Guess what city just mandated that businesses disclose their toxic chemicals, put a five cent price tag on plastic bags and set up a future ban on the sale of bottled water at city-owned centers as well as plastic take-out food containers?

Portland? San Francisco? They’ve taken some similar measures. But no, the latest municipality to get aggressive with consumer waste is Toronto, Canada’s largest and apparently greenest city.

This week the Toronto City Council set in motion a sweeping effort aimed at reducing the number of plastic disposables - grocery bags, water bottles and take-out cartons - that wind up in the local landfill. (more…)

I remember spending one long, gray Christmas season seven years ago in the hospital with my daughter. I wouldn’t say it was a terrible time. While we weren’t happy to be hospital-bound, but we were enormously, elatedly grateful that our little girl, just 3 ½, had survived a critical surgery and was getting the medical care she needed.

Still, spending Christmas morning in the hospital in slushy, deserted downtown Baltimore is a memory in sepia. There’s nothing quite so bittersweet as waking up with a child on a special day, only to recognize that those austere medical surroundings are still with you: the whirring breathing equipment, the IV, the white blankets, the 5^th floor view to the parking lot.

I always awakened first, and I would watch her until she did. That morning, I noticed someone had slipped a stuffed animal onto her bed, a white reindeer with shiny gold antlers. When she awoke, her eyes caught sight of it immediately. And she smiled.

Her smiles were worth a million bucks at the time, because she hadn’t yet recovered her speech.

The toy was an anonymous donation. Some group, I don’t even know which, had taken the time to gather the toys, assign them to appropriate kids and make sure they were in place very early Christmas Day. They had peeled away from their own family affairs to help a bunch of strangers: a hundred or so kids with disabilities and special needs stuck in a rehab unit inside Johns Hopkins Medical Center.

Later that day, I remember some of my daughter’s hospital pals coming by to show off their presents. One girl we’d come to know, wheelchair-bound after her treatment for cancer, came by quietly with her dad, a pathologist. She handed my daughter a Barbie video, something she’d outgrown but that she knew would delight a three-year-old. She too had lost her ability to speak, and so the girls communicated through nods and eye contact.

It sounds cliché, but you can do a lot of good at the holidays. Your old coat, a gently used book, a retired computer, a toy or video that didn’t get used — all these can find a good home. Read our story by reporter Diane Porter, an expert recycler, to find out the many, many places you can donate, both close to home and as far away as your gift is needed. Move that extra stuff out of your closets and drawers (hit the garage too), and spread the spirit of the season.

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

We’re too familiar with the downsides of the holiday season. Bags of new things come into the house and get hidden in already-full closets and drawers. Boxes of decorations come out of their hiding places, muscling their way into your living space. Wrapping paper and ribbons multiply like guppies, scissors and tape go missing, cookies come out of the oven and the doorbell rings. When it’s all over, we work to find places for the new stuff, stash the decorations again and vow to make next year different.

Guess what. It’s next year.

What if - indulge us here, for a moment - what if you could simplify first this year, getting rid of things you don’t use, recycling them where they’ll be appreciated? What if you could make space now, and begin the New Year with closets that don’t look like they’ve been through a natural disaster?

You can. And you’ll feel so good, because one computer, one stuffed animal or one pair of old athletic shoes can change a life.

“You’ve heard the story about the young person tossing starfish back into the ocean when they washed up on shore and were in danger of dying in the hot sun, right?” asked Barry Cranmer, president of the Share the Technology computer recycling project. “Someone asks why she was bothering because there were so many and she wouldn’t be able to rescue them all, so it wouldn’t really make any difference.

“As she tosses another back into the water, she says, ‘it will make a difference to this one.’ “

Take a quick tour of your closets, the basement, the garage. Are there books, tools, sports equipment you no longer need or use? Old towels, a wedding dress, a wheelbarrow?

Let’s save some starfish.

