Whole new approach to community gardening/food self-sufficiency
This English town grows veggies, herbs and fruits for the taking–and vandalism went down.
The goal: town-wide food self-sufficiency by 2018.
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
How I Started on the Green Path
Someone just asked on a LinkedIn group who inspired group members to go green. I decidced my answer is worth sharing here:
For me it was a gradual process with many key moments. Here are a few:
- Age three, realizing I had some power over my environment and didn’t have to tolerate cigarette smoke in my own house. I destroyed several packs of cigarettes at a party my parents threw–their guests had left the packs lying on the coffee table.
- Age 12, feeling injustice in a much more personal and direct way: I had to pay adult price for a movie ticket but sit in the children’s section. I started a boycott of that theater, and have not been back in 42 years–even though it was my neighborhood theater until I went to college.
- 1974, doing a research project on the pros and cons of nuclear power, I discovered that there were no pros but a lot of very serious cons–and recognized that I had to be actively involved in changing this country’s energy picture.
- Beginning to read (in the late 1970s) sustainability thinkers like Amory Lovins, Hazel Henderson, Ralph Borsodi, Helen and Scott Nearing–and to learn via magazine articles some of the ugly history of car companies buying up and yanking out trolley tracks, etc.
- 1981, having an 80-something woman demonstrate to me that we could wash dishes with about 5 percent of the water I’d been using, by turning the water off, soaping them all, and turning on a small stream to rinse.
- In 1999, learning so much from my fellow organizers of Save the Mountain—and proving that we could in fact harness enough citizen energy to protect our endangered mountain range
There are many more, continuing to the present day. Going green is a process.
US Treasury Building Gets a BIG Green Facelift
I love hearing stories about old buildings, especially iconic and massive ones, getting a serious green makeover. The US Treasury Department HQ in Washington, which took 33 years to build (1836-1869), has just achieved gold-level LEED certification.
So now, if people say to you, “and what other historic large office buildings besides the Empire State Building have gone green?” you can cite this great example. (Via GreenBiz.com)
Should we “Occupy Exxon”?
Paul Loeb, one of the most interesting commentators in the sustainability/progressive politics world, posted a provocative article on Huffington Post: “If You Care About Keystone and Climate Change, Occupy Exxon.”
This resonates in a lot of ways. ExxonMobil is so clearly complicit in the conspiracy to block meaningful action to counter human-caused/human-aided catastrophic climate change—directly behind much of the this-isn’t-our-problem propaganda and junk science. And the tar sands/keystone pipeline projects are so environmentally damaging.
There’s also a lot to be said for the Occupy movement getting more specific. Just as we know that the real wealth is concentrated in 1% of the 1%, so the movement can identify a few particularly rapacious corporations, and ExxonMobil certainly qualifies.
But I do have two concerns about picketing gas stations: First, the impact on the poor shlubs–local business owners–who bought the wrong franchise. I don’t know if there’s an easy way to target those stations that are corporate-owned rather than locally owned. And second, the health effects of breathing gas fumes for an extended period. However, the gas stations are a lot more VISIBLE than corporate offices or refineries. I’m wondering if maybe ExxonMobil could be occupied from the town squares and busy intersections, perhaps government offices such as EPA–but with signage clearly focused on the issue.
What do you think? Please post below.
One Author Fights Back Against Amazon’s Latest Stab IN The Back
This is a guest post by Edward Hasbrouck, author of The Practical Nomad, in a rebuttal to Amazon’s latest blow against independent bookstores: getting its customers to spy on them for price checks and then buy online. Remember: when big dogs attack, we are stronger in a circle than standing alone.
Here’s Edward now.
—Shel Horowitz
Amazon.com wants you to browse your local bookstore to find the books you want, then go to Amazon.com to see if you can get them cheaper online. Why not turn the tables? Go ahead and browse the reviews on Amazon.com to find books that might interest you—then order them from your local bookstore, where there are no shipping charges and you can pick books up at your convenience without having to wait at home for a delivery.
The links from both my own Web site (Hasbrouck.org) and my publisher’s site for my book series (PracticalNomad.com) go to Powells. if you sign up as a Powells.com “affiliate”, and include the appropriate code in your links, you also get a cut of sales referred from those links. Small, but royalties on book sales are also small, and every penny helps. It took some effort to get my publisher to link from their site to Powells.com for my books instead of Amazon.com (their default), but eventually they agreed.
You can also create direct links for a specific book from Indiebound/Booksense, a joint online marketing effort of local independent bookstores. If someone follows the link, they can find out what store has the book in stock nearby, or request that a copy be sent to a store near them for pickup. And as with Powell’s, you sign up with them as an affiliate to get a small referral commission.
Cars Aren’t the Only Things to Share
This is a reminder of two critical concepts for the coming years:
1. Money is not a goal; it is a means of accomplishing something. While having more money means you can purchase the goods or services you want, there are often other ways to accomplish the goal.
2. Buying stuff is not the only way to accomplish something.
Here’s a look at how to leverage other methods of getting your needs met and your wants fulfilled.
Zipcar just commissioned a study on the sharing habits of Millennials, showing that they are more willing to share not just cars, but a wide range of resources, than their parents and grandparents.
