Why Fighting Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs Is So Stupid - Ecocentric - TIME.com

Why Fighting Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs Is So Stupid - Ecocentric - TIME.com

There's dumb, there's dumber and then there are the House Republicans—nearly all of them—who voted this morning to set the U.S. back on energy efficiency. By a quick voice vote, the House approved an amendment that would prevent funds from a 2012 spending bill to be used to implement federal light bulb standards. The amendment came after a similar separate bill failed to garner a two-thirds supermajority earlier this week in the House—although it did win a simple majority and all but 10 Republicans in the House voted for it, along with five Democrats.

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/07/15/why-fighting-energy-efficient-light-bulbs-is-so-stupid/#ixzz1YVqKD5CC

What if the Light Bulb Produced More Than Light? | ElisaWood

What if the Light Bulb Produced More Than Light? | ElisaWood

A professor of engineering at Edinburgh University recently demonstrated for the first time to a wide audience his technology that uses common every day lights to transmit data.

Harald Haas streamed a video through a desk lamp at Ted Global 2011 at Scotland’s Edinburgh International Conference Center in July.

I can hardly wait for this one. - Val

Plastic Bag Pollution

Come on guys, this is a simple one.

The Plastic Bag - A Mockumentary

Garbage to Art Movie

An inspiring documentary about turning trash into art. A great summer movie find!  Watch for it.

"Located just outside Rio de Janeiro, Jardim Gramacho, Brazil, is the world's largest garbage landfill. Modern artist Vik Muniz works with the so-called catadores, the men and women who pick through the refuse, to create art out of recycled materials. Muniz selects six of the garbage pickers to pose as subjects in a series of photographs mimicking famous paintings. In his desire to assist the catadores and change their lives, Muniz finds himself changed as well. " http://www.wastelandmovie.com/

Movie: To Purchase

Was shown at

Rethink The Food Label | Nutrition. Conversation. Design.

Rethink The Food Label | Nutrition. Conversation. Design.
Calling all designers, nutritionist and healthy food advocates. Enter by July 1st your redesigned food label.

Food labeling has not changed for over 20 years and you can make a difference in helping consumers make educated decisions when purchasing food items. Understandable labeling addressing many of today's health and nutritional concerns may help reduce and reverse the obesity curve we see increasing today.

New Mortgages for Car-Free Families

New Mortgages for Car-Free Families
You've got to love it when you can save money while saving money.

National Geographic Magazine - NGM.com

National Geographic Magazine - NGM.com
A clear article about our dwindling seed varieties with an excellent graphic that demonstrates changes over time.

A Sustainable Supply Chain: Show me the Money – NOW!

A Sustainable Supply Chain: Show me the Money – NOW!

... The quantitative model was created by the analysis of the three main drivers and their respective impacts on the company’s annual procurement spend, market cap and revenue. Their impact was then compared to the implementation cost of a Sustainable Procurement program.

Among the reports key findings:

1. The payback from investing in risk reduction activities in the supply chain targeting the financial impact on “brand value from negative supplier practices (e.g., child labor, creating local pollution);economic cost of supply chain disruptions (e.g., noncompliance with environmental regulation,” etc. is eighty-five times the cost associated with the initial risk reduction investment.
2. Additional revenue through innovation of eco-friendly products/services, price premium or income from recycling programs yielded a 58 percent payback.

The study found sustainability- driven cost reduction from energy reduction programs for instance, could fund the entire cost of a procurement initiative. This would allow companies to benefit quickly from both risk management reduction and potential revenue growth opportunities. ...

Recycle Bank has so much potential

This year single stream recycling was introduced in Ann Arbor. I believe the single stream does make recycling easier, my husband loves that he does not have to divide up the recycling into separate containers. Ask the drivers and they say it is a mess back at the MURF or at least it was a lot cleaner when separated. I'm neither for or against, it is just a change. If this increases recycling and removes greater volume from the landfills, excellent.

