Women Of Green: Turn Up the Volume » Ecological Sustainability

For Women Saving the World

by Carolyn Parrs

Fierce Kindness

6 Mar 2012

Sharon Salzberg, the queen of loving-kindness meditation, tells a story of a time she was traveling in India. As she was exiting a taxi, a man grabbed her suitcase in attempt to steal it. Sharon, grabbing the handle, struggled back and forth and back and forth with this man. Finally, when she knew he wasn’t letting go, she took her umbrella and hit him over the head “with all the love in my heart,” she says. Hit him over the head with all the love in her heart. You’ve got to smile at that.

So often we think of the word “kindness” and get all mushy and passive. We confuse it with being “nice”. Being meek. Being monkish. I would like to shine a light on a side of kindness that doesn’t get much airtime. Fierce kindness. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not.

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Be the Change

Stories from our community on being the change we need in the world.

The jewels of Jes: Spreading compassion through jewelry

9 Feb 2012

I truly believe the reason my work has been so successful is because it’s infused with my passion for life – passion born from a place of deep compassion, for all creatures and our beautiful Mother Earth. My collectors can feel this and have expressed how deeply inspired they are by the love built into every design and how good it feels to wear jewelry and support a company that celebrates life, by honoring ethical practice and raising awareness.

My interest in the environment developed from a childhood spent mostly outdoors. Countless hours riding my horse bareback deep into the wooded hills near my home – never failed to return me to my souls essence. Nature was my altar as much then, as it is today. It’s the place where I can hear and feel my heart’s wisdom; not only does it inspire my creativity, but anchors it. My relationship with animals is no different. They are so pure, present and without judgment – I always feel relaxed in their company, like I can really be myself and love without constraint.

When you love something unconditionally, it is natural to want to do anything in your power to protect it. My real work as an artist is to spread compassion and bring awareness to the suffering innocent, and the abusive practices that are detrimentally impacting our Earth. As a business owner and entrepreneur, I feel a responsibility to affect positive change in my immediate environment – and on a global level. Implementing ethical practice in business requires a lot of research, attention to detail, and in many cases extra expense – but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I get to stand behind (and in front of) a company that brings more beauty into the world, while helping eliminate what is not so beautiful. My dedication to this level of integrity has also created amazing opportunities to collaborate with bigger companies making a powerful impact socially and environmentally.

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Steffany’s Eco-bold Move Pays Off

20 Nov 2011

I was born and raised in a small ranch in Brazil, and since the early days, my mom always made sure that we ate all our veggies and finish our fresh acerola juice. She always let – and sometimes encouraged – my sisters and I go play in the rain and mud. We never got sick and grew up living this very healthy lifestyle. Until this day, my mom is a wealth of knowledge about what’s good for us (eat your flax seeds grounded, but only grind them before you eat, and keep them in the dark!) and she always finds the most unique things at the grocery store, before they become “fashion” like the chia seeds juice or kombucha.

Ecobold evolved from an idea that I had to help people learn how to shop for healthy items. While doing my research, I realized that there were many products out there beyond food that people would love to buy, but didn’t know that they exist or where to get them, so I decided to switch plans to an online marketplace that helps sellers all over the world market their amazing products to the people who want them. And Ecobold was born. We launched just a few months ago with 80 products and today we have almost 3,000 products available in many categories: from beauty, to food, to clothing and even electronics. Our goal is to help sellers market these products and help consumers find these small sellers who are popping up everywhere (but who don’t have a clue on how to do sales online or where to even start). Sellers on our site can be anyone from a mom who decided to make natural soaps in her spare time,to a small business owner selling non-toxic body lotions to their local spas. Since we are based in Silicon Valley, we are in a position to offer them the absolute best tools to show their baby to the world, increase sales, awareness and get repeat customers.

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I was making pretty landfills for a living.

28 Sep 2011

Sometimes the challenges of the planet seem too big, too complex. What can I do? What is my role to play? My late friend, John Armer, used to say, “Our job is to leave the sandbox cleaner than when we found it.” I have always liked this simple yet poignant saying.

I am a textile designer by trade. For years, I designed products for mass markets — Walmart, Target, etc. I loved my job. Creating patterns and designs is total joy for me. In 2004, I got a call from a competitor who wanted me to come work for them.However, I couldn’t do it. It didn’t feel right. It felt like a step sideways. It was a blessing though, because it got me thinking. What is the next step? What does it look like?

It was around this same time that I walked into a mass market store and found a sea of check-out stands, all filled with customers, all with baskets filled with stuff. All I saw was a glacial-size flow of landfill. Cheap stuff to be enjoyed briefly and then discarded. It was in that moment that it hit me—I was making pretty landfills for a living!

