Category: People Helping People

By Posted on Posted in Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environmenl, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, Peace and War, People Helping People, poverty, Technology Tagged with , , , , ,

Watch this video about the Copenhagen Wheel, a device that captures and stores energy from cyclists pedaling and coasting, and supplements pedal power on the uphills or over long distances. And then read a few of the comments.

To me, this is brilliant technology! First, it makes biking—and particularly bicycle commuting over distances of 20 to 50 miles—an attractive option for tens of thousands of people who’ve felt unwilling to try it before. That, in turn, reduces the number of cars on the road, which has dozens of advantages to the planet and to our pocketbooks. Second, it makes it possible for the moderate cyclist (like me) to go much farther by bike.

A lot of the comments are angry that this will disrupt their exercise. I think they’re not thinking about it the right way. Instead of blaming a machine for interfering with their workout, think about the ability to bike instead of drive to good riding places some distance away, or to bike much farther distances to explore an area farther out.

I do ride for exercise. And I do face a BIG hill when I go out my door. I’ve learned to manage it, but when I first moved to that area, it was very tough. Something like this would have been a nice transition as I learned to conquer that tough hill.

And for the exercise-only bikers, I have one more suggestion: write to the company and tell them you want a manual override option: an off switch, in other words. Then you have the boost when you need it.

Let’s apply this kind of creativity to every aspect of our lives! We could not only solve climate change but war, poverty, and other global issues. I wish this company much success!

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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, Energy & Sustainability, Environmenl, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

Yesterday, I wrote about how much fun I have cooking and eating local organic food—and how it’s not uncommon for 80 percent of our dinners to be grown within a few miles of our house.

Today, I want to talk about what local organic food means personally, and to the planet.

For me:

  • Food that’s fun to cook and delicious to eat
  • Super-fresh, and loaded with nutrition, vitamins, and minerals (instead of toxic chemicals)
  • Very frugal
  • Children who feel a direct connection to where their food comes from and how it grows—and who have carried their food awareness into their own lives in big cities, now that they’re grown
  • Community; we always see friends when we pick up our share at the CSA farm, and they have educational programs like herb walks or food preservation workshops, potlucks and concerts once in a while

As an example of the dollars and cents, consider the six-flat of tomato plants we bought. I think we paid $3—so 50 cents per plant. Let’s amortize the fixed costs of the garden across all the crops, and add another $3 to cover the tomatoes’ share. So we’re up to $6.

Fresh local organic tomatoes are usually around $3 per pound at the local farmers  markets—so we break even on the second pound. This is a slow year; we’re only getting about a dozen tomatoes a week, perhaps four pounds. Some years we get more like 40 pounds a week. But even with this year’s limited crop, that means we’re pulling in $120 worth over a ten-week harvest season, and in a good year, that number is more like $1200. And that’s just one crop; we’re also growing broccoli, green beans, kidney beans, eggplant, kale, onions, basil, rosemary, cucumbers, zucchini, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and peas (earlier in the year). The whole garden costs us less than $100 for the year.

We split the $600 CSA membership with another family, and we collect our share for about 23 weeks, typically getting 10-20 pounds of organic produce per week—or roughly 345 pounds for the year. If the stores averaged even $4 per pound (they’re often higher for organic), that means our $300 has turned into $1380—not bad!

Saving so much money on our local organic produce lets us justify the expense of the locally produced food craft items at the farmers markets; the cheeses and eggs are quite a bit more expensive than the industrial versions in supermarkets. But it’s worth it, because they taste so much better, feel so much better in our bodies, and help our local organic farmers stay in farming. And with those foods, a little goes a long way; $10 or $20 a week gives us all we need.

