Shocker: ‘Natural’ Consumers Willing To Pay More For Green Products

December 18, 2007

Most natural-product consumers indicated they would pay more for environmentally friendly products, with seven in 10 consumers willing to pay up to 20 percent more, according to a recent MamboTrack study by Mambo Sprouts Marketing, which surveyed the buying habits of 1,000 natural product consumers and forecasted their expected purchases for the coming year. Only one in 10 respondents said they were unwilling to pay extra for green products and services.
In addition, survey results showed consumers want to support businesses and retail stores that have green sustainable practices. More than 7 in 10 indicated it was important (41%) or very important (32%) to do business with companies that were environmentally responsible. For the coming year, while price was the overriding factor (60%) in their decision of where to shop, 1 in 2 or more consumers also identified the selection of healthy organic products (56%) and availability of organic produce (49%) as key factors as well.

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Ever wonder what happens to your stuff when you throw it out ????

That is the Story of Stuff?

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view.

The Story of Stuff [storyofstuff.com] : a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns.

The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and...

Watch it now!

New carbon labels for food - do consumers understand?

This is a great bbc story about Walkers and their carbon label initiative and whether or not the end-consumer really understands. For those of us in this field it is becoming increasingly important to share what we know and to make sure that we are communicating a message that is understood and not understated.

Watch Video...

Why adding “carbon footprint” labels to foods and other products is tricky

May 17th 2007
From The Economist print edition

WOULD you like a footprint on your food? Labels already show fat, salt and sugar content, among other things. But now several British food companies and retailers plan to add “carbon footprint” labels showing the quantity (in grams) of carbon-dioxide emissions associated with making and transporting foods and other goods. The first such labels appeared on packets of Walkers crisps in April. Boots, a British pharmacy chain, will add carbon labels to some of its own-brand shampoos in July. These labels were produced in conjunction with the Carbon Trust, an environmental consultancy funded by the British government, as part of a trial scheme. Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, has also announced plans to apply carbon labels across its product range and many other firms plan to do the same.

If the idea can be made to work, carbon labels will allow shoppers to choose the products with the smallest carbon footprints and make it possible for them to compare locally produced and imported foods, as well as conventionally farmed and organic products. Claims that some kinds of food are more energy-efficient than others and worries about “food miles” would give way to “a much more rounded, inclusive picture,” says Euan Murray of the Carbon Trust.

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Is the Amazon more valuable for carbon offsets than cattle or soy?

Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com October 17, 2007 After a steep drop in deforestation rates since 2004, widespread fires in the Brazilian Amazon (September and October 2007) suggest that forest clearing may increase this year. All told, since 2000 Brazil has lost more than 60,000 square miles (150,000 square kilometers) of rainforest -- an area larger than the state of Georgia or the country of Bangladesh. Most of this destruction has been driven by clearing for cattle pasture and agriculture, often in association with infrastructure development and improvements. Higher commodity prices, especially for beef and soy, have further spurred forest conversion in the region. Read More...

Don't Just Be the Change, Mass-Produce It

Alex Steffen
September 12, 2007 3:50 PM

"If our world is really looking down the barrel of environmental catastrophe, how do I live my life right now?” asked an email I got recently.

I know the standard answer: Be the change.

This motto -- shorthand for Gandhi's instruction that "We must be the change we wish to see in the world" -- has become ubiquitous. And while a sensible person will appreciate the essential wisdom behind Gandhi's words, in the context of sustainability, this shorthand has become associated as well with another idea: that the being the change is a lifestyle choice.

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The Wider Social and Political Implications of the Greening Man theme

As many of you know, I am part of a team that is helping to create a baseline for the Burning Man event this year. This is a post from one of the team members that i think is important in understanding the evolution that is taking place and it's worth considering the wider impact that this year's theme will have.
From Dr. Elizabeth Dougherty:

As we all know, Burning Man is much more than either an organization or event. It has become, for many of us, an organizing principle. what is important in thisyear's theme and concurrent actions by, not just the org, but the many participants, is EDUCATION. It's not just about awareness of carbon output, but of overall daily lifestyles.