The same time single stream came in so did the recycling bank. I was asked if I knew about it. This was my response,

Yes, I have heard of the RecycleBank, we have it in Ann Arbor, and I have some issues with it. While it does encourage more household recycling and seems to make a difference in numbers of recycling materials collected it also encourages buying more stuff with little consideration to the end of life of the new stuff. It also relies on local vendors to provide all the incentives, which some of them seem to like but in my neighborhood case, if we all don’t spend our points and reach the level that we can earn enough points to get a big screen TV, I’m not sure how the vendor could handle that demand. You can also contribute to charities if you don't want to get stuff with your points.

I don’t like the approach Ann Arbor is taking because they don’t weigh each bin collected. Ann Arbor takes the number of bins lifted for recycling and divides the total weight evenly among the registered users in that neighborhood and distributes points evenly. It is known among the drivers that people are putting out the recycling bin with nothing in it, just so it registers and they can get free stuff.

I would be ecstatic if the recycle bank : 

1. The bins were randomly monitored to be sure people are not tossing in landfill items and removed from the program if they are unless they want to attend an educational session. Two strikes and are removed for a determined amount of time.
2. The prizes were limited to:
• Local social charitable gifts.
• High post consumer recycle content items.
• Minimally packaged grocery items.
• Car share memberships or trips.
• Bus passes and bicycles.
• Farmers market coupons.
• Local vendor services such as legal advice, tax assistance, teeth cleaning, eye doctor…
• YMCA or community athletic club memberships.
• Inhouse coffee or foods only – no take out or delivery.
• No tv’s or single use disposables or unnecessary packaging in goods such as CD’s.
3. Rewarded each home by the weight/volume of the actual recycling vs the weight/volume of their trash. Lots of recyclables in the trash get deducted.
4. Zero waste should be the focus and the educational emphasis  – reduced recycling and no or almost no landfillable items. People are instead being rewarded for enhanced recycling and to keep growing the recycling weight annually they will need to buy more.

Because recycling is big business I doubt any of this will happen in Michigan but without purchasing of post consumer recyclable goods being emphasized to close the loop what is the point?

My two cents.

Find out what pesticides are on your dinner plate

 

Companies want sustainable business but finding it hard to implement.

The sustainability learning center in Toronto, Ontario has a vested interest in advancing businesses and organizations implementation of sustainable applications and the feedback they are getting is positive but a new approach needs to be taken to be fully embraced. This article was posted on Sustainability Learning Center blog by Kathryn Cooper.

Global CEOs say “complexity of implementation” is greatest barrier to business sustainability

Posted on August 23, 2010 by kathryncooper

Global CEOs report that greatest barrier to business sustainability is the complexity of implementation.

In the New Era of Sustainability study, released June, 2010, 93 percent of 766 global CEOs agreed that sustainability is critical to the future success of their companies. In fact, 80 percent of them reported the global economic downturn accelerated their conviction to embrace sustainability practices. But they also lamented that “complexity of implementation across functions” was their most significant barrier to implementing an integrated, company-wide approach to Sustainability. Of particular issue was the challenge of establishing a consistent, companywide approach across large and increasingly complex supply chains and subsidiaries. Clearly, the journey from sustainability strategy to implementation is not all that easy. Fast forward to August, 2010, another study, Demand for ISO 14001 adoption in the global supply chain notes that environmental preferences and pressures of customers in environmentally conscious markets are more likely to encourage domestic and foreign suppliers to adopt ISO 14001.
To read full article click on link above.

History of Thrift Week

Thrift Week sounds great to me and I believe we need to get back to the hard core basics of living within our means and community.

I decided to look into Thrift Week and find out what happened to it and led to it's demise.
Here's what I found.

Thrift week began pre World War 1 in 1961
"National Thrift Week" and sponsored primarily by the Young Men's Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.), the campaign became an annual celebration. National thrift Week began each year on January 17 the American apostle of thrifts' birthday, Benjamin Franklin. Expanding in the 1920's Thrift week gained supporters from over 50 groups including the Boy and Girl Scouts, Bankers, Farm Mortgage groups, Advertising Clubs, The US Postal Service and The Red Cross.