That may be true of the majority culture, but there are plenty of us older folks who know a good thing when they see it. I’ve been lifelong practitioner of this sort of approach, and a public advocate all the way back to at least 1995, when I published my fourth book, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist. I’m turning 55 on Saturday, and here are some among many sharing experiences I’ve had over the years:
- As a college student in Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1973-76, I became aware of a mostly Quaker community called The Vale. Instead of everyone going out and buying a lawnmower, they pitched in and bought a communal tractor.
- In 1990, when laser printers cost several thousand dollars, I organized a co-op and brought in a bookstore owner, a community activist, and a magazine publisher to share the costs of purchasing one (it lived at my house, since I organized it).
- As a member of Servas since 1983 and Couchsurfing since 2009, I’ve shared my home with strangers traveling through, and received hospitality form others on three continents.
- My neighbors, a Republican mainstream farm family, constantly drive each other’s vehicles. The question seems to be what’s the best car, truck, or tractor for the task, and not who owns it.
- Two decades ago, I was on the board of a group called Homesharing in Hampshire County: a mainstream social service agency that matched up people with extra space in their homes (often elders in need of both companionship and home/property maintenance) with people who needed a place to live.
- Thirty years ago, I lived in a community in West Philadelphia (a place with good public transit), where three or four cars were shared among about 120 people, as needed, and users paid a small fee per mile to cover costs. When we needed to make a supermarket run or fill our water jugs (we all hated the municipal water, so we self-bottled 50 gallons at a time at a spring in the next town), we borrowed one of the communal cars. Most of this community lived in group housing: six or eight people sharing a big old Victorian. It worked out very nicely.
- For a decade at least, Freecycle has provided a formal structure to get rid of stuff you no longer need by passing it on to someone else, or to get something you need without having to buy it.
The article, in The Atlantic, also linked to a cool website (and concept) called Collaborative Consumption, which may be increasingly important as we try to turn the world green.
Brag: First Business to Earn Green America Gold Certification
It’s been a good year for recognition of my work for a better world. In October, I was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame (View pictures and read the transcript here.)
And then last night, I received notification that I (as the human face of GreenAndProfitable.com) am the very first business in the country to be certified by Green America at the Gold level (which was a fairly arduous process involving several reviews of an extensive questionnaire covering socially responsible investing, supply chain, commitment to social and economic justice, and, of course, environmental benchmarks, among other things).
I’m thrilled. After 40 years in the environmental world, it is nice to have people notice.
The Best Sustainability Tip Wins a $1299 Multifunction Printer
Now through Monday morning at 6 a.m., youhave a chance to enter a contest for a brand new Dell Dell 3335dn multifunction printer, which not only prints two-sided at high resolution from any computer on our network, but also scans, copies, e-mails, and stores documents in its memory. I have to tell you, even though I’ve gotten along just fine without in-house copying and faxing capabilities, I’m finding that I really enjoy having them.
Because the company is courting the green market for this printer (which not only can print both sides of the paper but also has some cool energy management features), Dell’s promotion team came to me and asked if I’d like to give one of these printers away. Of course, I agreed–but I put a condition on it. Rather than just give one away randomly, I’ll give it to the person who submits the best sustainability tip via my Twitter account during the giveaway days.
So you’ll be rewarded for your thinking processes, and probably not facing an enormous number of entries. In other words, if you give this your best shot, you’ll have a much better chance of winning than in most contests.
And five runners-up get a copy of my very useful e-book, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle.
Disclosure: as is obvious from above, I got one of these printers as a gift and have been using it steadily ever since.
By entering, you agree to both my rules and Dell’s rules for the contest, which are both posted at https://painlessgreenbook.com/win-a-1299-printer-december-16-19-2011.
Note: Posting a comment here or e-mailing me, while welcome, does not enter you in the contest. You must follow the specific procedure outlined on that page. There’s a specific place you need to enter, and your entry has to contain two specific things.
Dear Democrats: Stop Enabling GOP Bullying
If you give bullies what they want, they feel empowered, and they trample you again, and they go out and find new victims, Every parent knows this.
Yet apparently, the Democratic Party doesn’t understand this reality. Today’s paper had not one but two new instances of Democrats essentially squatting in front of their attackers with a “kick me” sign (on top of the many other times in the last few years, starting at least as far back as the 2002 vote to enable the illegal and unjustified war in Iraq).
First, Barack Obama gave up the very good promise to veto the military appropriation bill that contains draconian, even fascistic, legislation allowing indefinite military detention of US citizens arrested on US soil.
And second, even though the wealthiest Americans pay lower tax rates than they did even under Ronald Reagan, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have agreed to scuttle the “millionaires tax.”
What will the COP bullies come back with for their next demand? And when will the Democrats find their spine? Already, we are endanger of losing our democracy, and already the disparity between rich and poor makes us seem like some third-world country.
U.S. Solar Industry Posts Best Quarter Ever
Good article in Renewable Energy World, showing that despite such setbacks as Solyndra, solar is actually a pretty solid player these days.
In fact, for the first time ever, the U.S. solar industry installed more than a gigawatt of new capacity. That’s like a whole nuclear power plant, without the risks.