The kids’ room

Kendra Robins knows her territory. The founder of Project Night Night, a program that gives books, stuffed animals and blankets to homeless children, learned when she had her son that not all toys find their forever home the first time around.

Children “find their favorites, and those get super-loved,” she said. “The other ones sit on a shelf, looking cute. Things are either tattered beyond recognition or nearly pristine.”

This year, in its fourth year of operation, Project Night Night will distribute more than 25,000 tote bags to kids who don’t have homes. Each bag will include a brand new blanket, at least one children’s book, and at least one gently used stuffed animal, most of which have been donated from kids’ rooms just like yours.

“Shelters use them for welcome gifts. All of this is new and very scary to the child, and some of the shelters are not that nice. A lot of kids are frightened, and having a stuffed animal helps,” Robins said. Books are important because homeless kids often have lower academic achievements than others. And the blankets give them something new, all their own, to cuddle for security.

Project Night Night has drop-off locations in Phoenix, Arizona, the Bay Area in California and in Solon, Ohio, and five mailing addresses around the country. You can also work with the organization to keep your donations in your own community. Project Night Night sells its Tote Bags online for $3.50; you commit to packing them and donating them to a shelter of your own choosing or one of the 300 shelters with which they already have affiliations.

The concept drawings here, provided by the CHSR Authority and graphic animators Newlands & Company, Inc., illustrate how the system would work and be meshed with existing infrastructure.

Building the rail lines would cost less than adding highways, according to the CHSR Authority — as suggested by this picture where the train could carry as many passengers as are riding in four lanes of highway traffic.

In case you missed it, just before Thanksgiving, the World Meteorologic Society let us know that the atmospheric greenhouse gases reached their highest levels ever in 2007.

The same year the Arctic ice shelf pulled back more than ever. Hmmm. Coincidence?

According to the WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, the causes were clear: “Population growth and urban development worldwide continue to increase the use of fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and natural gas, which emit carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere. At the same time, the clearing of land for agriculture, including deforestation, is releasing carbon dioxide into the air and reducing carbon uptake by the biosphere.”

I checked a summary of the WMO report for any good news but found little.

Experts don’t expect a decline in greenhouse gas concentrations until decades after we curtail emissions here on the ground. With strong policies curbing GHGs, the concentrations could level off at around mid-century.

Which means what? Well, we won’t know how well we’re “fixing things” for a long time. To give you an example, remember CFC’s (Chlorofluorocarbons) ? These man-made gases used in refrigerants and aerosol products were mainly responsible for poking holes in the ozone layer. Their levels are declining now because of restrictions put in place in 1989, according to the WMO report.

As for greenhouse gases, scientists mainly hope to hold the line on when they peak in the atmosphere. If the peak comes too late, say by 2020 or 2025, they fear we’ll have lost the opportunity to make amends. (Scientifically it’s a little more complicated than that.)

So back to the good news, where is it? Well, the world did manage to collaborate on solutions pertaining to CFCs. Perhaps, once again, cooperative action will carry the day.

And too, we know what we’re confronting. We have seen the enemy and it is us. That might not be comforting. But we know now that we must get off fossil fuels. We must conserve, find clean energy solutions to power our houses and cars; discover ways to live that don’t take an undue toll on the water, air and soil.

The U.S., with 4 percent of the world population and one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, has not, for all its talk and expertise, been a good steward of the earth. Still the world looks to the U.S., with its abundance of human resources, for strong leadership. As United Nations climate talks opened in Poznan, Poland, today European leaders said they hoped for stronger U.S. engagement on the issue, given that president-elect Barak Obama has placed a high priority on fighting climate change.

Under President Bush, the U.S. has declined to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the main guidepost for emissions reductions, saying it would be too costly to businesses and that developing nations like China needed to do more. That stance is expected to change. U.S. youths attending the Poznan conference told the Environmental News Service that they hoped their country would confront climate change more aggressively.

