Hollywood’s feature films are greening up their productions thanks to the Producers Guild of America (PGA) Green Committee. Founded in 2008, the committee is reaching out to productions worldwide, reducing their carbon footprint and leading the industry in the fight against climate change. They are replanting trees, keeping Styrofoam out of their catering services, and recycling costumes, paints, props and fabrics.

“The Producers Guild of America (PGA) is a national non-profit trade group committed to protecting the rights and credits of producers in film, television and new media. Given the current climate crisis and the significance of the environmental impacts of film production, a movement is growing to support sustainable production practices,” said Amanda Scarano Carter, Co-Chair of PGA Green Committee West.

While it is the producers who have joined forces to encourage people to limit their environmental impact, they are getting some celebrity help. On the set of “Knight & Day”, Cameron Diaz has been proactive. She made sure there were no plastic bottles on the set, and that recycle bins were placed all around. “It makes it a lot easier when you have someone as influential as Cameron Diaz setting the tone,” said Fred Baron, Chair of the PGA Green Committee.

The committee’s website provides tools for industry professionals to exchange ideas and make suggestions about greening the filmmaking process. In the near future the committee’s website will become an environmental portal for the six major studios and film industry as a whole. It will feature a carbon calculator and a green marketplace where sets, costumes, and movie accessories can be exchanged. “I am very excited about the direction we are going,”  Baron said.

The PGA Green Committee also is taking their sustainable efforts off the set. This past Saturday, they joined with the Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles to green up a Lynwood, California community. The project will put up LEED-certified houses.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

GreenTown: The Future of Community is a one day conference that aims to help small, medium or large communities become more sustainable.

Featuring speakers like Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and hosted by Columbia College Chicago and sponsored by the City of Chicago, GreenTown will take place this Thursday in downtown Chicago at the Film Row Cinema. The conference, which is put on by a5 inc. and Seven Generations Ahead, is in its second year and is a carbon neutral event.

The purpose of GreenTown is “to bring together the public and private sector to discuss and determine ways to create sustainable communities. We have mayors and city managers, city council members and public works directors mingling with planners, architects, landscape architects and providers of product and services that can make healthier communities,” said John Harris with a5 inc.

The conference will feature five key environmental aspects, largely based on the climate action plan, including:

• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
• Transportation
• Adaptation to Climate Change
• Design and Building
• Waste Reduction

This event showcases national and local leaders who are at the forefront in sustainable urbanism, transit-oriented development, brownfield and riverfront re-development, green building, renewable energy, municipal food scrap recycling, zero waste schools, local food systems and more.

The event’s key speakers include:

• Richard M. Daley – mayor of Chicago, Illinois, that began Chicago’s environmental movement in 2006 with increased rooftop gardens, park space, and renewable energy use.
• Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – named one of TIME magazine’s “Hero’s for the Planet”, currently serves as the Vice Chair and Chief Prosecuting Attorney for Riverkeeper and Chairman of Waterkeeper Alliance
• Bob Dixson – mayor of Greensburg, Kansas, the town that was wiped out by an f5 tornado two years ago that is aiming to be the model green community by sustainably rebuilding.

It is not too late to register. GreenTown Chicago is open to anyone. There are discounts given to companies that have more than one person attending, as well as non-profit organizations, and students.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Greenpeace followed up the release this week of its latest Carting Away the Oceans scorecard with a friendly and fishy demonstration outside Trader Joe’s stores in San Francisco.

Greenpeace members, two of whom dressed as orange roughy and others who parodied Trader’s by wearing Hawaiian shirts mimicking the store’s trademark uniform, handed out information on why its important to select and buy seafood that can be replenished and also asked prospective customers to sign petition postcards to privately held grocery company.

