Tag Archives: CSR

Being Green: Interconnection

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Hi Folks:

A week has come and gone and it’s time for this week’s ‘Being Green’ post.  It’s going to be a short post this week; the afternoon sunshine is calling me outside!

The biggest items on the news of late is the after-effects of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. A list of some of the relief agencies involved may be found here: Help Survivors of Japan Quake & Tsunami.  There’s been so much in all of the media channels discussing what has happened and speculating about what is happening or may happen I have no wish to add to that.  It does occur to me, however, that for much of the world this latest event in Japan has eclipsed the recent earthquake in New Zealand, the one in Haiti, the one in Chile, the BP oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico last year… people in New Orleans are still rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina for that matter, and that was nearly six years ago.  The Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine was 20 years ago.

This being a blog post about ‘being green’ it would certainly be possible to use these and other global events as a platform to speak out against nuclear power, about the continued effects of global warming and the like, but I don’t want to go there.  Our blog posts tend to get divided between those dealing with spiritual understandings and those dealing with more ‘practical’ issues like green building, environmental and social issues and photography and I don’t often cross those boundaries, but for me life isn’t about one or the other.  Every day is a blend of both, the two becoming one.  I would never suggest to anyone else that they have to follow a certain spiritual Way of being, but I think that no matter what your beliefs – whether they are from a religious tradition, grounded firmly in scientific understanding or some combination that is uniquely yours, one thing we can all agree on is that this little ball we call earth, the one that we all share, is pretty unique.  We are, all of us, interconnected.  In the spirit of that idea, I wanted to pass on something written by a friend of ours, Reverend Karin Wilson.  Karin is with the Center for Spiritual Living in Kelowna, BC, and this piece comes from their March 2011 newsletter.  If you like what she has to say, Karin also has her own blog site: One Mind One Spirit | Northern Light from a Spiritual Seeker:

Let there be Peace

As I’m writing this, my thoughts are with Japan.

It’s so hard to not get caught up in what is unmistakeably one of the most significant dramas to unfold in my living memory.

But I also know that what is taking place there – from the tsumanis to explosions – is a divine idea in the mind of Spirit, even if my human mind has difficulty seeing exactly what that divine idea might be. Whenever I try and think about what it could be, I realize, that like the Tao, I am by turns limiting that One Great Consciousness.

What I do know is that every scientific talent that has anything to offer is offering it to Japan right now. That every person working on restoring the country – from its electricity to water to transportation – is able to so do with a peaceful mind that is focused on its intention, and loving in its delivery. I know that every country opens its doors to the Japanese people with compassion, and I know too that the right people stay behind to rebuild the country in a way that serves everyone.

And yet, I know too that as I say all these things, my treatment in mind is for that and so much more.

The limitless power that we know as God is present right here and right now. As we turn away from what appears to be, we open our eyes to the infinite possibility of what is.

My thoughts are with you Japan. Your sun is rising.

Peace and blessings.

Rev. Karin Wilson

Wherever you are on this little blue marble of ours, I wish you peace.

Okay, the links for this week include:

Okay, that’s it for now.   Have a great week!

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. Want to learn green building terms? ED+C Teams Up With Renowned Crossword Puzzle Author to Construct Interactive Green Building Crosswords

Being Green – The Future of Education

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Hi Folks:

Saturday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  It’s usually posted on Fridays, but not always… 😉

Anyway, while my blog posts are, by definition, my thoughts and ideas, this week I’m going to dust off the old soap box on a topic that I think is very important: education.  In this society we have a somewhat limited and very rigid view of what ‘education’ means; if you ask them, I believe most people would likely give an answer related to schools, classrooms and the like.  Personally, I invested some 18 years of my life in various classrooms… and then they had the nerve to tell me I had to go to high school!  I told them to forget it.  Continue Reading →

Being Green: Turning Back the Clock

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  Before I get to that, however, I wanted to add in the following link: How to say “peace” in 100 languages.  Always a good idea…

Much of the cosmetics industry seems to revolve around the idea of being able to turn back the aging process a few years… I’m getting a little grayer around the muzzle myself (I’m the wolf part of wolfnowl.com) but I’m rather proud of those white hairs – and not just because it makes me look like Santa Claus.  However, that’s not what this blog post is about.

