wish i could be there in nyc to experience this rainforest foundation performance. feist, sting, billy joel, and james taylor are just a few of the singing sensations performing to save the rainforest--being rainforest month and all. there's still time for you nyc locals to buy tickets. someone go and report back!
be sure to check out the empire state building tomorrow night too during the event. it will be lit up in green in honour of this month. cool huh?
while contemplating what to write about today i got to thinking about greenpeace. their interns are always knocking me down on the street with their clipboards and goodwill messages--gotta love their fortitude. lucky for me i can honestly tell them i have a friend working for greenpeace and i'm a regular site-reader. they smile at that and let me go.
here's a brief history about greenpeace:
it all began in 1971 with a cozy group of committed citizens aboard a small fishing vessel sailing toward amchitka island in alaska. their mission was to protect united states nuclear testing off the coast of alaska by actually placing themselves in harm's way. it was daring and risky--staring death in the eye for a natural cause. although they were intercepted by the united states coastguard, the mission was successful by bringing to the headlines the dangers of nuclear testing--worldwide.
since that effort, greenpeace has promised to educate and protect the world in the harms facing our planet all through ordinary yet committed people. they've grown considerably since their early days--30 offices internationally--and managed to maintain that same vivacity in their activists and donors.
greenpeace also doesn't solicit the government or corporations for funds. nor do they endorse politicians. their money comes from supporters and donors. to put a price tag on your support click here.
their campaigns.
global warming and energy
project hot seat
exxon secrets
science
solutions
energy [r]evolution
skeptics
climate lawsuit
global warming and energy reports
u.n. climate conference
oceans
whale defenders
bering witness
seafood
threats to ocean life
oceans reports
marine reserves
wildlife facts
forests
u.s. forests
forests worldwide
solutions to deforestation
kleenex=kleercut
music wood
forest reports
forest wildlife fact sheets
nuclear
no new nukes
disarmament
safety and security
nuclear reports
chernobyl anniversary
toxics
chemical threats
going hi-tech is highly toxic
go pvc-free
bhopal disaster
toxics reports
clash of the consoles
genetic engineering
ge industry
bans and labeling
go organic
ge reports
i'm way into the forest and ocean campaigns.
get involved!
do your part.
happy birthday mother earth.
we love you.
each year, earth day represents a reminder to the modern environmental movement that began april 22, 1970. the decided national day was to focus one whole day out of the year on the environmental problems facing our mother earth.
even 38 years ago, the environmental crisis was sweeping across the nation's campuses. they could see it then. we see it now. but how much progress has been made?
what will you do (or don't do) today, on earth day 2008, to observe this national day?
take action.
al gore believes in a happy ending still even though little has changed since his thought-provoking an inconvenient truth won a pulitzer. he also believes the environmental crisis has become even more urgent. do you believe he's doing his part in the environmental state of emergency? or do you believe the claims made against him for being an energy hog? (the writings contained herein this blog have been both pro and con toward al gore. lately, we're more pro. amazing what education can do to enlighten the mind. be sure to educate yourself.)
michelle kaufmann gives you some ideas how to take all that consumer waste and make it pretty in her do-it-yourself earth day activity kit.
the above graphic was orchestrated for a designboom and da--design association japan international design competition to demonstrate the theme "love your earth."
share more. how do you love your earth?
if you're with me (and greenpeace and so many others) in the fight against kimberly-clark, be aware of their other brands listed below. start a new habit of flipping over the product in question to see if kimberly-clark is listed as the parent company.
kleenex
huggies
kotex
depend
scott
viva
cottonelle
andrex
pull-ups
goodnites
little swimmers
poise
neat sheet
other sites promoting awareness toward the destruction kimberly-clark leaves in its wake:
greenpeace: cut and run. (new findings on the kimberly-clark "legacy." download and read the report.)
kleercut: wiping away ancient forests.
treehugger: kleenex kleercut--trees for tissues?
