Sustainable Living Round-up

Best Buy’s recycling program has been effect since February 2009 and has accepted more than 25 million pounds of in-store take-backs. Their e-cycle program accepts almost anything electronic, including inkjet cartridges, rechargeable batteries, gift cards, televisions, DVD players, computer monitors, audio and video cables, cell phones and other devices. Also, see next story ‘The Darker Side of E-waste”.

The darker side of e-waste While recycling your electronics is important, there is actually a darker side of e-waste that you need to be aware of: the outsourcing of this process to developing countries. The Basel Action Network (BAN) has uncovered numerous instances of toxic waste dumping in developing countries in Africa and China where workers are exposed to lead, flame retardants, chromium, PVC, mercury, cadmium, barium and many more.

Choosing polluters over children’s health. “Let’s get straight to the point. When members of Congress choose to support bills that would prevent the EPA from updating Clean Air Act standards, they are making a choice to support polluters over the health of children and adults.”

Whole Foods, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto’s controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for “coexistence” with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

Whole Food's Dirty Little Secret: Most of the So-Called "Natural" Processed Foods and Animal Products They Sell Are Contaminated with GMOs.

Round up of Sustainable Living

What makes omega-3s so great?

Simply put, omega-3s make your body run more smoothly. Research has shown that omega-3s greatly reduce risks, and often reverse or reduce symptoms, of different types of heart disease and cancers and diabetes.

More at Eco Centric

At Finca Exotica, Green Building is Only Natural

Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula is a green builder’s dream. Native and plentiful, guarada bamboo is an ideal building material, capable of taking a nail without splitting. In this tropical climate, walls are often unnecessary; everyone wants to be open to the moist air and the jungle’s breathing.

Recycle your medicines and save lives

Every year tons of out of date, surplus or redundant medicines are returned each year to pharmacies and GPs. Unwanted medicines cannot be reused or recycled and have to be destroyed in an incinerator.

Inter Care is a registered charity which collects returned medication from GP practices and recycles them to over one hundred health centers in six African countries. The work by Inter Care means that up to £800 million of valuable medicines can be saved from landfill and incineration in the UK, while being used to help alleviate suffering and save lives in Africa.

Study Finds People Ate Less Sustainable in 2010

What happened? Are we serious about wanting to do more for the environment? Are we discovering that reversing our long term bad habits is just too difficult?

Environmentalism, as we currently know it, has been around since early 1970’s. It has proven to be more than a passing phase and has grown beyond being just the latest trendy fad designed to get people to become more politically active.

Creating and living a sustainable life style takes time, effort and commitment. It exists hand-in-hand with environmentalism.

During the current recession we saw an increase in the number of home gardeners. We listened as these new converts to sustainable living made the pledge that they will reject factory food and take up growing their own and eating locally. Many of us secretly reserved our opinion on just how real this movement is and how long this would last but we all pulled for it to continue.

Now we learn that some of those Americans who joined us have given up the struggle and have reverted to their old ways. Polls show that they were less likely to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors in 2010 than they were in 2009, despite being more likely to identify with eco-friendly terms.

It seems, the fears many of us held in check were confirmed. The recent increases in people claiming to get back to the Earth only did so because times were becoming financially hard.

The poll, which surveyed 2,352 nationally representative adults online, found that fewer Americans said they were likely to buy local foods, down from 39% to 33%, and fewer respondents said they bought organic foods, down from 17 to 15 percent.

What I find most curious about this poll is that there was an increase in the number of people who said they were environmentally conscious. I guess this says they are aware of the condition of the environment and that something needs to be done but were willing to let someone else do it.

I’m sorry, but claiming to be an environmentalist during hard economical times is a sham unless you remain committed long after the economy improves.

If you are serious about remaining or becoming an active environmentalist ask for help and learn how to practice it. We don’t need charlatans and we don’t need lip service. The problems facing us are real and they do face all of us.