Determined to have my life’s work be something I could be proud of, it was on that day that I started down the road that would ultimately lead to the creation of Harmony Art Organic Design — an independent, printed organic fabric company. I am happy to report that six and a half years later, colorful printed organic cotton is no longer an anomaly but a growing market segment.

It is my sincere belief that for the “sandbox” to get collectively cleaner (or remain dirty and continue to inherit more debris) there is a magic shovel. No, I can’t solve poverty, climate change, financial exploitation, or war. What I can do (and what everyone on the planet can do) is to look at my own life. What contribution am I making with my life’s work? What about your contribution? I made the decision to walk away from a steady paycheck to create a new, healthier fabric option for people and businesses. I don’t expect you to quit your job and start your own company — that’s extreme. But I do think if we each took a good hard look at the results of our life’s work, and simply focused on creating the best possible product (or outcome) for the world, the change would be explosive and powerful.

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Game Over for the Climate

11 May 2012

From New York Times

Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

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What are the Most Sustainable Colleges in America?

10 May 2012

From Fast Company

More and more, students seem to be using environmental credentials as a key decision-making factor in deciding where to go college. Which schools are doing it best?

Aspiring higher eduction students have all sorts of reasons for picking a college: academic performance, cost of tuition, and alcohol availability among them. But, according to a new survey, one consideration is rising fast amid all the others: environmental performance.

According to the Princeton Review’s latest “Hopes and Worries” survey, which scans the views of 7,445 college-bound students, 68% now say commitment to sustainability impacts their college choice.

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USDA: Don’t put corporate interests over bee lives

2 May 2012

From Care2 petition site

Researchers at Beelogics, a leading bee research firm, identified pesticides as a leading contributor to declining bee populations. In late September of 2011, Monsanto, a major producer of genetically modified foods, bought the Beelogics firm for an undisclosed sum. It now seems likely that Monsanto’s funding will manipulate research to point the blame away from chemicals used in GMO food production.

The bee decline affects all U.S. citizens. Bees are responsible for pollinating 1/3 of U.S. crops and are essential to sustaining our ecological lifespan. It is vital that researchers can identify the true cause of the decline so that responsible citizens can learn how to help the bee population.

If the USDA uses Monsanto-funded research from Beelogics, it will essentially be sacrificing scientific integrity for corporate interests. Please support the truth of scientific research and tell the USDA not to use research funded by Monsanto.

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Biomimicry and teaching business the ‘secrets of life’

26 Apr 2012

From GreenBiz.com

Ray Anderson often asked a rhetorical question: does business exist to make a profit, or does business make a profit to exist? With this line of questioning, Ray called upon us to understand that while making a profit is the lifeblood of a company’s survival, it shouldn’t be the only reason for a company to exist.

With his talent for translating lofty vision into everyday reality, Ray would ask: what you would rather get out of bed to do each day: make carpet, or make history?

Making history by making carpet is a unifying sentiment for the people of Interface. How, exactly, are we making history? By proving the business model for sustainability, while taking on Ray’s challenge to eliminate our negative environmental footprint.

Ray believed there must be a better way for business to thrive on our planet, without the assumed ecological and social impacts that our current industrial take-make-waste system creates. With such ambitious goals, where do we look for inspiration in redesigning a system as pervasive and complex as business?

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Inmates pay their debt by caring for our planet

23 Apr 2012

It’s springtime in the northwest. The endangered frog eggs are now tadpoles, and the butterflies are beginning to pupate. But the people tending to these ecological projects aren’t grad students or forest-loving yuppies. They’re prisoners in the care of the Washington State Department of Corrections, where the Sustainable Prisons Project is in its seventh year.

Back in 2004, the Washington State Department of Corrections started a partnership with the Evergreen State College. A forest ecologist, Nalini Nadkarni, brought together staff and incarcerated men from a nearby corrections center to start the Moss-in-Prison Project. Using prison facilities as a controlled environment, the project explored how to “farm” mosses for the horticulture trade.

In that pilot project, participants had to figure out which species of moss could be cultivated to alleviate pressures of unsustainable moss harvesting in old-growth forests. Nadkarni also intended to provide intellectual and emotional stimulation for the inmates, who typically have little or no access to nature but could provide fresh perspectives for ecological research. The project was a huge success, and one inmate even coauthored a peer-reviewed paper for an international sustainability journal with Nadkarni.

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Garden Activists: Bringing green thumbs to urban blight

20 Apr 2012

From Washington Post

by Emily Wax

“Let’s throw some bombs,” a young woman calls out, waterproof floral purse swinging on her shoulder and Laura Ingalls braids flying behind her as a band of 25 followers cheer, “Cool!”