My mind often works in a ‘ping-pong’ fashion (some might call it ‘cascade failure’  instead 😉 ) and while I was fishing around for an idea for this week’s ‘green’ post I found myself thinking about the webinar with Dr. Jennifer Languell I watched last week.  One of the things she mentioned was our (over)reliance on technology such as air conditioning systems when we could choose instead to incorporate passive systems that require no energy generation.  That got me thinking about an episode I’d seen on television once about a house that had incorporated waterways and gardens within the main floor of the house; one that essentially required intensive airflow modification to keep the temperature and humidity in check.  It was an engineering marvel that worked very well… as long as the electricity to run the system wasn’t lost.  That got me thinking about different technologies, including methods used by ancient cultures, that don’t rely on such elaborate mechanical systems.  Many people tend to see ancient and especially aboriginal cultures as being ‘primitive’, but in many cases their technology and their Ways of being equalled or surpassed our own.  For example, the Hopi people of the American southwest have been growing corn in a desert for millenia. Continue Reading →

Being Green: The Value of Conservation

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post!  In last week’s post I referenced an article titled, “World’s ‘Greenest’ Home? It Depends on What You Mean by Green“.  One of the homes mentioned in the article includes:

A California couple, whom The Atlantic magazine has featured in their quest to build “the world’s greenest home” — a five-bedroom, 5,600-square-foot house with solar panels strong enough to charge five electric cars, power the house and return energy to the grid.

<snip>

Solar panels and other features let some trendy houses produce enough of their own energy that they actually sell power back to the energy company, which is nifty. Yet a person vying to live in the world’s “greenest” house could theoretically load it up with big-screen TVs and other less-than-efficient appliances, then write a mega-check to put solar panels all over the roof. But the resources consumed would belie the “green” label.

“You can get to net-zero just by writing a check,” notes Roberts. “There’s something a little off about that.”

For the most part I agree with the author of this post and was going to write a comment to that effect but wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it.  The answer came from a webinar I watched this week. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Sustainable Prisons

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Hi Folks:

I usually start these with, “Friday once again and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.”

This post started out the same way… I had one idea for a topic, then completely changed my mind and went off in a different direction, started doing research on that, wrote two other blog posts, celebrated (with Marcia) our 195th Monthaversary of being a couple, followed by our 18th Anniversary (216th Monthaversary) of the day we met, and it’s now Monday and I’m back to my original topic!  This coming Saturday is our 100th Monthaversary of being married, but I should have this week’s ‘Being Green’ post done before then!  😉

Before I get to that, however, last week’s post was on solar power and I wanted to take a second to add in this link: Concentrated Solar Power Tower In Seville, Spain: The Future Of Electricity? I also wanted to point you toward a brilliant TED talk by Michael Pawlyn on biomimicry, titled “Using nature’s genius in architecture“.  Well worth your time.

Okay, this week’s post is on ‘Sustainable Prisons’.  I have friend who has a Master’s degree in Criminology and as such she’s entitled to use fancy words like ‘recividism‘, and qualified to talk about the penal system in Canada and the US vs. the penal system in Sweden for example.  I also had a friend (now deceased) who was a psychologist at a prison for the criminally insane.  I have no such qualifications, but I have read Edward O. Wilson’s book called ‘Biophilia‘, and was touched by the movies ‘Greenfingers‘ and ‘The Bird Man of Alcatraz‘.  Essentially ‘biophilia’ translates as ‘love of the earth’, and that’s something that affects all of us.  There’s an interesting article called, ‘Biophilia, Selling the Love of Nature‘ that speaks to this, and I did a previous ‘Being Green‘ post on a similar same topic. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Bottling Sunshine

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  Of all of the world’s current ills, one of the largest and most well known is global warming – sometimes called the ‘greenhouse effect’.  There are essentially two strands to this problem: one is that plants like trees and even algae (which sequester CO2) are being killed off faster than they are being replenished through activities like logging and through poisoning the world’s oceans, and the other is that in our demands for energy we are burning fossil fuels to produce electricity and to power our vehicles (from cars to airplanes), thus releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere.  All in all, not a very pretty picture, and one that presents clear long-term consequences.