California-based Trader Joes is a grocery with more than 300 stores that caters to people looking for natural and organic and specialty items at reasonable prices. It prides itself on selling “unconventional and interesting products.” But Greenpeace has ranked the store dead last among national grocery chains for its conventional approach to selling seafood, specifically its lack of attention to seafood sustainability. The advocacy group says Trader Joes (which ranked #17 on the seafood scorecard) has no apparent plant to assure it is buying reputably fished and farmed seafood and sells “Red Listed” fish that are endangered by overfishing or habitat loss.

Orange roughy are on Greenpeace’s Red List, which includes several jeopardized fish that marine experts have identified as needing time to recover from over-harvesting and whose populations are at risk of collapsing.

Trader Joe’s has not replied to a query for response.

To keep the heat up on the chain, Greenpeace also opened a website, called “Traitor Joe’s” where a cartoon pirate welcomes people to his “one stop shop for ocean destruction.” The site further explains Greenpeace’s seafood campaign.

Greenpeace is urging consumers to buy from stores that are trying to minimize their impact on the oceans by selling sustainably farmed or caught fish. It’s new rankings released this week commended Wegman’s, Ahold USA, Whole Foods and Target for doing the best job to maintain an eco-friendly seafood counter. Safeway, Harris Teeter and Wal-Mart also received acceptable marks. But Greenpeace listed nine grocery chains, national and some regional, as doing little to help save the oceans and urged consumers to not buy seafood from those retailers. (Trader Joe’s was last among national chains, with three regional chains ranking lowest on the 20 store list.) For more details on Trader Joe’s response to Greenpeace’s seafood campaign, see the listings on the seafood scorecard.

The company responded to Greenpeace’s query for information on its seafood practices by saying its policy is guided by “listening to its customers” but declining to give any more information, according to Greenpeace’s report card. Greenpeace concludes in its report that the chain is not affiliated with any conservation groups, has no discernible seafood policy to reduce environmental harm and in addition, that signs posted in some of its stores suggesting that its seafood is environmentally friendly appear to be mere marketing ploys.

The company’s stated reliance on customer input helped shape Greenpeace’s decision to have Trader Joe’s customers sign petition postcards asking for strong seafood policies, a spokeswoman explained.

(Photo credit: Greenpeace, San Francisco.)

When you fish for seafood at your local grocery, it can be difficult to tell whether you are supporting sustainable fishing practices.

Was the snapper you selected caught using legal, sustainable fishing practices? Should you even be buying it? Is the Chilean Sea Bass you just purchased on the “Red List” of jeopardized marine species? Does the grocery you’re patronizing buy seafood certified by the Marine Stewardship Council?

Greenpeace is trying to help you sort it all out – and assure that groceries do not ignore the need to keep our oceans and fisheries healthy.

The worldwide conservation group published its third “Carting Away the Oceans” scorecard on Tuesday, outing several grocery chains that flout efforts to support sustainable seafood methods and lauding the stores that are helping conservationists.

The group is calling on customers to stop shopping for seafood at the lowest ranked stores, which have made little or no effort to support ocean ecosystems by selling sustainble seafood, including such large chains as Costco, Publix and Trader Joes.

The scorecard assessed and ranked the top 20 U.S. grocery chains on their green seafood credentials, giving top marks to Wegmans, Ahold USA, Whole Foods, Target, Safeway, Harris Teeter and Wal-Mart. These stores have all made strides toward responsible seafood buying and selling, though they may be innovating in different ways, Greenpeace reported.

Wegman’s, which was ranked number one on the list, for instance, has created a public sustainable seafood policy and supports a variety of initiatives aimed at supporting practices that preserve ocean ecosystems. The New York-based chain’s seafood policy dictates that wild-caught fish be properly reported and that capture methods meet certain standards; the store also buys from aquaculture groups that aim to avoid using pesticides, antibiotics and wild fish as feed. It actively seeks out items that have been certified by the Marine Stewardship Council and has removed several red list seafood species, though not all, from its inventory.

Privately owned Wegman’s, which operates 70 stores in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, provides in-store information to educate customers about seafood sustainability.