If you take a look at the greeningman web site, (www.burningman.com/environment/) you'll see that stores in Reno are stocking their shelves with green alternatives to products bought by burners on their way to Reno, lectures, soirees, awards and green film festivals have all been organized by theme camps, a green man pavilion will offer education on vehicles, grey water systems, composting, alternative energy storage, the town of Guerlach will move over to solar power with the installation of all the solar panels being used ont he man....many, many things are happening. And so many people are participating SPECIFICALLY because it's Greening Man (people like Starhawk). Did you know that an anonymous donor has given 3000 bikes to BM to use as public bikes on the playa making it the city with the most concentration of bikes int he world?????

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Have We Reached a Green Business Tipping Point?

by Joel Makower
Where are we, exactly, in the trajectory of green business? Things seem to have changed decidedly in the past six to twelve months, as more and more companies do more and more things. But what should we make of it?

I've done close to 100 media interviews since New Year's, a wide assortment of publications, websites, broadcasts, and podcasts. And two questions keep popping up from reporters: Is there a green business bubble? And have we achieved a tipping point?

I've already largely addressed the bubble question. In short, the greening of business isn't a bubble simply because it's a bell that can't be unrung. Once companies wring out the resource waste, toxic ingredients, embedded energy, and carbon intensity of their products and services, there's no turning back. Even if energy prices were to take a sharp dive, the old inefficiencies won't return. (Indeed, cheap energy would exacerbate the problem, by increasing energy use and, hence, carbon emissions.)

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Product Labels That Count Calories, Carbs And Now Carbon

August 17, 2007: 12:56 AM EST - CNN Newswire

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (Dow Jones) -- "Ethical" products will soon be hitting the shelves, replete with labels on packages that -- just like calories and carbohydrates -- show how much carbon was emitted to produce them.

Carbon emissions are a leading cause of global warming. Carbon dioxide is emitted when fossil fuels are burned to create energy.

Figuring the energy used to produce one item isn't easy, but the initiative is taking hold and gaining momentum among manufacturers that want to separate themselves from other brands and jump on the green gravy train. Consumers are lapping up all things green and slapping a label on products to show that you're part of the club can translate into big business.

Until now, companies have been painting themselves various shades of green through different environmentally friendly tactics, branding, advertising and corporate reporting.

Product labeling takes green to a whole new level, however, because it can be showcased in the shopping aisles.

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Businesses Embracing Green Procurement, Survey Finds

Source: GreenBiz.com

OAKLAND, Calif., Aug. 8, 2007 -- According to a new survey from EyeForProcurement, more than 50 percent of companies have policies on greening their supply chain, and companies are nearly unanimous in their belief that green supply chains will only continue growing.

The survey asked 188 procurement professionals -- primarily in the United States, Europe and Asia -- about their companies' practices, policies and plans for reducing the environmental impact of the materials used in their work.

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Food That Travels Well

By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS

Published: August 6, 2007

THE term “food miles” — how far food has traveled before you buy it — has entered the enlightened lexicon. Environmental groups, especially in Europe, are pushing for labels that show how far food has traveled to get to the market, and books like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” contemplate the damage wrought by trucking, shipping and flying food from distant parts of the globe.

There are many good reasons for eating local — freshness, purity, taste, community cohesion and preserving open space — but none of these benefits compares to the much-touted claim that eating local reduces fossil fuel consumption. In this respect eating local joins recycling, biking to work and driving a hybrid as a realistic way that we can, as individuals, shrink our carbon footprint and be good stewards of the environment.

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Corn biofuel 'dangerously oversold' as green energy

17:00 18 July 2007
NewScientist.com news service

Phil McKenna

Ethanol fuel made from corn may be being "dangerously oversold" as a green energy solution according to a new review of biofuels.

The report concludes that the rapidly growing and heavily subsidised corn ethanol industry in the US will cause significant environmental damage without significantly reducing the country's dependence on fossil fuels.

"There are smarter solutions than rushing straight to corn-based ethanol," says Scott Cullen of the Network for New Energy Choices (NNEC) and a co-author of the study. "It's just one piece of a more complex puzzle."

The report analyses hundreds of previous studies, and was compiled by the environmental advocacy groups Food and Water Watch, NNEC and the Vermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment. The study was released as the US Congress debates key agriculture and energy laws that will determine biofuel policy for years to come.

