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Students Heading Back To School Go Green

Image via Wikipedia Students Heading Back To School Go Green- Click This Link to See a Recent Channel 10 Interview with Ian and Maria Its wonderful to see so many 'green' back-to-school products this year out in stores. All companies want to be green  and some are greener than others, so make sure you do your homework before making those purchases. Look for products made from post-consumer recycled materials and products bearing the Forest Stewardship Council logo. Products bearing th...

Julia Butterfly Hill: Our Disposability Consciousness is a Weapon of Mass Destruction

Julia Butterfly Hill is best known for living in a 180-foot (55 m)-tall, roughly 1500-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days between December 1997 to December 1999. Hill lived in the tree, known as "Luna," to prevent loggers of the Pacific Lumber Company from cutting it down. In this video for the Global Oneness Project, she discusses our collective disposability consciousness. "When I started thinking about disposability consciousness, I went and asked a lot of native people that I kn...

Ending the Plastic Cycle

Your Actions Matter: The  Shift From Raising Awareness to Raising Care Fourteen-year-old J.D. Russo speaks out about plastic in this youtube video. "People need to stop trying to raise awareness and instead raise care. Because saying that raising awareness implies that you are trying to get people to know about something. And people know, its  just that people don't care." J.D. continues, "People need to be shown that there is a personal impact on them and a reason why they should not use these...

Reuseable Produce Bags

I recently read Colin Beavan's 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. The title's a little long, but the book is packed full of the Beavan family's interesting adventures as they grapple with the concepts of 'no-impact' and 'sustainability' for a year of their lives while living in New York City. This book won't save the planet, but it is a thoughtful and well researched rea...

Combating Nature-Deficit Disorder in the Garden

According to author Richard Louv, the greatest increase in childhood obesity in our history has occurred in the same two decades that the greatest increase in organized sports for children in our history. "Pediatricians are now saying that this generation of children may be the first to have a lower life expectancy than their parents and its because of this sedentary lifestyle." Studies show that kids connected to nature have Better Concentration Less Stress More Creativity and...

Composting with a Green Solar Cone Digester

We've talked about worm composting as a way to recycle food waste. But worms don't eat everything and if you do a lot of cooking, worms probably won't keep up with all your waste. In my yard, I also use the Green Cone System as an additional way to dispose of food waste. The primary function of the Green Cone System is to accelerate the natural decomposition process by raising temperatures, maintaining aerobic conditions, and encouraging the growth of micro-organisms. The system takes a...

Worms – Nature’s Greatest Recyclers

Testing Out Our New Worm Factory The latest addition to our garden is this composting worm bin system by The Worm Factory. We purchased ours locally at Donna's Garden Gate and she even included the worms, free. The Worm Factory Worm Composter unit comes with a helpful guide that tells you how to set it up, some interesting facts on vermicomposting, the anatomy of worms and a troubleshooting section. It also includes all the bedding that you need to get started. This makes it an ideal unit fo...

Climate, Overshoot & Exploring Alternatives to the Mall

As an alternative to being part of the herd at the mall this Black Friday, some celebrated Buy Nothing Day. As I explored in my previous post, our insatiable demand for natural resources now exceeds our planet's ability to meet it. September 25th symbolically marked Earth Overshoot Day, the day humanity began living beyond its ecological budget for the year. A simple economics lesson would show us that when a natural limit is overshot, there is an eventual collapse. How long a throw-away cult...

Living Beyond Earth’s Budget & Happiness

Thanksgiving is a recognizable holiday to most Americans but can anyone remember the event that fell on September 25th of this year? September 25th was Earth Overshoot Day and marked the day when humanity begins living beyond its ecological means. According to the Global Footprint Network, collectively at the present time, humanity is using 1.4 planets worth of resources. Many people in western countries like the US  are using four to five planets worth of resources. Since we only have one...