National Thrift Week was celebrated daily by specific principles and encouraged action each day.
Slogan, "For Success and Happiness."  

Monday: Have a Bank Account Day
Tuesday: Invest Safely Day
Wednesday; Carry Life Insurance Day 

Thursday: Keep a Budget Day
Friday: Pay Bills Promptly Day
Saturday: Own Your Home Day
Sunday: Share with Others Day.

Share with others Day was expanded into three pie charts:
“Mr. Tightwad’s Dollar,”
“Mr. Spendthrift’s Dollar,” 
“Mr. Thrifty’s Dollar.”
Mr. Tightwad and Mr. Spendthrift pie only allotted 1 percent to giving, Mr. Thrifty allotted 10 percent because he had more to give.

These principles were meant to cultivate responsible consumerism and civic progress. Rather than self-denial, the goal was self-control. The word, "thrift," finds its root in the phrase "to thrive".
Thrift is thriving because, in the end, the thrifty person will have more resources than the spendthrift—which thrift leaders believed was important not only for one’s personal flourishing, but for societal flourishing as well. 

Finally, thrift is thriving because thrift is not only wise use of money,  “intelligent use of health, time, and property of all kinds, including money.” In a school educational guide called "Thrift and Conservation"  thrift educators boasted that in 1917, schoolchildren in Los Angeles cultivated 90 vacant city lots, and more than 14,000 tended 900 acres of home gardens. As a result, they said, “Children are trained in habits of industry and thrift, and the spirit of cooperation is developed.” For these thrift educators, conserving natural resources was an intrinsic part of the thrift ethic: Because we hold all our resources in trust, the school guide noted, “it is our duty to guard our trust faithfully and to pass it on as little impaired by our use of it as possible.”

Special  events, parades, programs were the rage within budget but slowly fizzled out with more wars, economic downturns and cultural changes and lack of sponsorship until it completely disappeared in 1966. Arguably, thrift was replaced for the next forty years by consumerism and easy credit and our reversion back to thrift is one out of necessity.

How about starting our own thrift movement, emphasizing hard work, wise use of money, generosity, and conservation? As we work our way out of this Recession, the advice from nearly a century ago rings just as true for today: “Get the thrift habit.”Spending as we have seen does not necessarily stimulate the economy, as we are experiencing today.

Taking control back into our own hands and responsibility and out of investment bankers and speculation investors will go a long way to create sound communities and healthy solid/paid for homes and reduce waste everywhere.

Wasteful Numbers

What ever happened to Yankee frugality? Straightening bent nails, saving string.
Is Thrift Week, a holiday which began on Ben Franklin's birthday even on the calendar anymore? When did it disappear? 

"Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship," said he. That leak is not so small anymore.

We disapproved of frippery, definition according to answers.com

1. Pretentious, showy finery.
2. Pretentious elegance; ostentation.
3. Something trivial or nonessential.

We couldn't imagine wasting money on ourselves, made do or did without. It took a mighty effort to make us what we are today. 

Today in the USA:
Americans toss:

• 106,000 aluminum cans every 30 seconds. (Enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet every three months—and aluminum represents less than 1 percent of our solid waste stream).
• 2 million plastic beverage bottles every 5 minutes
• 426,000 cell phones every day
• 14 % of the food we buy at the store

Americans use:

• 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags each hour
• 60,000 plastic bags we use every 5 seconds
• US airline flights distributed 1 million plastic cups every 6 hours
• 15 million sheets of office paper every 5 minutes
• 170,000 Energizer batteries produced every 15 minutes

Energy:
The average American uses more energy between the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve and dinner on January 2 than the average, Tanzanian consumes in a year.

Time to rethink hyper-consumerism and get back in touch with what really matters.

The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff  The Book

Now Annie Leonard has a full explaination of her journey through "Stuff". An expanded version of much of the work that went on before her 20 minute video "The Story of Stuff" that has been viewed over 10 million times and is translated into multiple languages. Just as easy to read and understand as her videos, I recommend this book to everyone.