Ahold, listed number two on the Greenpeace list, operates as Stop & Shop, Giant and Martin’s Food Markets and is owned by Royal Ahold of the Netherlands. It deserves good marks for developing the “Choice Catch” program under which it avoids buying illegally caught seafood and takes ecological impacts into account, Greenpeace reported.

Ahold also gives preference to farmed seafood that is pesticide and antibiotic-free, but could do a better job of in-store education, according to the score card. Ahold has announced they will no longer sell Chilean sea bass, orange roughy and shark (they already have stopped sales of bluefin tuna and Atlantic halibut) but still sell other jeopardized seafood, the report said.

Whole Foods and Target (third and fourth on the Greenpeace list) also have worked to eliminate many unsustainable items from their inventory, though fast-growing Whole Foods, which previously ranked number one on Greenpeace’s seafood score card, continues to offer “a tremendous amount of red list seafood options.”

Green-minded visitors to northern Colorado should consider a tour of the New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins. New Belgium, best known for its Fat Tire Amber Ale brand, is one of the most environmentally progressive breweries in the world. The brewery has used wind-powered electricity since 1999, and green-design methods have been incorporated throughout the company. I visited the headquarters on a recent trip and discovered that many aspects of company life are dedicated to sustainability.

New Belgium sponsors a charity bike-and-music event called “Tour de Fat” in eleven cities in the United States, including Austin, Chicago, Minneapolis and Portland, that encourages people to trade their car for a bike, at least for a day. At Tour de Fat events, beer is served in compostable cups, and  performers take to a solar-powered stage. (A Tour de Fat schedule is online.)

Cycling has long been part of New Belgium’s corporate culture. Before he founded the company, Jeff Lebesch went on a tour of Belgian breweries, traveling through Europe in 1989 on a mountain bike, a rarity at the time. Many people commented on the “fat tires” he used, which inspired the name of Fat Tire Amber Ale. Today, employees of New Belgium each receive a mountain bike on the one-year anniversary of their hire date. They are encouraged to use the bikes to commute to work, thus reducing their carbon footprints. Outside the headquarters, dozens of bikes are lined up, looking well-used.

Tours of the brewery are free, and they are offered several days per week. One of the first things visitors notice is the beautiful pine wood used throughout the building, on ceilings, walls and floors. The wood has a bluish tint, meaning it’s “beetlekill” wood. Throughout Colorado, thousands of acres of lodgepole pines have been lost to a pine bark beetle infestation. The beetle injects a fungus into the trees, which tints the wood blue. Using the wood is a way to utilize these dead trees, the tour guide explained.

The most impressive sight on the tour is the gigantic “Merlin” brewing kettle, the size of a school bus. Traditional brew kettles heat the wort (unfermented beer, the liquid that comes from mashing grains) in a giant kettle that heats from the bottom, similar to how you heat a pan of water on the kitchen stove.

The Merlin, made by the Germany company Steinecker, has a huge cone-shaped heating element standing inside the vast cylindrical kettle. The liquid heats more quickly than in a traditional kettle because the heating surface is much larger, and the wort heats from the center out. Since the wort heats faster, the brew kettle uses less energy than traditional methods.

Every brewery produces a large amount of wastewater as a result of the brewing process. New Belgium built its own water-treatment plant, which includes anaerobic digestion. The company also uses the methane produced by the plant to generate electricity and heat. As it continues to work on new ways to save energy, New Belgium plans to install a solar photovoltaic array.

Best of all for visitors, each brewery guest 21 and up can sample four types of beer for free, in the first-floor bar called the “Liquid Center.” Most visitors start with the Fat Tire, and then move on to try other flavors, like Sunshine Wheat, Skinny Dip and Blue Paddle.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Opening this week at New York City’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the exhibition “Design for a Living World” explores possibilities for ecological sensitivity in a realm of top-tier design work — from fashion star Isaac Mizrahi to artist/architect Maya Lin — in which conspicuous over-consumption is often the rule.