They rush toward a drab vacant lot in Shaw. Some climb up onto the back of a truck to get better aim at their target. But these bombers aren’t likely to appear on any terrorist list or even get arrested. They’re throwing “seed bombs,” golf-ball-size lumps of mud packed with wildflower seeds, clay and a little bit of compost and water, which they just learned to make at a free seed-bombing workshop for Washington’s guerrilla gardeners.

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UN Intersessional Report: How will the Green Economy affect women?

9 Apr 2012

From Global Forest Coalition

Keith Brunner from Gears of Change Youth Media Project reports back from the side event “Women’s critical perspectives on the green economy” carried out during the UN Rio+20 intercessional (March 25-27) at the UN headquarters in New York.

The “green economy” will be a shot in the arm for ailing global markets- a rush of new commodities and investment frontiers, packaged neatly within a UN mandate for “sustainable development.” But how will it affect those who are already the most marginalized?

This afternoon I attended an event entitled “Women’s critical perspectives on the ‘green economy.” Participants painted a picture of a future far different from the heady visions on display at the corporate side events. The “green economy,” according to the panelists, will exacerbate already growing gender violence, urban migration and loss of traditional skills and knowledge amongst women, with women in the Global South being hit the hardest.

Isis Alvarez, with Global Forest Coalition, began the panel by noting that: “Biodiversity and the environment turned into marketable goods seems to be the current approach to conservation. And markets necessarily need privatization. But what are the consequences for women, if a resource which used to be accessible is now privatized?”

She continued: “Women usually provide their families with key resources for their livelihoods, such as fuel wood, medicinal plants, fodder, food, nuts, they collect seeds, so biodiversity means everything to them, as they depend on the non-monetary benefits of biodiversity.”

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An interview with Green Drinks founder, Margaret Lydecker

30 Mar 2012

From Eco-Chick

Before Margaret Lydecker founded Green Drinks NYC in 2002, there wasn’t a place for Manhattan’s like-minded, eco-conscious professionals to get their networking on. Margaret changed that, and now many of us wouldn’t know what to do without her monthly events.

Whether you’re a dedicated monthly green drinker or not, you’ve in all likelihood heard of Green Drinks NYC, even if you don’t live or work in the Big Apple. Over the years, Margaret has aided in the launch of 200-plus chapters globally (there are now 800-plus chapters worldwide). She’s helped build the global Green Drinks brand, in the coolest way imaginable: by connecting green businesses and professionals at the local level.

I went to the most recent Green Drinks NYC, and observed Margaret calmly and graciously working the room. She’s the face of Green Drinks– never letting a name or a face slip her, which is highly impressive considering she has literally met thousands of individuals at her events over the past 10 years. But Margaret also runs the show, delegates to her staff and Green Drinks volunteers, and ensures every minor detail goes off without a hitch.

I wanted to get to know the woman behind Green Drinks NYC who has effectively connected so many people. Margaret revealed the challenges she’s faced, how her passion for sustainability began, her thoughts on greenwashers, and how she manages to keep it all together.

Read an interview with Margaret Lydecker at Eco-Chick

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Women’s History Month Film Feature: Wangari Maathai

7 Mar 2012

In celebration of Women’s History Month, Women Of Green will be featuring each week a film about woman of vision who has dedicated her life to the health and well-being of this Big Beautiful Planet and the beings that live on it. First up is the legendary environmental activist, Wangari Maathai, who became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

Three decades ago, she suggested to rural women in her native Kenya that they plant trees for firewood and to stop soil erosion — an act that grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, defend human rights, and fight government injustice. The tree-planting groups that formed gave the women a reason to come together and become involved in resolving their communities’ challenges.

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai tells the story of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement and follows Maathai, the movement’s founder and the first environmentalist and African woman to win the Nobel Prize. Maathai discovered her life’s work by reconnecting with the rural women with whom she had grown up. They told her they were walking long distances for firewood, and that clean water was scarce. The soil was disappearing from their fields, and their children were suffering from malnutrition. “Well, why not plant trees?” she suggested.

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Who are the Social Entrepreneurs?

