May 13, 2009

Today’s Goal (92): Get out of your car and walk, bike, take mass transit.

Posted by eCoTemp under Today's Goal, culture, dialog, energy, patriotism, resiliance | Tags: , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Independence: I said this before, but I think it’s funny that the thing (the auto) that is credited with giving our society our independence, is the thing we are most dependent on. We “need” it for shopping, we “need” it to get to our far away jobs, the industry “provides” employment, we use it for entertainment, it is a statement of our “individuality,” we get (or loose) status from driving specific kinds,… the list goes on of things we “need” it for. I would argue that you can build a life that is very liberating by actually not having a car. Not having the expenses in buying, maintaining, parking, filling with gas, tickets, tolls, repairs, insuring, … can be very up lifting. In addition, not having the burden of enriching foreign countries by purchasing the oil/gas we need to build and power them, all of the tax money spent improving roads and bridges year after year after year and just the responsibility we have in climate change impacts from the carbon generated.

Short-term: There are so many reasons why autos are bad for society and just to throw one more on the pile, is they allow for suburbs to be possible increasing wetland, forest and other natural landscape degradation. Ok, so what to do about it. Well the first thing that you can do is spend a little bit of time thinking about your situation. How far is it to work, school, the kids doctor,… and think about ways in which you could walk, bike or use mass transit to replace a car trip or two every week. Just start small and think about trips to the local store or pick a single day a week that you can walk, ride or take mass transit.

Research: Once you do a bit of web or community research about different modes of transportation are available, try one out. A big hurdle to taking the bus regularly could just be better understanding your local routs and payment systems. 15 or 30 minutes of research could reduce a lot of the ambiguity or uncertainty of walking, taking a bus or riding a bike. Google Maps now show directions in many cities via walking or mass transit options.  

Longer-term: Think about arranging your life around your living situation or change your living situation to fit your life better. Could you move to an apartment or home that is more centrally located and sell your car or one of your two cars if you are a two car family (remember that there are lots of car share services popping up like Zip Cars or I-Go cars, that you could rent a car for an hour or day if you really needed one.). Maybe the apartment or home is a bit more expensive, but the money you saved from having one less auto may offset any increase in cost. In addition, you could move into a small place and focus on reducing your consumption and living with less, which would also save you money (and you can actually do it so that your standard of living increases).

Completed? Post on Twitter.com: “@greenergood DONE (92)” or comment on this blog.

 

May 6, 2009

Today’s Goal (91): Shade your walls.

Posted by eCoTemp under Today's Goal, culture, energy, food, resiliance | Tags: , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Yum, grapes: As we move deeper into spring, you might have an outside wall or two that gets direct sunlight. That direct sunlight, while good for heating your home in the winter, can greatly increase the heat that your home absorbs, increasing your cooling bills dramatically in the summer. By building a trellis for a vine plant or planting a deciduous tree, you can shade your home, while at the same time you grow some grapes or other beneficial vine foods or a beneficial tree as discussed in Today’s Goal (87). It’s is pretty easy to do and there are lots of guides online what will work for you. I happen to like the book The Carbon-Free Home and its detailed illustrations and guide to building one.

Use the sun at the right time of year: The reason that you want a vine or deciduous tree is that they will lose their leaves in the winter, allowing the sun to hit your home and provide some thermal heat, reducing your heating bills. Its best to use nature for all of the natural services it will provide you.

Not just for buildings: In addition, you could build a trellis over your patio that can keep a back porch more comfortable in the summer sun. Imagine picking grapes or fresh green beans off of the vines to snack on while enjoying some organic tea. Sounds delicious. Look around for other places that you may want to cool and think about using beneficial trees or vines to do so.

Completed? Post on Twitter.com: “@greenergood DONE (91)” or comment on this blog.

 

 

May 1, 2009

Today’s Goal (90): Use and Value Diversity.

Posted by eCoTemp under Today's Goal, culture, dialog, energy, food, leadership, patriotism, resiliance, waste | Tags: , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Single point of failure: Much is said about the just-in-time, ultra efficient industrial economy we have today. But as more and more sectors of our economy get lumped into fewer and fewer companies (think food production, with something like 70% of the calories we consume in the U.S. are owned by only a handful of companies), we are setting up single points of fail that make us more susceptible to supply interruptions by natural disaster, geopolitical forces, disease and climate change, while at the same time creating economic disparity. 

