Sustainability Archive

Is Your Favorite Natural Brand Owned by a Mega Corporation?

by Loren Berlin, via The Huffington Post

Toms of Maine logoIf you've recently traded in your Colgate toothpaste for a tube of Tom's of Maine in an effort to be more environmentally friendly, your money is still going to the same company.

Tom's of Maine, a popular line of natural toiletries, is owned by Colgate-Palmolive -- a Fortune 500 company with $15 billion in revenues last year.

Tom's of Maine is not the only earthy beauty company backed by a major American corporation. Rather, it's a common trend in the world of personal care products.

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Exploring National Parks Threatened by Climate Change

by Ted Alvarez, via Grist.org

Alex hiking in the Grand Canyon. Photo by Mike LanzaWhen writer and outdoorsman Mike Lanza realized climate change was staking a full-scale assault on our most beloved national parks, he didn’t just lament about how his kids wouldn’t get to experience them the way he did. Instead, he saddled up his entire family — wife Penny, son Nate, 10, and daughter Alex, 7 — with packs, kayaks, and climbing gear and embarked on a year-long mission to visit them all. His new book Before They’re Gone: A Family’s Year-Long Quest to explore America’s Most Endangered National Parks chronicles the adventure. He took some time to answer a few questions about our changing parks, life-list trip planning, and educating the next generation about climate change through adventures in the great outdoors.

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Disaster Resilient Construction and Sustainability

by Bill Lascher, Miller-McCune, via AtlerNet.org

UCSF building. Photo Credit: Rafael Vinoly Architects

As eco-savvy as the earthquake-prone Left Coast might be, it’s probably safe to bet that going green won’t be the first thing to come to mind when the Big One hits Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco.

Nevertheless, green-building advocates and disaster planners are finding common ground as they try to convince cost-conscious building owners that keeping a building operational after a punishing quake or other disaster makes economic and environmental sense. Developers and architects already earn green-building kudos for outfitting structures with solar panels and energy-scrimping lighting. Now some builders wonder whether keeping a building standing should earn them similar credit.

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What Makes a “Good” Corporation?

by Marjorie Kelly, via Yes! Magazine

Some of the partners at John Lewis PartnershipOur economic system is profoundly broken. To anyone paying attention, that much is clear. But what’s less clear is this: Our approach to fixing the economy is broken as well. The whole notion of “fighting corporate power” arises from an underlying belief that there is no alternative to capitalism as we know it. Starting from the insight that capitalism has become virtually a universal economy, we conclude that our best hope is to regulate corporations and work for countervailing powers like unions. But then we’ve lost before we begin. We’ve defined ourselves as marginal and powerless.

There is another approach. It’s bubbling up all around us in the form of economic alternatives like cooperatives, employee-owned firms, social enterprises, and community land trusts. We don’t recognize that these represent a coherent, workable alternative to capitalism, for two reasons.

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Farmer Joel Salatin Takes on the New York Times

by Joel Salatin, Polyface Farms

Joe SalatinThe recent editorial by James McWilliams titled "The Myth of Sustainable Meat" contains enough factual errors and skewed assumptions to fill a book and normally I would dismiss this out of hand as too much nonsense to merit a response. But since it specifically mentioned Polyface, a rebuttal is appropriate. For a more comprehensive rebuttal, read the book Folks, This Ain't Normal.

Let's go point by point. First, that grass grazing cows emit more methane than grain-fed. This is factually false. Actually, the amount of methane emitted by fermentation is the same whether it occurs in the cow or outside. Whether the feed is eaten by an herbivore or left to rot on its own, the methane generated is identical.

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The United Nations Embraces the Economics of Happiness

by Laura Musikanski, via Yes! Magazine

Denmark and other Scandinavian countries frequently top lists of the world's happiest countries. Photo by Eddie CodelImagine you open the paper tomorrow, and the headlines are not about the “sluggish economy,” but our nation’s quality of life. You turn to the business section, and find not just information about a certain company’s profitability, but also about its impact on community health and employee well-being.

Imagine, in short, a world where the metric that guides our decisions is not money, but happiness.

That is the future that 650 political, academic, and civic leaders from around the world came together to promote on April 2, 2012. Encouraged by the government of Bhutan, the United Nations held a High Level Meeting for Well being and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm.

