Permaculture 101: Designing A Life Beyond Sustainability
By Erin Gallagher
Filed Under The Big Picture | 6 Comments
According to the Hirsch Report issued by the US Department of Energy, global oil production peaked in 2005 with the last major discoveries of light crude oil occurring in the 1960s. Regardless, global consumption rates continue to climb 1.5% each year and the UN estimates the world population will hit 9.1 Billion in the next 40 years. It should be glaringly apparent that our world is off balance; what remains unclear is where we should start to stabilize ourselves.
A revolutionary concept developed in the 1970s, dubbed “permaculture,” is rapidly gaining attention as a transformative vehicle for creating holistic, healthy systems from the microcosm of our immediate surroundings to the macrocosm of the planet.
per. ma. cul. ture \ˈpər-mə-ˌkəl-chər\ Etymology: permanent + agriculture
A method for designing human habitats so that all elements integrate to form a simple, non-wasteful, harmless, self sustaining, productive, highly functional system.
The idea of permaculture was developed at the University of Tasmania by environmental psychology professor Bill Mollison and his environmental design student, David Holmgren. In response to the extreme drought conditions of Australia and global dependence on fossil fuels, the two men developed a model that created much needed balance. Inputs equaled outputs and the only “waste” the model created, easily broke down into simple elements that added to the health of their environment. Though the basis of their design has existed in many aboriginal and native cultures for centuries, Mollison and Holmgren devised a way to communicate it to a much broader audience. Continue reading Permaculture 101: Designing A Life Beyond Sustainability…
Posted on August 14, 2008 |
Eco Toothbrush Review
By Jillian Polaski
Filed Under Conscious Commerce, News & Reviews | 2 Comments
Dentists recommend that you change your toothbrush every three months, so four times a year is apparently the minimum. If you brush hard and the bristles of your brush get all mashed down (you know what I’m talking about guys), you need to toss that brush out even sooner. Tons of toothbrushes in our bathroom wastebaskets means tons of toothbrushes in our landfills and oceans. All this discarded dental care amounts to 50 million pounds worth of waste every single year. And that’s just the brush itself. What about all the plastic and paper packaging, plus the poisons that go into the conventional plastic toothbrushes? Lucky for us, there are companies out there who care not only about our oral hygiene, but also about our health and the planet. Check out the lowdown on the most eco toothbrushes around.
Continue reading Eco Toothbrush Review…
Posted on July 15, 2008 |
Greenify Your Fourth Of July
By Jillian Polaski
Filed Under Conscious Commerce, Green Living | 1 Comment
Fourth of July is upon us once again. Who doesn’t like getting together with friends and family, firing up the old grill, enjoying some BBQ, and watching the fireworks after the sun goes down? Picnics, parties, beer to drink, games to be played…good times.
Maybe you’d even like the Fourth Of July reverie, along with that three-day weekend, to last forever. Well, sadly much of the plastic dishware and decorations from the July 4th will do just that…in a landfill. Bummer. Since foregoing your annual patriotic grillfest is simply not an option, here are some easy things that you can do this Fourth of July to lessen your impact on America The Beautiful. Continue reading Greenify Your Fourth Of July…
Posted on July 1, 2008 |
Green Screen
By Tommy Rosen
Filed Under Conscious Commerce | Leave a Comment
Not a single day has gone by in the last eighteen months when I did not struggle to come up with the words to describe the current global movement to address humanity’s biggest concerns, both social and environmental. The main problem is that the green business sector has not been successful at setting widely accepted definitions and standards for what it actually means to be “green,” “eco,” or “sustainable.” This has led to debate and controversy as governments, companies, organizations and individuals try to figure out what industry practices are truly sustainable. Continue reading Green Screen…
Posted on June 24, 2008 |
Ready, Get Set, To-Go Ware
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under Green Living | Leave a Comment
Stephanie Bernstein went to get some ice cream with her sister. They went to a little ice cream shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was 1997. They both ordered scoops in a bowl, no cone, and when they were served Stephanie got confused. Did they ask for the ice cream to go? Um, no. Why was the ice cream in a plastic bowl with a plastic spoon? To her deep disappointment, her local ice cream shop, along with so many other ice cream shops, coffee shops, and small restaurants around the country were starting to replace reusable dishware with paper and plastic single use containers. That day an idea was born.
A lot of university students carried their coffee mugs everywhere, mainly for the discount they received from the coffee shops around town, but also for the positive environmental impact. Stephanie wondered, what if we all just carried everything around that we’d need in a day-what would that look like?
Seven years later, in Northern California, Stephanie sold her first set of utensils in their own handwoven carrying case. They were a hit. Her first generation To-Go Ware sets feature bamboo utensils in cloth carriers woven by a women’s cooperative of Burmese refugees called WEAVE. The women of WEAVE are able to care for their children and their homes, while also creating income for themselves and their families.