The Planet:

Now, let’s look at what my food lifestyle means to the economy and ecology of my town, and the whole country:

  • Very low carbon footprint. Instead of being shipped across the country, our food is hand-carried about 100 feet from our garden to our kitchen, or brought three miles (five kilometers) from the CSA farm either by car or bicycle. Instead of requiring huge inputs of petrochemicals and petrolabor, we work our garden by hand, except for the initial rototilling. And as vegetarians, our carbon footprint is much lower than if we ate meat (it would be lower still if we went vegan).
  • Chemical-free. No health effects from pesticides and herbicides—to me and those who share my table, or to the farmers who grow it. AND no harmful effects to the soil and the water.
  • Good for the local economy. Our farm membership fee and the dollars we spend on local dairy products, bread, and fruit stay in the community, instead of being siphoned off by a dozen middlemen and into the coffers of far-away corporations.
  • Good for farmland. Every farmer that sells food to us is a farmer who is keeping the land in agriculture instead of selling that land off for development—and every successful local organic farm is a living lesson to other farmers that they don’t need to douse the earth (and their customers’ bodies) with poisons.

Pretty cool!

Now it’s Your Turn:

Please leave a comment about how you’ve incorporated (or will start incorporating) local artisan foods into your lifestyle. How are local organic foods making a difference to you?

Still need ideas? Tomorrow’s blog will provide concrete steps you can take to green your food, even if you live in a city. I do have to warn you though: once you’ve tasted REAL food, you won’t ever be satisfied by the poor imitations that dominate the industrial food system.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Demographics/Psychographics, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, People Helping People Tagged with , , , , ,

A friend sent me a link to a very interesting article, “A Locavore’s Dilemma: On the Fantasy of Urban Farming” by Will Boisvert

According to Mr. Boisvert (whose name, ironically, translates as “green woods”), we would all do more for the planet to buy big-agro chemiculture food from thousands of miles away than to develop food sources in or close to urban areas.

I’ve heard this argument before. And I do think it’s important to do our research and know the numbers; it’s important to make a business case for local food sustainability, whether urban or rural.

But I’d say Mr. Boisvert totally misses the point.

He says the most sustainable thing we can do in NYC is build more housing, to avoid further stress on the exurbs and suburbs, which are very UNsustainable. But I don’t see why it has to be housing vs. food. Build that 600-person apartment building he wants, and THEN use add urban agriculture and solar arrays to harness the roof for food and energy.

And his attack on COmmunity Supported Agriculture farms (CSAs) is just bizarre. I don’t think our annual membership fee for the organic CSA we belong to here in Massachusetts would even cover the same amount of factory food at our local supermarket, and it’s far cheaper than buying the nonindustrial stuff at Whole Foods, a pricy organic grocery, or the farmers markets.

We do need to look at the economics/carbon impact of urban agriculture and the urban food movement, and often, they’re not pretty. But no uglier than mass-scale farming.

He writes:

Hauling each spud from upstate thus requires as much fuel as moving it 585 miles by corporate semi or 2,340 miles by rail. I don’t know the numbers, but I think truck is a lot more common than rail.

If that’s true, then even with the much-reduced efficiency per mile, the number of miles is so much fewer that local food, especialy urban agriculture, comes out way ahead. If the potatoes go 127 miles at 28 ton-miles/gallon vs. 2500 miles from Arizona at 120 tm/g, the Catskills come out way ahead: 4.5 gallons vs. 20.8 for the far-shipped chemiculture ones. And his analysis doesn’t recognize that the efficiencies of big trucking disappear rapidly when that huge truck is running 4 mph stop-and-go in NYC traffic, while those of urban farming increase.

As he notes, a neighborhood urban farm might use one gallon to transport to multiple sites across the city, in a small van. And if we’re really talking hyperlocal, your neighborhood rooftop or small-lot urban farm could efficiently deliver in a five-mile radius with a bicycle (more efficient in time as well as fuel, in NYC’s traffic-choked streets)—which can offset the fuel costs of hauling the soil up to the roof by crane. Equipped with a handlebar box, a rear rack, and maybe even a small trailer, bicycles can carry quite a bit. Even back in the 1960s when I was a kid in the Bronx, a lot of local merchants offered bicycle delivery (using massive one-speed bikes with huge handlebar boxes).

Even if it’s trucked in a van, the fuel cost of a three-block delivery is pretty close to zero.