Adding diversity back: In nature, there is never a single point of failure in any natural system, they have all failed and redundant systems have replaced them when there was a void. As an example, it is now widely recognized that monoculture (growing a single crop on a piece of land, rather than how nature does it by growing mutually beneficial plants together) is a major cause of vulnerability to pests and diseases, and causes the wide spread use of toxic pesticides and energy to control them. To make our society resilient and self-reliant we have to embrace the diversity that life naturally offers and incorporate it back into our economy.

Depending on so few: We now depend on so few companies, organizations resources for our energy, food, and water, all critical to life. And all of those systems are under stress around the world. To ensure that we don’t put all of our eggs in so few baskets and have a system wide failure (as we have seen in the banking industry) for energy, food and water, we need to start bringing using and valuing diversity at the local and community level. It keeps more money in your local economy and insulates your community more from larger systemic wide issues that we are starting to see evidence of.

 

April 29, 2009

Today’s Goal (89): Turn the lights off (and open the shades).

Posted by eCoTemp under Today's Goal, culture, dialog, energy, patriotism, waste | Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Break the habit. Now that Spring is in full swing, it’s time to break the auto-on lights habit. I notice it almost everywhere I go. People have a habit of turning on a light ever time they enter a room, even if the room is well lit from outside lighting. So focus on making a conscious effort to not turn on the lights, unless they are really needed. Could you walk over and open up the blinds to naturally light an area? By keeping the lights off, you increase the life of the bulb, which means you don’t have to make as many trips to the store, you don’t have to change them as often and you don’t have to buy new ones as often. It also means that you are not disposing bulbs into the landfills or if it is a CFL, dropping them off at the special CFL disposal locations. In addition, it means less carbon based energy used to keep the lights on, which means less carbon in the atmosphere (and lower energy bills).

Step by step. I have gotten used to showering and shaving without the light on in the morning, using the natural light from the outdoors. It’s not as bright as it used to be, but makes for a great experience.  In addition, we make it a habit to open the shades in our house each morning, letting in the natural light which is healthier and brings us closer to the outdoors. By changing our light bulbs to Compact Florescent Lights and getting in the habit of only turning on the lights when we absolutely need to, we have lowered our electricity usage by about 45% over the past year.

So easy a kid can do it. Even my 4 year old has gotten into the habit of turning off lights when she leaves a room. For us, it was just a matter of getting used to it and thinking about it for a month or so and it suddenly became the norm for us.  We are currently in the process of looking for other effective ways of using outdoor light in our lives every day. 

Completed? Post on Twitter.com: “@greenergood DONE (89)” or comment on this blog.

 

April 27, 2009

Today’s Goal (88): Harvest your rainwater.

Posted by eCoTemp under Today's Goal, energy, leadership, patriotism, resiliance, waste | Tags: , , , |
1 Comment 

The next oil. Many believe that water will become the next oil, meaning that as fresh water supplies dwindle around the world, there will be more conflict related to securing clean water sources. They are increasingly intertwined as they are both becoming scarce. Frankly, it’s not just that water is coming increasingly scarce, but water is also very costly to move around, so why not capture and use it at its source. There are studies that have determined that in some cities, as much as 30% of their energy costs are associated with moving water (storm water away from your house, clean potable water to your home, waste water away from your house and of course water treatment). And in many cases, it is carbon based electricity that is used to move that water around, adding to the climate challenges we face.

Where you live is a great place to start. It is easy to start harvesting rain water by simply adding a 55-gallon food-grade or permamanufactured rain barrel to the bottom of your down spouts. You can capture a small fraction of the water that mother nature deposits on your site for free to water your plants and garden. Such an effort, if repeated across a wide portion of your local community, can have a big impact. It makes helps reduce a rain storm from overwhelming your local sewer system, means less water to treat, is probably cleaner than your municipality provided water, (if properly treated) can act as an emergency supply if there is some sort of disruption and by keeping the water on site, gives it time to better soak into your landscape, recharging local aquifers.

How to get started? There are several sources from youtube, to books like The Carbon Free Home that give simple step by step instructions and tips to think about when undertaking a rain barrel installation. It’s pretty simple, but it’s never bad to get a few tricks that might help the project go more smoothly. Installing a rain barrel can be done in a couple of hours and could work in most housing environments from multi-family structures to single family homes. And many municipalities sell discounted barrels, so check with them to see what they have.