The show was developed by The Nature Conservancy, whose Project Director Sara Elliott says they “were looking for designers who demonstrated an innovative and open-minded approach to materials or who were thinking about the relationship between products and place or source,” instead of only recruiting those known for green-friendly work. Designers were pointed toward areas where the Conservancy works — from Bolivia to Australia to Idaho — and asked to draw their inspiration from whatever they found there.

The show, which is expected to travel to cities like Miami, Chicago, and San Francisco after leaving New York in January, wound up with a broad array of creations, from sculptural pieces to prototypes for what could be mass-produced, everyday objects. More important than marketability, Elliott says, is “that the objects say something about the place, the people who depend on that place for their livelihood, and/or the inherent qualities of the material.”

In a way, the show’s impact on viewers seems like a secondary concern: The challenge here was to designers, who make so many decisions on the consumer’s behalf long before a product is available for sale. Non-designers come away from the show, hopefully, ready to pay more attention to questions about where their goods come from and how their production affects a community. As for the creative professionals who participated, Elliott says, “I think in almost every instance, the designers have been inspired to pay closer attention to the materials they specify in their work and the impacts that those material choices have on real people and real places across the globe.”

Sodexo, a food service and facilities management company responsible for millions of cafeteria meals across the country, and students at Ithaca College recently joined together to green the college’s dining operations.

It seemed a good place to start, given that dining facilities at colleges require five times more energy than lecture halls or office, according to a news release by the food service firm. A team of students and Sodexo employees began by surveying every piece of equipment for energy efficiency. The group also conducted a water and energy audit.

The team was able to set short term and long term goals on how to reduce waste. As a result, the college will be installing energy-efficient exhaust fans, making employees more aware of energy use and adding light sensors. The team’s plan will cut the energy by by nearly $140,000 a year and reduce the kitchens carbon footprint by 26%, says Sodexo.

The New York college will have to invest in $215,000 worth of equipment estimated to pay for itself in 19 months of energy savings.

“Students are passionate about the environment and teaming with them promotes sustainability on campus as well as after they graduate,” said Al Allen, president of Sodexo facility management, in a statement.

The cost reductions are part of Sodexo’s commitment to reduce waste, conserve water, to provide locally grown and sourced foods and to engage in other green practices. Sodexo is one of the leading food service providers in the country servicing more than 600 campuses in the United States.

(Photo courtesy of Ithaca College)

Copyright C 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Count the city of Houston among the growing number of municipalities and groups gathering up old stuff — to keep it out of the landfill and recycle it for new uses.

In this case, Houston is now accepting donations of construction and home materials, which will be made available to any nonprofit organization at no charge.

A $150,000 grant helped to created the Building Materials Reuse Warehouse. Construction workers or home builders simply drop off extra ceiling fans, faucets or anything left over. The products then get a new home at a nonprofit organization instead of filling up the landfill. More than one-third of the waste in Houston is directly related to construction and demolition material.

The warehouse is currently mostly lumber and the grand opening is not until June in hopes of obtaining more donated materials.  Visit the website to see the hours of operation for the warehouse and rules for donating and shopping.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Want to spend the summer restoring a wildlife habitat on the Dolores River? There is a camp for that. Or would you prefer learning first-hand how to cultivate a thriving organic farm? There is a camp for that, too.

With more than 5,000 overnight camps and more than 1,400 teen tours across the nation, there is a camp to suit the interests of almost every child. But we’re not talking basic glue noodles to paper, play tether ball and call-it-a-day sort of camps. We’re talking traveling the world, adapting to foreign cultures, nurturing wildlife and embracing conservation.

And the best part is these summer options are incorporating green practices and green teachings into every aspect of their programs.

“Most parents want to make sure their child comes back from camp with community service or academic credit, ” explains ChoiceCamps.com co-founder Peter Ross. ChoiceCamps.com is a new website that provides expert advice, online recommendations and testimonials from parents and campers on more than 300 of the best summer camps and teen travel programs.

“Often that credit takes the form of some environmental program. That could be anything from studying species migration to building a dam to help supply water to a village.”