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How to clean up your supply chain from source to shelf.

By Andrew Cave

Many businesses have taken action to reduce energy use, improve efficiency and cut direct carbon emissions.

They have devised and implemented energy and carbon management strategies, reaping benefits through cost savings and more engaged workforces.

Businesses can reach the next stage by focusing on the indirect carbon emissions from their supply chains and meeting consumers' increased demands for low-carbon products and services.

By studying their supply chains, businesses can map out carbon emitted at every stage of a product's life cycle from source to shelf, consumption and disposal.

Pilot projects with crisps group Walkers and newspapers company Trinity Mirror identified potential annual savings totalling £2.7m and 28,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide - equivalent to the emissions of 5,000 households.

Similar pilot programmes are now under way at confectionery group Cadbury Schweppes, retailer Marks & Spencer and pharmacy chain Boots amongst others.

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The localvore's dilemma

By Drake Bennett | July 22, 2007

AT VARIOUS POINTS in the coming months, a few hundred of Vermont's most ethical eaters will take the "Localvore Challenge." The actual dates of the challenge vary from town to town, but the idea is that, for a single meal, or a day, or an entire week, participants will eat only food that was grown or raised within 100 miles of where they live.

Vermont's localvores (also known as "locavores" or "locatarians") and their counterparts around the country are part of a burgeoning movement. In recent years, as large companies with globe-straddling supply networks have come to dominate organic agriculture, "local" has emerged as the new watchword of conscientious consumption. Over the past year and a half, the interest in local food has been fueled by best-selling memoirs and manifestos about local eating and dietary self-sufficiency, such as Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," Bill McKibben's "Deep Economy," and Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma."

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Buying imported food may actually be more energy-efficient

ALASTAIR JAMIESON CONSUMER AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (ajamieson@scotsman.com)

FOR the conscientious, food shopping now poses yet another ethical dilemma: is it really better to buy locally rather than shipping meat, fruit and vegetables around the globe?

A conference of experts yesterday heard that importing food from the other side of the world can actually be more energy-efficient than buying British produce and helps developing countries tackle poverty.

The debate threatens to split the organic movement and could leave ordinary shoppers confused as to what to do for the best. It also comes as the Scottish Conservatives launch a "buy local, eat local" campaign to support farmers and reduce food miles - the distance travelled from suppliers to supermarkets.

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What Assures Consumers On Climate Change?

Sarah Rich
June 24, 2007 1:47 PM

The mantra of businesses targeting and converting consumers towards sustainable purchasing patterns has long been "small steps make all the difference." At Worldchanging, we are generally of the mind that in fact small steps ultimately make no difference in the face of catastrophic environmental collapse and limited time to make real change. But it's never an easy argument, since everyone has to start somewhere, and our consumption choices matter a great deal in aggregate.

Last week, two UK-based organizations, AccountAbility and Consumers International, released an extensive consumer survey exploring the big problem/small action conundrum, among many other things. They surveyed 2,734 people in the UK and the US to get a better understanding of consumers' sentiments about how and what they buy, and most importantly to find out who they trust (and how much) for information about their decisions. The 64-page report (available as a downloadable PDF) contains some predictable findings, such as the fact that "climate change is a mainstream consumer issue," but it also delves deeper, investigating the problems inherent in current consumer trends towards "climate consciousness" and presenting solutions that might push us past a touchy transitional period between understanding the problem and learning to take effective action.

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Ecological Footprint 2.0

WorldChanging Team
June 17, 2007 9:08 AM

by Worldchanging Intern, Alex Lowe:

To understand the subtleties and difficulties in ecological footprinting, think of accounting. In the past few years, Enron's collapse and the scandals that surrounded WorldCom gave people a small glimpse into the intricacies of accountancy. To the uninitiated, the swirl of news reports circa 2003 must have posed several questions: How hard can accounting really be? How can any grey areas exist in an activity as seemingly concrete and dry as counting beans?

But grey areas abound, and the task of accounting for nature's resources as well as their depletion from human demand is, to use the colloquial, a doozy. How can one compare the value of a single fish to that of a bushel of corn or a California redwood? How does that relationship change from the exhaust pouring out of your car or the dishwater circling your drain?

