Towards a Sustainable Future

If you like to garden, or attempted to in the past, you have probably at some point purchased plants to use in your garden. I know I have always been told that when I buy or receive a plant, I need to re-pot it or put it in the ground to help it continue to grow well. This has worked great for me in the past, however there is a problem with this…most plants come in plastic pots. These little plastic pots are not easy to recycle… in fact only 1% of them are recycled each year! Yikes!

Luckily Bonnie Plants decided to do something about this and they came out with a biodegradable plant holder! It is so easy, all you have to do is remove the recycled paper from the outside and put the plant in the garden or a pot and you are done!

Bonnie Plants calls the biodegradable plant holder a Peat Pot and it is made from peat moss which is often used to supplement garden soils. At the same time, it provides the same protection to the plant’s roots as a the average plastic container. According to Bonnie Plants, these Peat Pots have already prevented over 100 million pounds of plastics from ending up in landfills. WOW! Plus, Bonnie Plants has a recycling facility where they recycle all of the tags, paper, pots, and plant container trays. I love hearing that Bonnie Plants is looking for ways to make their products and the process more sustainable.

I am so glad I found out about these. I am about to add some lavender and mint to my garden and although I have recently enjoyed planting from seeds…I might have to try out Bonnie Plants, especially because they are so easy to find. There is a dealer locater on the Bonnie Plants website and all of the Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowes stores near me have them! Having locations that sell Bonnie Plants nearby makes it so easy to grow plants in a more sustainable way.

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I love to run and one thing that is frustrating about running is… shoes  wear out…fast. I usually go through about two pairs of shoes a year.  You can’t really keep running with old running shoes because that leads to injury and that is really not worth it. So, when I found out that Brooks, a brand of running shoes, is coming out with a new sustainable running shoe, I got really excited.

Sadly, we have to wait until February 1, 2010 for this new sustainable running shoe, coined the Green Silence, to be released, but it will be worth the wait. Not only is this running shoe ecofriendly, the price is the competitive with other running shoes out there too at around $100 a pair. Here are the specs of the new green shoes according to the Brooks website:

• BioMoGo, the world’s first-ever biodegradable midsole for running shoes
• 75% of the shoe’s materials are post-consumer recycled
• Biodegradable insole and collar foams
• Laces, gillies, and reinforced webbing are 100% post-consumer recycled
• Water-based adhesives are used throughout
• All dyes and colorants are non-toxic
• Packaging is 100% post-consumer recycled

This is so exciting. Hopefully other running shoe companies will follow… and hopefully Brooks will make all of their running shoes green! I can’t wait to try these out!

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The Sears Tower is following in the Empire State Building footsteps and going green. This is awesome considering buildings worldwide account for 50 to 70% of carbon emissions. The Sears Tower holds 20,000 people - one building the size of a small village… so it isn’t surprising that it used a lot of energy. Luckily the 110 story Sears Tower is going to go under a $350 million renovation project to make it greener.

Part of the renovation is they are turning the rooftop of the Sears Tower into a Plaza. They will also add a 50 story hotel next door that will have “net zero” use of energy. After the green renovations to the Sears Tower, the electricity usage is expected to be cut by 80%. Wow! Some of the changes that will be made are:(According the the Chicago Sun Times)

• Granite plaza to be replaced with green space, new retail, permeable pavement and, along Adams Street, a solar-powered digital display for news and event information.
• Lobby “learning center” to demonstrate the latest in energy production and conservation.
• Replacement of 16,000 windows and metal panels to save heating energy by up to 60 %
• New mechanical systems to incorporate fuel cell technology.
• Advanced lighting controls will adjust to movement and daylight.
• Elevators get new motors that go on or off almost instantly to adjust with demand.
• Escalators get motion detectors.
• Solar hot water panels on 90th floor roof will heat water for the restrooms.
• New plumbing fixtures will cut water use.
• Wind turbines and green roofs will be tested at various levels except the tower’s antenna roof.
• Programs for tenants include bicycle sharing and recycling of paper and electronics.

The whole renovation is expected to take five years. By the end of the renovation, the Sears Tower will be no more, because the name is changing this summer to the Willis Tower. Cheers to a future green Willis Tower! Hopefully more buildings will follow.

