Green Options

With the economy on the downturn, more and more people are starting gardens to help ease grocery bills. Growing one’s own food is a step towards living sustainably, so this is great news. However, more gardens mean more water use,  and 40% of water used during the summer is used outdoors. So, as you plan your garden this spring, be sure to keep water in mind and take measures to reduce water usage.

Reducing water usage in an organic garden not only conserves our most precious resource, it also lowers costs and in many cases, benefits the plants as well. By paying attention to how your garden is watered, you can be sure to give plants just the amount of water they need to thrive without overdoing it. Many of the water saving methods mentioned below also benefit the soil and enrich your garden in other ways. Water should be a key part of your garden planning from day one. Read on for ways to garden sustainably and save water.

Water to 5 million of Mexico city’s residents will be cut off for 36 hours over Easter weekend due to record low water reserves.

It’s been stormy here in Atlanta. We’ve had a wet winter and rainy early spring. In a drought-stricken region like this, you tend to hear variations on the same joke every time it rains: “Well, I guess that pesky drought is over!”

With all the rain this week, some folks have once again been saying we’re out of the drought. Only this time, it was no joke.

Georgia’s state climatologist, David Stooksbury, declared the drought over this week. All of the good rain we’ve had lately has apparently pulled North Georgia out of its water shortage with the exception of Lake Lanier and Lake Hartwell basins. So as long as you don’t count the two lakes where we get a large part of the region’s water, the drought is over!

Wait, what?

Mining company Gem Diamonds has gained approval from the Botswana government for a controversial diamond mine on the land of the Kalahari Bushmen, under the condition it does not provide the Bushmen with water. The government has, however, reserved the right to use water boreholes drilled by Gem for wildlife.

Video blogger Jeff Korhan, in his “Black Friday” video blog, had an interesting perspective on the new green trends. It is hard to remember when PCs were “new and different”, but Jeff reminds us of when people didn’t quite trust them yet, and still used a typewriter when it absolutely had to be done right.

A fundamental necessity for ALL life forms on earth is clean, potable water. Yet sustainable sources of fresh water are in limited supply, particularly in poorer areas of the world. Water is the ONLY resource that is not replaceable with another - oil can be made obsolete through the use of new, renewable energy sources, food sources can be substituted one for another, but pure water has no equal.

I’ve been reading a number of articles recently about how blue is the new green. I’ve always understood it to mean that yes, we are focused on sustainability (denoted by the word “green”) but we should also be concerned because a water shortage is looming – water, of course being blue.

But John Rooks, of the Soap Group, has another take on it in his article in Environmental Standard, Sustainability is Not a Color - Sustainability is Transparent.

Some nouveau-environmentalist and entrepreneurial ad agencies are trying to re-brand (a move akin to dogs marking territory) the environmental movement as “blue.” “Blue is the new Green,” they say. One argument goes that “the earth is mostly water, the sky is mostly blue,” so Blue is the best natural color of a deeper level of business-driven environmental movement. Some even claim this shift to be one of the greatest marketing trends of the coming year.

Surely there is a need to consider using other colors besides green to brand an eco business, over 300,000 green trademarks were filed with the U.S. patent office in 2007, but do you think we’ll see a rush to blue