At the risk of getting preachy, we need to remember that we all have picked up some bad habits that are detrimental to the well-being of the environment. But we can reverse these effects by being vigilant about adopting a sustainable lifestyle. It’s going to take getting your hands dirty. Growing our own food, buying & using less biodegradable products, finding additional uses for every single thing we buy, these are not over-night propositions. We need to learn how to do it effectively, and there is a ton of help out there. The more food we grow for ourselves the less dependent we will be on factory farms which are, in all honesty, not providing us with the best in healthy food.

Look, our home gardens don’t have to win awards for being the most beautiful or most productive or most organic, but they do need to be created and used.

This poll says that the number of people who still claim to be environmentalist has remained high, I find this encouraging. It also says that the practice of being an environmentalist has fallen due to high prices of organic food and buying what is being labeled as ‘green’ products. My thoughts on this is that perhaps we need to reassess our spending priorities. Redirect spending from electronic devices that are geared more for entertainment and spend that money on healthier food and setting up gardens to grow our own.

Living a sustainable green lifestyle isn't always about large changes, but one of the changes that can make a serious impact on your health and body is making the effort to eat as sustainably as possible. It’s a matter of attitude. It is a mind set that we need to focus on in order for the environment to heal.

Solar Charging Tree

photo: Yarel Yair – Design Studio

Love this idea. This is showing some real promise instead of all the talk. Let’s get this thing going.

I have seen similar fake trees in California (palm trees of course) used to provide power for cell phone towers. They actually look pretty good and they blend in reall well with the surroundings.

Hopefully we will see shapes like oak trees, fruit trees, redwoods (probably too big) but the list is almost endless. Much better looking than some ordinary ugly stone/plastic/steel monolith towers all over the city.

A couple of ideals:

1 - these trees could be charging stations for pedestrians to charge their cell phones, cameras, mp3 players, etc.

2 – solar powered vehicles should have solar film built into their skin so we are not forced to maintain coal powered electricity generating power plants.

Now, if only we could get more widespread access to good-looking, longer-distance vehicles.

Environmental Scorecard

My first post of the year, is it really the 15th already, is going to help me shed some light on how my family does the green thing.

A lot of big talk and good intentions are in the air about the need to save the planet from, well, us basically, so I figured I would throw out a few of the ways in which my family is helping to do our part.

Being environmentally responsible is a lot more than just recycling. It touches almost every aspect of our daily lives, from what we choose to eat, how the products we buy are packaged, how we clean our homes and how we get from point A to point B.

I grow some of the food we eat and put some of that up for the winter via the miracle of canning. I must admit that we could can more but we give a lot of it away to neighbors and family while it is still fresh.

We shred all of our junk mail, except the slick glossy stuff, who knows what goes into the inks on these things. I even shred my bills! Ha! In my dreams. I do pay most of them online but elect to receive the paper bill just in case I lose the use of the computer for whatever reason, like a seriously bad economic down turn. It is terribly satisfying to shred a credit card bill though.

The shredded paper, along with our newspapers get added to the compost pile.

Whatever bit of cardboard that does not find its way into a new planting bed goes into the recycle bin along with cans. But mostly I rip it up and place it on the compost as well.

Our neighborhood stopped collecting glass stating it was becoming too expensive to process it and even without that load our recycling bin is nearly over-flowing when they pick it up every two weeks.

I have canceled magazine subscriptions for insisting on stuffing way too many subscription forms in them as well as all manner of loose leaf ads. The really bad ones put the magazine in a plastic bag so they can throw more ads at us. I have written to these offending companies and told them how unhappy I am with the amount of landfill material they send out with each magazine. If I get a response at all it is nothing more than thanking me for writing. So I just cancel the subscription.

In the matter of those monthly bills that stuff fliers advertising their products and services, I stuff these back into the bill envelope with a note telling them to throw away their own trash.

We throw food scraps on the compost pile.

I collect compost from the city to use in the garden.

We adhere to shopping lists and go to the market once a week and then combine other destinations on the same trip so as not to waste gas.

I see to it that both of our cars are properly maintained in order to get the most fuel efficiency.

