Archive for the ‘eco’ Category

Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food Causes Campus Debate

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael PollanUp for debate on the campus of University of Wisconsin-Madison is not how far the Badgers will go this football season but how food is produced and eaten.

Discussions stem from Michale Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto which the university handed out for free to all incoming freshmen. Professors have also been encouraged by school officials to use the book in their classes.

While students are excited about how the book has fuelled debate which in turn has served to connect students to one another, local dairy farmers are none-too-pleased.  They see Pollan’s call to action—Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.- as an attack on modern farming and are seeking an opportunity to present their side of the story to students.

Pollan’s blaming of scientists for the preservatives in food and the replacement of true nutrition with ‘food’, has also drawn criticism from at least one UW-Madison professor.  John Lucey, who is a  food scientist as well as a professor wrote on a university web site that scientists have helped preserve foods longer, improved food safety and cut meal preparation time for busy parents.

In Defense of Food was chosed by UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin who started the “Go Big Read” program where the campus is asked to read the same book. She said she chose Pollan’s book because of its coverage of several topical national issues.

“This is our core business at the university — taking something that interests a significant number of people and let people talk about it from every conceivable point of view,” Martin said. “I love this give and take. That’s what a university is about.”

No Impact Man - Colin Beavan’s Environmental Experiment

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

No Impact Man by Colin BeavanAs a city-dweller I get, and have even considered, doing without a car. But I’m stymied at going without toilet-paper. Give me a bog roll made from recycled paper but I won’t use a newspaper prior to processing into a much softer format.

Colin Beavan’s  family on the other hand, did go a year without toilet paper. Or a car. Or TV. Or electricity. And nothing new other than food. Oh, did I mention the family included a two-year-old?

It all sounds pretty extreme but the Beavans survived their year-long experiment and as toddlers usually do, the two-year-old  adapted easily to the new lifestyle.  They experienced  year of appreciating what they had and their relationships with people rather than things.

Colin Beavan documented his year in his “green printed” book, No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process.  His intention was to bring attention to the problem of global warming and to discover how necessary life’s necessities really are.

I’ll admit, I don’t think that I could do what the Beavans did but I am wanting to live a little greener and perhaps his book would give me some insight on how to live without the things I couldn’t possibly live without.

Watch an interview with Colin Beavan.

See a promo for the No Impact Man documentary:

Ten Books to Help Make it Easier to Be Green

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Responding to widespread environmental decline,  American Senator Gaylord Nelson called for an environmental teach-in, or Earth Day, to be held on April 22, 1970.  Now,  every April 22, Earth Day is observed by more than 500 million people and national governments in 175 countries.

Kermit-the-Frog warned us that it’s not easy being green so this Earth Day, we decided to lend a hand. Take a look through our list of Ten books to help you live a greener life:

  1. Biking to Work (The Chelsea Green Guides) by Rory McMullanbiking-to-work
    A complete guide to make cycling to work a reality, and safe, for the beginning cyclist. For those who live within cycling distance to commute to work, this book offers simple safety, bike buying, and gear buying tips, as well as ways to best plan your route to and from the office.
  2. Don’t Throw It Out: Recycle, Renew and Reuse to Make Things Last by Lori Bairddont-throw-out
    Draws on traditional Yankee ingenuity and thrift in an ingenious guide that presents more than one thousand ways to help extend the life and value of household objects, from furniture and fishing reels to cell phones, lawn mowers, linens, and jewelry, with fix-it-fast tips for making simple repairs, money-saving ideas for making things last longer, and new uses for worn-out items.
  3. How to Grow Fresh Air: 50 House Plants that Purify Your Home or Office by B.C. Wolvertongrow-fresh-air
    In research designed to create a breathable environment for a NASA lunar habitat noted scientist Dr. B. C. Wolverton discovered that houseplants are the best filters of common pollutants such as ammonia, formaldehyde, and benzene. Hundreds of these poisonous chemicals can be released by furniture, carpets, and building material, and then trapped by closed ventilation systems, leading to the host of respiratory and allergic reactions now called Sick Building Syndrome. In this full-color, easy-to-follow guide, Dr. Wolverton shows you how to grow and nurture 50 plants as accessible and trouble-free as the tulip and the Boston fern, and includes many beautiful but commonly found varieties not generally thought of as indoor plants. He also rates each plant for its effectiveness in removing various pollutants, and its ease of growth and maintenance.
  4. Eco Craft: Recycle Recraft Restyle by Susan Wasingereco-craft
    Who knew taking care of the planet could look so good? Eco Craft shows how, with 30 truly beautiful home décor projects that elevate environmental consciousness to stylish new heights. Every idea is amazingly clever: who would ever have imagined that plastic six-pack can holders could become a chic Moorish-inspired filigree tri-fold screen? Or that glass baby food jars would make a charming candle chandelier? Every project features at least one beauty shot in a modern home setting, easy-to-follow instructions, and step-by-step color photos, while handy icons spotlight the key techniques, materials, and the estimated time to complete each project.
  5. The Bag Book: Over 500 Great Uses and Reuses for Paper, Plastic and Other Bags to Organize bag-bookand Enhance Your Life by Vicki Lansky
    Readers get over 500 ideas for using and reusing all kinds of bags to organize and enhance their lives. Tools, toys, and even art are among the crafts that make use of paper, plastic, and other kinds of bags.
  6. Weekend Furniture Facelifts: 70 Great Ways to Update Your Furnishings by Helenweekend-furniture-facelifts Carey
    Everyone gets the urge to redecorate–but often there’s little money or time to spare. Now there’s a way to renovate furnishings quickly, even on the tightest budget. More than 20 step-by-step projects–from pretty pastel chairs and divine lampshades to sparkling bathroom storage and an instant home office–are explained and illustrated with detailed photographs. A glass tabletop becomes a focal point with the help of a stenciled floral design. A bed radiates luxury with the addition of a fabric-covered headboard. Incredible color and texture effects are achieved using the latest paint and craft products. And each one of the eye-catching projects can be completed in a weekend or less.
  7. 99 Ways to Cut, Sew & Deck Out Your Denim by Faith Blakeney, Justina Blakeney, Ellen Schultz99-ways-denim
    How many pairs of old jeans do you have in your closet? Everyone from the sewing novice to the fashion guru can appreciate the 99 ingenious projects that will reincarnate your denim has-beens into fashion must-haves. The techniques are simple, the supplies are easy-to-find, and every project takes ninety minutes or less, from start to finish.
  8. Baking Soda: Over 500 Fabulous, Fun, and Frugal Uses You’ve Probably baking-sodaNever Thought Of by Vicki Lansky
    Ecologically safe, inexpensive, and found in nearly every home, baking soda is one of America’s most trusted products. Hundreds of practical tips are divided into categories that cover uses in cooking, gardening, cleaning, health maintenance, first aid and much more. Includes a brief history of the product and an explanation of how it works.
  9. Junk Beautiful: Room by Room Makeovers with Junkmarket Style by Sue Whitney, Ki Nassauerjunk-beautiful
    Using a recycle and reuse approach to home decorating, a richly illustrated manual explains how to transform trash and junk into one-of-a-kind furnishings and accessories for every room in the house, with tips on searching and shopping for recycled materials, design and construction, adding personal touches, and more.
  10. Sewing Green: 25 Projects Made with Repurposed & Organic Materials by Betz sewing-greenWhite
    By its nature, do-it-yourself sewing is environmentally friendly. In Sewing Green, Betz White takes stitching to an even higher level of sustainability, presenting 25 projects made from repurposed thrift-store and back-of-the-closet finds and organic fabrics.  White’s whimsical yet practical designs include an apron constructed from men’s dress shirts (and a wallet from the shirt’s cuffs!), a soft blanket pieced from secondhand cashmere sweaters, and even a tote bag refashioned from used Tyvek envelopes. Along the way, White dispenses tips on everything from how to deconstruct old garments for reuse in new creations to how to wrap gifts with reusable fabric scraps instead of paper. Inspiring profiles about well-known leaders in the eco-stitching movement are sprinkled throughout, and a complete resources section helps crafters make eco-smart choices. With Sewing Green, today’s sewers will be fashioning handmade heirlooms and sustaining traditions for generations to come.

The 100-Mile Diet Book Inspires Reality TV

Monday, March 30th, 2009

100-mile-diet-booksThe 100-Mile Challenge, a six part series based on the bestselling book The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating by James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith is scheduled to air on Food Network Canada starting Sunday, April 5 at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET.

The program follows six families in Mission, BC as they spend 100 days completely living the 100-Mile Diet.  Authors MacKinnon and Smith were on hand as guides.

Interestingly MacKinnon noted, “[The families] couldn’t get their kids to eat spinach from the store, but when they grew it they ate it.”

Parents, get ready to plant!

Eloisa Cartonera - Using Cardboard to Create Books and to Help People

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

eloisa-cartonera-logo1In the midst of the Argentine economic crisis, those desperate for money began collecting paper and cardboard from municipal waste to sell for recycling. These people are became known as “cartoneros”.

From this crisis, creativity was born.  In 2003,  Eloisa Cartonera was established, breathing new life into the cartoneros community. Eloisa Cartonera publishes the works of  new and classic Latin American writers  such Cesar Aira and  Alejandro Lopez and purchases cardboard used in the books  from the cartoneros.   The cartoneros  also paint and decorate the books.

The authors help by giving up their copyrights.  These donations have made it possible for Eloisa Cartonera to publish 5,000 books a year and to pay the cartoneros five times as much as they’d receive from garbage processors.

Eloisa Cartonera is located in Buenos Aires but the concept has spread throughout Latin America. decorating-book1

The books are inexpensive (one newspaper article reports that an Italian distributor bought 70 copies for three euros) and offer a promising return for foreign distributors as the books can be marketed outside of the country as a cultural and social project, not to mention unique pieces of art. It seems as if it’s a winning proposition for all involved.

Eloisa Cartonera has a website where you can  see some of their work.