grist: greenpeace hacks kleenex pr.
wikipedia: kleercut.
nrdc: flushing forests down the toilet.
and remember, it takes 90 years to grow a box of kleenex. 90 years!
continue the education.
in the span of eight days i received new catalogs from 2 of my favourite furniture retailers--design within reach and mitchell gold+bob williams. flipping through the first couple pages i noticed both merchants declared their smart ideas and promises for both offering and maintaining eco-friendly products.
i especially love what mitchell and bob say in their eco-statement: "we've been eco-friendly since 1989. not since it became fashionable." they also recognize being eco-friendly is not only a privilege but their responsibility. i can appreciate that.
they demonstrate their claim in the makeup of their pieces. their seat cushions are wrapped up in 80 percent regenerated fibers and 10 percent soy. they use fabrics like cotton, linen, mohair, and hemp--all natural fibers. a large part of their casegoods--chests, dressers, tables--are built from parawood (also called rubberwood). but the parawood trees aren't harvested until they stop producing sap. how awesome is that? totally utilizing the tree's resources. and finally, the best of all: their back pillows are composed of fibers that came from plastic bottles.
seems to me mitchell and bob are living up to their promise.
in addition to already focusing their eco-friendly efforts on their products, they're working with the climate project, a non-profit dedicated to creating the opportunity to move our nation into action. with every purchase of fine art photography by tipper gore a portion will benefit the movement.
now on to design within reach (dwr). (i don't really get why it's called what it is because as i browse through the pages there is little i can afford. in fact, i'm not sure i can even afford one of their lightbulbs.)
their assortment of eco-friendly products is conveniently listed on their solutions page. categories are: energy efficient, green guard certified, recyclable products, recyclable materials, sustainable materials. this will enable you to find just what you're looking for based upon your environmental goal or vision.
dwr says being conscious of the environment has always been part of their vision and assortment of products but now they've set up categories so it's easier for the buyer--you!--to find just what s/he is looking for. genius.
my favourite of the green dwr products is first in their "what is green?" catalog. the page boasts "green is up-cycling cans into a chair that lasts 150 years." the chair it's speaking of is the 1006 navy chair by emeco. back in 1944 when emeco started designing chairs, you can bet your hybrid marketing slogans encouraging him to make it appealing to the eco-conscious weren't floating around the design board. he was more focused on guaranteeing it could withstand a torpedo blast. to satisfy the military crazy request, emeco created a 77-step patented process. during the process, emeco invented a method to make aluminum three times stronger than steel. a chair so unbelievably durable its estimated lifespan is 150 years. legend has it the maker of the 1006 navy chair, wilton dinges, the founder of emeco in 1944, actually tossed the chair out the window of a 6-story building. aside from startling the people on the street and a few scratches, the chair didn't show any damage.
the 1006 navy chair has gone down in history as one of the most revered, respected, and wanted chairs. wanted so much that target even copied it opening the chair's distribution to the more general public at $249.99 compared to the original price of $395.00-1,115.00 by authorized dealers. the copy at target caused a real stir. target doesn't outright claim their cafe aluminum side chair to be a copy of the 1006 navy chair, of course; in the description it simply says it's of classic design. true. (when i searched the site i couldn't find cafe aluminum side chair. all the search produced was this barstool. look familiar? perhaps at the time of the washingtonpost.com article it was still on target.com. i don't have any major issues with copies. my issue would be they're likely to not have the same green makeup as the higher priced original. something to consider.) to set the original apart from copies, three small welds are left exposed on the back slats. (as if paying the original price wasn't enough of a clue.)
another beautiful tidbit about the emeco 1006 navy chair is it starts out with 80 percent recycled aluminum which requires only 5 percent the energy needed to produce virgin aluminum. and the factory is here in the united states! pennsylvania even.
good stuff.
live simply.
note: the awesome catalogs i received from dwr and mitchell gold+bob williams are both printed on 100 percent recycled products. fsc-certified even for dwr.