My wife works outside the home, I work at home and I have taken up cooking from recipes that use whole foods as opposed to processed foods.

One of the most difficult things to free ourselves of is plastic. We find it in a number of food packing, consumer packaging, even the bags we carry our consumer goods home in. We re-use almost all of the plastic food containers and plastic shopping bags. Anything that can be re-used is.

We take quick showers (baths are so wasteful) and do laundry only one day a week.

We have cut down a lot on eating beef. We mostly eat chicken.

We have installed compact fluorescent lights in every room and lamp in our house for energy efficiency and turn off lights when not in the room. My computer is on all day because that’s is my work tool.

Plastic milk jugs get re-used for a lot of purposes. I use them to start plants in until they are big enough to set out in the garden. I use them as cloches over the tender plants I set out until they are able to take nature on its own.

We feed our lawn and all garden plants (including houseplants) with organic material, i.e., the compost pile and supplement it with seaweed, fish emulsion, cottonseed meal, bone meal, blood meal, etc, instead of using synthetic fertilizer.

We turn the thermostat down to 64 at night and pile extra blankets on the bed. The thermostat itself has four time settings so that the house temperature can be customized for when we are in the house or away from home.

I do still use my gasoline powered lawn mower but use an electric edge trimmer. I prune everything else by hand.

I shovel snow with an actual snow shovel while many people around my neighborhood use a gas powered snow blower.

I am embarrassed to say that we still clean our home with chemical cleaners but I am trying to get my wife converted to using natural products such as vinegar, salt, lemon juice, baking soda, etc. It is a tough uphill battle.

One of the requirements to living a sustainable life is learning how others do it, because there always seems to be an easier or more ingenious way of doing something.

I find that the majority of the people I talk to about it say they would like to or actually do something with the environment in mind. But when I visit their houses I sometimes find recyclable items thrown in the trash can or see someway they do something that could be a little more earth friendly. I am mindful that I cannot be the self-appointed ‘environment police’ and just continually bark at everyone about the error of their ways, so I just have to realize that we are dealing with a lifestyle that cannot be easily unlearned.

I would be tickled pink if a grow-your-own-food/gardening revolution would take place that would knock food prices down, discontinue the use of chemical based fertilizers and pesticides, finally win the war against obesity, and lower our healthcare costs because we would all be eating healthier and visiting the doctor les often. What a slice of paradise that would be.

But the major change is going to have to happen at the corporate level. We are going to have to be forced to stop using plastic bags only when companies stop making them. We are going to have to be taken by the hand to drive vehicles that get 50 mpg or more when the automobile industry stops making cars that get less.

Mass transit is only going to work when we are taxed out of driving our personal vehicles into corporate/commercial zones to work and shop everyday.

Coal-powered power plants are gong to stop fouling our air and water only when alternative energy sources are proven to be more cost effective and these fossil-fuel sucking behemoths are finally put to rest.

We as individuals can only do so much. And as long as we are given the less expensive more environmentally-damaging alternative to live our lives we will sadly do it.

If maybe I can inspire someone through this blog to change a little something about their behavior to stop taking this planet for granted then I feel my time spent has been worthwhile.

Are We There Yet?

Do we have a grand plan for taking care of this planet or are we just stumbling along trying to make the best of the situation?

Planned communities are pretty popular here in the U.S. for those people who don’t want to take a lot of responsibility for their living environment. They hire homeowners associations to decide on and enforce whatever rules that every inhabitant is forced to live by.

Would this concept work if it were applied to the entire planet?

Perhaps it is something we need to look into. This free-form self-managed method of caring for our environment has left us with many areas of the earth decimated through the free-reign plundering of natural resources. We have created groups and devised plans to clean up afterwards but why don’t we have oversight groups with well thought out usage plans whose permission would have to be attained before the plunder takes place? I know there aren’t any places remaining that this plan could be experimented with but if we began to turn our attention to that line of thinking it would lead to a more conservation conscious public outlook.