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Although not the first to come up with the bamboo bike, two MBA students from Colorado State University are planning to start selling their bamboo bike in the fall of 2009 for a third of the price of other bamboo bikes out there.

John McKinney went on a trip last summer to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and when he got back he started brainstorming what he could do with the extremely strong and fast growing bamboo he had witnessed on his trip. In his words, “I got back home from my summer trip and I was thinking, ‘I wonder what we can do with this,’ and I looked at my bike and thought, ‘Why not make bamboo bikes?” After that he got together with his friend and fellow classmate Jacob Castillo to put together a design. Soon after, Panda Bicycles was born.

Bamboo is an incredibly sustainable material because it grows incredibly fast and it soaks up carbon dioxide. According to the Panda Bicycles website, the bamboo “offers strength like steel, a weight similar to aluminum, and a more comfortable vibration-dampening ride than carbon fiber - allowing you to live a fulfilling two wheeled existence.”

I love the look of these bicycles and I hope they start a trend that leads to all bicycles to one day be made from bamboo - can you imagine the decrease in the carbon footprint of bicycle manufacturing? Mmmm. The first Panda Bicycle, called “The One” is going to be a high quality commuter bike and it will cost $850, which is a great deal, since other bamboo bicycles range in price from $3,000 to $10,000. (Ouch!)

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Every Week we send out a Free Weekly Green Tips newsletter and each week we publish the green tips from the week prior. Sign up today for our free Weekly Green Tips.

A lot of the time organic fruit and vegetables are pricier than the pesticide filled variety and I know that if I spend more money on something, I want it to last longer. However, this is not always the case and you don’t want your veggies or fruits to end up in the trash (or hopefully your compost bin) if you can help it because you miss out on eating them and it wastes money! So, here are some green tips to keeping your produce fresh.

• Wrap leafy greens and store in the refrigerator - Lettuce and other leafy greens should be wrapped in a wet cloth and stored in the refrigerator if you want them to last longer and prevent wilting.

• Put away potatoes and onions in a cold, dry place - Potatoes and onions will last longer in a cold and dry place. A dark enclosed bin in a closet will work very well.

• Refrigerate avacados when ripe - Avacados can sit out in a bowl, but when they begin to ripen, they will last longer if they are left in the refrigerator.

• Buy local - More than likely if you buy your produce from a farmer’s market, it will be fresher than the produce at your local grocery store, therefore it should last longer.

• Freeze fresh herbs - If you have cut fresh herbs, they will go bad after a couple of days, however if you finely chop up the herbs and mix them with a little olive oil then put the mixture in ice trays, you can freeze the herb mixture and use it at a later time.

• Follow the rules for different types of fruit - Berries should be stored in the refrigerator in containers with air flow. Apples and Oranges can sit out, but also do well when they are in the refrigerator while tomatoes do best when left at room temperature.

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Many advertising mediums are not sustainable, and we have talked about more sustainable advertising before, but now there is a new kind of greener advertising that also decorates the inside of parking garages.

Carspaze is an advertising agency that has a new type of advertising that takes place in parking garages of shopping centers. Basically they created a screen that goes on a parking garage wall that shows photo quality images that decorate the garage and bring more customers to the retail stores. Want to know something else great about it? The screens are made from recycled materials and have low energy lighting. Cool!

Carspaze has been around in Europe for a while, but they are now in the United States, and their first campaign is for JetBlue and it takes place in the Tysons Corner Center Shopping Mall just outside of DC. “We are minimizing our impact on the environment while providing a creative new way for advertisers to engage with consumers. We have transformed a grey concrete box into a large canvas for brands with incredibly high recall.” said Carspaze’s Jim Anstey.

There are a few things I like about Carspaze’s advertising. One is that it takes place in a building that is already there and it is not cluttering land like billboards. A second thing I like is that it uses low energy lighting and it is made of recycled materials. The third thing I like is that this seems like an effective form of advertising and it does not require wasteful materials. I hope other advertising companies look into greener ways of advertising.

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Trees are a beautiful and an important part of our life. They provide oxygen, shade, fruit, and a lot more (a limb for a backyard swing, a home for a squirrel…) Many trees are being cut down daily for development purposes, paper products, construction, and the sad thing is they are not being replenished. There are foundations out there that are growing trees and we have talked about them before… Now, in Florida, they are trying a new way of increasing the amount of trees, and that is by giving them away for free.