like nigel farndale, the author of the article, turn your nose up at eco-snobs, someone slap my wrist for my attitude toward those that aren't as or even striving to be as eco-friendly as me. i'm guilty of my ears perking up to someone in the market line refusing a paper bag while the woman in front of me gladly takes the offered bag. (at my local safeway here in san francisco plastic bags are no longer offered as a means to transport your groceries. it's paper or your own bag.) it's happened so many times. and what about those that walk by the recycling bin in the office and dump their empty water bottles in the trash can? shame on them? or shame on me?
farndale's article hit home with me and now i feel bad. take a read yourself. if you're going green, good for you, but be careful to avoid rubbing it in the face of those surrounding you. like some folks said in the comments of a treehugger.com article, going green should be treated like a religion. if you try to convert someone into changing their ways and thinking differently about the environment, you won't be successful by shoving it down their throat. my mother always taught me to lead by example and actions speak louder than words. in this day and age, those words of wisdom still ring true.
emily bazalon, a writer for slate.com, wrote another view of appearing or teaching a version of eco-snobbery: she fears what her family's purchase of their prius might mean to her children. her article is both witty and realistic.
don't puff yourself up thinking you're all that just because you reuse and recycle or drive a prius. join me in relieving the world of a few eco-snobs, myself included.
have you ever been drinking from a starbucks cup and noticed how it says 10% post-consumer fibers on the bottom? and have you ever wondered what it means? it happened to me this morning. i was walking back to my office and trying to sip every last drop of my steamed nonfat milk out of my cup and noticed the writing. then i started to wonder: how legitimate is that? and what does it mean exactly? some of my findings are below.
in february 2007 solo cup company, manufacturer of disposable foodservice products for the consumer/retail, foodservice, packaging and international markets co-developed a post-consumer fiber paper cup with starbucks. the post-consumer fiber paper cup is manufactured with recycled paper and helps support starbucks corporate social responsibility mission to serve products in an environmentally sustainable choice of packaging. read more. and more about how starbucks is changing the way coffee is served.
read starbucks' social responsibility newsletter announcing the new post-consumer hot cup.
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clips from recycling point dot com: debunking the myths of recycled paper.
definition of post-consumer waste: paper that has been recovered after having been used as a consumer item including papers from offices and homes, old newspapers and packaging.
in california, recycled paper must contain at least 10% post-consumer waste.
"in buying recycled paper, you must understand what composition you are buying," said lawrence chan, manager of office paper and stationary at shiro paper (singapore) pte ltd. "for example, if you buy recycled paper made from mill broke, it does not really help the environment because the paper mills have always been doing it. even before this trend towards recycling paper, mills have been recycling mill broke as it is only good housekeeping. "
"personally, i feel that the important components are the pre- and post- consumer wastes," added lawrence. "instead of dumping them into landfills or incinerating them, you put them to good use."
definition of mill broke: waste material recovered from inside a paper mill during the paper making process. this includes paper trimmings. paper makers have always reused their broke. many people do not consider paper made from mill broke as genuine recycled paper.
today is blog action day.
bloggers everywhere are making their voices heard (or the sound of clicking keyboard strokes) on the hot topic of our day--the environment.
we're blogging as a critical mass to raise the awareness and urgency of the situation. if we all participate, we can make a difference.
so what are you doing to lessen your carbon footprint? what are you doing to save your planet? what are you doing to do your part in the fight of our lives--saving our mother earth? what's your action plan?
take a stand. be an activist.
start refusing plastic bags at the grocery store.
limit your use of paper and plastic products.
turn the lights off when nobody's home.
recycle.
compost.
leave your car parked--take public transportation.
all it takes is one person. that person is you.
note: this blog is dedicated 100% to the overwhelming issue of global warming. browse through the other entries for tips on how you can lessen your carbon footprint with simple and easy measures.
