Tag Archives: being green

Being Green – Connections

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Hi Folks:

Happy Friday!  Happy Earth Day, +1!  Actually, as the saying goes, “Make Every Day Earth Day“.  I saw an ad for a T-shirt once that said, “Love Your Mother.  Good Planets Are Hard to Find.“  It looked something like this:

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Being Green – How Green Can We Be?

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Hi Folks:

Well, next Monday marks the beginning of what is now ‘Earth Week’.  Forty years ago Earth Day began in the US, largely due to the efforts of US Senator Gaylord Nelson.  Forty years ago being an ‘environmentalist’ was generally looked down on, a title bestowed upon those radical hippie types with whom ‘normal’ people did not want to associate.  How times have changed, and for the good of all of us, too!  Daily Planet for example is hosting ‘Be Kind to Earth Week’ on Discovery Channel, but if you’ve signed up for the Biomimicry Institute’s Great TV Rebellion of 2010, you won’t be watching television, electing to go outside more instead.

The title for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post comes from a Twitter hashtag – #howgreencanweb from @eight bottles – people are invited to post ideas and methods for being greener with this tag attached.  How green can we be?  It’s an interesting question.  Note the question is not, “How green should we be?” because today the general answer is that we should all strive to be as green as possible.  Continue Reading →

Being Green – Update

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Hi Folks:

T.G.I.F. !!

I received two wonderful comments from last Friday’s ‘Being Green‘ post, one from Olivia Khalili in response to my link to a post she had written, and the second from Doug Makaroff, as I had also mentioned his Living Forest Communities project, Elkington Forest.  In his comment Doug said, “I would love to find out more about you and your blog.” and I thought, ‘That’s a fair question.’  Now, if you wander around our blog you’ll find that we write about many different things – food, photography, stories, poetry, spirituality and other things.  I’m not going to get into those but restrict my comments to the ‘Being Green’ category.  So, who am I and why do I do this?  Better yet, why should you bother to read what I write? Continue Reading →

Being Green – Update

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again!  It’s also the end of the month, and that means our “Eating Our Way Through Victoria” post and my “Photo of the Month” post as well as our usual Sunday “He Says, She Says…” and Monday’s “Marcia’s Meanderings” posts are coming due as well!  Going to have to limber up those typing fingers.

I was going to write a post this week about “Intentional Communities“, but I’m going to postpone that for a week.  Please bear with me.  In exchange, I’ll offer a couple of reminders of upcoming events this weekend.  If you live in the US or know someone who does, the premiere of Jamie Oliver’s program “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” begins this evening on ABC.  If you’re asking yourself, “What’s green about that?” consider the enormous amounts of water and energy that go into not only the production of ‘fast food’ and prepackaged foods, but also the environmental costs of the packaging, transport, etc.  There’s a link on ‘hidden water use’ in the list below.  Also in the news this week are plans to ‘downsize’ parts of Detroit. Suggestions include the creation of a series of ‘urban farms’, more parks, and interconnected ‘villages’.  Not a simple idea by any means, but it’s an idea Jame will agree with, I’m sure. Greensburg, KS might serve as a role model of sorts, since almost the entire town was wiped out by a tornado a few short years ago and rebuilt as a model green town. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Taking Responsibility

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Hi Folks:

Responsibility is kind of a dirty word in our society today.  It brings to mind image of blame and finger pointing, and I think we associate the idea of responsibility with the transition from the freedom of childhood to the daily grind of being an adult. Still, is being responsible really a bad thing? If you look up the word ‘responsibility’ in the dictionary you’ll encounter words like duty, obligation, accountability, consequence… but you’ll also find other ways of defining responsibility – like trust, worth, or more simply, ‘able to respond’.

Elaine Cohen is an e-friend of mine (@elainecohen for all you Twitter users) who runs a business dealing with corporate social and environmental responsibility.  It’s definitely a growing field, at least partly because the people who run those corporations are waking up to the fact that being responsible is good for the company, good for the planet, and good for business.  I’m old enough to remember a time when ‘corporate America’ (not to pick on any one nation, but it was and is a common term) meant groups of companies that put their profit above all else, and some multi-national corporations not only had a larger footprint than some countries, they were also bound to the laws of no country in particular.  If things got too ‘hot’ or too expensive to operate somewhere, they’d simply close down and move somewhere else.  Such companies still exist of course, but they’re becoming the dinosaurs of this new age.  CSRs (corporate responsibility reports) are showing up on websites all over the world, with varying degrees of success.  Still, I think all of their efforts should be applauded.  As has been said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Green Walls

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Hello, Dear Reader!