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Climate Counts - its a start...

At last, the climate revolution is getting -- well, consumer-friendly.

Today marks the launch of Climate Counts, a new nonprofit initiative to rate major consumer brands on their climate commitments and performance.

The project represents the first time big companies have been rated consistently on climate using a comprehensive, consistent, and credible set of metrics.

This is a fantastic start, but i feel it is only a start as there are so many other factors that need to included, such as social change. Here is looking forward to these leaders incorporating the philosophy of 'how you do anything, is how you do everything'.

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Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.

clipped from www.bestlifeonline.com Our oceans are turning into plastic...are we? By Susan Casey, Photographs by Gregg Segal A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse. Fate can take strange forms, and so perhaps it does not seem unusual that Captain Charles Moore found his life’s purpose in a nightmare. Unfortunately, he was awake at the time, and 800 miles north of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. Returning to Southern California from Hawaii after a sailing race, Moore had altered Alguita’s course, veering slightly north. He had the time and the curiosity to try a new route, one that would lead the vessel through the eastern corner of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Pacific subtropical gyre

Food with 0.9% GM still organic, say farm ministers

clipped from environment.guardian.co.uk Organic foods can be labelled "GM-free" even if they contain up to 0.9% genetically modified content, European agriculture ministers decided yesterday. The decision provoked outcry among environmental campaigners and supporters of organic farming, who said it would lead to "genetic contamination". The ministers' meeting in Luxembourg supported commission arguments that setting a lower limit of 0.1% , the lowest level at which GM organisms could be scientifically detected, would place standards which would make organic produce too expensive for farmers.

GM Food Debates Heats Up with Global Warming

clipped from www.treehugger.com If you think the pro-genetically-modified-foods camp is pushy now, just wait till global warming starts razing the planet's surface, creating even harsher environments for food crops. "Trying to grow plants in Australian conditions, as in many countries around the world where the conditions are harsh, is challenging, and it is likely to get harder under the effects of climate change," said Mark Tester, a plant-genomics researcher at the University of Adelaide in Australia and an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow. Tester, who is decidedly on the side of GM foods, is working to identify genes responsible for making some plants more tolerable to hostile environments, including those afflicted by drought, salinity, and frost. The next step: moving these genes into plants for commercial production through conventional breeding and genetic-modification techniques.

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clipped from www.worldchanging.com t]he scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had. According to some long-term projections, the mountain snows that feed the Colorado River will melt faster and evaporate in greater amounts with rising global temperatures, providing stress to the waterway even without drought. This year, the spring runoff is expected to be about half its long-term average. In only one year of the last seven, 2005, has the runoff been above average. Everywhere in the West, along the Colorado and other rivers, as officials search for water to fill current and future needs, tempers are flaring among competing water users, old rivalries are hardening and some states are waging legal fight catalogu

Seeing the Future from High Above Greenland

Alex Steffen
May 23, 2007 3:37 PM

Unfortunately, if you're a member of the reality-based community, that other 60% of our climate impact is very much to the point.

So, too, are the indirect impacts of our lives, what's been termed our "public ecological footprint": the environmental and social impacts of all those things we almost never make direct personal decisions about, but which make possible our current ways of life, from the military, to the highway system, to the health care system. All of those deeply flawed systems are part of the backstories of our lives (though rarely counted in footprint calculations), and all need serious reengineering. Enormous damage is being caused by our attempts to prop up bad systems with minor incremental changes instead of working wholesale towards their improvement.

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Food Miles and Carbon Labels

As i sit in my tree house and smell the light scent of compost from my lasagna garden i think about how dependent we have become on our food suply being shipped from around the world to the grocery store and then to us. In the UK there has been a lot of talk lately on understanding food miles and more importantly having consumers understand them by way of carbon labels.

In North America we need to ask these questions and we need to look at solutions whether it be 100 mile diets, local 'green' houses (which can be green and emit less carbon than food shipped from across the globe), growing our own or a combination of them all. The Soil Association, the biggest organic body in Britain, may slap a ban on air-freighting. It is asking suppliers, the public and other interested parties for their views on flying in food to the UK. There are five options: 1. No change; 2. Labelling air miles; 3. Offsetting carbon from flights; 4. A selective ban; 5. A total ban. Read More...