al gore was awarded the nobel peace prize last night alongside the u.n. intergovernmental panel on climate change for their efforts in bringing attention to the global warming issues plaguing the planet.
some quotes and statements from the article:
the nobel committee praised gore for being "one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians."
in the announcement, the committee cited gore and the ipcc "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
president bill clinton, gore's ex-boss, praised gore saying this award was well-deserved and "he saw this coming before others in public life."
gore said he was "deeply hounoured" and stated "the climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all humanity."
while shoveling my organic walnut oatmeal in my mouth, i filtered through some of my eco-emails that come every morning and came across this one from grist that i like very much. i'm guilty of the occasional eco-littering. read the article and then imagine the effect of spitting your gum out into the bushes has.
Into the Wild: On tossing food waste
question
Dear Umbra,
I am a college student. I eat a lot on the go. Not fast food or boxed meals, but when I leave my dorm I usually grab an apple, banana, or other fruit/veggie to eat as I walk to my destination. I don't compost, instead I just throw the banana peel or apple core into the bushes. I like the thought that maybe one day my apple core will become an apple, or that my banana peel will help nourish that piece of ground/animals in the area over ending up in a landfill. To me this eco-littering is an opportunity for new life. I know that it takes a long time to biodegrade as a piece of fruit tossed in the bushes, but I think that, on a smaller scale (not all of society throwing their food scraps into our green places), it's not a bad thing. But I've heard that this eco-littering isn't terribly good. I don't really know and I kinda like my fantasy world where it is. Is my eco-littering OK? Should I start to properly compost my food?
Brendan
Moscow,
answer
Dearest Brendan,
Many angles to consider here -- or, there's more than one way to peel this apple. Is that the expression? Am I conflating skinning a cat with peel me a grape?
We'll sort through the peelings, but let's start with the end and say: It would be better to properly compost your food.
Partly this has to do with citizenship. What you are doing is just plain old littering, and from a civic standpoint, it's improper. Mind you, I think most people throw food into the bushes one way or another. My mother threw apple cores out the car window into roadside woodlands, I throw plum pits under the apple trees in my back yard. But one is not meant to do it in either frequented public places or in remote locales; other people who encounter your litter may find it repulsive. It may spoil their pleasant bush-side jaunt, they may feel the need to clean up after you, they may be gardeners maintaining the bushes who find your rotten leavings. We vote, and recycle, and drive less, because we believe that one person has an impact. By this logic, one person's litter makes a difference. Not a good difference. There should be all types of activism in the environmental movement, but I don't think fruit rinds send a clear enough message to count as activism.
At an ecological level, discarded fruit leavings are not the cat's meow either. Almost none of the produce you discard will sprout new life. An apple seed or a plum pit might, because these grow in your area, but due to the unpredictable nature of sexual reproduction in domesticated tree fruit, the resultant tree would likely be a weird, unrecognizable, and less tasty fruit. If you live in a human-dominated landscape, it will be torn up. Any animals that eat the fruit will be scavengers who have other food sources, because no animal could build a life on waiting for banana peels. In a worst-case scenario, an innocent animal would eat your garbage and suffer indigestion or death. (I'm kind of making the death part up, but it doesn't seem utterly out of the question.)
Those are some of the reasons why we should stop throwing our produce bits about. True, one alternative is to throw them in the garbage, where they will be interred for centuries. But the other alternative, composting them, fulfills almost all the aspects of your fantasy world. If you were to compost your pits and peels, they would transform themselves into nourishing plant nutrients. Composted material isn't just more aesthetically pleasing than rotting banana peels, it has a chemical and structural difference that is beneficial to plants. If you then threw this material under the bushes -- oh, happy bushie day.
Luckily for you, basic information about all sorts of composting is just a click away, on this very website. May your fantasy life simply improve as you change your leftover hummus into humus.
