Amazing Green…how sweet the smell

The Paleaku Peace Gardens Sanctuary in Kona, Hawaii, USA, is a meticulously planned garden spanning about 30 meters provides a relatively accurate map of our Milky Way Galaxy. Different plants depict stars, globular clusters, and even nebulas. Many bright stars visible in Earth’s night sky are depicted on leaves surrounding the marked location of the Sun. Plant rows were placed to represent arms of our Galaxy, including the Sun’s Orion Arm, the impressive Sagittarius Arm, and the little discussed Norma Arm. A small bar runs through our Galaxy’s center, while a fountain has been built to represent the central black hole.

Is this amazing or what?

Continue reading...

What? Students suspended for biking to school.

Via Treehugger

On the second to last day of school, 60 seniors from Kenowa Hills High School in Walker, Michigan, rode their bikes to school. It wasn’t an improvised things either, as they had police escort and did it safely, and even the mayor joined them (handing out donuts, which isn’t exactly health food, but nobody was forced to eat them). But their principal, out of some sort of “I’ll show you who’s boss” primal instinct, decided to reprimand them, calling the bike ride a “prank”, going as far as suspending them from a traditional year’s end celebration at that school.

But calling this a prank is taking the “letter of the law” too far and forgetting the spirit. This wasn’t burning dog poop, exploding toilet and naked kids running around. It was a safe bike ride with adult supervision, something that an untold number of kids do every single school day in many places around the world.

Schools Would be Empty in Amsterdam and Copenhagen…

Now it’s possible that this wasn’t done in the best possible way and that this slowed down traffic some (the school pretends it was terrible, the police escort says it wasn’t a problem — whatever), but it still was an act that should be commended, not punished. This could have been the beginning of a great tradition, and the next ride would have been even better organized, rather than a sour end to some kids’ high-school career.

Continue reading...

Game Over for the Climate

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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?

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

Happy Earth Day!

Continue reading...