Catching up!

Whew! What a weekend – lots of good things happening. It’s been a while since I posted, so I’m going to cover quite a few things today. Here goes:

First a follow up to my –>previous post about Arbor Day – we planted our tree! It wasn’t as easy or quick as I thought it would be. There was a lot of pre-planning involved. From deciding where to plant to what kind of tree to buy, everything required some careful consideration. We decided to plant on the northeast corner of our backyard, so the tree will be getting sun pretty much all day. Then we needed to decide if we wanted an evergreen (stay green all year) or a deciduous (shed leaves in fall) type of tree – picked evergreen. Next choice is how fast you want the tree to grow – slow, moderate, or fast – we opted for a fast tree as we’re not sure how much longer we’ll be at this house. Finally, we needed to pick the type of tree. We went with a –>Brazillian Pepper Tree – grows quickly and has that classic shade tree look. The guys at the nursery told us this hardy tree will grow quickly and thrive in our Southern California climate. Will post pictures of our tree as soon as I get a chance, but here is one that is mature. Look at the vibrant green, can’t wait until ours is that big!

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This post from –>The Way We Live caught my eye; hadn’t really thought about ‘green’ housing before. Prefab houses, if done right, combine attractive design with sustainable materials and systems. This particular prefab is located in Venice, CA (love that city by the way – spent much of my college years there!) and was designed by Jennifer Siegal. You can see more excellent prefabs at her site –>Office of Mobile Design.

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Did some spring cleaning in the garage this weekend. Recycled what we could, sold what we could, gave away what we could, but we still have lots of stuff left. What to do? Here’s a –>great link from the Green Advice blog for –>Freecycle.org, a grass roots online community of folks who are giving things away for free. One more way to recycle rather than throw away. You know what they say about one man’s trash…

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Although Walmart has its share of problems, they are doing some good things on a couple of fronts. One, they are starting to carry some organic food products in their stores. Go organic wherever possible. The other is that they carrying compact fluorescent light bulbs that are subsidized by the local utility and a bargain at 94 cents for a 24W bulb (replaces 100W) and 74 cents for a 20W bulb (replaces 75W). Your store may or may not have these – I’m in San Diego and have seen a couple of stores with these subsidized offers. Here’s a –>great page on Walmart’s site that discusses the advantages and savings to switching from standard incandescent light bulbs. Also check out –>18seconds.org to see how the US is doing in switching to CFL bulbs.

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One –>fellow blogger has got a great eco-wishlist going. They are –>tracking their progress point by point. Great list of things for all of us to attempt.

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Got my hands on some crucial music as well. –>Stephen Marley just released his –>first solo album Mind Control and it is very Ital! –>Stephen was part of the original Melody Makers with his brother Ziggy and two sisters. His voice is, of all the Marley clan, probably the closest to his famous father’s. He’s sung lead on numerous tracks over the years on MM albums (I’m partial to the work he did on Joy and Blues) and often produces and collaborates on albums with the younger Marleys. I highly recommend his album – especially the more rootsy tunes on it. –>Listen to sample cuts here.

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Well that’s it for now.

Arbor Day – April 27, 2007

For years I’ve seen Arbor Day come and go on the calendar and my only thought has been: “cool, a day to plant trees.” The thing is, I’ve never planted a tree on the day. So given my new outlook on all things green, I plan to plant one with my family this coming Friday.

Here is a collection of links you mind find useful for Arbor Day information and activities:

–> Arbor Day history
–> National Arbor Day Foundation
–> Arbor Day celebrations by state
–> Arbor Day for kids
–> More Kids
–> Arbor Day for teachers (activities suggestions)

What are the benefits to planting a tree? Well, aside from looking great and providing shade, there are some substantial green benefits. Trees purify our air by absorbing C02. Planting them prevents soil erosion and can help restore areas that are damaged by humans, animals, fires, disease or other natural causes. From –> Vanity Fair’s Green Issue: “It may seem like a very small contribution, but if 5 percent of the U.S. population were to germinate one tree in one year, there would be almost 15 million extra trees absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.” Talk about offsetting our carbon emissions! Trees are one of the best ways to accomplish that and frankly, it’s not that hard.

Companies are –> getting into the act. Citibank, my bank, has a –>Plant-a-Tree Program that will plant a tree for everyone of their customers who switches to paperless statements. A double-whamy! Save a few trees by foregoing paper statements and let them plant a tree for you. I encourage Citibank customers to take advantage of their program; I did this morning – twice! Maybe there are companies doing something similar out there. If anyone knows, please share. I do know that most of the companies I owe money to offer paperless statements via email, so take advantage of that.

So who is planting a tree on Friday?

50 Ways to Help Save the Planet

From Vanity Fair –> 50 Ways to Help Save the Planet: What you can do.

Great list of things anyone can do to be well on their way to living green. Some are more well known suggestions, like changing to energy efficient light bulbs and walking/cycling instead of driving. A few are more obscure and not obvious. My favorite: don’t pre-wash dishes that go into your dishwasher. According to Consumer Reports (–>here’s what they had to say), doing so doesn’t help much in the end. By cutting out the pre-wash, you could save up to 7,300 gallons of water each year! Putting this one into play right away! So read on and see how many your going to try.

Wondering how to go green?

If you’re new to the whole green thing (a lot of us are), there is a –> handy guide at Treehugger.com that covers just about any area of your life. For example, wondering how to –> green your work or how to –>green your coffee, they show you how. Great site with lots of good information.

The whole topic of green at work is timely for me. We’re just starting to have serious discussions on the subject, and some of us have realized that we’re not very green at all. Interestingly, we’ve taken to fighting for small victories while still working towards an overall green philosophical shift.

One such case is with our coffee habits. Much like the guides I linked above suggested, a lot of us have taken to bringing in mugs at work for our coffee. Once our maintenance guy told us how many paper cups we consume as a company (it’s in the thousands per month!) we made the switch instantly. Better yet, we started telling everyone. Lot’s of mugs in the office these days! Again, small victories. Check the guides and see what you can do at your office.

Peace.

Earth Day

Decided not to attend our local Earth Day celebration in San Diego. I figured that the one hour drive and the amount of gas I would have spent each way was too much. A better way to spend the resources was in taking some time to recycle a few things around the house and using it as a teaching opportunity for my children. We had a nice discussion about reusing and recycling things, rather than just tossing something into the trash.

Children are sponges aren’t they? They were so captivated by the subject and are now ready to face their days looking for ways to put what they learned into action. I’m going to give my two kids each a recycling bin of their own so they can make their own decisions about what goes in and what doesn’t. Should be interesting…

Vanity Fair – 2nd Annual Green Issue

Just picked up this issue – great reading! It’s good to see this topic being covered by mainstream publications. I just started reading it and will post some of the choice information in future posts. So far, there’s been a couple of eye openers and I expect a few more.

Hello world!

Hello everyone! Thanks for visiting this new blog. I’m new to the blog thing, but I thought it might be a good way to get some conversation started about “being green”. Read the About page to get a feel for this blog’s vibe. Post away!