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Using Technology and Excess Produce to Solve Hunger

Gary Oppenheimer in his gardenLegendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow once said, “The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.” One of those rare people who not only see but act on what was has clearly been invisible to most of us is Gary Oppenheimer. Since he founded AmpleHarvest.org, he has been named CNN Hero, has received major media coverage, has spoken at TEDx Manhattan, has been praised by First Lady Michelle Obama, and was even invited to the White House to meet the President.

What’s it all about? AmpleHarvest.org matches the food pantries used by more than 50 million Americans living in food-insecure homes with the over 40 million people who grow fruits, vegetables, herbs and nuts in home gardens—and who often have an excess. Prior to the site, the problem was that gardeners could not find local food pantries (also called food shelves, food closets, food cupboards or food banks in some areas) to donate to, as many were not online. AmpleHarvest.org provides a central repository for these pantries so that gardeners can easily locate those nearest them.

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New Wind Turbine Produces Electricity and Water in the Desert

via RechargeNews

Eole Water's WMS1000 turbine. Photograph: Eole WaterFrench technology start-up Eole Water is on track to erect a wind turbine in the United Arab Emirates that can produce hundreds of litres of drinking water a day from the dry desert air.

Tests on a ground-mounted prototype of its water maker system (WMS), which began in October in Mussafah, on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, have shown it to be capable of flowing 500-800 litres daily. But Eole Water believes this volume can be tuned up to levels of well over 1,000 litres with a tower-top system, and the company has hopes of scaling up the technology for use by industry and off-grid communities.

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New Study Links Autism to HFCS and Industrial Food

by Katie Rojas-Jahn and Renee Dufault, FIHRI, via Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

The epidemic of autism in children in the United States may be linked to the typical American diet according to a new study published online in Clinical Epigenetics by Renee Dufault, et. al. The study explores how mineral deficiencies—affected by dietary factors like high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—could impact how the human body rids itself of common toxic chemicals like mercury and pesticides.

The release comes on the heels of a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimates the average rate of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among eight year olds is now 1 in 88, representing a 78 percent increase between 2002 and 2008. Among boys, the rate is nearly five times the prevalence found in girls.

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Fighting Fossil Fuel’s Government Finance Freebies

by Bill McKibben, via Yes! Magazine

The worship of big oil. Photo by John CurleyAlong with “fivedollaragallongas,” the energy watchword for the next few months is: “subsidies.” Last week, for instance, New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez proposed ending some of the billions of dollars in handouts enjoyed by the fossil-fuel industry with a “Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act.” It was, in truth, nothing to write home about—a curiously skimpy bill that only targeted oil companies, and just the five richest of them at that. Left out were coal and natural gas, and you won’t be surprised to learn that even then it didn’t pass.

Still, President Obama is now calling for an end to oil subsidies at every stop on his early presidential-campaign-plus-fundraising blitz—even at those stops where he’s also promising to “drill everywhere.” And later this month Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will introduce a much more comprehensive bill that tackles all fossil fuels and their purveyors (and has no chance whatsoever of passing this Congress).

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New Science Tracks Industrial Agriculture’s True Climate Impact

by Tom Laskaway, vai Grist.org

Industrial agricultureWhen I examined the reasons agriculture often gets a pass in climate negotiations recently, I pointed to the fact that precise measurement of the climate impact of many industrial farming practices remains difficult and controversial. This is especially true when it comes to synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

The effect of excess fertilizer on our waterways gets much more attention than it does when it enters the air. And for good reason. It’s toxic to consume nitrates in your drinking water. We’re learning that agricultural overuse of fertilizer has contaminated the drinking water of whole regions of California. Meanwhile, nitrogen that runs into the ocean causes oxygen-depleted “dead zones” around the world. The dead zone in our own Gulf Of Mexico (measured every summer) keeps getting larger — last year’s was the size of New Jersey.

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Growing Urban Farmers in New Orleans

by Claire Thompson, via Grist.org

Nat Turner (third from left, white shirt) stands on a new compost pile with a group of OSBG interns, Americorps employees, and volunteers.Nat Turner, a former New York City public-school teacher, moved to New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward on Thanksgiving Day, 2008. He didn’t know anything about gardening — “I could barely keep a cactus alive” — but he had a vision to start an urban farm that would be a vehicle for educating and empowering the neighborhood’s youth. He’d been making service trips to the Big Easy with students, but he wanted an opportunity to dig deeper, literally and figuratively, into the city’s revitalization.