Many people talk of electricity as ‘clean energy’, but at the moment that’s more advertising hype than it is truth for the simple reason that most of our ‘clean’ electricity’ comes from dirty sources: generating plants that burn coal or even natural gas.  Nuclear reactors present their own very-long-term challenges as well as the potential for environmental disasters… such as what happened in Chernobyl. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Fair Trade

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  Imagine getting up every morning and going to work, but discovering on payday that you have to pay your boss for being there…  Sounds silly, right?  Consider then that of the roughly 8 million tonnes of coffee consumed every year, some 80% is sold for less than what it costs to grow it.  That’s just one example, albeit a common one; where would we be without our caffeine jolt in the morning?  While people are generally happy to discover low prices on foods and other products in the store, how many stop to consider what the ‘cost’ of those low prices really is?

The term ‘Fair Trade‘ has been given several definitions, but the one agreed upon by the four member organizations of ‘FINE’ (from Wikipedia) is:

In 2001, FINE members agreed the following definition of fair trade, on which to base their work:

“Fair trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers – especially in the South. Fair trade organisations, backed by consumers, are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade”.

FINE members further agreed to define fair trade‘s strategic intent as:

  • deliberately to work with marginalised producers and workers in order to help them move from a position of vulnerability to security and economic self-sufficiency,
  • to empower producers and workers as stakeholders in their own organisations,
  • actively to play a wider role in the global arena to achieve greater equity in international trade.

Continue Reading →

Being Green: Green Consumers

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  The title for this post was inspired by a couple of articles I read this week.  The first was, “It’s not easy being a green consumer“, and it begins with:

Green consumerism has the ring of being an oxymoron, but we all need to consume to live. One could go crazy trying to be totally consistent (even Gandhi realized that). Buying less and local are good starts. Combining that with some research and exercising common sense could go a long way, it seems, towards making us all more responsible consumers. (GW)

Continue Reading →

Being Green – Celebrating Abundance

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  I usually decide on a weekly topic based on something I pick up during the week past, and for this week’s post I had a few ideas… all of which evaporated when I received a note from a fellow forum user this morning (thanks, D.!)  He pointed me to a Youtube video of William McDonough giving the opening keynote address for “Global Forum 2009: Business as an Agent of World Benefit“.  The video is a little over an hour and I haven’t listened to it all yet, but I will.  I really like the reference near the beginning of the talk to the green roof on the Ford plant instead of asphalt (‘ass fault’, as two words denoting blame).  I’ve been a fan of William McDonough and his work for a number of years now, both in the work of his architectural firm and from his founding partnership with MBDC, the people behind the ‘Cradle to Cradle’ certification.  In his opening for the TED talk he did in 2005 he lamented how a ‘rubber duck’ sold in the state of California needs to carry what amounts to a biohazard label.  There’s just no reason for that. Continue Reading →

Being Green in 2011

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  In the links below you’ll find several posts from people talking about the best ‘green’ topics of 2010 and predictions for the green future of 2011, so I won’t repeat them all here.  I will say that 2010 brought a number of wonderful new technologies and ideas, several insightful conferences, and is further proof that we as humans have the capacity to make our world better.  As to what 2011 will bring?  Personally I’m going to adopt a ‘wait and see’ attitude, but I am looking forward with anticipation to more new ideas, new technologies and new projects that will bring us, both individually and collectively into a ‘greener’ future!  This being my first ‘Being Green’ post of 2011, I should probably reiterate what you can expect to find on this section of our blog.  On Fridays (almost always!) I write a short post on a topic related to green living in some capacity – this started out as a section devoted to green building specifically, but has expanded to include issues of sustainability in a larger context, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and other topics related to living in harmony with this little blue marble of ours.  For the most part I write about solutions rather than problems, and I tend to focus on positive innovations rather than negative news as the latter is well covered elsewhere.  I don’t generally profile specific products or services unless I think they’re really innovative, but there are few hard and fast rules here!  I also add a list of links to other sites of interest that I’ve come across in the previous week.  Most of these come from links I’ve encountered through Twitter, and some come from e-newsletters I receive.  I trust you will find some benefit in what you read here, and invite you to leave a comment on anything ‘green’ you’ve encountered, sites you think others would like to know about, etc. Continue Reading →