Zip Car - a great way to get around town

I've been a zip car user for two years now and it is a great way to get a car in a convenient location for a flat fee. If I just need a car for a few hours I walk book online to reserve the car, walk 10 minutes downtown or take the bus, pick up the car, drive and drop the car off when my time is up. Gas, insurance, it's all covered and my time driving the zip car also counts as a driver for insurance if I should ever decide to own my own.

I was also able to add visitors to town on my account so they could drive if they needed to. Visitor from Switzerland in town need to drive for only a few days, no problem with zip.

Looks like I can drive a zip car where-ever they are located so that next trip to Chicago or Toronto, no problem, they have even added London, England to the list. I recommend this company to anyone as a zero Waste alternative to car ownership that has zipcar in their area.

They are not going to take our crap

India Plans Laws on E-waste Management

John Ribeiro, IDG News Service 

The Indian government plans to enact new rules that makes a producer of electrical and electronic equipment responsible for the collection and appropriate disposal of e-waste generated at the end of life of its products.

The draft of the new rules, called the E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2010, was made available for public comment on the Web site of the Ministry of Environment and Forests on Wednesday. 

Under the draft rules, producers include manufacturers of products under their own brand, as well as those who sell under their brand products that are manufactured by contractors. Importers of products for sale in India are also included under the classification. 

The proposed rules will also ban the import of used electrical and electronic equipment for charity in the country.

A new way at looking at raw materials

BioTrade Potential for Growth and Sustainability
7 April 2010, Geneva Switzerland 

The informal brainstorming session on the BioTrade Potential for Growth and Sustainability brought together a group of experts and negotiators with unique perspectives on biodiversity, trade and intellectual property rights (IPRs) to discuss opportunities and challenges for its advancement in Latin America and the Caribbean. Representatives of several Permanent Missions of the Latin American and Caribbean region and other international experts participated in the event.

The workshop was organized in the framework of a regional initiative entitled “Biodiversity and Ecosystems: Why these are Important for Sustained Growth and Equity in Latin America and the Caribbean”, which is currently being implemented by UNDP in association with UNEP, ECLAC and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).Documents on stimulating trade and investment in biological resources to further sustainable development. 


The event, organized by the BioTrade Initiative of UNCTAD and the Regional Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean of UNDP, provided a platform in obtaining valuable inputs to the UNDP team in preparing the regional biodiversity report. 


 BioTrade refers to those activities of collection, production, transformation, and commercialization of goods and services derived from native biodiversity under the criteria of environmental, social and economic sustainability. http://www.biotrade.org/

BioTrade Principles and Criteria

Based on the experience of national programs in the implementation of their principles and criteria and the different contexts in which they have been applied, a general set of BioTrade Principles has been defined trough a joint process carried out by UNCTAD and the National BioTrade Programs. The following are the Principles agreed upon and adhered by the BioTrade initiative, its programs and partners:

1. Conservation of biodiversity
2. Sustainable use of biodiversity
3. Equitable sharing of benefits derived from the use of biodiversity
4. Socio-economic sustainability (management, production and markets)
5. Compliance with national and international legislation and agreements
6. Respect for the rights of actors involved in BioTrade activities
7. Clarity about land tenure, use and access to natural resources and knowledge

The BioTrade Principles and Criteria are based on the objectives of the CBD and other social and economic criteria that assure the sustainability of private initiatives and the competitiveness of these products in the market.

BioTrade principles and criteria are the basis for the definition of other tools developed by BTFP such as the verification framework for BioTrade products and BioTrade Impact Assessment System.

Six Tenets of Zero Waste

1.    Smart Design
2.    Producer Responsibility
3.    Community Investment
4.    End of Taxpayer Subsidies
5.    Local Markets and Jobs
6.    Transparency

Introduction: As consumers, when we purchase items, we vote with every dollar we spend. If cheap is all we look for on the price tag then we pay later with our tax dollars cleaning up water, land and air that did not need to be polluted from the start. We pay through poor health and medical bills.