Painfully,
Umbra
it's just really sad. so many creatures are affected negatively by global warming. while the effects are difficult still to see on the mainland they're evidencing themselves clearly in places like antarctica and the arctic.
penguins are running out of space to mate. such a wonderful creature.
don't be silly and think because they're so far away and in an environment very foreign to most of us that our efforts can't help them.
everything we/you can do from changing our lightbulbs to boycotting the plastic bag will have far-reaching effects.
maybe seeing the danger this adorable creature is in will encourage you to try just a little bit harder to minimize your carbon footprint. i hope it will. it wells my eyes with tears.
many of you have commented (thank you) on the entries in this blog about al gore and the claims that he's an energy hog--preaching something different than he's practicing. i would love to provide both sides of the story but having a difficult time nailing down anything more than just hypocritical claims or information on personal blogs toward the environmental prophet. if you have details, i.e., links, papers, please pass them along to me as i strive to keep this blog educational so we can all make our own decisions about the environment's direction.
keep the comments coming. whether positive or negative, we welcome them all.
focused on giving back to her community and managing her environmental responsibility, denise stevens shares luxurious comforts for home--home, baby, pets, body--through lush comforts.
today is madonna's 49th birthday. happy freakin' birthday.
for the most part, i like madonna.
but then i learned how un-green she is and it all changed. she's truly a material girl--seeming more focused on investments financially than following the lead of her celebrity associates and large money donors to preserve and save our earth.
she sang at the live earth show earlier this summer and spoke as if she truly believed in the cause. maybe she does. but her actions suggest otherwise: she has invested about $2.7 million in companies that damage our environment instead of save or preserve it. (article from fox news below.)
she and jennifer aniston should join forces. together they could be trailblazers in destroying any environmental resources we have left.
===
Friday, July 06, 2007
'Green' Means Money, Not Environmentalism to Madonna
Madonna had better clean up her business before she starts cleaning up the world.
The Material Mom is the headliner at tomorrow night's Live Earth show from London's Wembley Stadium. But guess what? For her, the word green means money, not the environment.
Madonna, who seems to be on top of all her many business endeavors, has actually invested about $2.7 million dollars in companies that are creating the destruction that Live Earth is trying to raise awareness about. She has invested in several companies named as the biggest corporate polluters in the world.
It's a cruel irony that Madonna's Ray of Light Foundation owns blocks of shares in companies that folks like Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio would like to see punished and rehabilitated for their attitudes toward global warming, climate control and basic pollution.
The companies include Alcoa, Ingersoll Rand, Weyerhaeuser, and several others associated with oil exploration, digging, and refining including British Petroleum, Schlumberger (a chief competitor of Halliburton), Devon Energy, Peabody Energy, Emerson Electric, Kimberly Clark and Weatherford International.
In 2002, the University of Massachusetts' Political Research Institute ranked Alcoa No. 9 on a list of all-time toxic American companies. And I don't mean toxic as in toxic bachelor. This is toxic as in air pollution.
The same UMass PRI study ranked Ford Motor Company at No. 7 on the Toxic Top 10. Northrop Grumman was No. 17. Weyerhaeuser was No. 42. Emerson Electric was No. 56. 3M Corp was No. 70. Kimberly Clark was No. 96.
You get the picture. Madonna's Ray of Light Foundation has stock in each of these companies. Her last published tax statement claims $4.2 million in corporate stock, and only $620,000 in donations to other charities including her pet project: the Kabbalah Center.
Madonna even has 175,000 shares of Ford Motor Company, which in 2005 — the last year for which Ray of Light Foundation's tax form is available — had only one hybrid SUV in its fleet. Even now, but certainly then, Ford was/is not known as a green company. The only obvious thing Ford and Madonna have in common is Detroit — although it could be argued that only Ford has retained its Midwest accent.
Take Weyerhaeuser Corporation, a "forest products" company that is basically in the business of killing trees for paper and wood for housing. In 2005, Madonna owed roughly 1,100 shares valued at an average price of $63. Since then, the share price is up to around $80. If her number of shares remained constant, she's made a nice profit over the last two years.
