Stop Junk Mail. Be Eco Friendly. Do Good. The GreenDimes Blog

CLIMBING OUT OF THE BAD BOOKS

Climate Counts is a non-profit organisation, funded by organics yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm and launched in collaboration with Clean Air-Cool Planet.  With a mission to get consumers considering how businesses are affecting the everyday, they recently released their rankings of companies who have reduced emissions and attempt to attack climate change over the past year.

Nike scored 82/100.  Other top scorers: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Anheuser-Busch and Levi Strauss.

Five companies scored one or zero points: Jones Apparel Group, Burger King, Darden Restaurants (owns Red Lobster and Olive Garden), Yum! Brands (parent to Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC) and Wendys.

Cimate Counts is offering a wallet size version of the guide for free for all consumers who want to be reminding on a daily basis which of the current businesses out there are jeopardising the state of the environment.  Checking on a company by text is also an available service: text ‘cc (company name)’ to 30644 and you an receive the score for that company as long as they were considered in Climate Counts’ 2008 Scorecard.

“Business is being pushed by consumers to do its part to solve the climate crisis,” says Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm’s CEO and chair of Climate Counts. “The Scorecard allows consumers to make good climate decisions in their everyday purchases, and it’s having an impact.”

Check the Climate Counts website

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE

Three artists make use of the discarded of the everyday, to make art.

Ptolemy Elrington
Raising dead hub caps from the dead and re-incarnating them into everything from griant dragon flies, fish, dogs and crocodiles is the art that Ptolemy makes. 

Clare Graham
From scrabble pieces, to boxes, to yardsticks to bottletops, Clare utilises common everyday pieces into playful re-inventions of stylish interior design.

Zhang Wang
Zhan Wang is one of China’s most celebrated artists – his ‘scholar’s rock’s’ sculptures creates a replica of China’s topographical models of urban landscapes by using mirrored utensils, steel pots and pans. 

WHO'S GOT THE KEYS TO MY BEEMER

China still stands as the land of bicycles, having produced up to 78 million of them in 2003, one third of the world’s total, whilst in 2002 every 100 household had up to 143 bikes.  In the rise of China’s surge of economic development and cultural consumption, the car has entered the roads as a signal to the newly modernised people. It joins the new industrial shift of the country from one of the leaders in manufacturing, consumerism, business development and most unfortunately – as a key driver of smog and pollution in the environment.

Watch The Guardian's video article on the changing face of the streets

RAISE THE ROOF

As urban cities grow towards the sky, at times ambushing community property in favor of cookie cutter condominiums and show-off corporate structures, a new trend of the garden variety is sweeping across cities in the US – Green roofs.  They are appearing on million square spaces in places like Whole Foods, Vancouver International Airport and W hotels.

CNN Money has revealed that green roofs are growing at up to 125 % a year.  Companies such as G-Sky have recognized the gap in the market and are promoting themselves as the expert vendors to provide this innovative service.  Buildings have not just roof terraces but the four walls which surround them, allowing for increased available space to cover with plants such as sedum and prairie grass.  Added advantages include lower heating and air conditioning costs for the buildings thus not only releasing CO2 into the environment but keeping change in corporate pockets,at times only way they ever consider environmental practices.

Read Sidra Durst’s full article here

IN THE VEIN OF BEING GREEN

Magazines are spurting out green issues in fast trend, but Vanity Fair is in it’s 3rd year running for its annual issue dedicated to all things Green, with Madonna gracing their cover.

Notably, the article on William McDonough, a man of architecture who instrumental to current sustainability and clean-technology movements is one of the most promising discussions.  His view is, ‘If we understand that design leads to the manifestation of human intention, and if what we make with our hands is to be sacred and honor the earth that gives us life.' McDonough said there needs to exist a day ‘when the things we make must not only rise from the ground but return to it, soil to soil, water to water, so everything that is received from the earth can be freely given back without causing harm to any living system.  This is ecology.  This is good design.  It is of this we must now speak.’

His stance is that products should be manufactured according to how they can be recycled, to feed the earth’s ‘biological metabolism’ as he calls it.  We should be creating products that can be converted back into the earth’s nutrients, calling for a new industrial revolution to begin.  As he calls it, ‘we need 400 kinds of French cheese, not French plastic’.