Organic Obama: Barack and Michelle Plant a Vegetable Garden

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

americangothic Barack and Michelle Obama have announced their plans to transform part of the existing White House lawn/landscape into an edible garden. Among the veggies destined for presidential planting are spinach, chard, collard greens, black kale and cilantro, as well various other herbs and lettuces.

The garden will be used in part as an educational tool for children, teaching that fresh food, grown from your own garden, can taste a lot better than what you can get in the supermarket, and be healthier too. Involving kids in the process of growing their own food can be an exciting, informative way to generate excitement about healthy eating.

Since Michelle and Barack are Chicago city-slickers, we figured they could use a little help, and we recommended them 10 books on growing your own fruit and vegetable garden.

…Looks like they’ll have plenty of space.

white-house

Build a Bookshelf

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Need more space for your ever-growing book pile but don’t have a lot of cash to spend on a new bookcase? Over at Mother Earth News you’ll find super easy instructions for building this rather decent looking, low-cost bookshelf using an old ladder and some recycled wood planks.

ladder-bookshelf

Saving the Environment One Cubicle at a Time

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Here’s a novel (pardon the pun) eco tip from Reuter’s and Australia’s ABC News:

Loo poetry can help tackle global warming: study

Poetry in the loo can cut down on paper use too, says a Japanese group campaigning to save toilet paper as part of the country’s battle against global warming.

Simply pasting a “toilet poem” at the eye level of a person seated in the cubicle can help cut toilet paper use by up to 20 per cent, a study by the research centre Japan Toilet Labo showed.

“That paper will meet you only for a moment,” reads one poem.

“Fold the paper over and over and over again,” says another.

Or just: “Love the toilet”.

Now the group is looking to have its posters displayed in 1,000 public toilets.

“We asked ourselves what we could do for the environment in the toilet?” Ryusuke Nagahara of the Japan Toilet Labo said.

“The answer is to save toilet paper and save water.”

Toilet paper use in Japan has been increasing in recent years, according to an industry body, possibly because of a rise in the number of public toilets, where people tend to use more paper.

“It’s because it’s free,” an official at the Kikaisuki Washi Rengokai said.

“At home, people are more inclined to scrimp.”

Powell’s turn to solar power

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

Powell’s Books - Oregon’s finest - has introduced solar panels at their Portland warehouse. Is it that sunny in Oregon? It sure rains a lot in our part of the Pacific Northwest.

Bee & Me

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Bee & Me by Elle J. McGuinness

During a dash into a bookstore (if one can ever really dash through a bookstore) a new children’s book caught my eye;  a) Because my 4 year old niece has, in adult terms, an irrational fear of insects (and all fluff resembling bug-like creatures) and b) Because it has a very cute cover.

The book is Bee & Me by Elle J. McGuinness, illustrated by Heather Brown, and with animation effects by Jeffrey Charles Cole and Katrina Ford. Yes, you read that correctly, “animation effects”.  The book employs ’scanimation’, a process that produces the illusion of movement. Some of you may be familiar with this from the highly popular scanimation books, Gallop! and Swing!, both by Rufus Butler Seder.

The fact that the bee “flies” throughout the book makes the book fascinating but the pictures are delightfully colourful and the story is quite catchy too. It tells a tale of misconceptions, the eco-balance, friendship and understanding. Who wouldn’t be moved by a poor little misunderstood bee?!

If this book wins my niece over to bugs, then I’d say it’s a winner all ’round!

Alternative homes for eco-friendly minds

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

The term eco-friendly is thrown around a lot these days, here in British Columbia the government even offers rebates and tax breaks if you invest in making your home more energy efficient. But these improvements can be expensive, so if you want a truly eco-friendly home look no further then our guide to alternative homes.

Most of which are reasonable suggestions!

Eco-friendly publishing

Monday, April 7th, 2008

The BBC reports that publisher Dorling Kindersley claims to have printed the most environmentally conscious series of books in the world.

Read Like a WorldChanger

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

One of my favourite websites is WorldChanging - an organization that looks at the world and ways of making it better - the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us.

They have posted a list of books that have inspired and informed their ideas and thinking. There are lot of great books in there to help anyone start changing the world.

Antartica

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

While reading the paper this weekend I saw an article about a local couple, Pat and Rosemarie Keough of Saltspring Island, who produced a wonderful limited edition book of photographs called Antartica

Limited to 950 copies, the large coffee table sized book features “the most stunning and diverse portfolios ever assembled about this great white continent.”

This beautiful book was assembled to raise awareness about the plight of the continent with all of the net proceeds are being put towards international albatross conservation programs.

Second Life for Used Books

Thursday, April 12th, 2007

Lately, I’ve become more concerned about being ecofriendly.  Not that this issue didn’t concern me before,  but I’m delving more into ways to “reduce, reuse and recycle”.  

During one of my random internet searches, came across this interesting site for a design company that focuses on environmental and social goals and they had a great use for some old, used books that were headed for the dump - a bar!  It’s amazing how they pieced it together without using fasteners or even glue.  You really need to see it for yourself!

Now maybe I should get myself a copy of Recycle: Make Your Own Eco-Friendly and Creative Designs - Over 60 Projects for Home & Garden and have a go at making something myself!