But Weyerhaeuser is no friend of the green community. A story posted on the Rainforest Action Network details Weyerhaeuser's ongoing fight with environmental activists who call the Seattle-based corporation "a bad investment" and "one of America's worst environmental performers."
Even if more than half the Network's characterizations of Weyerhaeuser are hyperbolic, one has to wonder why Madonna has put even a penny into the company if she has any feeling for environmental causes. But that's an inconvenient question for the material girl as she prepares to close the Live Earth show live from London.
Worse — public relations-wise — than Weyerhaeuser is Madonna's investment in Alcoa, the Aluminum Company of America. Alcoa is under fire all over the world, especially in Iceland, for building aluminum smelters that some feel threaten the environment.
The Ray of Light Foundation's Schedule of Realized Gains and Losses is revealing in many ways. It shows that Madonna, while eager to espouse politically correct beliefs, simply does not put her money where her mouth is. The Ray of Light Foundation, for example, has only a few hundred shares of one media company: Viacom. Madonna didn't even carry an investment in Warner Music Group, the company that releases her music.
this may surprise many of you but last night i finally watched al gore's an inconvenient truth.
if you haven't watched it, please do. rent it. borrow it from a friend or the library. buy it.
in spite of al gore being an energy hog and trying to justify it by saying he has lots of carbon credits, the man is doing a great thing with this movie he's made. he's a great speaker/presenter, and will have you crying and laughing the entire way through the startling and jaw dropping content.
i've gotta hand it to him. he's taken it upon himself to fight this troubling reality by sharing it with as many people as will hear him. now we have a responsibility to act on it. make a change today.
it's never anything short of a miracle when heavy-hitting political players are thinking along the same lines. now add in that they were thinking the same about conserving energy as it relates to better protecting our planet and our energy security and you've got something larger than a miracle on your hands. as a final twist, toss in the fact the players are international leaders.
whoa. i knew they had it in them.
this miraculous event occurred just yesterday between mexico, canada and the united states.
the 5-year deal was signed after a meeting on canada's pacific coast. the countries agree they should encourage practicing joint research in areas like nuclear energy and renewable fuels.
now look at that: a baker, a butcher and a candlestick maker--all working together. isn't it lovely?
u.s.a., canada, mexico vow energy tech co-operation
abc news
canada, u.s.a., mexico sign trilateral energy accord
cbc news
canada signs energy pact
toronto star
even harry potter is going green.
scholastic announced the printing of the seventh and final book in the series of harry potter, harry potter and the deathly hallows, will be printed on 30% post consumer waste fiber. additionally, 2/3 of the paper will be fsc (forest stewardship council) certified.
from the nytimes: a bid for harry potter's green fans.
apparently the truth is too inconvenient for even al gore, the guy who told us we have 10 years to shape up or our planet will be sent free-falling. you know, the guy at the front of the documentary an inconvenient truth.
according to the article below, actions speak louder than words and he's being called an energy hog.
===
For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)
Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.
Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.
But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.
Gore is not alone. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has said, "Global warming is happening, and it threatens our very existence." The DNC website applauds the fact that Gore has "tried to move people to act." Yet, astoundingly, Gore's persuasive powers have failed to convince his own party: The DNC has not signed up to pay an additional two pennies a kilowatt hour to go green. For that matter, neither has the Republican National Committee.
Maybe our very existence isn't threatened.
[...]
The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up [...] one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.
Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.
grist names the 15 green cities worldwide.
congratulations u.s.a., you received 3 mentions!
what's not to love about robert redford?
a remarkable actor, filmmaker, entrepreneur, activist, creative...the list could continue.
and now he's going green. he's created a television channel through sundance solely geared toward green thinking--the green. the website links browsers to local community activities and shares other critical information.
we love you and all you do robert redford. you're a pioneer in your day.
