Fresh Greens
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Wear Business Casual, Stop Climate Change
Continue reading… 0 CommentsTo slash energy costs, the United Nations building will be setting its thermostat at a maximum of 77 degrees, which will save the organization an estimated $100,000. Reuters reports that the employees in the New York headquarters will be encouraged to switch from wool suits to business casual in order to be more comfortable.
Perhaps other businesses will take note. In warmer climes, many companies air-condition their offices to excess, leaving some workers chilly. Freezing offices and scorching outside temperatures also mean that office employees need to dress in layers, all of which are peeled off immediately upon exiting the building. Business casual in warmer offices isn't just good for the environment—both warmer room temperatures and casual clothing have been found to increase productivity. At the same time, some might argue the importance of proper office decorum in dress, especially in an organization as important as the United Nations.
So, is business casual the way to go? Or does the idea of a warmer office make you sweat?
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4 Ways to Earn Cash for Recycling
Continue reading… 29 CommentsRecycling may be getting easier each year, but let's face it: People are lazy. That's why bottles get thrown into trash bins when recycling bins are a foot away. It's also why technology ends up in landfills, when it could be deconstructed for its perfectly good parts. Four programs are trying to change that by offering armchair environmentalists cold, hard cash to recycle their stuff.
Cell for Cash offers money for an infrequently recycled gadget—your cellphone. Many people get a new cellphone each year. Some leave the old one sitting around their house, and 7 percent just throw it away. Cellphones are full of chemicals that leach into groundwater from landfills. In California, they're considered hazardous waste. Cell for Cash lists hundreds of makes and models of phones. When you find yours, you can request a postage-paid box. Send it back with your phone and charger, and once the company verifies the contents, you'll receive a check. Cell for Cash refurbishes the phones and sells them in developing countries. Not all phones are worth cash, though; many older models are listed on the site as "Free Recycling," which means they have no resale value. My four-year-old Nokia phone, despite being in perfect working condition, will earn me zilch.
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I'm Not a Plastic Bag
Continue reading… 6 CommentsPaper versus plastic versus canvas has become another one of those ecobattles that call both sides to the site of the latest green battleground: the grocery store. (You can also look at bottled water.)
We've heard that plastic bags are evil, because they don't biodegrade. Therefore, many cities have taken steps to ban them, and grocery stores charge customers to use them. Not so fast, says John Tierney of the New York Times. The fifth item in his list of "10 Things to Scratch From Your Worry List" today states that plastic bags require less energy to produce, and less pollution goes into the air and the water during their manufacturing. They also take up less space in landfills. At the same time, they take up more space in the floating island of trash gathering in the Pacific.
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4 Easy Ways to Be a Freegan
Continue reading… 33 CommentsConventional wisdom states that dumpster-diving is for the homeless. Freegans, however, are a small anticonsumerist group who won't allow anything useful to go to waste—to the point where middle-class environmentalists can be found scavenging the trash bins of grocery stores for the still-good food thrown out every day. Some of them even chronicle their finds on the Web, boasting of spending only a few dollars on food each month and furnishing their homes for free, often to the dismay of store owners who see them as scavengers.
Thankfully, you don't have to dumpster-dive to subscribe to the freegan philosophy and reap the cost-saving benefits. Here are a few tips for accessible—and considerably less smelly—freeganism:
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Blow Up Your SUV for the Environment? Yeah, Right
Continue reading… 1 CommentMeet Ryan Mickle. He's a management consultant who recently moved to San Francisco, where he realized he'd no longer be needing his gas-guzzling Range Rover (San Francisco is, after all, the most walkable city in America.). But Mickle concluded that selling his car wouldn't do any good—though his own carbon footprint would decrease, someone else would still be polluting. He wants to get his SUV off the road for good, and he wants your help.
Mickle started a website, One Fewer, soliciting ideas for the best way to eliminate his SUV. In a video, he lounges in a Ghostbusters T-shirt and tells us, to the tune of Radiohead, that he will fling his SUV into the Pacific Ocean "like a fat kid into a swimming pool," or he will do whatever the "crowdsourcing" masses recommend as the best solution.
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Global Warming Begets Adorable Kittens
Continue reading… 3 CommentsWe blame global warming for a lot of things, but making our planet cuter is not one of them. That could change with the recent news from the Environmental Protection Agency that small mammals are going into heat earlier and for longer periods of time because of earlier springs. So, even though global warming depletes our ozone layer, look on the bright side! At least we'll have more adorable kittens running around.
According to this article in the Chicago Sun-Times, cat populations are booming. "The brain receives instructions to produce a hormone that basically initiates the heat cycle in a cat," said Nancy Peterson, feral cat program manager of the Humane Society of the United States, "and those instructions are affected by the length of day and usually the rising temperatures of spring."
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Google Maps Adds Walking Directions
Continue reading… 0 CommentsJust in time for the recent announcement of America's most and least walkable cities, Google has added a tool for finding walking directions to its maps. The Google Lat Long Blog (as reported by Grist) details the latest improvements: Walking directions ignore whether or not streets are one-way, offering the fastest point from point A to point B.