ALSO IN THE ISSUE:

Charles Clover’s discussion with influential chefs on how endangered fish are reaching some restaurant menus

Fish considered what-not-to-eat:

1.    Bluefin Tuna, Yellowfish Tuna, and Bigeye Tuna – listed by the International Union for Conservatoion of Nature (I.U.C.N) as critically endangered
2.    Chilean Sea Bass
3.    Black Grouper
4.    Beluga caviar
5.    Red Snapper
6.    Skate
7.    Maine Wolffish
8.    Peruvian seabass
9.    Georges Bank cod (cod from Alaska is OK)
10.    Pompano
11.    New Zealand orange roughy
12.    Baby swordfish (also known as ‘pups’)
13.    Monkfish
14.    Halibut
15.    Shellfish depending on whether they are farmed or wild

Their list of Environmental DVDs and Books

Alan Weisman's fastforward discussion on what the world will look like due to accelerated environmental damage - focusing on Las Vegas, Cairo and Nunavut, Canada

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE - NOT JUST ON PAPER

Paper has a list of 64 Beautiful People that they want to tell the world about.  They do it every year and it ranges from individuals to collectives of folk who are influencing the worlds of music, film and fashion with their crafts. Now despite what you think of these popularity lists, two incredible inclusions need to be mentioned:

ECO GROUP
Eco-friendly record label Green Owl Records is featured.  Co-founded by Jill Fehrenbacher who first started Inhabitat.com, a blog about sustainability, and Ben Brewer, who is currently working on a compilation CD including Feist, Of Montreal, Bloc Party, Juliana Hatfield, and Muse.  All proceeds of sales of CDs will go towards Energy Action Coalition, an action to educate the youth on energy saving.  Read more here at Paper

THE DO-GOODERS
Scott Marrison is a man with connections – he  got the Mercer Hotel to sell expensive bottles of water at $20 a pop to raise money to dig wells in Africa.  David Belle helps to train Haitian filmmakers and got Wyclef Jean to play in the city of Jacmel in 2006.  Jess Atkin’s organisation MEAK aids Kenyans with the opportunity to get eye and heart surgeries.  Read more here at Paper

THE GRASS GETS GREENER

We’re always hearing about wars being waged and bag things happening.  Now the semantics remove the dirty word from actual guerrilla warfare and exchange it with Disneyland metaphors where 'fairy godmothers' suddenly bless you with a secret garden.

Urban beatification has been changing landscapes in our modern age with the emergence of graffiti in New York in the 1980s where the ‘bombing’ of subway trains used graphic fonts and explosive colours.  Artists such artists Basquiat and Banksy triggered a new wave in street creativity handing empowerment to disillusioned youth who begged to define themselves as present in a city too eager to forget them.  Yet despite its signal to start a creative movement, spray paint is harmful to the environment. 

Enter Guerrilla Gardening.

Westminister, London

Drive your car down an ugly street one day, go to bed and you could well wake up to see that space ‘ambushed’ with seamless street art to fit into nature with luscious foliage. These self-proclaimed ‘troops’ of gardeners enter like thieves in the night to completely beautify neglected land and buildings. From cities in New York to Berlin, Basel and Brisbane, they proudly adopt war metaphors to explain how they are making ‘orphaned land’ in cities and even country-sides, into new pop up works of art to last.

So much so that new collectives of gardeners are popping up giving themselves a moniker in true sub-cultural style attaching names to themselves, such as Public Space in Toronto.  Naomi Klein donates to their activism for the purchase of tools, receiving compost from the city, or soil and plants from green thumbers in the community.

That furrowed brow over city living and it's ugliness loses its crease, breathing a sigh of relief.  Now the epidemic of sprouting green thumbs all point to enlivened green spaces. 

Eco Tip: Green Printing

Did you know?

• In 2004 the United States used 8 million tons of office paper. That’s equivalent to 178 million trees!
• In the U.S. we have lost 95% of our old growth forests and 4281 acres of rainforest are lost every hour worldwide
• Global paper products consumption has tripled over the past 3 decades and is expected to grow by half before 2010.