Thinking bigger. There are even much bigger projects you could do in which you would harvest all of your rain water, with multi 1000 gallon tanks, purification systems, metal roofs and more advance plumbing to get you be your primary water source and only use the city water as a backup. It’s not about ROI or paying for itself (although it could), it’s about water security and reducing your environmental footprint. 

Completed? Post on Twitter.com: “@greenergood DONE (88)” or comment on this blog.

 

April 24, 2009

Today’s Goal (87): Plant a (useful) tree.

Posted by eCoTemp under Today's Goal, culture, dialog, energy, food, resiliance | Tags: , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Trees are cool. Trees are one of nature’s really great (yet underappreciated) gifts to us. They provide the air we breathe, they sequester carbon, they provide shade to cool, they provide food (nuts, fruit), they soak up rain runoff to reduce flooding, they provide a home for wild life, they add structure and nutrients to the soil, can fix nitrogen to aid other plants, they can be a source of energy, they can act as a wind break, they can provide the raw materials necessary for building and they are good to look at. 

What is a useful tree? A useful tree is something that provides as many of the above features as possible, but should include food, fuel and raw materials for building. A list of the most useful include:

  • Alder: Nitrogen-fixing, windbreak, meter a year growth
  • Apple: Food source, grows in a lot of climates
  • Bamboo: Multi use, easy to produce, food source
  • Downy Oak: Good timber, drought resistant
  • Lime: Food source, coppieces logs (good for growin mushrooms), edible young leaves
  • Pine: Good lumber source, provides raw materials that replace some of oils functions
  • Plum: Food source, easy to grow, works well in warm(ing) temperatures
  • Sweet Chestnut: Useful timber, solid tree ‘grain’ crop
  • Walnut: Fast growing timber, good cash crop
  • Willow: Good wind brake, source of bio fuel, coppice log

So plant one or several in your area. Just stick some seeds in the ground. Some will grow and some won’t get a few seeds in the ground. Order some seeds online and plant in your yard, the car park, vacant fields, other land around your neighborhood your back yard, your neighbor’s yard, your porch or even in a pot. They won’t be quick sources of food energy or raw materials (because trees can take a few years to grow), but they will be the foundation of a localized, resilient economy as carbon based energy sources start to be in shorter supply and get much more expensive. 

Completed? Post on Twitter.com: “@greenergood DONE (87)” or comment on this blog.

 

April 22, 2009

Today’s Goal (86): Celebrate Earth day by getting involved.

Posted by eCoTemp under Today's Goal, culture, dialog, leadership, patriotism, strategy | Tags: , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Every April 22nd is Earth Day, a tradition that started in1970. Many credit Earth Day as the beginning of the modern day environmental movement. As credited by EarthDay.net,

Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, proposed the first nationwide environmental protest “to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda. ” “It was a gamble,” he recalls, “but it worked.”

What does it mean for us today? I think it is great that my daughter, now 4.5 years old, knows about Earth Day. She is studying it in school and learning about the challenges we face as a society. I certainly don’t remember studying it when I was in school. Today, it is certainly at an elevated level of consciousness, but is it high enough? When we think about the challenges and the inertia of the current way of doing things, we really have a long uphill battle. There are some signs that many grass roots efforts are creating a ground swell in the green movement, but the entrenched mind set will take a tremendous effort.

So, for today’s goal, jump in. Sign up for the email list. Donate or host an event. It doesn’t have to be only on Earth Day, it can be any day of the year. Learn more about how your actions make a difference. You don’t need to change the world, just figure out how changing your actions can impact those around you.

To sign up: http://www.earthday.net/

 

Completed? Post on Twitter.com: “@greenergood DONE (86)” or comment on this blog.

 

April 15, 2009

Today’s Goal (85): Green your wardrobe and save money.

Posted by eCoTemp under Today's Goal, culture, dialog, energy, leadership, resiliance, waste | Tags: , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

Something most of us use every day: Our wardrobe is one of the major purchases in our life. It says a lot about who we are, what we value and what we want people to think about us. We spend a lot of money and time shopping, buying, trying on, hemming, washing, altering, returning, sharing, dry cleaning, or even making our clothes. What we wear and how we treat it also has a tremendous impact on the environment and our natural systems. Clothing needs raw material, it needs to be made, packaged, shipped, warehoused, displayed, sold, cleaned, and eventually discarded. All of which have embedded energy built into it.