And unlike Mr. Boisvert, I don’t discount the many other benefits. Better quality food, community-building, job skills training for those interns and volunteers, and an understanding of the food cycle. My own first garden was in Brooklyn, in fact, and the thrill of growing my own food in my mini-urban farm definitely helped push me to the locavore mindset. I discovered a new crop: radish seed cones; the young ones are terrific in salads. And that was also around the time that I started advocating using flat roofs as food and energy resources.

I do have some concerns, and would like to see research, on how urban agriculture can avoid pollution-borne contamination of the food. But he doesn’t talk about that.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ethics-International, Green Business, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice, travel Tagged with , , ,

I can think of no better way to celebrate July 4th this year than to acknowledge the huge honor my hero and friend Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans in Orange, MA recently received.

Dean Cycon, CEO, Dean's Beans, jamming with musicians in Rwanda
Dean Cycon making music in Rwanda

Dean Cycon is the most ethical business owner I know, and the only person to be a guest twice on the business ethics radio show I hosted and produced for four years, from 2005 to 2009. Dean has done 100% organic and fair trade coffee and cocoa since the day he opened his company, which he located in a depressed area where jobs are scarce. Dean not just funds but also actively partners with people in the villages that supply his coffee to do “people-centered development” projects, led by the folks who live and work in those villages. He also partners with local charities in western Massachusetts to create private label coffee they can sell as fundraisers. Oh yes, and he’s also the author of one of my favorite travel books: Ippy Award gold winner Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee (Chelsea Green, 2007). And he’s a fun guy who hasn’t let success interfere with his playful spirit.

And now, OMG, Dean Cycon has been awarded one of the most prestigious honors in the world: the Oslo Business for Peace Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Prize for business. The award judges are actual Nobel Laureates, including microlending pioneer Prof. Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel prize in Economics in 2006, and Prof. A. Michael Spence, winner of the Nobel prize in economics in 2001. Dean is one of five honorees, and the only American. All I can say is, he richly deserves it.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, People Helping People, Technology Tagged with , , , , , ,

Since about 1980, I’ve felt that we could solve a lot of our urban problems by seeing flat city roofs (and for that matter, roofs in suburban shopping centers, etc.) as resources: places where we can harvest energy with solar collectors—but also harvest food.

But when I started talking about my brainstorm, people told me that the roofs were not designed to bear the weight of a dense garden, and the amount of reinforcement they needed would make the whole idea unworkable. I never quite believed this. It seemed to me that if you were to put one or two 200 square-foot gardens onto a 2000 square foot roof, the weight load could be distributed across the entire rooftop without much difficulty. But I’m not an engineer.

Still, I wasn’t surprised to see the “green roof” movement emerge over the past ten years or so—but I was disappointed at how few green roofs seem to grow edible crops.

I do think community food self-sufficiency—particularly in urban areas–is a big part of the answer to “how do we reclaim our economy—and our bodies?” and a great antidote to the very dangerous practices of “chemiculture” [a word I personally coined, BTW], GMO seed strains, and the attempt by Monsanto and similar companies to exercise a terrifying degree of control over (and damage to) our food supply.  So I was delighted when I found these folks in the Bronx, using 6000 square feet of the 10,000-square-foot roof of a city-owned apartment building, to commercially grow hydroponic greens. With hydroponics, there is no soil, and therefore the issue of weight and roof support is moot. In this short video, Farm Manager Kate Ahearn gives us some background about the project. (I did make one error. I referred to a supermarket rooftop farm in Lynn, Mass. It’s actually in LynnFIELD.)

This model, with hydroponic gardens and protection from the elements, offers a 12-month growing season and numerous harvests. Yes, it’s more expensive to set up than a basic soil-based garden, but the payback is much greater. And as a green marketing guy, I see profitable, sustainable, earth-friendly businesses like this as a big step forward not only in economic development but in human rights and the rights of other living things.

Note: there will be more on this story. My old buddy Ted Cartselos did another shoot, with a better camera, on Friday. (Thanks, Ted, for working with me on this.)

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Peace and War, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

This is very personal to me; my son’s college is about a mile from Copley Square.