We could possibly even learn (retrain ourselves) to put the long-term health of the environment as a high priority right up there with profit making. It just doesn’t seem right that the few people who lay waste to the landscape in search of resources for the implied purpose of benefiting so many should not add the cost of cleanup to the cost of extraction without leaving a mess for someone else to deal with. We all participate in the destruction of our plant and the depletion of its resources every time we participate in wasteful fuel consumption, purchase plastic products, or throw away any still-useable item. Understanding that we must participate in this wantonness in order to survive, why can’t we also understand that our lifestyles can be scaled back to be less resource-wasteful. It can be done, it is practiced every day. The road block to this is of course convincing yourself that you can live just as comfortably with less. Denying the chance to prove it to yourself is putting the responsibility onto someone else.

Just as with homeowners associations we have put the responsibility onto someone else. Only, in the case of the environment, the responsibility is overwhelming and cannot be accomplished by just a handful of groups. Especially since it seems we are at odds about the importance of such groups.

Just because we have organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency or a Department of Conservation or the World Wildlife Fund or a Center for Environmental Law doesn’t mean our responsibility ends with them. We can still do little things to make their jobs easier. And in doing so provide benefits to all of us.

We can do things like pick up trash that some unthinking or uncaring slob has thrown to the ground. We can stop the use of animal parts as jewelry or decoration. We can grow our own food, give away items that are no longer useful to us but may benefit someone else instead of tossing it into the landfill or having sit around collecting dust. This “out of sight out of mind” thinking needs to be put to rest. Just because we throw it away doesn’t mean we are no longer affected by it.

Plastic is killing off large numbers of wildlife and it seems we will never be rid of innovative plastic items that we just cannot live without. So at least we can be more responsible in its use and not just callously throw it on the trash heap. Help reduce the use of plastic if you can with more sustainable items such as reusable cloth or cotton shopping bags, ask fast food restaurants and coffee shops to use your reusable cups instead of their throw away cups, if they refuse then don’t patronize these establishments. Your body could probably use a break from these nutrient-deficient places anyway.

Some magazines are in the habit of including a lot of paper in the form of several subscription cards and other loose-leaf advertising, write to them and ask them to stop this practice. If they don’t want to listen to you then stop subscribing to the magazine.

The excess paper, in the form of advertising, that your credit card companies, cell phone service providers and other monthly billings include amount to a lot of excess useless paper that gets thrown in the trash or shredded. Take the time to ask them to stop this wasteful practice. If enough voices are heard they will have to listen.

We simply must understand the effect that each and every one of us has on our environment. It is a cop out to say ‘I am just one person and cannot possibly have any effect’. If this thinking were true then why is it that we have piles of trash? Each person throws trash out and it accumulates into huge mountains. So please don’t hide behind this lame excuse. Let’s each of us think about how we are part of the picture and each one of us please do something every day.

So, to answer the original question, No, we do not have a master plan. But, all of us collectively working as if there was a master plan to keep this planet healthy wouldn’t that in effect be a master plan? We can make a difference.

From Green Roofing to Vertical Farming

Green roofs, eco-roofs, vegetated roofs, or living roofs, whatever you want to call them are becoming trendy commercial building additions in many parts of the world.

This photo of a re-creation of Viking houses in Newfoundland illustrates the use of grass as a building feature that helped maintain a comfortable living environment year-round. Plus it was readily available and cheap. But this was on buildings many centuries ago.

Today, we have commercial buildings such as this one in Fukuoka, Japan. This building, designed by architects Emilio Ambasz & Associates, houses offices, retail space, a 2,000 seat theater and a museum. Home to 35,000 plants, the ‘living’ roof greatly reduces the amount of energy required to heat and cool the building occupants. For more views of this building click here.

The Hundertwasser house (Forest Spiral), built in Darmstadt, Austria between 1998 and 2000 was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the famous Austrian architect and painter, who was widely renowned for his revolutionary, colorful architectural designs which incorporate irregular, organic forms, e.g. and onion-shaped domes. The structure houses 105 apartments that wraps around a landscaped courtyard with a running stream.

