Author: Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert

A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,

I revisited a post I’d written on election reform, back in 2007. In that post, I listed seven specific steps the United States could take to make its elections more representative and relevant.

But I left out a huge one—did I think back then, that it was so obvious it didn’t need to be listed?

Getting. Money. Out. Of. Politics.

That means not only repealing the wretched anti-democratic Citizens United decision, but much more. It means making politicians once again responsible to the people, and not to well-funded lobbyists. It probably means public funding of candidates, and limits on the dollars that can be spent. Ideally, it would mean an end to TV advertising of smear ads, and replacing them with a list of candidate websites (not just the largest parties but any party that achieves an agreed threshold of support) where people could learn the candidate’s positions on actual issues—in more depth than attack sound bites.

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Copywriting, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Reading a newsletter from a marketer I generally find thought-provoking, sincere, and personable, I was rather surprised to read an article where she took one of her subscribers to task for objecting to the word “sucks” on her home page.

To me, that word inserts an unnecessary barrier, the more ironic because she bases her whole approach on connecting person-to-person.

So of course, I wrote her a note:

As some one who does my best to–and *usually* succeeds–find the best even in the grumps (in that way, I’m like your late father, I guess)–may I put another possible interpretation out there? It’s likely that this person was just looking for an excuse to act out–BUT it’s also possible that he had good reason to be offended by the S word. I personally don’t use that word, because it can be can be interpreted as homophobic–being derived from a longer expletive that starts with a c, the first four letters of which represent the male organ (I’m not being a prude here by not stating the word, but I do have a goal of avoiding the spamfilters). For the same reasons, I don’t use the word “niggardly”, even though its etymology has nothing to do with the n-word–I don’t want people who don’t know that etymology to think I’m racist.

And there’s a difference between “plain language” and foul language. I grew up on the tough streets of the Bronx, and it was a minefield of F-bombs and other expletives–but I’ve lived in places where cursing is considered not just extremely rude but an offense against religion. So, take your choice–the left -wing or right-wing possibility of why he was teed off.

I don’t remember how I found your list, but I suspect I would not have subscribed if the first thing I’d seen was “disconnection sucks”. I have a thicker skin than to be offended, but there are always better ways to say it, and I would not have wanted to get into the network of someone whose language could have been interpreted as mean and deliberately offensive, because I surround myself with people who empower others and don’t denigrate them.

Luckily, I found you some other way (I have no idea how our paths crossed, actually)–and I know you to be a caring and empowering person. But think about the message you’re putting out here, intentionally or not. This is not so much a question of political correctness as it is of establishing unnecessary barriers. yes, I understand that you want to drive the wrong people away, and I respect that. I do the same thing. For instance, when someone approaches me about working together, there’s a paragraph in my reply that says,

“Please note that I reserve the right to reject a project if I feel I’m not the right person for it. This would include projects that in my opinion promote racism, homophobia, bigotry or violence–or that promote the tobacco, nuclear power, or weapons industries–or if I do not feel the product is of high enough quality that I can get enthusiastic about it.”

But I wonder if what your doing might drive the RIGHT people away too–especially since to me, it is so out-of-harmony with your real core message of marketing through the power of personal story.

I’ll be very curious to receive her response. And meanwhile, how about a response from you? Are curse words a barrier for you? Am I overreacting? Is she unnecessarily defensive? Why, or why not?

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By Posted on Posted in Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environmenl, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Earthship Biotecture World Headquarters, just outside Taos, New Mexico, is a deep ecology subdivision of some 70 homes, expected to grow eventually to about 130. It sits on 650 acres, of which 347 acres are parkland, owned in common by the residents. DSCN7767The houses look like a mating between the Taos Pueblo adobe of 1000 years ago and Starship Enterprise. Visitors can go through a self-guided tour with explanatory video and slideshow and learn how the homes—off-grid not just for electricity but also for water and sewer—are constructed to use very little electricity, water, or heating/cooling energy. I asked Ashton Wolfe, one of the media liaisons, what was different about Earthships compared to other passive solar earth-sheltered homes. She explained that:

  • Earthships are fairly self-contained: they generate their own electricity and all or most of their own water (the threshold is eight inches of rain a year, so in a dry, desert climate like Taos, extra water is sometimes needed). Passive solar design and thick earthen and rubber tire walls eliminate the need for any fossil-fuel-based heating or cooling system. Attached greenhouses not only provide growing space for food, but also create an essential climate barrier between extreme outside temperatures (ranging from -30° to over 100°F in Taos, assisting the homes in maintaining temperatures ranging from 65 to 75° all year long, without any need for outside power sources.
  • The key structural innovation is old tires packed with soil.
  • The buildings contain a large percentage of recycled materials, and thus are somewhat different from unit to unit. Many of these are not traditional building materials, but things like old cans and bottles, so Earthships also reduce landfill volume.
  • Water is used four times, filtered through a system of restorer cells that capture and purify wastewater. It starts with the highest uses: drinking and washing, then domestic uses, flushing toilets and finally, exterior landscaping: watering nonfood plants.
  • Earthship homes, which have been built in every state and in some 18 countries, lend themselves well to building on undeveloped lots. Much of the cost of a “normal” home is in the infrastructure: connecting water, sewer, and electricity, for instance. While Earthships’ construction cost is higher, at about $200-$250 per square foot in a place like Taos, the lack of infrastructure costs result in a house that is pretty much comparably priced with a conventional home—and of course, far cheaper to operate over the lifespan of the house.
  • The concept was developed by Michael Reynolds in the years after his graduation from architecture school in 1969. By 1975, he was using the filled-tire construction method, and the first Earthship incorporating self-sufficiency in water, power, heating, and cooling was constructed back in 1988.DSCN7775