Two things I know are true 1) the world is changing and 2) we need to rethink how we do things. So, would we change our purchasing choices if we know that the white asparagus we buy is air shipped to us from New Zealand and travels 14,000 kms ? Or would we still indulge? Is carbon labeling a good idea at all? Would consumers understand the significance of a bag potato chips having a little label saying that they have taken 78 grams of carbon to produce?

And when calculating the embedded carbon where do we start? from inception of the product? this is a complicated process, because the label has to reflect all the CO2 emitted while growing the potatoes and vegetable oil (pesticides, fertilizers, tractor fuel, etc.) as well as manufacturing, packaging, and transporting the chips. This would be a huge undertaking with many factors and standards that would need to be defined. Is this what a conscious brand truly would look like?

Simply, as a rule of thumb, I think we can all eat lower on the food chain (more plant based foods, less meat), eat less processed foods (more grains, less pasta), look at products with less packaging (bulk purchases) and most simply look to local organic production for your food choices.

Together we create change,
r.

Strategic Consumption

WorldChanging Team
May 14, 2007 4:04 PM

Strategic consumption is the recognition that the immediate, or tactical, effects of our purchases are of such limited power as to be essentially meaningless.

Bill Rees, who coined the term ecological footprint, says individual behavior changes in the absence a broader strategy for creating change are pointless:

"We're all on the same ship and what we do in our individual cabins is of almost no consequence in terms of the direction the ship is going."

But we've all got to buy things, and we quite rightly would rather that our dollars do as much good as they can. Hence the concept of strategic consumption: the practice of basing decisions not only on the immediate qualities of a product or service, but also on the changes buying them is likely to have in the broader world.

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Time's global warming survival guide: Skip the steak

Full story: Time Magazine - March 29, 2007

Which is responsible for more global warming: your BMW or your Big Mac? Believe it or not, it's the burger. The international meat industry generates roughly 18% of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions - even more than transportation - according to a report last year from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization. Much of that comes from the nitrous oxide in manure and the methane that is, as the New York Times delicately put it, "the natural result of bovine digestion." Methane has a warming effect that is 23 times as great as that of carbon, while nitrous oxide is 296 times as great.

There are 1.5 billion cattle and buffalo on the planet, along with 1.7 billion sheep and goats. Their populations are rising fast, especially in the developing world. Global meat production is expected to double between 2001 and 2050. Given the amount of energy consumed raising, shipping and selling livestock, a 16-oz.T-bone is like a Hummer on a plate. If you switch to vegetarianism, you can shrink your carbon footprint by up to 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to research by the University of Chicago. Trading a standard car for a hybrid cuts only about one ton - and isn't as tasty.

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Farmers Markets: Great, But Still Not Perfect

Having just returned from the local farmers’ market, i noticed a few things. As always, there was an abundant array of delicious and beautiful local produce on display. However, I was also struck by two things – an awful lot of cars, and a ridiculous amount of plastic bags. Don’t get me wrong, buying local food and supporting local economies is probably one of the most beneficial things you can do, but it doesn’t end there. Even when we buy local, we need to make efforts to do it in the most responsible way. That means refusing those bags and taking your own, it means biking, busing or carpooling when possible, and it means asking questions about how your food was grown. In some ways this highlights one of the biggest, but perhaps most intangible, benefits of the farmers market – communication. Because we come face-to-face with the people producing our food, and often the people organizing the market, we can form real relationships, and communicate our values to them. It’s not so easy to do that at your local big box retailer. Of course, these thoughts are probably nothing new to the reader, but I just had to get that off my chest. And for those wanting more guidance on greening your food shopping, check out this handy guide to greening your meals.

Is it OK to steal food from pandas?