Canada’s largest green roof, Vancouver’s Convention and Exhibition Center, is currently under construction. It is expected to be completed in 2009 and will host the international media and broadcast center in the 2010 Winter Olympics. At a cost of over 850 million dollars the cost of this mammoth undertaking is being viewed by some Vancouver residents as excessive saying the money should, instead, go towards housing and feeding the poor.

One of the world’s largest green roof is in the USA, at Ford Motor Company's River Rouge Plant, Dearborn, Michigan, where 42,000 square meters (454,000 ft²) of assembly plant roofs are covered with sedum and other plants. Other well-known American examples include Chicago’s City Hall and the Gap headquarters in San Bruno, CA. Recently, the American Society of Landscape Architects retrofitted their existing headquarters building in Washington, D.C. with a green roof designed by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh. The cities of Chicago, Atlanta and Portland, Ore. also boast numerous green roofs.

This photo of the green roof Mountain Equipment Co-op in Toronto Canada is a prime example of mixing beauty with functionality to city rooftops.

Switzerland has one of Europe's oldest green roofs, created in 1914 at the Moos lake water-treatment plant, Wallishofen, Zürich. Its filter-tanks have 30,000 square meters (320,000 ft²) of flat concrete roofs. To keep the interior cool and prevent bacterial growth in the filtration beds, a drainage layer of gravel and a 15 cm (6 in) layer of soil was spread over the roofs, which had been waterproofed with asphalt. A meadow developed from seeds already present in the soil; it is now a haven for many plant species, some of which are now otherwise extinct in the district, most notably 6,000 Orchis morio (green-winged orchid). More recent Swiss examples can be found at Klinikum 1 and Klinikum 2, the Cantonal Hospitals of Basel, and the Sihlpost platform at Zürich's main railway station.

Green roofing represents the next step in the growing evolution for more sustainable struwctures. Commercial structures that can collect and reuse rainwater to better manage stormwater runoff can avoid the need for expensive underground sand filters. They also combat the urban heat island effect of traditional building materials that soak up the sun’s radiation and re-emit it as heat, making cities at least 4 degrees Celsius (7 °F) hotter than surrounding areas. Here, Atlanta Georgia’s City Hall is covered with vegetation and soil creating energy savings as well as aesthetic benefits.

Rooftop water purification is also being implemented in green roofs. These forms of green roofs can actually have ponds built onto the rooftops. They are built either from a simple substrate (as being done in Dongtan China) or with plant-based ponds (as being done by WaterWorks UK Grow System).

Green roofs also provide habitat for insects, birds, bees and butterflies. Rooftop greenery complements wild areas by providing "stepping stones" for songbirds, migratory birds and other wildlife facing shortages of natural habitat.

As our natural habitat is replaced by urban development with its impenetrable asphalt and concrete surfaces, wildlife is being relentlessly pushed into smaller habitats. This results in food and shelter becoming less abundant and therefore their numbers are dwindling. Reintroducing green spaces into the environment has several other benefits for both humans and wildlife. The already mentioned benefits of stormwater management, energy conservation, mitigation of the urban heat island effect, are coupled with increased longevity of roofing membranes, as well as providing a more aesthetically pleasing environment in which to work and live. The construction and maintenance of green roofs provide business opportunities for nurseries, landscape contractors, irrigation specialists, and other green industry members while addressing the issues of environmental stewardship.

The next evolution in green roofs is rooftop farming, or sky farming. If you can grow grass and flowers on the roof, why not grow food?

Traditional indoor gardening facilities (factory greenhouses) designed to produce what used to be considered seasonal food crops year-round have sprung up in Japan, Scandinavia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada. These are all single-story buildings. The time for a new direction in indoor farming has come. Vertical farming, stacking multiple layers of farm acreage into towers to provide fresh food crops to urbanites which simultaneously cuts down on transportation costs of getting the produce to market.