 

The Earthship community has a very informative website at Earthship.com. It looks like there’s very little there when you srrive at the website, but scroll down or click through to the blog and you’ll see there’s actually quite a bit.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

I hope Obama and the Democrats learn their lesson. when they refuse to comprise on things that should not be compromised on, when they stand up for their principles, they win.

What a great president he might have been (and perhaps still could be) if he had figured that out in 2009. There is a difference between conciliation and giving away the store, and every time he kowtowed, the other side saw him as weak, and took out their lances again to whittle things down even further.

Of course, it helped that progressives and liberals came out in force to tell him he was doing the right thing. One of the lessons Obama should have taken from the 2008 election campaign is that he can organize a large constituency that “has his back.” and we progressives can also organize to push him leftward when he dirfts like a rudderless boat in the face of pressure from the right.

We have to remember that Obamacare was a Heritage Foundation invention. The left wanted single-payer, which Obama refused to even discuss.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Eco-friendly, Frugality/Frugal Fun, localism/locavore, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

When I get a good apple or pear, I eat it “right down to the bone.”

Apple core

This is an actual core from a wonderful Macoun apple that I picked myself. It was fresh, juicy, crunchy, and that wonderful combination of sweet and tart. An apple right from the tree is one of the great pleasures in life. When we go apple picking, I get home and immediately start drying them and making apple sauce, because even one day later, it won’t taste quite as good. And three weeks later, it’ll taste only a little bit better than a store-bought apple shipped from the other side of the country.

As a locavore, a green business profitability expert, and someone who attempts to live a very green, yet very comfortable life, I feel each of us has a responsibility to minimize waste. Eating every last bit of a tasty apple is one of the ways that minimizing waste can actually be fun. And of course, the few grams remaining go into the compost, to be recycled by Mother Nature into something else.

And those are the two principles of waste reduction: use things more efficiently so you generate less waste, and figure out what that waste can be turned into to create something else. Better than pollution, I’d say.

Please comment below about how you are—or how you could be—generating less waste or setting that waste up as raw material for something else.

 

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By Posted on Posted in media-general, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

My local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts, ran a brilliant editorial, “The GOP’s Ship of Fools,” on who’s responsible for the idiotic and totally avoidable government shutdown.

Here’s a little piece:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor led reporters into a room Monday and showed them an empty table, suggesting that if only Democrats and the president were willing to talk, the government would not have been hours from a new fiscal year without a budget. Do not be fooled. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Democrats were about to get what they wanted — a government shutdown. Do not be fooled. Senate Leader Harry Reid observed that McConnell (R-Absurdistan) was channeling “1984” author George Orwell as his speechwriter, so upside down was his logic.

Want to read the whole thing? You’ll find it at gazettenet.com/home/8759377-95/editorial-the-gops-ship-of-fools —I recommend that you read it.

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , ,

It’s amazing how much you can see on foot, if you just open your eyes.

I just took an hour-plus walk in Springfield, Massachusetts, from Baystate Medical Center’s Chestnut Building in the North End to the Quadrangle downtown, inbound on Dwight and returning on Chestnut. And I saw all sorts of things that I found fascinating (your mileage may vary—but as I always say, I became a writer because I’m interested in almost everything). Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, so words will have to do. Here’s some of what I discovered:

  • A spectacular blue, green, and pink Victorian house, as fancy as any of San Francisco’s Painted Ladies.
  • Not one, but three churches with Star of David motifs. One of them was obviously and one probably built as synagogues, but the third, a massive stone Catholic edifice with a medieval-style tower and an ultra-modern series of metal sculptures on the roof—could only have been built as a church. The star was directly over the main entrance.
  • The most graceful windows I’ve ever seen on a residence: the dramatically tall and elegant rounded windows on the Kimball, built in 1911.
  • Several blocks that must have once held graceful if run-down Victorians and still has a few—but most have been replaced by a tactless mix of tiny 1950s ranch houses and ugly 1970s or 1980s small duplexes. What a shame!
  • The vibrant blue art panels and gold trim on the sides of the Deco-era Massachusetts State Office Building, across from the railroad station—which I never noticed in many trips passing it as I picked up or dropped off someone
  • A former school from the late 19th century, built to resemble a castle (now housing for the elderly).
  • An enormous strip club decked out to look like a commercial block in New Orleans
  • The sprawling ante-bellum-Southern-mansion-style institution that might be part of Mercy Hospital, tall columns and all—sealed off with a chain-link fence and no trespassing signs, seemingly deserted except for one cluster of rooms with lights on. This building was sandwiched between another once-grand institutional building that had burned and been partially demolished—and a modern glass, steel, and aluminum office complex that doesn’t even have its walls yet.
  • A beautiful green antique copper clock tower on Main Street, viewed from up the hill on Chestnut near State where I couldn’t tell what building it was attached to.
  • Three gilded onion domes atop a Russian Orthodox church.
  • A sculpture all by itself on the Chestnut Street side of Museum Quadrangle, obviously part of the Dr. Seuss Sculpture Garden but one I’d never noticed walking around the quad—and another sculpture across from the Mass Mutual Center that looked like broken pottery.
  • The Two Mattoon nightclub is now a law office. Mattoon is a beautiful historic block that would be at home in Washington DC’s Georgetown or Brooklyn’s Park Slope. I didn’t walk it today, but crossed the western edge of it.
  • Rehab projects everywhere.
  • How remarkably few people were out on the streets. In an hour’s walk, I probably saw just a couple of dozen pedestrians, even though I came close to Main Street and it was a beautiful sunny day.

Of course, it’s not enough to notice. We need to think about what these things mean. For instance, I see Springfield as a city that actively reuses its old buildings; the ugly urban renewal project was an exception. More typical are the synagogues that have become evangelical churches, the train station that’s being redeveloped into a modern transportation center and retail base, and the school that now provides living quarters.

The near-absence of pedestrians means something less positive: that the city still has a long way to go before it feels vibrant. I’ve seen pictures of Downtown Springfield in the 1940s, teeming with people. The city needs a more active commercial base with people-centered retail and attention to both visitors and residents, as it once had.

What do you see when you walk around a neighborhood that you usually drive through? Your comments, below, are welcome.

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By Posted on Posted in media-general, Peace and War, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

Last Wednesday, my local paper’s lead story was a profile of two long-time peace activists: Frances Crowe, age 94, and Arky Markham, 98. I’ve known them both for decades; you can’t be involved in peace and social justice issues in our area for long without encountering them. I saw both of them at the peace demonstration last Monday, in fact.

31 years ago, when I was actively freelancing for this same paper, I published an interview with a different pair of legendary local peace activists, and was thrilled when the paper ran it on the front page.

Of course, these four wonderful people are just the tiniest fraction of people doing good work for peace in our neighborhood and around the world.

Let’s tell our newspapers we want more stories like that on the front page :-).

Note: you may have to be a subscriber to view the link, but you should be able to at least see the headline and lead paragraph.

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By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environmenl, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles Tagged with , , , , ,

In light of Michelle Obama’s new initiative on drinking more water, a reporter wanted to know the best bottled waters.

I immediately wondered why the reporter saw bottled water as the only choice to drink more water, and this is what I wrote:

I do hope your article offers the non-bottled alternative of filtered tapwater. It is far superior–at least for those of us who live somewhere the water is drinkable–in environmental and social impact and cost.

Enviro

Water bottling not only wastes the oil used to make the plastic, as well as the energy to power the bottling plant, it also contaminates and renders unusable two to three times as much water as is in the bottle. And quite frankly, I don’t think we have that water to squander. Our grandchildren might forgive us for squandering the oil, but they won’t forgive us for leaving them without enough usable water.

Economic

I’ve seen estimates that people can save $1400 a year per person drinking tap instead of bottled.

Social Justice

In far too many locations, water (and soda) bottlers draw down an area’s water reserves with little or no compensation to the locals–who are often economically disadvantaged. Sometimes they are left withinadequate supplies for their own farming, etc.

And did you know that a number of prominent bottled water brands are nothing more than filtered tap anyway? Both Green American and Corporate Accountability International have long-running campaigns in favor of nonbottled water. You can find lots of information on their websites.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business-general, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Peace and War, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

All through the Vietnam era, we used to hear that war was terrible in so many other ways, but good for the economy. It put people to work, it allowed companies facing hardship to find customers, etc. etc.

This was always a misleading argument, as war spending created far fewer jobs than many other categories.

It seems today’s market is much more aware of the potential economic devastation of war. Consider this bit of news:

With the possibility of military action against Syria easing, investors sent the markets soaring to a sharply higher close with the Dow leaping 127 points to 15,191. Nasdaq climbed 22 points to 3729.

Incidentally, money spent on energy efficiency and going green has a much higher rate of return for the economy. Green energy spending creates more jobs, consumer spending, and long-term consumer savings that frees up cash for more spending, while war drives us deeper into debt.

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