While I was doing research for the Flowers chapter of the book I’m writing on eco-weddings, I stumbled across a really cool project. It ran from September of 2007 until year’s end, so I’ve missed it. But, I thought it was cool enough to mention again. For the 100th anniversary of the New York City metered taxi, schoolchildren painted 750,000 square feet of adhesive panels as part of the Garden in Transit project. These flower panels were then affixed to New York City yellow cabs as a moving art exhibit.
The environmental angle came on November 1, when VeriFlora, a certification organization for organically grown flowers, gave 80,000 environmentally and socially responsible flowers to taxicab drivers. They handed these flowers out to passengers and pedestrians with a message attached to ‘move this flower along!’ New York as a walking garden. Too cool.
The blog associated with the method line of products recently posted about an incredible art installation in Sao Paolo. Sao Paolo is home to the Tiete River, one of the most polluted waterways in the world. The artist, Eduardo Srur, has created an installation of 40′ long (huge!) plastic PET bottles along the embankments of the Tiete River to raise awareness of pollution and the need for recycling. They’re lit from within and look darn cool in the nighttime shots. I recommend checking out his ‘Art’ link - he’s got some amazing, larger-than-life stuff.
The library is one of the best and oldest recycling centers. According to Savannah Now, many children’s books (including one of my favorites: Where the Wild Things Are) are read so often that they fall apart and must be replaced. If you have young children, I heartily encourage you to take them to the library. Not only will you be starting them on the wonderful road of being lifelong library patrons, you’re also recycling. Just think - how many children’s books might you purchase for your children that would never be read after they learn to walk and hold silverware? How many middle school children want to read Pat the Bunny? And, while you and your child are visiting the library, check out a book for yourself. What’s the point in owning a novel, for instance, that you might only read once. And, if you do purchase books, share them! BookCrossing is one great site for recycling books and seeing where they travel.
If I could, I would give the majority of my income to charity. But then I’d be living out of a cardboard box. So, since my furniture won’t fit in a cardboard box, I’ve found an easier way to give to charity doing something I normally do anyway. The site is GoodSearch, and it’s a search engine that makes a contribution to charity every time you search. The results are just about as good as Google, though I do resort to Google for more complicated searches. But the best part is that you pick the charity. AND, you can see how much of a difference people are making by clicking on the Amount Raised button. I’ve got three different charities set up between the three machines I use regularly at work and home. I haven’t found a charity yet that’s not listed. Plus, they’ve got a shopping portal, in case you don’t already have one that you use regularly.
While listening to NPR this morning, I heard a story on Pitzer College near Claremont, California. Pitzer is just putting the finishing touches on Gold LEED certified residence halls. They’ve got student-maintained organic gardens, low-flow showerheads, water-conserving toilets, solar panels, recycled building materials and more. And, they anticipate that this project will save the college money in the long-term. If a residence hall can do it, what an easy job a house would be. Sounds much better than the high-rise cement block housing I had in college.
On my recent travels, I heard a radio ad for a restaurant in Chattanooga called 212 Market. Once I got home, I checked their website and found that they’re a certified green restaurant. I looked up what that meant and found the Green Restaurant Association. To be certified, a restaurant must use a recycling program for all products accepted by local recyclers, must be free of styrofoam products, must complete four environmental steps every year of membership, and commit to completing one environmental step after joining. To help you support green restaurants with your dollar, they have a searchable database of certified restaurants. Sadly, there aren’t any near me, so you’ll have to dine out on my behalf.
Normally, I shy away from depressing representations of the state of the world. But, the well-known miniature earth representation - if our world was reduced to a village of 100 people - can actually be helpful. I watched the video, and it certainly makes my struggles to pay off my credit card seem trivial. So, if you need a little motivation to stay motivated, as it were, I recommend it.
I have stumbled across the coolest website. I think I either heard about it on the radio or saw it online when I was looking for somewhere to recycle my broken scanner. It’s called the Center for the New American Dream. It’s a very content-rich site, with so much information I couldn’t possibly go into all of it here. Overall, their goal is to redefine the American dream - to make it about quality of life and surroundings, time with friends and family, and living consciously rather than the big house, big car and big credit card lifestyle. They have an off-shoot site called Responsible Purchasing Network, giving you all kinds of information on how to exercise the power of your dollar. I highly recommend checking it out.
In lieu of an actual post on the weekends, I’m going to copy one of my favorite blogs and do a list of various things each weekend.
This weekend’s list is of post-secondary environmental education programs. I’m sure it’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s a list of schools I’ve come across in my explorations.