“As youth representatives of the United States, we’re working with other young people from around the world here in Poland,” said Jeremy Osborn, 24, from Connecticut. “It’s time for our government to do the same. If we can all get along and work together, so can they.”

About 11,000 people, representing nearly 200 countries and hundreds of environmental groups, are attending the two-week conference in Poland, the 14th Conference of the 192 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Their goal is to further find and refine ways that nations and global groups can develop technology and finance solutions to climate change.

With the U.S. economy now officially in recession, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, called on participants to focus on climate change actions that work hand in hand with economic recovery.

So where’s the good news? Today, 11,000 people gathered to discuss a common purpose.

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Despite the derailing economy, California voters got on board for reviving train service in their state November 4th by passing state proposition 1A — a $10 million bond to begin construction of a fully electric rail system running 220-mph trains between San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal and Union Station in Los Angeles.

The bond is a vote of confidence from the public and a down payment on the $40 billion-plus project that plans to run high-speed trains from Sacramento to San Diego. The plan’s boosters say it will create jobs, relieve air and highway congestion, and help the state meet its legislative mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Slideshow: California’s High-Speed Railway Plan

While detractors like the San Diego Union-Tribune’s editorial board said California’s budget woes make spending billions of dollars on a massive transportation project not only ill-advised, but “potentially the biggest boondoggle in California history”, proponents called the victory a landmark for high-speed rail nationwide. (more…)

This week, I had two features in national newspapers that highlighted the central theme of Saving The World At Work:  One person, filled with purpose, can change the world.

Read both of those stories:

• Harnessing The Power Of One (Investor’s Business Daily)
• Frequent Flier (The New York Times)

Read more from Tim at SandersSays and at the Saving the World at Work site.

Dumpster diving as the perfect solution to a sustainable lifestyle?

It could be, according to a report from The Daily Show. Seems forest-living, oil-spurning electrical engineer Tod Kershaw has perfected the art. “My favorite dumpster is Trader Joe’s. It’s just so wonderful; it’s the nirvana of dumpsters. There’s great food, a lot of it is organic and very rarely do you find maggots in there.”

If you say so, Tod.

But kidding aside - and Kershaw isn’t - the fact he can feed his family on discarded grocery items is telling. Telling us that food waste in America is out of control.

Food scraps or leftovers, according to the EPA, comprise the single-largest component of waste by weight in the United States. Food tossed from restaurants during preparation and in uneaten portions, and from households, institutions and industrial sources.

Figures vary and are often dated, but all point to the problem’s massive scale:

• 96 billion pounds of food - or 27% of the 356 billion pounds of edible food available - is wasted each year in the U.S. according to the U.S, Department of Agriculture. On his Wasted Food blog, Jonathan Bloom places that figure at more than 150 billion pounds.

• The amount of food required to eliminate hunger in the U.S. is only 5 billion pounds annually, says charity Feeding America. If just 5 percent of food scraps were recovered, states the USDA, it would equal a day’s worth of food for 4 million people; recovery of 25 percent would feed 20 million.

• According to the U.N. World Food Programme, the total U.S. food surplus could satisfy “every empty stomach in Africa”.

• It costs the nation around $1 billion annually to dispose of all its food waste. (EPA)

This excessive waste not only eats at our pocketbooks to the tune of $130 billion plus a year, but at our ethical core: Some 49 million people could benefit from these discarded resources. The question then becomes, “How do we change?” (more…)

California this week honored 21 companies and organizations with the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards, the state’s highest prize for contributions to environmental issues.

The Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards program was established in 1993. Recipients are selected by a large panel of evaluators and the Secretaries of Cal/EPA, the Resources Agency, Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, the Department of Food and Agriculture, the State and Consumer Services Agency, and the Governor’s Office. It honors projects in nine categories.