1 Mar 2012

On the day Steve Jobs died last fall, Occupy Wall Street organized the first massive march down though the Canyon of Heroes in New York, in the opposite direction of the route the New York Giants would take four months later. Swollen by busloads of stoic union troops, the small and somewhat ragged OWS band melded with a much larger crowd and dominated lower Manhattan from Foley Square to Trinity Church, a patch of turf Washington and Hamilton would surely still recognize for its geographic and economic centrality to the nation, if not for the shadows of the modern buildings and mounted police officers in riot gear.That news of Apple‘s

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Turkish women beekeepers to lead organic revolution

29 Feb 2012

More than 10,000,000 women live in rural parts of Turkey, and although Turkey has one of the world’s lowest employment rates for women (22%), women are working full-time (albeit unpaid) while they care for their large families and run small family farms. But in these remote villages, they are cut off from the city centers, so there are limited opportunities to translate this labor into income, educational opportunities, or professional development.

Organic beekeeping, particularly in rural untouched areas such as Northeastern Turkey is an ideal livelihood for women, because women are stable –therefore not moving their bees into areas with harmful crops or pesticides– and beekeeping can be done right from their backyards without taking away too much time from raising a family.

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Frack attack

9 Feb 2012

From Huffington Post via Women Of Green

WASHINGTON — Natural gas drillers would be required to disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” on public lands, according to draft rules created by the Department of Interior. The proposed regulations would also force companies to report the amount of any given chemical injected during the fracking process.

The move for increased regulation comes after President Barack Obama touted his commitment to expanding natural gas production while ensuring the drilling is done responsibly. “My administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” he said during his State of the Union address last month. Fracking, which involves the high-pressure injection of undisclosed chemicals into rocks containing oil or natural gas, has drawn increasing scrutiny from environmentalists who suggest the process contaminates groundwater and destroys ecosystems.

Under the proposed regulations, companies would be required to reveal the “complete chemical makeup of all materials used,” according to a copy of the rules obtained by The Huffington Post. But environmentalists have noted that, while the regulations offer some “good elements,” the rules still offer companies considerable protections for “trade secrets,” an exemption some worry could negate the rule.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said regulations will also cover well-bore integrity and regulation of flowback waters (the fluids that rise to the surface after hydraulic fracturing operations are complete). Further, reports detailing the ingredients used in the fracking fluids and a fluid treatment plan must be submitted 30 days before operations begin at any proposed well.

Interior spokesman Adam Fetcher elaborated in a statement.

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The jewels of Jes: Spreading compassion through jewelry

9 Feb 2012

I truly believe the reason my work has been so successful is because it’s infused with my passion for life – passion born from a place of deep compassion, for all creatures and our beautiful Mother Earth. My collectors can feel this and have expressed how deeply inspired they are by the love built into every design and how good it feels to wear jewelry and support a company that celebrates life, by honoring ethical practice and raising awareness.

My interest in the environment developed from a childhood spent mostly outdoors. Countless hours riding my horse bareback deep into the wooded hills near my home – never failed to return me to my souls essence. Nature was my altar as much then, as it is today. It’s the place where I can hear and feel my heart’s wisdom; not only does it inspire my creativity, but anchors it. My relationship with animals is no different. They are so pure, present and without judgment – I always feel relaxed in their company, like I can really be myself and love without constraint.

When you love something unconditionally, it is natural to want to do anything in your power to protect it. My real work as an artist is to spread compassion and bring awareness to the suffering innocent, and the abusive practices that are detrimentally impacting our Earth. As a business owner and entrepreneur, I feel a responsibility to affect positive change in my immediate environment – and on a global level. Implementing ethical practice in business requires a lot of research, attention to detail, and in many cases extra expense – but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I get to stand behind (and in front of) a company that brings more beauty into the world, while helping eliminate what is not so beautiful. My dedication to this level of integrity has also created amazing opportunities to collaborate with bigger companies making a powerful impact socially and environmentally.

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UN panel says only Sustainable Development can create a ‘Resilient Planet’

8 Feb 2012

From Environment News Service

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, A panel of current and former heads of government, ministers and lawmakers Monday launched a plan for world leaders to propel an “ever-green” energy revolution that could wean the world off fossil fuels, when they meet in Brazil later this year.

The report of the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability links the United Nations’ goals of reducing poverty and inequality to promoting the use of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources to power the economies of rich and poor nations alike.

The report, “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing,” contains 56 recommendations to put sustainable development into practice quickly, moving it from a general concept to the core of mainstream economics.

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What’s in your sushi these days

6 Feb 2012

Recent studies estimate that fish off the West Coast ingest over 12,000 ton of plastic a year. How many plastic water, soda, juice bottles and plastic bags did you toss last year? Say NO to plastic. Promise?!

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Can Facebook create a healthier, more just world?

4 Feb 2012

Facebook is about to go public. Founder, Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to its shareholders, “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected. We think it’s important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do. We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services.”

OK, so Facebook’s good for business. Now how can we leverage it then to create a healthier, more just world for our children, and our children’s children?

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