Some tips for making your wardrobe easier on your pocket book and better for the planet:

  • Stitch in time saves nine. If you have a favorite pair of jeans or a shirt and its starting to wear thin on a seam. Pull out some thread and sow it up, or bring it to a local tailor to repair before it becomes unrepeatable.
  • Resize clothes. Maybe you put on a few lbs since college or now like a different fit, try seeing is some of your old favorites might be able to be altered, maybe an inch taken out in the waist or something similar in the shoulders.
  • Host a clothes swap party. Maybe you are tired of something or it doesn’t fit you the way you like any more, invite some friends over, break out the (eco friendly) wine and have a little party swapping clothing. Your trash maybe someone else’s treasure. Make it fun and have a fashion show were you try on clothing for each other.
  • Buy used or second hand. It’s fun to go to a second hand store and see what they have. It’s a new experience each time with some outfits you can’t imagine why someone would have bought it in the first place, right along side of outfits that you can’t believe someone would have gotten ride of.
  • Buy quality. Stores like Patagonia seem like they are catered to the rich, but if you buy basic items there that will stand the test of fashion over time (if fashion matters to you), they will last you a lot longer, so you will be better off financially. Buying stuff from stores like Old Navy that will (aren’t made with eco friendlier practices) wear out in a season or two and need to be recycled.
  • Be retro and wear clothes from 3 or 4 seasons ago. What the heck, be your own fashion leader. And if you own more basics that stand the test of fashion time, your outfits will be in fashion longer.
  • Buy low maintenance clothing. Avoid buying things that require dry cleaning. Dry cleaning is time consuming, costly and in most instances is nasty on the environment.
  • Hang dry your clothes. If you hang dry your clothes, you will not only reduce your energy usage of the dryer, your clothes will also last longer, again saving money and shopping headache and ultimately reduce your environmental footprint.
  • Ask yourself if you really need that extra item. Do you really need another shirt? Do you really need that extra pair of shoes? See if you can get by on buying/owning less clothing. Be creatve with what you’ve got and create your own style.

Tell us what other tips you have to save money and help green the planet.

Completed? Post on Twitter.com: “@greenergood DONE (85)” or comment on this blog.

 

April 13, 2009

Today’s Goal (84): Join 350.org’s mailing list.

Posted by eCoTemp under Today's Goal, culture, dialog, energy, leadership, patriotism, resiliance | Tags: , , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

What is 350.org? They are a movement that is trying to get people to create and take actions that help us lower the carbon in the atmosphere to 350 parts/ million, which is the number that most climate scientists believe we need to get to to keep a balanced environment. At 350 parts/ million scientists believe that we will have a stable climate. They are planning a community based global action day on October 24th that you can either potentially organize for your community or at least participate in a local action.

Their mission from the 350.org site:

Our mission is to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis–to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility for our planet. 

Our focus is on the number 350–as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. But 350 is more than a number–it’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.  

Here is their 98 second video on introducing their mission:

So, sign up for their mailing list to find out more about their cause. Become aware of the challenges that are in front of us and how you can help move us in a better direction. 

 

April 10, 2009

Today’s Goal (83): Buy one BogoLight. Give one free.

Posted by eCoTemp under Today's Goal, culture, energy, leadership, resiliance | Tags: , , , |
Leave a Comment 

So consumption is not an ideal way to help us with our challenges, but buying a really cool emergency light that can be used to reduce your energy usage, offers multiple benefits. First it allows you to use a solar powered light for 750 to 1000 times for 6 to 8 hours per charge. That can be a very good back up light to have around if we run into challenges with energy here at home. Second, when you buy one, you are also donating one to someone in another part of the world that does not enjoy the benefit of centralized power. This will keep them from needing to burn fire wood and become unhealthy from the smoke.

 

If we can’t help the third world’s population increase their standard of living, the environment will be the last of their worries. So, by helping them reduce the need for resources and maintain a healthier standard of living, they won’t need to pillage their resources to the point at which they are taking too much from the environment.

Check out the video: 

So buy for yourself and give one to someone in need.  Go to: http://www.bogolight.com/