What are the Most Sustainable Colleges in America?

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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Women Rock in Green and Natural Businesses

From Eco18.com

There are a lot of successful big companies out in the business world, many run by women, but there are so many more successful small businesses and those that aspire to becoming a success. According to the National Women’s Business Council (NWBC), women own 7.8 million of the 27.2 million small businesses in America. What is even more exciting is when these companies specialize in a niche market like green and natural. Many women create companies born out of a personal mission to improve family, health, lifestyle, environmental issues, etc. which seems to drive them 24/7 to create more than just a product, but a company they can be proud of.

Many originally had jobs outside of the home in other sectors when they decided they wanted to live their passion and others are moms with a great idea born out of necessity. Product categories such as pet, chocolate, vitamins, feminine hygiene, household, food, baby, and full service agencies that can promote them like ADinfinitum are more important than ever.

Sue Taggart, President and Founder of ADinfinitum, originally from England, was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis many years ago and was told there was very little that could be done except to be on drugs for the remainder of her life. She was only in her 30’s at the time. Going the traditional medical route and using so many toxic drugs was not acceptable to her. She decided to see an herbalist who turned her life around and taught her to manage her symptoms with natural solutions and dietary changes. Soon after that she started her full service agency, which has been specializing in promoting green and natural brands for over 20 years. In July of 2011, Sue founded eco18.com to provide online consumers with green and healthy lifestyle information for everyday living.

Diva Cup, an eco friendly alternative to women’s menstrual products is a family business run by Corrine and Francine Chambers , who have not only built a successful business, but have an amazing community of loyal brand advocates. Green Depot, founded by Sarah Beatty in 2005, is the nation’s leading supplier of environmentally friendly building products, services and home solutions with many retail stores. Some companies like Shazi Visram’s Happy Baby Food and Marie Moody’s Stella and Chewy’s pet food have gone on to be multi-million dollar companies.

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For the love of a tree…

For the love of a tree,
she went out on a limb.

For the love of the sea,
she rocked the boat.

For the love of the earth,
she dug deeper.

For the love of community,
she mended fences.

For the love of the stars,
she let her light shine.

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USDA: Don’t put corporate interests over bee lives

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’

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

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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Happy Earth Day!

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Junk food kills

From OrganicConsumers.org

The U.S. industrial food and farming system, dominated by fast food restaurants and processed, chemical-laden food, has precipitated a public health crisis. Although nutritionists recommend that consumers avoid eating unhealthy junk foods, every day 75 million Americans “supersize” themselves and damage their health by eating at McDonald’s or other fast food restaurants. Forty percent of American meals are now purchased and consumed outside the home, typically consisting of high-calorie, low-nutrition items such as soft drinks, French fries, and low-grade meat, laced with fat, cheap sweeteners, pesticide residues, chemical additives, and salt. We have become a Fast Food Nation of bulging waistlines and high blood pressure.

Recent studies link pesticide residues and chemical additives like MSG in processed foods and restaurant fare to hormone disruption and obesity. No wonder 60% percent of Americans are either overweight or obese. One in every three children born since the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime. Diet-related obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are now the nation’s number one public health problem, generating an estimated $150 billion in health care costs every year. Millions of youth and adults have literally become addicted to the chemically enhanced junk food served in fast food restaurants, school lunchrooms, and institutional cafeterias. In 1972, U.S. consumers spent three billion dollars a year on fast food – today we spend more than $110 billion.

The junk food industry, now under attack by public health advocates and parents, finds itself in a similar position to where the tobacco industry was in the 1990s. After decades of lies and industry propaganda, the truth is finally coming out: junk food kills.

Indeed, despite individual efforts by some states to tax soda pop, require healthier school lunches, or mandate calorie information in chain restaurants, obesity rates in the United States are growing. It is time for the federal government to stop subsiding, with billions of dollars of public tax money, the factory-farmed crops and animal products (corn, soybeans, cotton, dairy, and meat) that create the artificially low prices that prop up the nation’s junk food industry.

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The Lorax has gone Hollywood. And so has its environmental message.

From Mother Jones

If you read this blog regularly, it’s likely that you were a fan of The Lorax, Dr. Seuss’ cherished 1971 classic. It’s a story about a little orange guy devoted to protecting the Truffula trees, but it speaks more broadly to the threat that industry poses to the natural world. Now The Lorax has gone Hollywood, with a new film version from Universal Pictures due out on March 2. And it appears that fans of Seuss’ environmental message aren’t very excited about the release.

The trailer for the film prompted the students of Ted Wells’ 4th grade class at the Park School in Brookline, Mass. to start a petition asking Universal to revive the tree-hugging themes of the book. Over at Change.org, they’re requesting that the company at least add more educational materials to the film’s website and promotional materials. Wells notes that his students thought the trailer made the movie look “more like an adventure and romance, like it had totally lost its message about helping the planet.”

“Currently, the movie website, trailer, and story summary have no mention of helping our planet!” says the students’ petition. “This is a missed opportunity. There are big problems in our natural world and we need more and more people helping out.”

They have collected more than 50,000 signatures since they launched the petition in December. Here’s the trailer, which makes me think the kids are right on:

See the trailer here

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Green Resolutions that Really Matter

From our friends at Living Green Magazine

Experts say that the most successful New Year’s resolutions are those where an action is practiced regularly to achieve an important goal. What could be a more important resolution than to make your life (even) greener and reduce your impact on the environment.

Here are six simple actions you can take for a greener 2012.

Educate yourself about the environmental concerns important to you. Pick one environmental topic you want to know more about (climate change, renewable energy, organic food, etc.), and make a commitment to educate yourself about that topic. Start reading books on the subject that you find at your local library, or go to your local bookseller for books. Search for nonprofit organizations and green news sites that provide information on your topic.

Use your knowledge to get involved. Contact your elected officials when an environmental issue will affect you or your community. Join the local chapter of a nonprofit organization that works on your area of concern and help them be successful.

Eat healthy, with less meat and sugar, and more fruits and vegetables. I’m not just talking about the usual January resolutions to lose weight. I’m talking about developing new healthy habits and eating more vegetarian. Have you tried meatless days, using beans and rice for your protein? How can you add more fruits and veggies to your meals?

Reducing your meat consumption has a positive effect on the environment, and for the animals too. Livestock production accounts for nearly 20 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and about 25 percent of all global water used in agriculture. Websites such as Meatless Monday and Eating Well offer numerous vegetarian recipes that are healthy for you and the environment. (To see some of our recent vegetarian articles and recipes, visit LG’s Food & Health Section.)

Go on a low-carbon diet and cut your energy use. We each have to take personal responsibility for the energy we use each day—and the estimated 20 tons per year of carbon dioxide we generate daily. Replacing your light bulbs is a start. Rethink the use of your car(s), make public transportation more of a daily feature in your life, and walk whenever possible. Insulate and caulk your home to cut heating and cooling bills, and turn out the lights around your home and business.

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