However, the walking directions are still under development, so off-road features like pedestrian paths won't show up yet. Neither will shortcuts through traffic circles or parks. For cities where Google has mapped public transit directions, you'll now find walking directions automatically from the point where you'd exit the subway or bus stop.
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Locavores Let the Hired Help Do the Harvesting
Continue reading… 0 CommentsWould you pay someone to tend your vegetable garden so that you can eat greener? This New York Times article details the trend of becoming a locavore (someone who eats only food that has been grown locally, cutting out the environmental effects of transportation) by proxy. This means that you'd pay someone to plant your vegetable garden, go to the farmers' market for you, and even cook your organic meals, free of "food miles." Becoming a locavore is an expensive trend, since farmers' market food can be pricier than supermarket fare, and some doubt that food miles have as bad of an impact as we fear. But it's as trendy as a shiny new iPhone.
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It's Getting Hot in Here: Energy-Saving Air Conditioner Tips
Continue reading… 14 CommentsToday is scorching hot. It's oppressively humid. It's a day to spend all of my nonworking hours in a swimming pool. It's a day to give in and crank up the AC. But air conditioning, as we learned years ago, fuels global warming. Here are a few eco-friendly ways to beat the heat and keep your energy bills low.
- Turn the air conditioner off when you're at work if you don't have any pets. See if your company offers time-of-use pricing, where you pay only for the hours you're in the house with the AC on, for even more savings.
- If you're buying an air conditioner, make sure it's Energy Star rated.
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The Recycling Bin: A Roundup of Green News, Al Gore Edition
Continue reading… 7 CommentsWhat are ecobloggers talking about as we ease into the weekend? Our president of global warming, Al Gore.
- After yesterday's Gore speech, conservative bloggers like the team at Americans for Prosperity are gleefully pointing out that Gore arrived at the event in a car, despite asking supporters to take bikes or public transportation.
- Wired Magazine says of Gore's 10-year plan: "Absent a huge run-up in coal prices, a fusion power breakthrough, or some unforeseen technology, it seems impossible."
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Notes From Al Gore's Climate Speech
Continue reading… 19 CommentsAl Gore's climate change speech for the We Campaign today challenged the United States to produce 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy and carbon-free sources within a decade. Gore paralleled his charge to the nation with President Kennedy's 1961 challenge to put a man on the moon within 10 years.
"Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind," he said, after describing his experience watching Apollo 11 take off in person.
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America's Best Hospitals, Green Edition
Continue reading… 3 CommentsUpdated on 07/16/08
When U.S. News released its annual ranking of America's Best Hospitals, we ranked healthcare facilities in many categories, but "greenest" wasn't one of them. The greening of hospitals is a topic making the rounds at medical conferences, with an increasing number of healthcare facilities looking to minimize their environmental footprint. According to noharm.org:
- Healthcare facilities expend about twice as much energy per square foot as a commercial building
- Hospitals generate more than 2 million tons of solid waste per year—15 pounds of waste per patient every day
- Hospitals are the fourth-largest source of mercury discharge into the environment.
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Fiji Water Chimes In on Bottled Versus Tap
Continue reading… 13 CommentsI've been writing about water for the past few days, mainly because there are so many deeply felt opinions on it. But when I mentioned Fiji Green in the first part of this impromptu three-part series, I wondered how the company would respond to a study that concluded the environmental impact of bottled water can be 1,000 times that of tap water. Thomas Mooney, senior vice president for sustainable growth at Fiji Green, gave me a call today, and we talked about his company's efforts to make its green practices known, and about the bottled water industry's bad reputation. Excerpts:
So, what do you think about the study?
I understand why a Swiss utility would commission the study. People think that tap water and bottled water are the competitive set. That is not, in fact, how it plays out. People choose to buy a packaged beverage, and then they choose whatever they want. What is so frustrating about this debate is when you look at it through that lens, bottled water represents the healthiest choice, and by far the lowest environmental impact.... The Swiss study made me think, "Riding a bicycle is better than a Prius, so a Prius is bad." A Prius replaces an SUV, just as bottled water replaces soda. People are drinking more bottled water, but there has been a decrease in carbonated soft drink consumption. If your tap water tastes great and you like it, drink it. Bottled water is the better choice if you're reaching into a cooler. -
Poland Spring, Vintage 2008
Continue reading… 6 CommentsMy previous post on bottled water inspired comments from both sides of the debate. Reader Joel pointed out that bottled water can cost more per ounce than beer, while Stand Back and Look at the Big Picture said that he or she prefers bottled water because it's better for us than soda—and besides, our landfills will just get clogged up with other stuff. But even those who chug their bottled water each day may roll their eyes at this one: gourmet bottled water, paired specially with food and wine, and served up by a water sommelier as if it were a glass of Bordeaux.