From The Observer:
Globally, 1bn people rely on bamboo for shelter or income. In Tamil Nadu, in India, it is a critical housing material in post-tsunami reconstruction. But the idea that it grows like wildfire is a gross simplification. Harvest bamboo at the wrong time or on too large a scale and it can lead to irreversible forest destruction and possible shortages for the communities that need it most. Out of 1,600 bamboo species, commercial growers focus on just 38 of the fastest growing, leading to the spectre of more monocultures. The World Conservation Union's Red List of endangered species includes 27 species of woody bamboo, including that preferred by giant pandas and west African mountain gorillas.

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Packaging, Transparency and Sustainability Consciousness

by Laurie Demeritt

When we hear the term “sustainability”, any number of subjects spring to mind: global warming, carbon offsets, green building, packaging reduction, equipment recycling, alternative energy and corporate transparency. Many of these innovations and initiatives relate to the ongoing broad-scale “greening” of industrial and consumer packaged goods producers and retailers. Trade and consumer publications have devoted entire issues to the greening of suppliers and retailers, yet it is apparent the voice of the consumer in the midst of all this sustainability discussion is frequently missing or, at the very least, tends to be comprised of the greenest of consumers (as if they represent all of the public).

In order to better comprehend how the term “sustainability” fits with complex consumer lifestyles, over the past year The Hartman Group has focused on consumer perceptions of sustainability in an effort to better understand where the public is in the midst of all the media headlines, and what it thinks about issues like packaging waste, recycling and corporate transparency.

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Greening the Desert

This video tells the story of a seemingly impossible feat achieved by permaculture designer, Geoff Lawton, in which he trained a group of locals in the principals of permaculture, and together they transformed the "hyper-arid" land until it bore fruit, desalinated water, and created fertile ground which requires very little water to be productive. If it can be done there, argues Lawton, it can be done anywhere, and it can become a real tool for addressing pollution, desertification and global warming.

Make This Earth Day Your Last!

ALEX STEFFEN AND SARAH RICH | 19 APRIL 07

Most of the time, we go far out of our way to blog from the sunny side of the street, but today we have something important to say that involves some strong words: Sunday should be the last Earth Day.

This weekend, throughout much of North America and across the globe, hundreds of thousands of people who care about the environment will get together at protests, concerts, neighborhood clean-ups and tree-plantings... and accomplish almost nothing. Earth Day, which every year has become less and less the revolutionary event it once was, seems this year to have entered a new phase of meaninglessness. Indeed, this year it appears to gone into a form of retrograde motion and begun to move actively away from the concept of comprehensive sustainability that drives all rational environmentalism. In short, Earth Day has served its time, and it must go.

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paraSITE: A Decade of Urban Intervention

Sarah Rich
April 6, 2007 1:49 AM

Main Entry: par·a·site
Pronunciation: /ˈpærəˌsaɪt/ or [par-uh-sahyt]
Definition: an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment.

Michael Rakowitz's parasite has lived a long time, enduring numerous attempts by its host to vanquish it forever, transmuting in the face of opposition in order to stay nourished. This case is one worth noting.

I'm in the UAE this week attending the Symposium of the Sharjah Biennial -- three days of exploration around the relationship between culture and ecology through architecture, visual art and new technologies. Yesterday, artist/interventionist, Michael Rakowitz, discussed his 10-year old ongoing project, paraSITE, sharing a compelling narrative that bears repeating.

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Science corner: the natural carbon cycle vs. fossil fuels

Terra Pass
by Adam
We get a steady stream of questions that hinge on a basic confusion over the difference between the natural carbon cycle — the continual uptake and release of carbon dioxide by biological organisms — and the burning of fossil fuels. This post is an attempt to set the record straight. We hope that it achieves the worldwide acclaim of our post on how to turn 6 pounds of carbon into 20 pounds of CO2. I now present to you the most famous graph in climate science, the Keeling Curve: This trend line shows in precise detail how atmospheric concentrations of...

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Clean that Apple...

Inhabitat
by Jennifer
Take a poll on any city street, and you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t admire Apple’s clean, innovative product design. In the past 5 years, with the success of the iPod and power PCs, Mac has come to dominate the high-end consumer electronic space, with their clean, minimalist aesthetic. With such a prestigious design-driven brand, one would think that Apple would be leading the way in the green design revolution. Sadly, this is not the case - Apple is actually lagging behind companies like Dell and HP - and because of this, Greenpeace has spearheaded a creative campaign to green Apple.

