Category: Your Impact

In our EcoBlueprint Home Study course , the fourth segment includes a whirlwind tour of going-green websites. As an information junkie, I’ve been keeping tabs on them for years. This has become a more and more difficult task recently, as Earth’s Immune System rolls into high gear.

The best of these websites helps us to get at the nagging questions: What is our budget – we hear a lot about what NOT to do to the environment. How are we to focus in on what TO do? What’s really going to make a difference? One of the first acts is to become better informed about the impact that we are actually having. Several online tools are out there now, but which ones are the most useful? Which ones will really help us set and reach our greening goals?

In answer, GOforChange is offering the Green Website Summer Adventure Tour , starting on July 15th. We’ll dig into some of the best tools that are out there: for increasing our awareness, helping us to conserve, and also to restore damaged ecosystems.

I’m particularly intrigued by tools that allow us to baseline and measure our impacts and even to track our progress. This sort of feedback is very helpful in keeping us on our path. It also allows us to adjust when things aren’t working, or to amp up if when we are comfortable with a strategy. . . we can do more of that, or move on to something a bit more challenging.

For you iPhone users, there are some cool applications now for getting green tips, such as Green Tip of the Day and The Green Book. There are others for tracking impacts, especially CO2 from transportation. You can set a yearly and monthly budget, then log in when you travel and it tracks your impact. As long as you are logging in your travel, you can see how you’re doing against your budget.

The tracking apps seem most useful for building your own awareness. You might do them religiously for a week or a month, to better understand your own patterns and impacts. The feedback could help you design alternative strategies. I recently downloaded a few others that have specific information, like which fruits and vegetables have heavier pesticide loads ; knowing that, you may choose to buy organic. There’s also an app that lets you find out what foods are in season wherever you are — and, to locate the farmer’s markets so you can go buy them.

On the Green Website Summer Adventure Tour, some of the sites we’ll visit will include Green Irene , Low Impact Living , Greenopolis , Be Green Now , Awakening the Dreamer , and Going Green Today .  Listen to a preview call and join us on July 15th!

Artist and educator Hugh Pocock sent us some very interesting information today. First, he has a solo show at the Contemporary Museum from May 22 through August 16, 2009. My 7-year-old son would adore the show’s title: "MY FOOD — MY POOP ." It’s a brilliant premise: Hugh weighed all the food and drink he took in and the waste he put out over the course of 63 days. Determining these weights and then calculating the differences between them would represent an approximate measurement of each day’s energy production.

He also kept a daily diary of his interactions, thoughts, and activities throughout the project.  Entries comment on the importance of the sun for all sources of energy, the role of fossil fuel usage in his daily life, and his body’s continuous cycle of energy transfer. It opened up questions like, "where does the energy go after it leaves my body?" I plan to go to the exhibit and report further. The thought that we contain sunlight reminded me of "Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight ," by Thom Hartmann. One of the first points he makes is that we are all made out of sunlight. "Everything you see alive around you is there because a plant somewhere was able to capture sunlight and store it."

Speaking of plants, Hugh is also teaching an urban farming course this summer at various locations throughout Baltimore. One of them is Participation Park , a 1/3-acre urban farm that was founded by artists in winter, 2007. Artists, being such hands-on people anyway, seem well-disposed to thoughtful engagement in such a deeply hopeful enterprise. The course’s blog currently has a lengthy piece with 10 things learned about compost, with gems like this: "Contrary to popular belief, just leaving waste in a big stupid pile does not magically transform it into dirt."

Three cheers for Hugh’s leadership in waking us up and making us more aware.

My husband, the Eagle Scout, came home from Target recently with literally a bucketful of plastic. The bucket ITSELF was plastic! It looked like he had won some kind of shopping spree contest. Everything you can fit into a laundry basket in five minutes. In addition to what you see here, there was also contact lens solution, which comes in a cardboard box, but the solution itself is in a plastic bottle that has a little plastic safety seal on it.

What made me really take notice of this is – I had just been teaching a 4-week course called "Your EcoBlueprint ." In the third week, we played with the Plastic Tracker, which is an audit worksheet to build awareness of the amount and kinds of plastic that comes into our lives. Where they come from, what their purpose is, and what we do with them after we’ve used them. Read through this post to find out how you can win a copy of the Plastic Tracker to try for yourself.

In the fourth class, we talked a bit about the experience of using the plastic tracker. How surprised we were to learn just how much of this stuff is in our lives. For those of us who think of ourselves as fairly environmentally aware, this can be a real revelation. Continued

I recently posed this question on several LinkedIn green groups and was surprised to get so many answers with a wide range of opinions. Most of them advocated systemic expressions of sustainability: green business, policy and regulation, economic incentives, standards, strategic planning, and simple common sense. A few mentioned awareness-building: education, marketing campaigns ("green is good"), and mission statements. The rest championed tools like directories, handbooks, and websites. One outlier suggested that sometimes the answer is just in a state of mind.

In the spirit of Ken Wilber and Integral , in one sense they are all right. Just not 100% right, to the exclusion of the others. I found it intriguing that the majority of them oriented towards systems, technologies, and policy, and only one touched on the metaphysical. Yet, consciousness of our innermost motivations, values, and beliefs is critical to the success of any greening initiative, whether personal or organizational.

As we make the transition from short-term, fear- and anxiety-based motivations to more long-term, optimistic and effective motivations, it’s important to bring greater consciousness to what’s behind our behaviors. Shining the light of awareness on how and whether our needs are being met can be transforming.

At GOforChange, we believe strongly that eco-friendly strategies are far better at meeting the full range of our needs than tired, wasteful consumerism. We are designing a process to help people bring that awareness to their own lives, called Your EcoBlueprint . One clear benefit is that it eliminates the mismatch between people’s "shoulds" and their actual behavior, giving them a fresh perspective on which green strategies actually work for them. Your EcoBlueprint is as unique as your fingerprint!

We invite you to give us your thoughts and feedback. What are the struggles or challenges you have with making green a priority? Is big-picture visioning a distraction from necessary action, or a helpful North Star? How are you negotiating the glut of information out there? We would love to hear stories of your ah-hah moments, successes, roadblocks, and your favorite awareness practices! Drop us a line through the contact page, or comment here.

After watching this beautiful, simple film, you will want to run outside, grab a few hundred friends and make some words yourself. Never has the sense of urgency about climate action been so creatively expressed. Its relevance for Baltimore’s budding Sustainability Plan cannot be underestimated. While you are inspired and raring to go, head on over to 350.org and sign up to receive their action notices. We are scheming ways to help Baltimore develop a Climate Action Plan , neighborhood by neighborhood. Drop us a line with your ideas — either via the "contact us" page or on our social networking site’s discussion forums. Yes, we need to lean on our elected officials ( federal , state , and local ), and YES — there is a lot we can do ourselves.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere has raised about 35% since the Industrial Age, which would be just another boring statistic if it wasn’t for the fact that the gas plays a crucial role in climate change. The levels of CO₂ have been climbing, due in large part to what is often unnecessary human activity, and raising the global temperature all the while. In addition to these emissions, we’re also responsible for producing mass amounts of wasteful electricity and the burning of other fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. But whereas these actions once had practically imperceptible effects on our environment, our Earth is now starting to tell us otherwise, and it may not be too late to undo some of the damage. And fortunately for all of us, there are people out there that can help us do just that, whether you’re 20 years young, 80 years old, or somewhere in-between. Continued