A few weeks back I did a post on roofing materials; one strategy for a roof is a ‘green roof’ or a vegetated roof. Green roofs have many advantages, but one need not stop there. Vegetated walls are also an option. Sometimes called living walls or biowalls, green walls can be used inside or outside a building. Used outside, green walls can help to control stormwater runoff and to cool the building. Used inside, a living wall can help cool the building, purify the air, lower energy costs, and improve people’s health and morale. I recently watched a TED talk by Kamal Meattle on ‘How to Grow Fresh Air‘. The first such ‘natural air purifier’ I heard about is at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, ON. Their living wall was designed into the structure, completed in 2002. Another living wall in Toronto is located at The Robertson Building, and there’s also a green wall at the Integrated Learning Centre at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON and at the Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo in Waterloo, ON. In Madrid, the CaixaForum gallery space has a very large outdoor living wall, and in Paris, the office wing of the Quai Branly Museum has an outdoor green wall as well. Both of these walls were designed by Patrick Franc of Paris. Also in Paris, the Pershing Hall Hotel has a large green wall in the patio area of their dining room.

Speaking of dining, one possibility for an indoor green wall is to grow food plants. At Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles, a green wall installed by Tournesol Siteworks is used to grow rosemary, lettuce, etc. Going beyond that is the idea of a ‘Vertical Farm’, which is basically a multi-storey greenhouse. More information on that may be found at ‘The Vertical Farm Project‘. In a similar vein, there’s a plan in the works to convert some Detroit neighbourhoods into urban farms, but that’s getting away from green walls per se.

More information on green walls can be found here:

Okay, other news and information I’ve come across this week includes:

Okay, that’s it for today. Have a great week, and if you have any links to add, feel free to leave us a comment!

Take care,
Mike.

P.S. Since I’ve been talking about living walls ‘n’ things, I came across an interesting article in National Geographic on ‘Terra Preta‘. Terra preta is a Portugese term for ‘black earth’; basically, it’s an ancient technique that was practiced in the Amazon basin, adding charcoal, bone and organic matter to the rainforest’s relatively infertile soils. It’s a practice that built up the soil over generations. Some of the terra preta soils discovered are 2 metres deep. Scientists today are trying to tease apart this puzzle, in part because the process sequesters much more CO2 than the slash and burn agriculture practiced today in much of the Amazon.

Being Green – Good News!

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Hi Folks!  Friday again… where does the week go?  Wait a minute – didn’t I ask that same question last week?  Oh well…  This is going to be short, I’m afraid, but I didn’t want to let a Friday go by without doing a ‘Being Green‘ post.  I’ll add my usual weekly links at the bottom, but I wanted to mention a few ‘good news’ items I’ve come across recently.  While I don’t like to show favouritism and highlight specific companies, there are many that are making a conscious effort to go greener in different ways.  I’ll let you decide whether or not their products are right for you.  One is Method, a company that makes environmentally friendly cleaning products.  They’ve just announced a new non-toxic, plant-based laundry detergent, super-concentrated, but the best part is that it’s “the world’s first Cradle to CradleCM certified laundry detergent, thanks to its comprehensive green design. And like other method products, it’s recognized by the US EPA’s DfE program for its safer chemistry.“  They even show their ingredient list on the site. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Social Networking

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Greetings!  Friday once again… where did the week go?  Ah well, as the saying goes, there are 168 hours in a week; what you do with them is up to you.  I was sitting at my computer, staring at a blank screen (that adamantly refused to write anything on itself), when my wife (who sits at the computer beside me) suggested I ‘follow’ on Twitter someone from England who blogs about rooftop gardens, green roofs, etc. (@gardenbeet on Twitter).  That got me thinking about an article I had read earlier today entitled, “Why you have to engage in social media, even if you don’t want to“.

While it’s true that twenty years ago few people had ever heard of a ‘web site’, the simple truth is that websites now get lost in their sheer numbers and social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and more are sweeping the world and very directly changing the way we do business.  Marcia and I wrote a post last month about our own foray into Social Networking, and we now have a Twitter landing page on this site, where we provide links and information related to social networking information (updated as we can).  Social networking affects every group or business, in every field.   During the recent 2010 TED Conference in California, there were over 40,000 ‘tweets’ (short posts) about the conference.   Chris Anderson of TED can be found at @TEDChris. More and more businesses are allowing/encouraging their employees to post about their experiences with and within the company, and while there have been a couple of instances of people being dismissed as a result of their posts, these events were anything but private and reflect back to the company as well.  ‘CoTweet‘ for example is a resource that allows the employees of a company to share one Twitter account, engaging with their clients online.

Curious, I went to the US Green Building Council home page, and they have a Twitter account (@usgbc).  Being Canadian, I also went to the Canada Green Building Council home page, and they’re not (yet?) hooked up to Twitter.  I’ve sent them an e-mail letting them know that when they do, I’ll be happy to update this post!  Some of the groups, organizations and companies I ‘follow’ on Twitter in relation to sustainability and green building, in addition to those mentioned above, are:

I’m sure you’ll develop your own lists.  Oh, BTW, if you’re like me and tend to be a bit loquacious, I highly recommend Twitlonger.

Articles, sites and news I found this week include the following.  Before I get to that, a reminder that there’s a webinar on ‘Understanding Green Schools‘ on March 17, 2:00 p.m. EDT.  Click on the link to register.

In no particular order:

Have a great week!

Mike.

P.S.

If you’re in the Portland, OR area on March 20–21 and are looking for a way to release some of the stress in your life, drop by the Ohara Ikebana Exhibition at the Portland Japanese Garden.