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Affordable solar - soon...

By MERVYN DYKES - Manawatu Standard | Thursday, 5 April 2007

New solar cells developed by Massey University don't need direct sunlight to operate and use a patented range of dyes that can be impregnated in roofs, window glass and eventually even clothing to produce power.

This means teenagers could one day be wearing jackets that will recharge their equivalents of cellphones, iPods and other battery- driven devices.

The breakthrough is a development of the university's Nanomaterials Research Centre and has attracted world-wide interest already - particularly from Australia and Japan.

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Vegetables Fight Global Warming

By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News

April 27, 2006 — It turns out there's something anyone can do right now to make a big impact on global warming, says one climate researcher: Eat more veggies.

A new study of how much greenhouse gas is released into the atmosphere by the production of food shows that the difference between a meat-based and plant-based diet amounts to the same as driving an SUV versus a small sedan.

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Beyond Organic

Jay Walljasper

This article appeared in Ode issue: 41

The next ecological and social revolution is being plotted right now in the rainforests of South America

Our small boat bobs along the unimaginably wide Amazon River, then heads up a fast-flowing tributary the colour of tea with cream, and finally turns onto a stream leading into the heart of the rainforest. Monkeys scamper in the trees above us as the motorboat chugs more and more slowly until the stream becomes too narrow to travel. This is where José Luiz de Oliveira and his 17-year-old son Alex live on a small farmstead alive with bird calls. Piglets frolic in the cool mud below their dock while ducks march in formation.
In many ways this boat ride feels like a trip into the past. The forest is largely untouched here except for the sunny clearing around the house (although we did spot an illegal lumber operation downriver). The de Oliveiras live as people have for centuries—drawing their daily meals and livelihood from the land, the river and the livestock. It’s an enchanting place if you can get used to the mosquitoes. Yet beauty and peace do not translate into prosperity. The tiny house has no electricity, no telephone, no fans, no screens in the windows.

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San Francisco passes plastic-bag ban

From the Associated Press: City leaders approved a ban on plastic grocery bags after weeks of lobbying on both sides from environmentalists and a supermarket trade group. San Francisco would be the first U.S. city to adopt such a rule if Mayor Gavin Newsom signs the ban as expected.

More….

Green is good

From Fortune: No, it's not just greenwash. Business in the U.S. really has become cleaner and greener. Environmentalists actually have embraced market-based solutions. And the politics are about to get very interesting, says Fortune's Marc Gunther.

Big business and environmentalists used to be sworn enemies - and for good reason. General Electric dumped toxins into the Hudson River. Wal-Mart bulldozed its way across America. DuPont was named the nation's worst polluter. The response from the environmental movement: mandate, regulate and litigate. Those days are mostly over.

Read on….

Holistic approach works for environmental health

Holistic approach works for environmental health

By Loni Nannini

Special to the Arizona Daily Star

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.01.2007

Going green is all the buzz in Hollywood, but Catlow Shipek and other volunteers are bringing a holistic approach to environmental health close to home with the Watershed Management Group (WMG).

"We take a holistic approach not just about environmental and ecological linkages within the watershed system, but social and economical linkages, which evolve into political linkages: The holistic approach involves all the stakeholders, so no one is excluded," said Shipek, who holds a master's degree in watershed management from the University of Arizona. He partnered with Jared Buono and a small group of fellow students to found the nonprofit Watershed Management Group in 2003.

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Charge It with Sugar Batteries

Though it's not the first battery to run on sugar, researchers at St. Louis University have developed a more efficient version that could last three to four times longer than conventional lithium ion batteries -- a boon for personal electronic devices. The icing on the cake: these new batteries are built completely from biodegradable materials. Let's hope for a rechargeable version so we don't have to test the biodegradability until absolutely necessary.

Coincidentally, the key part of the battery, a charge-stripping enzyme, is incorporated into a membrane that's made from chitosan -- the same compound that makes up Patagonia's Gladiodor natural odor control in our Capilene Baselayers.