“There really is a green theme throughout a lot of these camps,” Ross says. “And parents are certainly happy when their child is doing something like studying the ecosystem of the Galapagos Islands. That’s a life experience.”

Most camps on ChoiceCamps accept applications on a first come first serve basis, and nearly every camp listed on the site still has space available. Be sure to ask about any deals the camps may be running or any sibling or friend discounts they might be offering.

Choosing the Right Camp

With so many options, you want to be sure you’re signing up for the camp that best suits your family.

The most important thing is that you are matching the child to the camp. Certain programs are meant for certain kids, Ross says, so you’ll want to consider these three major points:

1. What does your child really want to get out of their summer break?

2. How long do you want your child to be at camp? Camp stays can range anywhere between five days to more than 30 days, but two week long programs are most popular.

3. Where is the camp located?

It’s also important to decide whether you’re looking into the more traditional overnight camps (usually for younger children) or a more travel-oriented our for teens. Teen tours generally include a community service component, a travel component or a language component – and often it’s all three. Some adventures accept kids at young as 13, but the majority caters to 16- to 18-year-olds. The groups are often smaller (10 to 40 campers) and the staff to camper ratio often higher.

Because teen-oriented trips feature more traveling than traditional camps, they tend to focus on interacting with the environment and methods of preservation (like “leave no trace” camping), says Ross. Overnight camps, on the other hand, can focus on stressing the importance of green practices like organic farming.

Here are a few of Green Right Now’s favorite Overnight Camps and Teen Tours:

It can be a challenge to update an historic building, let alone transform it into a model of green modernity. Rattling pipes crowd walls that need new duct work; old fixtures adhere stubbornly to aging walls and facades retain character, but heating and cooling – not so much.

Still, the historic Heathman Hotel in downtown Portland has recently undergone two green upgrades, and is determined to become a model of sustainability, while sacrificing none of its landmark historic elegance.

The 81-year-old Heathman, like most vintage urban hotels, has been through many nips and tucks over the decades. It got its first green redo about three years ago with the renovation of the guest bedrooms and living areas and the addition of a new heating and cooling system. The project, which won financial incentives from the Energy Trust of Oregon, and included switching to CFL light bulbs, proved enlightening: The changes trimmed energy usage by 20 to 30 percent at the 150-room hotel.

“My return on investment, we realized that in less than two years; a year and half for the HVAC investment,” said hotel general manager Chris Erickson. “It was a wise idea and now as we move into the future, it’s all straight to the bottom line.”

Green redo Number Two, is currently underway as the Heathman overhauls its guest bathrooms, all 155 of them, which will save thousands of gallons of water every day. New low-flow shower heads and water-wise commodes (which use 1.5 gallons per flush instead of 3 gallons) are expected to cut bathroom water use in half, without guests even noticing.

Having witnessed during his career how most hotel renovations send tons of refuse to the dump, Erickson decided to turn this latest bathroom project into a study of converting to a more sustainable operation, sustainably.

He contracted with Ankrom Moisan Associated Architects to design the new look of the bathrooms, and also with the non-profit ReBuilding Center of Portland, to whisk away the outgoing material.

The Center sent “deconstruction” experts to assess how everything coming out of the bathrooms could be reclaimed, thus giving the used sinks, fixtures and doors a second life through the center’s resale program, and also reducing the impact on the landfill.

The program they came up with has produced a nearly waste-free, or 99 percent landfill-free, remodel that diverted an estimated 15 tons of debris. Only the mirrors that were accidentally broken while being removed had to be discarded.

Every Tuesday night at 7:00, Jean Ponzi steps behind the microphone as the host and producer for her weekly environmental talk show, “Earthworms,” where she interviews local, regional and national guests on the topics of sustainable living and being environmentally conscious on St. Louis’s community radio KDHX. The show has been running for 21 years and Ponzi has been talking about going green long before it was the cool thing to do.