Here are the 2008 award winners in each category with comments from the California EPA:

Climate Change

• University of California, Irvine — Sustainable Transportation Program
  Irvine’s Sustainable Transportation Program seeks to change the commuting culture by raising awareness of environmental impacts and encouraging the use of green alternatives. The program uses incentives, infrastructure improvements, policies and educational outreach to develop a culture of environmentally conscious commuters, whose lifestyle changes help preserve the natural beauty and quality of life in California. This comprehensive program eliminates over 39 million vehicle miles traveled, 18,600 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, and saves the University more than $21 million each year.
• Dixon Ridge Farms — Energy Self-Sufficiency by 2012
  The goal of Dixon Ridge Farms’ energy self-sufficiency plan is to eliminate all types of outside energy use by 2012, while also being carbon and nitrous-oxide negative from using nonfood sources for energy and maintaining its strategic and sustainable growth. The farm pioneered Biologically Integrated Orchard Systems to reduce pesticide and fertilizer usage in walnut production, re-circulate irrigation water runoff and embrace alternative sources of energy. In 2007, Dixon Ridge set an ambitious 5-year goal for energy self-sufficiency and became the first on-farm user of a 50kW co-generator that converts walnut shells into renewable energy. To date, this is the farm’s largest step in moving “off the grid” and “off the pipeline” as this new, green technology will supply 40% of the farm’s overall electricity needs.
• Marin Sanitary Service — Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
  A family-run business, Marin Sanitary Service has pioneered state-of-the-art recycling methods,
  technologies, and programs resulting in a 75% recycling rate. They also recycle more than 547 tons of waste water per day — saving the equivalent of 2 million trees and 900 million gallons of water. Since 1990, the company has recycled over 2.2 million tons of waste, representing a reduction of almost 4 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Marin Sanitary Service has created new recycling technologies, and effectively worked with residents and businesses to create partnerships and education programs to further reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

Want to stay safe, avoid toxic toy recalls and make your toy selections a little greener this season? There are no guarantees but here are few ideas:

• Maybe your toddler (19 months and up) would enjoy Plan Toy’s delightful preservative-free rubberwood Pull-Along Snail or the equally cheeky Dancing Alligator (both about $19). Plan Toys are green and made in America.

• If you have a pint-size chef in your midst, he or she might like a pastel-colored cook set made from recycled (American) milk jugs - no BPA or phthalates. Green Toys’ Cookware Set, for ages 3 and up, includes a stock pot with lid, skillet, four place settings including eating utensils, plates, bowls and cups. About $40.00 . Green Toys also makes a bang-up sandbox set from recycled milk jugs. For around $20, it includes a bucket, sand-castle mold, shovel and rake.

(more…)

It’s the giving season once again, and already we’re decking halls, basting turkeys, stringing lights and scratching our heads over what Santa might send down the chimney. It’s a tough call this year, considering our less-than-merry economy. Even old St. Nick is tightening his belt.

But child-safety advocates have a message: Resist the temptation to cheap out. With purse-strings tighter than ever, don’t be seduced by dubious toys – products that may have chemical coatings, phthalates or lead paint, are poorly designed or just aren’t age appropriate. That’s not to say “cheap” always equals “inferior,” says Chicago-based consumer advocate Nancy Cowles. Locally or simply made toys can be quite durable and affordable. But while you’re looking to avoid problems, save money and save the planet, ’tis the season for research and reason.

“With the economy like it is, we’re concerned that people will be looking more to dollar stores and things like Craig’s List, E-bay and second-hand stores,” says Cowles, executive director of Kids in Danger a toy-safety consumer group. “Our concern is that recalled products often turn up in these places. …We certainly don’t discourage people from shopping second hand, but it’s a little less safe, especially the dollar stores.”

Also, deep discount stores aren’t exactly known for their eco-sound products. Cheap items are usually cheap for any number of reasons: They’re outdated, poorly constructed or have been recalled, or they may come from countries where labor is cheap and consumer/environment protections are nil.

Perhaps the real money-saving formula this holiday season, then, is quality over quantity. Maybe it’s best to spend a bit more on one or two high-quality toys.