If you are a resident of Orange County, Florida you can get a free tree to grow at your home. How cool is that? The University of Florida IFAS Extension Education Center and Orange County are giving out free trees to anyone who lives in Orange County, Florida! It is limited to two per household, but this is a list of locations, dates, and times where residents can pick up there trees. What is great is there is a variety of options to choose from including:live oak, sand live oak, southern magnolia (my favorite), red maple, and bald cypress; but as always, it depends on availability.

So if you are a resident of Orange County, Florida, help out our planet and pick up your free trees to grow! (If you do, send us a picture, and we might post it.)

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At parks, businesses, stadiums, beaches, and any other public place there have to be trash cans to keep the area trash free. Now, you can hope that there are also recycling bins but not everything can be recycled.

There are some problems with the trash can system that are not very sustainable. One example is trash has to be picked up and hauled to a landfill, normally by a gas guzzling truck. Depending on how often that trash can is full, that is a lot of wasted gas and energy just hauling the trash. A second example is it is hard to know when the trash cans will be full. Sure, most places have a system where they collect the trash at certain times a week depending on historical information, but what about those days when the trash cans do overflow and trash is spilling out all over the place? Often that trash blows away somewhere polluting the area. A third example is a lot of animals like to feed off the trash, which is often unhealthy for the animals and it can cause pollution if the animals drag the trash anywhere and leave it.

These examples show that trash collection is really not green. Luckily. there is a company out there that recognized this problem and decided to make a solution - the Big Belly Solar Trash Compacter.

The Big Belly Solar Trash Compacter is a trash can that is powered by the sun through solar panels and it compacts the trash inside of it using the energy from the sun. How cool! (Doesn’t even have to be direct sunlight, even indirect sunlight powers the solar panels on top of the can.)

These trash cans can actually hold 5 times more trash than a regular trash can because it compacts the trash into a smaller space. Therefore, this means less pickups to haul the trash to a landfill. Also, the Big Belly Solar Trash Compacter has a wireless component that basically automatically sends a message when the compacter is full! So, no more guessing when the right time is to pick up the trash, this trash compacter will actually tell you! This is great because that also means there won’t be trash spillage polluting the environment. Another great feature of the Big Belly Solar Trash Compacter is that the design is not penetrable by animals so animals can not eat the potentially harmful garbage nor can they take the trash anywhere causing more pollution.

Trash is definitely not a good thing and we hope to decrease what goes into landfills. It is nice to hear that Big Belly Solar is doing their part to make the trash collecting process greener. I hope I start seeing these everywhere!

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Every Week we send out a Free Weekly Green Tips newsletter and each week we publish the green tips from the week prior. Sign up today for our free Weekly Green Tips.

Father’s Day is around the corner on June 21, 2009, and so it is time to start thinking about how to celebrate Father’s Day. This holiday can be as wasteful as the rest of them with the growing pile in the landfills of all the cards and gift wrapping and the pesticide filled nonorganic ties, t-shirts, underwear, etc. None of these are good ways to honor your father. Here are some Green Tips For Father’s Day.

• Buy organic - If you want to give your dad a tie, socks, underwear, or “I love you Dad” t-shirt, choose organic cotton or other types of sustainable materials for your Father’s gift.

• Send an ecard - Paper cards often end up in landfills, so why not go with a loving ecard for your dad? This is definitely a more sustainable way to communicate your sentiments.

• Drink Organic - Planning to share a beverage with your dad on Father’s day? Choose organic and fair trade beer and wine. Maybe he will even make a permanent switch to these more environmentally friendly beverages.

• Don’t use gift wrap - He probably won’t even mind if you leave off the gift wrap of your Father’s Day gift, but if you do want to wrap it, use old magazines, newspaper, and other types of recycled paper.

• Eat local and organic food - If you go to a restaurant or if you cook for your Dad, stick to organic and locally grown to have less of an impact on the environment. The food will be fresh and pesticide free, what a great way to honor your father!

• Go outside - Looking for something to do with Dad on Father’s Day? Take him to a park and play some ball or play frisbee. If you live near the beach or a lake, ride your bikes or commute there and spend a day on the water. Enjoying the great outdoors during this beautiful time of year is a great way to spend time with your Father.

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