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[Via Google News and LiveScience; Photo: Batteries awaiting recycling. By: Free]

Using Bottled Water to Turn the Tides

World Changing

Jonathan Greenblatt
March 22, 2007 7:23 AM

In a world seemingly teeming with problems, perhaps one of the most important challenges of our time is the world water crisis. Worldchanging readers are deeply familiar with this issue, but most people living in the Global North have only a glancing awareness of the problem. Yet the worldwide scarcity of clean water and adequate sanitation diminishes the prospects of almost half of the Earth’s population. Commentators often note that a person dies every eight seconds from a water-related disease. They often fail to mention the terrible plight of hundreds of millions of people who survive but endure lifetimes of chronic debilitation and pain due to the absence of basic, clean water. The forces of climate change and global urbanization will only exacerbate this problem in the coming years.

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Food of the Future, and the Future of Food

Alex Steffen
February 26, 2007 11:54 PM

"The first freedom of man, I contend, is the freedom to eat" -- Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps because it is such a commonplace, defining the rhythms of our daily lives, many people who think seriously about the future have a tendency to dismiss food and food culture as a serious issue. That's too bad, not only because food is life, and questions of hunger and food supply still loom large on our planet (800 million people currently suffer from malnutrition, according to the FAO), but also because the growing, catching, selling and preparing of food creates some of our largest impacts on the planet and some of the largest conflicts between peoples.

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Carbon dioxide 'released, not stored' by soil

Microbes in soil release carbon dioxide

Wagdy Sawahel
16 March 2007
Source: SciDev.Net

Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may turn soil from a potential carbon sink into a carbon source by stimulating microbial communities to release, not store, carbon dioxide, according to a study.

Research published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week (13 March) suggests that altering microbial activity could help stabilise atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and help slow global warming.

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World Changing

World Water Day: Here, There and Everywhere
SARAH RICH | 22 MAR 07
It's World Water Day 2007 (March 22), an annual, international day of recognition of the world's most precious resource, established by the UN after the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The theme this year is "Coping with Water Scarcity." In the last few weeks we've gotten numerous emails about various events, projects and resources related to this occasion. Here's a round-up of some of the ones we know about. Feel free to add others in the comments.

Strainght Veggie Oil

Frybrid: How to Run Your Car on Grease
SARAH RICH | 15 MAR 07
What do you get when you cross hybrid transportation with local economic support and resource reuse? Frybrid. A small company in Seattle has developed a simple system for running any diesel automobile on vegetable oil discarded from the grease traps of restaurants. This is not biodiesel -- in which vegetable oil gets transformed into a highly viscous substance through transesterification; this is what many people call "straight vegetable oil" or "waste vegetable oil" (SVO/WVO) -- a direct line from the kitchen to the car.

The End of Garbage

The end of garbage
From CNN Money.com: Zero waste is just what it sounds like - producing, consuming, and recycling products without throwing anything away. Getting to a wasteless world will require nothing less than a total makeover of the global economy, which thinkers such as entrepreneur Paul Hawken, consultant Amory Lovins, and architect William McDonough have called the Next Industrial Revolution.

Read on….

Sustainable dance club

SUSTAINABLE DANCE CLUB

From: Inhabitat

It’s probably safe to say that few of us have used the phrases “dance club” and “renewable energy” in the same sentence. Enter the Sustainable Dance Club, a downright awesome project that turns fancy footwork into kilowatts to power the club’s basic utilities. The brainchild of environmental organization Enviu and Dutch architectural firm Döll, the Sustainable Dance Club project launched with a party called The Critical Mass last October in Rotterdam. So next time you’re out dancing with friends, don’t forget that all that booty shaking could be providing power for the club’s lights, speakers, and more. Check out the video to see just how the technology works.
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conscious brands

News

Dell gets on the environmental bandwagon
From CNN Money: Michael Dell and his company will now recycle your computer hardware for free -- even if you're not buying anything new from Dell.

Dell is now the only computer maker to offer consumers free recycling, whether or not they are buying a new Dell product. You can go to a Dell website, and print out a prepaid shipping label to return your Dell desktop, laptop, printer or ink cartridge, free of charge. They'll send a service to pick the equipment up.

Read more….

http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/08/magazines/fortune/pluggedin_gunther_dellrecycle.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007030809

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