Cheap today just means pay much more later in taxes, or health, or inaction due to lack of funds.

Paying it forward is in the long run the least expensive manner to shop by. No toxins, pesticides or fungicides in my food processing means no watershed clean-up, no elimination of beneficial insects or depleted soils later and no toxins in my body from eating. No lead in my child's toys means more to me than a dollar or two. A car returned to the manufacturer instead of the junk yard means fewer materials and chemicals in the cars manufacturing so it can be reused again to make more cars or another product.

To encourage manufacturers and government to implement clean green products that will not harm us, our children or the environment we need to consider the tenets of zero waste in each item we purchase until it becomes the norm in manufacturing.

The really crazy thing is this is already happening in Europe and has been for over a decade. Companies here in the US that operate in the European Union already practice these tenets because they have to by law. They don’t do it here because we are not telling them we want it. We just accept what they give us. Remember you vote with every dollar you spend.

What exactly is Zero Waste?
Specifically, Zero Waste has six basic tenets:

1.    Smart Design. Redesign involves smart planning to limit the resources consumed in producing a product, in its totality, before manufacturing begins. Analyzing waste throughout the process and eliminating it is fundamental. Instead of using virgin materials recovered materials are priority through reuse, repurposing and recycling. All products are designed to be environmentally benign if not beneficial, and packaging is returned to the cycle (not landfilled) or compostable.

2.    Producer Responsibility. Manufacturers are held responsible for the waste and environmental impact their product and packaging creates, rather than passing that responsibility on to the consumer. The end result is that manufacturers redesign products to reduce materials consumption and facilitate reuse, recovery and recycling.

3.    Community Investment. Rather than using the tax base to build new landfills and incinerators, communities invest in new facilities designed to take the place of a landfill or incinerator. Combined with social policies and market signals, the technological advances can easily support the diversion of almost all of society's discards and create a broader job market.

4.    Taxpayer Subsidies would end for wasteful, polluting industries. Manufacturers use virgin resources for raw material partly because tax subsidies and other social policies make this a cheaper and easier alternative than using recycled or recovered materials. This is the beginning of the pollution, energy consumption and environmental destruction chain. Additional public subsidies exist to keep "disposal" costs through landfills and incinerators artificially low by not assigning significant economic penalties to the harmful emissions produced by these facilities. Properly allotted taxes to recover these “externalized” expenses would have an immediate impact.

5.    Local markets and jobs. Creating a new local market from discards, creating jobs and new business opportunities. Wasting materials in a landfill or incinerator also wastes business opportunities that could be created if those resources were preserved. Per-ton, sorting and processing recyclables alone sustains ten times more jobs than landfilling or incineration. Each recycling step a community takes locally means more jobs, more business expenditures on supplies and services, and more money circulating in the local economy through spending and tax payments. Sending our recycling overseas, while cleaner and simpler, removes these opportunities and is environmentally unmonitored.

6.   Transparency. In order to be believable, accountable and to adjust to changes in technology and perception in real time we need a sixth tenet of zero waste and that is transparency. This can help identify true innovators and socially responsible acting industries from their green washing competition who are trying to look good, and possibly mean well, but taking the cheap way around their true actions. If an incinerator claims to not pollute and be better for the community we need to be able to measure the pollutants released and energy consumed in real time, not years later, we need soil samples before incineration and after, often. If a company claims to be a green innovator we need to see the totality of their commitment, not just one or two green buildings out of thousands around the world.

What is all the fuss about?

If ever anyone wanted to truly understand the complex interrelationship between our consumerism and its true impact on the planet the storyofstuff.org is the first place they need to go. The Story of Stuff written by Annie Leonard is the most comprehensive, personable, straight talking, simple yet all encompassing video and book available today.

Annie demonstrates in clear, simple manner the facts and truths about how all of our actions are interconnected and the true scope of consumption. This woman is brilliant and I highly recommend everyone to visit her site and watch the videos. Her book is a comprehensive detailed expansion of the video written in a voice that speaks to you as a friend, neighbor and educator.