestyle already and so ready to, and likely more successful with, inching closer to being 100% sustainable. (Of course, much of what Caroline shared is also relevant for beginners in green living, just as what I have written is useful for anyone at any stage. But her sort of life off the grid as a complete life experience seems to me more appropriate for the seasoned sustainabillies.)

With gas prices steep, public transit ridership is at an all-time high. Instead of cutting back on public transportation services, we should be reforming our national transportation system to create more affordable travel options for the whole country.

Check out these facts about oil and gas to learn more.

96

Percent of the world’s transportation energy currently supplied by oil.

75

Cost of barrel of oil on July 18th, 2007.

$131

Cost of barrel of oil on July 18th, 2008.

If oil is so ingrained in the modern world we all know — ubiquitous in the manufacturing and transporting of countless consumer products — does that mean we are hopelessly dependent upon it?

The question came to mind after receiving a comment from Morris (no last name given) on a previous post of mine here at sustainablog.org, World Naked Bike Ride: Is Anything Gained by Protesting Oil Dependency in the Buff?

Not to put words in Morris’s mouth, but he seems to suggest that oil cannot be escaped. Is he right? Even if he is, does that mean we should abandon efforts to break our addiction to crude?

Educating kids about how they can make a difference with the environment is important. Letting them actually make a difference with the environment is even more important. Involving kids, hands on, in environmental and sustainability projects will give them a sense of power over the environmental problems they hear about. They need to learn that they can DO something to help at their age. It’s not just a problem for the grown ups to fix.

The Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge is a program that is designed to do just that. According to their website

the Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge will provide students and teachers with the tools and resources to inspire innovative thinking about sustainability issues, and engage them in developing actionable solutions for a greener world.

The first step of this challenge will begin this September with a national middle school competition where 6-8th graders will identify an environmental problem in their community, create a program to improve that problem, and explain how their program can be used in other communities, too.

Dear Justin… and Dear all!

Special thanks to Jeff Strasburg for helping us indulge our imaginations in this series!  I’d also like to extend my gratitude to Justin for engaging me in this form.  It has been edifying to explore concepts about sustainability.  I hope that the readers of this “debate” have enjoyed the process as well, and I know I speak for Justin when I say: we welcome all comments!  This a dialog, a free exchange of ideas, so tell us yours and help to fuel the mutual inspiration.

(Author’s Note: I include the image above not only because, figuratively speaking, the “sun is setting” on our Sustainability dialog, but also because I will be travelling westward-ho! throughout the United States until the beginning of September.  My objective is to get some relief from my high-technology-based lifestyle right now, so the vacation will heavily consist of camping in national parks.  Therefore, I will blog if I am able to during this time, but if not… be prepared for both the Sust Enable episode debuts AND a bona fide blogging bonanza upon my return in early September.)

Without further ado,

Here are my final thoughts, in conclusion.

1) If you can learn to modify your life to be as close to environmental sustainability as possible, it is necessary that you proceed to do so. The human will is one of the most powerful–and dangerous–elements on the planet.  At first glance, it might feel like “too much” to give up using a flush toilet (just for an example).  But is it really?  Think about the idea.  Get familiar with it.  Picture what it would look like to use a composting toilet in your home.  Maybe start with a little one, to be used only sometimes.  Soon, the consequences may not seem all that daunting. There is always a choice. 

Don’t let your true identity and dreams for what the world could be become casualties of conforming.  You only have one life, so use it, in the most effective ways visible.  If many individuals decided that, deep in their hearts, ecocide felt wrong to them, that many persons when taken together comprise a mutiny against old, obsolete customs and beliefs.  Your little action today plays a role in a social revolution, of the “green” kind.

“Simple living” continues to garner much pop culture hype, sparking books, magazines and a slew of self-help opportunities to assist you to declutter, scale back and slow down. Environmentally conscious and sustainable living fall under the simple living radar, but where does ecopreneuring or running a green business fit in?

My wife and I incorporated numerous “simple living” strategies into our business and life over the years. While our lifestyle may exude quintessential simple living elements — from canning applesauce to crafting holiday gifts — there remains an inherently complex element to our ecopreneuring workstyle. Our calendar looks like a treasure hunt map of lines of travel, Bed & Breakfast guests arriving and departing, writing deadlines, family gatherings, and our son’s home-school group projects. We always juggle multiple, sometimes unrelated, projects.

A better word than “simple” to describe our ecopreneuring approach is “focus.” By consciously choosing to do certain things, we inherently simplify by prioritizing. We open more time to focus on what we really want to do by eliminating (or at least seriously reducing) time drains, including the following:

(1) Daily commute.
With the average daily commute in the US now nearly a half-hour, by working from home, we save over seven days per year driving to someplace, not to mention the fossil fuel emissions of daily driving.

From what you write, Caroline, it is clear that at this point your heart (or mind–or both!) compelled you to try the 100% sustainable, Sust Enable “experiment.” And you learned and shared many good things with us–mistakes not to try again and great methods for living sustainably. That is wonderful, and it is surely going to stick with you; after all, we learn best not only from direct experience but, I believe, from “mistakes” as well.

Obviously you are not disregarding changes others make, nor are you screaming at them from your soapbox on high to go all the way. My concern, though, is that focusing on such a 100% approach on a larger scale would turn off people to environmentalism. As I said before, there has to be an equal (even greater?) focus on small steps, an equal (even greater?) celebration of little changes, in order to help keep the mood positive and morale high–and the changes occurring, the momentum building, the tide turning!

I think we are both on the same vibe in the end. Heck, we both feel urgently the need to do good for the Earth and to help others do so as well. We both share a desire to see positive things happen and to serve our fellow beings by using all our “tools” to help build a better, safer community. I think we differ mostly in terms of focus and emphasis in the nature of what we write.

I believe, then, we need both the point and the counterpoint within the environmental movement itself. Die-hard Socratic that I am, I believe we need to question all things—in particular the accepted “norms”…and more especially the things we think are “right,” “true,” etc. This self-reflective, synergistic approach to environmentalism will keep it green and thriving, a sustainable force driven by the symbiosis of its dynamic elements.