His first goal, Turner says, “is to figure out how to make the Lower Ninth food secure.” It seems fitting, then, that in a neighborhood with no supermarket, Turner set up shop in a falling-down building that had once housed a black-owned family business called the B&G Grocery. He filled a pink bathtub in the backyard with soil and planted scallions, which floated away when the bathtub flooded in a rainstorm. That was the beginning of Our School at Blair Grocery (OSBG).

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California Fracking—Ungregulated For the Past 60 Years?

by Scott Thill, via AlterNet.org

A natural gas drill stands at a hydraulic fracturing site on January 18, 2012 in South Montrose, Pennsylvania. | Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThanks to the smoking gun of Josh Fox's sobering documentary Gasland, hydraulic fracturing has finally entered our renewable news cycle. Yet despite poisoning groundwater, freeing methane and literally creating earthquakes back east, fracking has a visibility problem in California.

The situation became less clear after a recent investigative report from DC-based nonprofit Environmental Working Group explained that California has experienced 60 unregulated years of widespread fracking, whose technical methods and geographical locations in the seismically active state exist outside of the public purview. It got darker after Governor Jerry Brown's administration wiped the state government's Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) Web site of fracking fact-sheets and documents. Good luck finding anything about fracking on the governor's official site either.

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Chef Clayton Chapman Brings the Food Revolution to Omaha

Clayton ChapmanThe Grey Plume has been dubbed “The Greenest Restaurant in America” by the Green Restaurant Association. Not only are ingredients for their menu sourced locally from sustainable growers—and all dishes based upon seasonal crops—but every detail of the restaurant itself has been fashioned to be eco-friendly. Yet perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this eatery is its location: Omaha, Nebraska, in the very heart of industrial agriculture country.

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Pesticide Isolated as Cause of Bee Colony Collapse

Honey beeThe likely culprit in sharp worldwide declines in honeybee colonies since 2006 is imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).

The authors, led by Chensheng (Alex) Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the Department of Environmental Health, write that the new research provides “convincing evidence” of the link between imidacloprid and the phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which adult bees abandon their hives.

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Stopping Climate Change Is MUCH Cheaper than Purported

by James West, via Grist.org

Pocket change—the actual cost of fixing the climateYou’ve heard it before: Politicians say they’d love to take action against climate change, but they’re reeling from sticker shock. A new report from the U.K.’s leading climate change watchdog refutes this oft-cited argument that climate action will herald economic Armageddon.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) report, with the hairy-sounding title “Statutory Advice on Inclusion of International Aviation and Shipping,” says that in 2050, the U.K.’s emissions reductions across the whole economy will cost 1 to 2 percent of the total GDP. This updates, in greater detail, the range predicted half a decade ago by the watershed Stern Review.

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The Growth of Domestic Fair Trade

by Twilight Greenaway, via Grist.org

The Farm lunch at the Gathering Together FarmAt Gathering Together Farm, in Philomath, Ore., owners Sally Brewer and John Eveland sit down with all their employees three times a week for an all-farm lunch. At the height of the growing season, Gathering Together Farm employs as many as 100 people, so Brewer and Eveland bring in employees on those days especially to cook. It’s no small expense, but it’s a way to ensure that the field crew gets face time with the irrigation crew, the office employees, and the farmers market crew.

“It’s a huge meal, and it’s part of the benefits package,” says Rose Mahoney, who helps manage the farm. “It really has a family feeling.”

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How to Start Your Own Alternative Power Company

By Sven Eberlein, via AlterNet.org

Ursula SladekUrsula Sladek, a 2011 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient, is the co-founder and president of EWS, one of Europe’s largest cooperatively owned green energy companies. Motivated by the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl in 1986, the schoolteacher and mother of five from the small town of Schönau (population 2,382) in Germany’s Black Forest region—along with her husband Michael and a group of concerned parents—unsuccessfully lobbied her regional power company to adopt conservation measures, to no avail. After over 10 years of citizen activism and two referendums, Sladek and her small-town energy rebels were able to take over the local grid and start a community-run power co-op.

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New Yorkers Get a Farmer’s Market on Their Phones

by Jenny An, via Grist.org

Food from FarmsA community-supported agriculture (CSA) share can be a culinary battle royale. Every other week, it’s you versus a mystery box. No tap outs, no substitutions. Just a bitter melon so fresh, you wouldn’t dare toss it out. And while there’s something to be said for experimentation, sometimes you just want something a little more familiar, something easy to pack for lunch, something the kids will touch. Or maybe you’re just having a mad craving for heirloom radishes?