“For nearly 20 years, the topics I care about were marginalized in our society – then in 2007 green got ‘in’. Many sources are now repeating the kinds of messages I delivered as a minority voice for years,” Ponzi says.  This new popularity helps her to deliver a much deeper message about the human interconnection with Earth’s resources, she explains: “I am able to talk about what our species needs to learn to coexist in healthy, sustainable relationships with every other kind of living thing on Earth.”

“Over the years, Jean has presented conversations with countless authors, researchers, teachers and other experts, and it is amazing to me how much information she conveys each week in such an entertaining manner,” said Larry Weir, operations manager for KDHX. When not behind the radio mic, Ponzi’s job is to educate the people and businesses of St. Louis how to drop their wasteful ways in exchange for a sustainable lifestyle.

As the Green Resources Manager for Missouri Botanical Garden’s EarthWays Center, Ponzi has taken on the challenge of educating St. Louis. The EarthWays center strives to inform residents about practical ways to conserve natural resources. Ponzi proudly states that the garden has been “green for 150 years.” Ponzi gets her message across through various public talks, adult education classes and media interviews. She helps local businesses form “Green Teams” to identify and achieve sustainability goals in the office. She also serves as the St. Louis region’s Residential Green Building Advocate, another aspect of her city job, she promotes residential Green Building practices to homeowners and home builders.

In a nut shell, Ponzi is the go-to gal in St. Louis for residents who want to go green. She is able to help residents check facts and learn about products, practices and service providers and also help avoid citizens and businesses avoid “green-washing” solicitations.

“If Jean Ponzi were to leave St. Louis, it would be a tremendous loss for the environmental community, and an equally tremendous gain to wherever she decided to be,” said Weir.

Growing up in Wisconsin, she entered the working world knowing nothing about environmental issues. She first encountered the world of Ecology accidentally while doing video production work for Missouri Botanical Garden. “I was immediately hooked on a field that is all about systems, cycles and interconnected relationships of diverse living things,” said Ponzi. Ever since this chance encounter, she has focused her work on communicating the importance of environmental topics.

Whether you tune into her radio show, give her a call, or send an email Ponzi is just waiting to tell you about the importance of green living. “Our species needs to learn to coexist in healthy sustainable relationships with every other kind of living thing on Earth,” she said.

Copyright C 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The multi-edged issues facing the travel industry as it moves toward becoming more green are not hard to envision. First, there’s that sticky matter of getting there – by jet? by car?

There’s a certain built-in, un-green aspect at the core of tourism.

But that said, there are many ways travelers can be less consumptive and more supportive of eco-friendly practices. They can stay at conservation-minded hotels; places that don’t wash your sheets automatically every day; that serve local food and arrange low-impact tours for guests.

Online travel company Travelocity has taken its first steps toward helping consumers find and patronize greener destinations by launching an eco-friendly directory. The Green Directory aims to help travelers sort the green from the “green washed,” and so far features more than 200 hotels and resorts many of which already claim to be carbon neutral, according to the company.

Destinations in the directory include hotels around the world, in Mumbai, Osaka, Calgary, Ottawa, Edinburgh, Geneva, New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, Orlando, Montego Bay, Acalpulco and St. Johns. Brand name hotels on the list include Doubletree, Disney, Fairmont, Hyatt, Kimpton and Sheraton.

Not surprisingly, California lodgings are well represented with more than 25 listed hotels spread from San Diego to San Francisco. Orlando turns out to be a green hot spot, also with more than 25 hospitality locales in The Green Directory, including several Disney properties.

It turns out that hotels in U.S. states that have strict green certification programs were ahead of the game because they’d already taken many steps to qualify for their state programs, said Natasha Carvell, director of Travelocity’s Travel For Good program.

In addition to using existing state programs, Travelocity relied on reports from its field managers to develop the list of eco-hotels.

“We’ve asked them, because they’ve been to these hotels, to try to figure out which hotels are walking the talk. They’ve helped us sort out a long list,” Carvell said.