If you’re like me, you know the frustration of printing a document or a Web page only to waste 1-3 pieces of paper. When I have the time, I have resorted to copying and pasting the information I need into a Word document before I print just to avoid this innocent yet harmful act. GreenPrint provides a really cool software solution and they even have a free version.  You can download it onto to your computer to help you eliminate those pesky extra pages that result from printing. It detects wasted pages (for example, a page with only one line of text on it) and deletes it from your print file.  Of course, you are in complete control over the process deciding if you want to print the page in question.  They also have an option to turn the desired page into a PDF, eliminating the need to print altogether.  Their worldwide version is free, but you can upgrade to their Premium or Enterprise versions.

It also tracks your impact from using the service, so you can see the difference you are making to help save the environment just from using this software.  They also say on their web site that if all US households with a computer used GreenPrint, we would save over $6 billion. And if all new computers sold in 2006 used GreenPrint, we would save over 36 million trees.  A Fortune 500 company using GreenPrint would save over $2 million, 4000 trees and prevent 12,623 tons of CO2 emissions every year.

It only took me a few minutes to download it and it is easy to use.  They provide an online demo and other interesting eco-facts about printing on the GreenPrint web site. To see some of their press coverage, check out CNN, CNBC, and TreeHugger.

Here’s a short video from CNN:

So, just by using GreenPrint, you help save paper, ink, money, and millions of trees – a simple way to protect the environment. 

~Melissa

The Art of Junk Mail

Make art out of junk mail.  That’s what the artist Schimmel has done. She has created quite gorgeous mosaics out of recycled junk mail and greeting cards.  I would have never fathomed that such beauty could come out of quite literally, “trash.”

      

(2 pieces of Shimmel’s art made out of recycled junk mail: portraits of Venus and Twiggy)

In her own words from her Web site, “I am a rabid recycler – I am compelled to utilize unusual resources to create my art. To reuse materials – and give others’ images and words new life in my work.” I recommend that you check out her entire collection on her Web site: Schimmelart.com. You really have to see it to believe it. 

For those of you who are “crafty,” here’s a How-to Recycle Junk Mail into Art……on A Little Hut Blog.

And for those of you who prefer to shop, check out the Junk Mail Gems web site, where you can buy wallets, bookmarks, gifts, and other necessities which have all been made out of junk mail.

Whether making museum-quality portraits or funky magnets and fun wallets, there’s no limit to what you can do with your junk mail.  Now, I’m convinced that creative people can make something beautiful out of anything…even ugly and annoying junk mail.

~Melissa

Green Apple Festival 2008

Take a bite out of the Green Apple

Where will you be spending Earth Day this year?  How about at the 3rd annual Green Apple Festival? They’re calling it “America’s largest Earth Day celebration” where you can enjoy a weekend of music and environmental awareness from April 18^th- April 20^th.  The Festival will have 8 locations across the U.S. and they are free.  The bummer is that since that they occur simultaneously, it would be hard to attend all of them; if you need pick one, here they are:  New York City (Central Park), Washington, DC (The National Mall), Chicago IL (Lincoln Park Zoo), Miami FL (Bicentennial Park), Denver CO (City Park), Dallas TX (Fair Park), San Francisco CA (Golden Gate Park) and Los Angeles CA (Santa Monica Pier).

The 2008 Green Apple Festival

·         Is one of the largest Earth Day gatherings in U.S. history

·         Presents 8 simultaneous events at landmark parks across the country on April 20, 2008

·         Is located in parks, rather than concrete venues, chosen with eco-considerations such as easy foot/bike access and public transportation

·         Will “green” over 150 music venues over Earth Day Weekend in each Green Apple city

·         Is produced in partnership with Earth Day Network, founders of the original “Earth Day” in 1970

Each festival will invite nonprofit environmentally friendly organizations to promote new eco-friendly technology and green products. And, the more than 1,000 acts performing will be encouraged to speak about Earth Day from the stage.  Bands will also be asked to make a donation to an environmentally oriented charity.

The Green Apple Festival is produced with as small a carbon footprint as possible. How do they accomplish this green goal?  They have mandated a paperless event; use organic cotton t-shirts for staff; bio-diesel generators for power where they can; serve organic food and encourage patrons to take public transport, bike or get to the events on foot.

Last year's Green Apple Festival, billed as the largest carbon-neutral event of its kind, was held in New York, Chicago and San Francisco with artists such as Bob Weir & Ratdog, the Decemberists, Taylor Hicks, Stephen Marley and the Kaiser Chiefs, among many others.

52 days until Earth Day…why not take a bite of the green apple?

~Melissa