Tis’ the season to be…conservative? Afraid so. As the economic downturn and the need to better care for our planet converge into a new aesthetic, we are facing an unusual holiday season. We can show we care with holiday gifts that help us all to consume less.

This might seem the antithesis of consumerism, too bah humbug to be any fun. But we think you’ll see that we’re talking about smarter consuming; buying durable goods that cut out the disposables, forsaking chemical-laden items and making some of your own stuff, whether its soda or energy. Read on:

The Sodastream Penguin - make your own soda, bypass plastic bottles

We admit we were easily sold on the idea of making our own soda because it cuts down on plastic proliferation. Even a family that recycles #1 and #2 beverage bottles, could reduce their carbon imprint by cutting out the purchase of petroleum-based plastic bottles.

So the key question was not whether the Sodastream Penguin was environmentally friendly, but did the thing work? (And would it be a cool gift?)
We eagerly set up the inaugural trial at the kitchen table. The 13-year-old did the honors — and let’s face it, figured it all out quicker than his elders would have. But then as our most avid soda consumer he was the most motivated.

Turns out that making one’s own bubbly is no more difficult than making chocolate chip cookies, and a good bit quicker. After loading the carbonation canister inside the appliance, you fill the glass carafe with tap water and lock it in on the opposite side of Mr. Penguin; a couple pushes on the button, a whistle, and you’ve carbonated the water. Add flavoring and you’ve got soda. We tried several of our sample flavorings over the next two days, finding that we liked Lemon Lime and Root Beer the best.

However - and here was the biggest stumbling block - we didn’t like the extra sweet taste or aftertaste of the sucralose that had been added to even the regular drinks. Perhaps we were a skewed lot because we avoid faux sweeteners such as aspartame and Splenda and are unaccustomed to the taste of sucralose. A spokeswoman for the company told us that the sucralose is less bulky than sugar, and that’s why it’s added. But whatever the reason, we found its inclusion to be not so refreshing.

Happily, the Lemon-Lime, Orange and Berry all-natural flavor essences that Soda Club sells do not have any sucralose baggage. They are not sweetened and add just a hint of flavor to make a fun seltzer. The flavor and the fizz was as good as we’d been buying, and this being our drink of choice anyway, we began churning out carafes of these sparkling waters. The economics of this look pretty sweet, actually: Each small bottle of essence makes 40 liters of flavored seltzer, meaning that a variety three pack (retail $9.99) would make 120 liters, enough to hold our family for months. Add about $25 for the cost of carbonating the water for those 120 liters and you’re talking about 30 cents a carafe, not counting the overhead cost of the machine. (I’m not sure how to amortize that.)

Picture too the environmental savings of 120 plastic bottles subtracted from the waste equation, or about four recycle bins that your family didn’t fill.

Which reminds me. Those carbonation canisters do not go in the trash! You send them in to be refilled at a cost of about $12.50 per canister. (See the Soda Club website for details.) A word about the carbonation: Home soda makers have received mixed reviews on the consistency and durability of their bubbles. Consumer Reports, though, found that homemade soda held its carbonation for 10 days in the refrigerator just as well as the manufactured controls.

And we discovered another healthier drink to make, celebratory sparkling juice. Just mix juice with the seltzer. We’ve found it’s best to use grape juice, which could stand to be diluted anyway, or real juice concentrates, sold in many health food markets. Our kids have come to expect their bubbly at holidays (in wine glasses of course), and now that we have the Penguin, they can make their own varietals!

So if you’re looking for a “conservative” gift that’s also got pizazz, no easy trick, the Penguin should make a splash.The Penguin retails for $199.95 (and includes a starter pack of 2 60-carafe carbonators and two glass carafes). It is available at Williams Sonoma stores, and online at the Sodastream store.
A soda maker called the “Design” is available at Sam’s Club stores for $79.99, with a starter carbonator and two BPA-free reusable bottles.