He was fine, but he and a group of friends decided to walk home (several miles) rather than take the train as usual.

9/11 was also very personal. I was one connection removed from at least two people who were killed, and it took me two frantic weeks to find out that my ex-housemate from my Brooklyn days, who was at that time living just two blocks from the WTC, was all right.

But what made me want to write tonight was not those deep personal connections. It was a question by my friend @PeterShankman, founder of HARO, about how he can talk about this sort of random violence to his daughter, due to be born in a few days.

My answer, I admit, talked around his question rather than going straight for the center. I wrote:

We explained to our young kids (now 20 and 25) why we were bringing them to protest various wars and injustices and environmental atrocities, and to talk of the importance of NOT accepting evil, that we could always do SOMETHING and whether it worked or not was less important than that we did not turn a blind eye.

Interestingly enough, they both have been involved in social justice work quite a bit. My daughter defended a nerdy male classmate against bullies when she was six, and my son was also six when he organized a children’s fundraiser for Save the Mountain, the environmental group my wife and I started that actually did save our local mountain. I was and still am very proud of them.

I do feel that one of the things we did right as parents is to inculcate our kids both with a sense of social justice and with the knowledge that they can actually have an impact. These were lessons I got from my own mother, the late Gloria Yoshida; as a young mom in New York City, she was one of the white volunteers civil rights groups could call upon to find out if that “already rented” apartment was REALLY rented, or if it was only off the market if a black family came to look at it.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Energy & Sustainability, Innovation, People Helping People, Technology Tagged with , , , ,

I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy. Especially when I see evidence all around me of brilliant minds hard at work solving “intractable” problems, I freely admit that I’m an optimist. The human capacity to destroy ourselves is eclipsed by the human capacity to creatively collaborate, and to dig ourselves out of the mess.

And since writing is what  do, I’ve wanted to do a big-picture book on this, for many years. Last month, I started writing an essay on this, and I think it will evolve into the proposal for my ninth book.

To give you a bit of inspiration on this snowy afternoon (here in Massachusetts, anyway), I want to share two sentences from a section of the essay entitled “Throw Away Assumptions”:

Assumption, 18th century: humans can travel no faster than the fastest horse. Reality: humans aboard the International Space Station have traveled at 17,247 miles per hour; future technologies such as warp-space drives and tesseracts, imagined by speculative fiction writers, could potentially take us orders of magnitude faster.

Shifting our attitudes from the impossibility of going more than 15 or 20 miles an hour to hurtling through space at more than 17,000 mph took a couple of centuries. With today’s future-think mindset, solving the problems of the world ought to be a whole lot quicker. Especially considering the consequences of failure.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Innovation, People Helping People Tagged with , , , , ,

For more than three decades, I’ve been suggesting that we need to see flat roofs as resources: they can provide space not just for solar energy, but also for gardens.

And growing up in New York City, where far too many people think that food comes out of cans or mysteriously arrives in the supermarket, this is especially true. New York has an enormous supply of flat roofs, many of which have terrific sun exposure.

So it gladdens my heart to see a project like this: utilizing flat roof space for year-round greenhouses in a long-depressed South Bronx neighborhood. On the roof of a public housing project designed to be green, in fact. My Western Massachusetts neighbor Joe Swartz (@SwartzFarm on Twitter), who is involved with this project, shared the first picture on a list we both participate on.

(The first link has an excellent picture. The second link has a crummy picture but a short informative article about the whole project.)

This is by no means the only example. It’s simpler to build without greenhouses, of course, if you don’t mind closing down for the winter. Here’s a 6,000 square-foot no-greenhouse rooftop commercial organic farm in northern Brooklyn, on a warehouse right across the river from Manhattan.

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By Posted on Posted in Diversity, People Helping People, Politics, poverty Tagged with , , , ,

Not many politicians, even progressive ones with a strong sustainability commitment, would try to live on today’s food stamp budget. Hats off to Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker for this bold step–showing his colleagues what it’s actually like to be poor.

Of course, he can go back to his regular life any time he wants. An option not open to very many of those who live on SNAP assistance.

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