With earth’s population approaching the apex beyond which we can no longer produce enough food to sustain it, vertical farming is a theoretical construct whose time has come. It is predicted that food prices will increase dramatically over the next year due to food shortages. Already we have seen the effect of higher food prices artificially created by the misguided reapportioning of food crops to biofuel production. The spike in oil prices has pushed up fertilizer prices, as well as the cost of trucking food from farms to local markets and shipping it abroad. Climate change seriously disrupt harvests by freak weather, including prolonged droughts in Australia and southern Africa, floods in West Africa, and this past winter's deep frost in China and record-breaking warmth in northern Europe.

Vertical farming can address these issues and others. One self-sustaining vertical farm taking up one square city block and rising up 30 stories could provide enough nutrition to feed 10,000 people, utilizing currently technology. The building could also produce a net output of clean water and energy. Estimates show that 150 such buildings would be required to feed the entire city of New York for a year. However, we still need research in many areas to produce the greater yield that is going to be required to make these structures financially viable. According to experts, additional research in hydrobiology, engineering, industrial microbiology, plant and animal genetics, architecture and design, public health, waste management, physics, and urban planning, are needed to make this increase possible.

Architects have designed some very promising structures to help meet the expected need. Here Daekwon Park designed what is called a Symbiotic Interlock system of modular, prefabricated units that are attached to the outside of existing highrise buildings. The system of stackable modules add an extra layer of infrastructure to existing buildings via sky docks and bridges, vertical gardens, cultural spaces, and energy producing wind turbines. It addresses some of the shortcomings of green roofs by internalizing green environments within its biomorphic structure while contributing functionality, energy, and food.

Architect Pierre Sartoux of Atelier SOA designed this vertical farming skyscraper. A light-shading skin wraps around the structure and opens to admit sunlight at particular locations for various functional (and aesthetic) purposes. The building’s air, heating and cooling systems are wind-driven and circulate oxygen and carbon dioxide between growing and living spaces. The simple but reinforced structure is designed to handle additional dead loads from the weight of growing floors and also serve to make the entire building more durable (and thus sustainable).

In a different direction we go below the busy streets of Tokyo, just steps from the subway system, where you can find Pasona O2, an indoor urban farm where vegetables, rice, flowers and herbs flourish under fluorescent lights and LEDs in an environment that is almost entirely chemical-free. In a basement that was once a bank-vault, plants are cultivated and nourished hydroponically using nutrient-enhanced water instead of natural soil. Temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels are all controlled by computers. This kind of tank-farming makes it possible to grow plants rapidly, all year round, by maintaining an optimal balance of nutrients.

Shanghai has also moved its greenery below ground. Shu Yu, deputy director of the Shanghai Urban Underground Space Development Institute, has revealed that local architects are working on developing China’s first underground park. Architects will landscape one of Shanghai’s existing underground shopping malls or pedestrian walkthroughs and complete the park in three years. The park is set to cover hundreds of square meters and eventually look like a small forest with winding streams. Can farming be far behind?

Moving onto the waterways running through cities is another adventure in farming. The Science Barge is a sustainable urban farm designed by New York Sun Works, a Manhattan-based environmental nonprofit organization. Situated atop a floating ‘barge’ greenhouse powered by solar, wind and biofuels, and irrigated by rainwater and purified river water, the farm grows food in the city with no carbon emissions, no net water consumption, and no waste stream. The vegetables grown on the Science Barge require seven times less land and four times less water than traditional field crops. The center also uses a method called ‘recirculating greenhouse hydroponics’ to grow tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, and peppers. No soil or pumped in water is utilized in this cultivation process.

Clearly ingenuity is flowing throughout our society. Hopefully, these new forms of high-tech, urban farming will encourage a new generation of farmers.

Further reading and study:

New York Magazine: Sky Farming

National Roofing Contractors Association has published a manual providing in-depth information about green roof projects.

City Farmer News: Guide to Setting up Your Own Edible Rooftop Garden

Urban Agriculture Notes