While some restaurants (such as Alice Waters's famous Chez Panisse in Berkeley) have eliminated bottled water from their menus, others are encouraging people to shell out cash for bottled water found farther afield than Fiji—some comes from Tasmanian rain water or Hawaiian volcanic springs.
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Bottled Water: as Terrible as We Suspected
Continue reading… 14 CommentsFile this news under "obviously." A comparison of the environmental effects of tap water versus bottled water by the Swiss Gas and Water Association, as reported by Treehugger today, states what we've long suspected: The environmental impact of bottledwater is up to 1,000 times as bad as that of tap water. Not to mention the effect on your wallet: Cases of bottled water add up, while the cost of clean, safe tap water (where your bottled water often comes from) is negligible, when you consider that most of what the water utility companies bill us for goes down a sink, washing machine, or shower drain.
But I won't tell you yet another thing that you already know. Instead, let's look at the ways that the bottled water industry is trying to revamp its image. The most prominent example is Fiji Green, whose ads I see each morning as I walk to work. The company, mindful of the bad rep of its product, announced its decision to go green months ago, and has put out literature and a website touting itself as "carbon negative," despite shipping water in plastic bottles halfway across the Earth. But wouldn't the most eco-friendly solution be for Fiji Water...not to exist? I'm obviously not the first or only person to raise the point. And other brands have followed suit. One wonders how, or if, the Fiji spin team will react to the Swiss study—or if they'll ever be called out for greenwashing, as Fiat and EasyJet were in their recent scolding by Britain's Advertising Standards Authority.
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Real Girls Eat (Organic, Grass-Fed) Meat
Continue reading… 6 CommentsWhat's the best way to get someone to give up meat? Insults and scare tactics aren't among the methods with the highest success rates. Yet the name-calling between wanton carnivores and devout vegetarians persists—and escalated this week with Pamela Anderson's disproportionate response to Jessica Simpson's "Real Girls Eat Meat" shirt.
PETA responded with some name-calling of its own, while other bloggers leapt to Simpson's defense. Though it's a silly fight between silly celebrities, it's representative of the heated arguments that occur over the dinner table between noncelebrities all the time. So since it's obvious that name-calling will not turn Simpson (or anyone else, for that matter) away from a delicious burger, Chris Baskind of Lighter Footstep offers some tips for going veg, gradually. After you make the switch, you can get a T-shirt of your own.
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Will Shortages Unplug Flat-Screen Industry?
Continue reading… 4 CommentsWe do everything we can to save the pandas: They're cute. But cute is not a word we'd use to describe the latest additions to the endangered list: the elements gallium, indium, hafnium, zinc, and copper. According to Peak Oil News (via Asimov's), the decline of these elements will be due to their use in flat-screen TVs, computer chips, and monitors. Time is running out quickly: Armin Reller of Germany's University of Augsberg says that gallium, which we extract from zinc and aluminum, will be gone by 2017. Zinc has more time but not by much—Reller estimates it will be extinct by 2037.
But extinct may not be the most accurate term. A commenter on Andrew Sullivan's blog points out that once we've mined the last of each element, they'll still exist, but just in products like your TV. The trick will be developing a cost-efficient recycling method.
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Should All Public Art Be Green?
Continue reading… 1 CommentA quick jaunt to New York City this weekend brought me to the Brooklyn Bridge to check out the city's latest public art project, the "New York City Waterfalls" by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The piece features four waterfalls suspended only by steel scaffolding and a system of pumps, which suck up water from the East River and send it tumbling down from heights of 90 to 120 feet, almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty. The falls put a little piece of upstate in Manhattan and, according to Eliasson, are intended to get New Yorkers to slow down and notice things around them, natural or otherwise. "I am not trying to bring nature to the city," Eliasson told the New Yorker. "It's a kind of counter-numbness project."
The project, funded by the Public Art Fund and the City of New York, is quite green. Its electricity is 100 percent offset by renewable energy sources, it uses energy-saving LED lights, and it has special filters in place to ensure that fish and river life can't get caught in the pumps.
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How to Have a Green Fourth of July
Continue reading… 2 CommentsBe green while you celebrate the red, white, and blue with these tips for an eco-friendly Fourth:
—Use dishware, not paper plates, to serve guests. It may require some extra cleanup for you, but you'll save trees and keep garbage out of landfills.
—For picnics, try a reusable sandwich wrap, rather than plastic wrap.
—Go to a community fireworks show, rather than buying your own. Big fireworks displays are getting greener and eliminating some of the most hazardous chemicals.
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Bike Shares Stalled Across the Country
Continue reading… 1 CommentBad news for the bikeless: Hourly bike rental systems are being delayed in three U.S. cities because of various concerns.
Chicago residents won't see rental bikes until legal issues are resolved—the city must establish whether the biker, company, or city is legally liable for any injuries incurred while riding. Officials have not announced a time frame for the rollout of the bikes. In Portland, Ore., plans are stalled indefinitely while city officials study the pros and cons of similar programs in Paris, Rome, and New Zealand.