The second generation of To-Go Ware was launched earlier this month. These sleek sets have a firmer case made of recycled compressed plastic bags. The bags are collected by ragpickers in India and formed into the colorful polymer by CONSERVE, a recycling and waste management organization. CONSERVE’s collection efforts help to clean the polluted streets of New Delhi while employing hundreds of people in need of work. Continue reading Ready, Get Set, To-Go Ware…
Posted on June 20, 2008 |
Top 5 Easiest Ways To Save The Planet
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under Green Living | 3 Comments
1 CARPOOL by Wolf
Sharing a trip with one other person immediately cuts the emissions in half by taking a car off the road. On average a carpool saves 527.8 gallons of gasoline and 4.536 tons of CO2 each year. The average family purchases 1,143 gallons of gas per year.
2 EAT LESS MEAT by DAVEC
Raising meat for food (livestock) is an environmental disaster, contributing more to global warming than transportation, using up 30% of the Earth’s land (yes, that’s right, 30% of the entire land mass of the Earth is used directly or indirectly in livestock production), contributing to significant water pollution, using up tons of energy and water for raising and transporting livestock, etc. For example, it takes 2500 gallons of water to produce 1 lb of meat. The average American eats 185 lbs of meat per year, meaning 462,500 gallons of water can be saved by moving to a vegetarian diet!
3 TUNE YOUR CAR REGULARLY by Argam
Keep your engine tuned properly. Checking spark plugs, oxygen sensors, air filters, hoses and belts are a few examples of maintenance that can save a vehicle owner up to 165 gallons of gas per year, resulting in potential savings of over $600.
4 ELIMINATE JUNK MAIL by karlbach
- Junk mail destroys 100 million trees a year — the equivalent of deforesting all of Rocky Mountain National Park every four months.
- Largely due to deforestation, junk mail manufacturing creates as much greenhouse gas emissions annually as 3.7 million cars.
- Every year, Americans receive 848 pieces of junk mail per household — 44% of which ends up unopened in a landfill
Also, more than half of unsolicited mail is discarded unread or unopened; the response rate is less than 2%. And junk mail creates 4 million tons of unnecessary waste per year! Calculating the weight of the junk mail trash from EPA data, it works out to 13.4% of 1276 lbs per household! So that’s 170 pounds of trash per household per year.
5 DON’T WATER YOUR LAWN EVERY DAY by Ghengis
The amount of water used by a sprinkler in one hour is equal to the daily water needs of a family of four! The average sprinkler will use in excess of 240 gallons of water per hour. If the average person sprinkles every day for a half hour and reduced that to once a week, one could save 37,560 gallons a year!! This is huge!
These Top 5 Creative Solutions were chosen by the folks at CreativeCitizen.com, the freshly launched collaborative website for community-proposed eco tips.
Posted on June 12, 2008 |
Junk Raft: Sailing The Seas Of Debris
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under News & Reviews | 3 Comments
What do you get when you take 15,000 plastic bottles, the discarded wingless body of a Cessna 310 aircraft, and a sail? A seaworthy, solar powered ship dubbed the ‘Junk Raft‘ headed from Long Beach, CA to Hawaii, of course. Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal plan to sail a raft with recycled plastic bottles wrapped in discarded fishing net acting as pontoons and an old wingless Cessna cockpit as the cabin. This long, strange trip will be calling attention to the massively detrimental effect of plastic in our oceans. (Apparently 10,000 pounds of plastic are dumped into the ocean every day from Los Angeles alone.) Eriksen has sailed with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, trolling the waters of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and now he’s ready to risk life and limb for this cause. When asked why he and his partner were willing to put their lives on the line over some plastic in the ocean, Eriksen stated the folowing…
Yes, we are risking our lives, but the issue of petroleum-based plastic and our national dependence on petroleum, warrant urgent action. My quality of life, the future of our nation’s economy, environmental quality, and human health, are at stake. I remember 17 years ago, as a young Marine in the Gulf War, standing in Kuwait City covered with drops of oil from the burning wells, saying to myself, “Why have we done this?” James Baker, former Secretary of State, the man that sent me to war, said recently, “We had a written policy that we would go to war to defend secure access to the energy reserves of the Persian Gulf.” This is not why I chose to serve my country!
So Eriksen, along with co-pilot Paschal and Junk’s on-the-ground operations czar Anna Cummins, have all chosen to serve their country in a different way. Continue reading Junk Raft: Sailing The Seas Of Debris…
Posted on May 30, 2008 |
Drink Coffee, Kick Junk
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under Green Living | 3 Comments
I’m not generally into making New Year’s resolutions and, until now, I’ve never actually kept one. Back in December, I went to have a late night tea with a friend. There was a Coffee Bean And Tea Leaf right there, so we popped in for their last call. I didn’t actually want the tea I ordered, I just wanted to talk with my friend and it seemed polite to have a tea together. My mint tea came in not just one paper cup, but two, and a sleeve. These people really wanted to protect me from the heat of my luke warm tea. I’d been trying to cut down on excess waste (plastic bags and all that), so I gave them back one of the cups. As I sat with my friend, sipping this tea I didn’t really want to begin with, I just realized I can’t do this anymore. I looked at my friend and said, “This is my last paper cup.” Continue reading Drink Coffee, Kick Junk…
Posted on May 2, 2008 |
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