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Local Action—Bypassing Congress on Farm Bill 2012

by Jill Richardson, via AtlerNet.org

Local actions will likely be more effective than the 2012 Farm Bill (Photo: Stockbyte/Getty Images) I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but I don't care about the 2012 farm bill. Here's why.

The sustainable food and agriculture movement has a lot of momentum and a lot of opportunities right now, but only limited resources in terms of lobbying power. The movement has a large amount of people who care, but a relatively small amount of money compared to entrenched agriculture interests. It has a few strategically placed sympathetic appointees and elected representatives in the government. But, unfortunately, Dennis Kucinich alone cannot pass the vastly revamped farm bill we need.

But outside of Washington, the ranks of those who care about localizing our food supply and making agriculture more sustainable are growing every day. After all, delicious food is a powerful recruiting tool. The sustainable food movement is not powerless. Not nearly. But the movement can make far more progress if it focuses its energy on more winnable issues. Focusing on the farm bill for the whole of 2012 will use up endless resources and result in relatively little gain.

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Northampton’s Organic Community Gardens

by Bruce Boyers

Grow Food Northampton logoAn entire town getting behind and pushing locally grown, sustainable food for the community is a dream that many of us have—but in Northampton, Massachusetts, home of Smith College, that dream is becoming a reality.

As this is being written, 100 gardening plots in the town’s new 17-acre community organic garden are being seriously vied for by citizens, schools and groups, while a recently established organic farm is expanding, and yet another is opening in the upcoming season. In total, 121 acres are being developed simply and only for sustainable organic farming. The entire scenario was brought about under the guidance of nonprofit organization Grow Food Northampton.

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Mapping Wind Energy as Art

The live wind mapEngineers Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas from Google have produced as astounding personal art project called the Wind Map. It is a live visual demonstration of wind patterns in the United States.

According to their website, "Surface wind data comes from the National Digital Forecast Database. These are near-term forecasts, revised once per hour. So what you're seeing is a living portrait. And for those of you chasing top wind speed, note that maximum speed may occur over lakes or just offshore."

If anyone still harbors doubts about the usefulness of wind as an energy source, this map should allay them.

Below is a video capture of the map in action. Click here to visit the live site.

YouTube Preview Image

 

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A Road Map to Sustainable Agriculture

via University of Wisconsin

Sustainable agricultureAn independent commission of scientific leaders from 13 countries on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 released a detailed set of recommendations to policymakers on how to achieve food security in the face of climate change.

In their report, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change proposes specific policy responses to the global challenge of feeding a world confronted by climate change, population growth, poverty, food price spikes and degraded ecosystems. The report highlights specific opportunities under the mandates of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Group of 20 (G20) nations.

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Solar Energy Takes on a Third Dimension

by David L. Chandler, via MIT News Office

Two small-scale versions of three-dimensional photovoltaic arrays were among those tested by Jeffrey Grossman and his team on an MIT rooftop to measure their actual electrical output throughout the day. Photo: Allegra BovermanIntensive research around the world has focused on improving the performance of solar photovoltaic cells and bringing down their cost. But very little attention has been paid to the best ways of arranging those cells, which are typically placed flat on a rooftop or other surface, or sometimes attached to motorized structures that keep the cells pointed toward the sun as it crosses the sky.

Now, a team of MIT researchers has come up with a very different approach: building cubes or towers that extend the solar cells upward in three-dimensional configurations. Amazingly, the results from the structures they’ve tested show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area.

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Butterfly Wings and Renewable Energy

via American Chemical Society

Black Swallowtail butterflyButterfly wings may rank among the most delicate structures in nature, but they have given researchers powerful inspiration for new technology that doubles production of hydrogen gas—a green fuel of the future—from water and sunlight. The researchers presented their findings here today at the American Chemical Society's (ACS') 243rd National Meeting & Exposition.

Tongxiang Fan, Ph.D., who reported on the use of two swallowtail butterflies—Troides aeacus (Heng-chun birdwing butterfly) and Papilio helenus Linnaeus (Red Helen)—as models, explained that finding renewable sources of energy is one of the great global challenges of the 21st century. One promising technology involves producing clean-burning hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water. It can be done in devices that use sunlight to kick up the activity of catalysts that split water into its components, hydrogen and oxygen. Better solar collectors are the key to making the technology practical, and Fan's team turned to butterfly wings in their search for making solar collectors that gather more useful light.

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